"It may, in fact, be said without exaggeration that his discoveries, which were all made within a period not exceeding five years, outweighed in importance all other discoveries combined relating to physiologico-psychical issues made previous to his time." I can see many a reader smile after perusing the foregoing, and perhaps saying: "Here is a Jules Verne of a new type come to deal with a novel subject." Yet the time will come when the reader will cease to smile, and look upon these matters _seriously_. I do not mean, however, to throw down a gauntlet to science on these momentous questions in _a vaunting and reckless spirit_; but come as a petitioner rather, asking it to investigate. My time and generation are but like a flash from the orb of eternity, but the laws I have discovered are as eternal as that orb itself. With all the scientific investigations now going on, there has not even an approach been made which might have led up to them; nay, not a hint or a hypothesis, even, leading toward the same. Science, in fact, had nothing to do with them; the first man might have made them almost as well as the latest. They are all grappling with matter, while I have grasped the spirit that is in, yet above, all living matter. In making these discoveries I have bent a sail upon the crafts of physiology and psychology, which have been aimlessly, almost hopelessly, drifting on the shallow waters of the examination of isolated material phenomena. This sail will enable them to reach the broad expanse of the ocean, where they will be able to make soundings in its deepest waters. Professor Huxley declared that during his fifty years of experience as a student and teacher not one thing really _new_ had ever come under his observation. Had he lived to become acquainted with these facts I feel confident he would have declared them to be new. The venerable Professor Virchow, the other day, in an address before the International Congress of Physicians at Moscow, made use, in substance, of these words: "The cell is immortal--there must have been a previous cell for its generation. On this fact as a basis (ascertained by the aid of the microscope) the science of the coming century may securely rest." And he set this down as the greatest achievement of science in respect to the recognition of the phenomena of life. Yet there is nothing more fallible than the microscope in ascertaining facts regarding the knowledge of life. It may to some extent reveal the essence of _matter_, but it is not given to it to assist in recognizing the principles which govern life and the _spirit_ of life. FRAGMENTS