It is said proverbially, and I am quite aware of the fact, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that sharp tools should not be entrusted to the hands of unskilled persons; and it is because some may depreciate my knowledge, and class me among those to whom sharp tools are a danger, both to themselves and the community at large, that I have not placed my discovery before the scientific world. I have no particular ambition to pose as a great genius or inventor; the things which I have discovered are so simple, that anybody else, following the same line of thought, would probably have stumbled upon the same truths. That my discoveries, placed in the hands of profane or frivolous persons, would be fraught with many and great evils I do not deny, and it is for this consideration that I refrain from giving my _exact_ modus operandi in this narrative. As will be seen from a perusal of this short recital, but little further thought and elaboration are required to place my experiments among the most astounding of this most marvellous age of discovery and invention. It is a trite expression we make use of when we say that “Electricity is in its infancy.” Of course it is; it is but in its swaddling clothes: but, by and by, it will grow such a powerful fellow as to claim by right the kingship of the whole mechanical and motive world. Now to my mind the two greatest forces in the universe are brain power (or intellect) and electricity; and the time is rapidly approaching when these two subtle energies shall govern or control nearly everything under the sun. My friends infer that if I had a little more brain force I should not take such absurd views of these two great _Souls of Man and Motion_, as I am pleased to term intellect and electricity. That I am not so distraught as my friends are pleased to suppose, may be gathered from the outcome of those experiments which I am now about to explain, so far at least as that can be done without actually divulging the particular secrets which, for the present, I wish to withhold, even from the great _savants_ of this scientific epoch. I am afraid, however, that some reader of these lines will, if he be of a keen, searching, inventive temperament, come in a short time very near the borders of that discovery which it has taken me a dozen years to experiment upon, and place in its present unfinished form. Even when I was a lad I was a great reader and literary delver after things which were in any way obscure, unfinished, or apparently unfathomable; and among the many theories I formed upon subjects of which the world had written much, and talked more, without advancing any nearer to their solution, was an idea regarding the soul of man! I may say in a few words, without giving the precise chain of thought I employed, that my idea of man’s soul was--that it was nothing more nor less than his _brain_; for is not that the very spirit, essence, conscience, reason, and vital principle of man?