set-up which Galvani had come upon by accident. The paradoxical result
- as he himself noticed with surprise - was that his apparatus turned
out to be a close replica of the peculiar organ with which the electric
fishes are endowed by nature. We must now take a closer view of this
organ.

The electric organ of such a fish consists of many thousands of little
piles, each made up of a very great number of plates of two different
kinds, arranged in alternating layers. The two kinds differ in
substance: in one case the plate is made from a material similar to
that present in the nervous system of animals; in the other the
resemblance is to a substance present in the muscular system, though
only when the muscles are in a state of decay. In this way the two
opposing systems of the animal body' seem to be brought here into
direct contact, repeated many thousands of times.

In the electric fishes, accordingly, sensation and will are brought
into a peculiar interrelation. For the will-pole is related to its
bodily foundation in a manner which otherwise obtains only between the
nervous system and the psychological processes co-ordinated with it.
These fishes then have the capacity to send out force-currents which
produce in other animals and in man 'concussion of the limbs', or in
extreme cases paralysis and even death. Through describing the process
in this way we realize that electricity appears here as metamorphosed
animal will, which takes this peculiar form because part of the
animal's volitional system is assimilated to its sensory system in an
exceptional manner.

It is known to-day that what nature reveals so strikingly in the case
of the electric fish, is nothing but the manifestation of a principle