Philosophic positive sur la Vibration nerveuse_.[780] The ascending action or vibration expresses the influence of the physical on the moral; the descending action or vibration expresses the influence of the moral on the physical. In these cases it is the descending action which we have to consider. This action is exerted on the muscular portion of the affected part; it contracts energetically; it breaks down the pathological adhesions if they exist; it restores the bones violently to their place; this done, the patient is in a condition to use the limb, but not without passing through a period of debility which requires time for recovery. It is a violent extension produced by muscular contractions. Surgery has frequently to break down such adhesions and destroy false anchyloses. Here the force is not exerted by a strange hand, but by an influence which is exerted on the muscles themselves, and this in a far more beneficent manner than surgery can afford. What is the exciting cause of these energetic contractions? That which we find in all miracles of this sort—a strong persuasion, a complete confidence. Under a profound emotion born of these sentiments, the patient, feeling that the cure was in the extension of the part, had a belief which he could understand. Of course such faith is not possible in every case. On one side there must be the mental condition which can receive in its fulness the emotion born of persuasion and confidence, and on the other that the lesions must be susceptible of cure. To a certain degree there are lesions which escape all this sort of treatment. Herbert Spencer points out[781] that muscular power fails with flagging emotions or desires which lapse into indifference, and conversely that intense feeling or passion confers a great increase in muscular force. It is brain and feeling generated by the mind which give strength to the person who thinks strongly. ALBERTUS MAGNUS (1193-1280), one of the greatest of the schoolmen, combined with his religious speculations so great a knowledge of physical science and mechanics that he was reputed as a sorcerer. He constructed automata, some of which could speak; wrote on anatomy, physiology, botany, chemistry, astronomy, magnetism, acclimatization of plants and animals, etc. He digested, interpreted, and systematized the whole of the writings of Aristotle in accordance with the teaching of the Church. He was called, not only “Albert the Great,” but “the Universal doctor.” To his labours and those of THOMAS AQUINAS may be explained the reverence for ARISTOTLE entertained by the clergy of the Roman and Anglican churches even to the present day.