Feminism; Women; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
In an article by me, "_Is Man an Electrical Organism?_" which appeared
in _The Nineteenth Century_, July, 1914, I showed--on the evidence of
careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert--that the two
sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different
electrical potential. The active, right side is _positively_
electrified, while the passive, left side is _negatively_ electrified.
Mental Telepathy and Telæsthesia prove, surely, that brain and
nerve-currents are electrical--one brain-hemisphere operating as
transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs _one_ Law only
to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an
apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ _two_ laws
for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively?
The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles
of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or
potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night.
Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the
potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two
states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain,
concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness
suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision--which
comprises the intrinsic _faculty_ of Vision and the concrete _function_
of visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with
the waning of Day.
Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep.
Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and
physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination
intensify with the approach of night.
Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female
brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual
luminaries of our earth--the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the
changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences
upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of
lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases
on persons of unstable mentality.
Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to
rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of
living--a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation.
Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in
Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of
Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living
processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at
each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again
with the following dawn?
Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And
drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep
supervene.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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