[8] This word, which is of recent coinage in Germany, has been found so incapable of being rendered by an exact English equivalent, that it has been thought best to retain it and to give the author's own explanation of the meaning which he desired it to express. He says, in a note to the translator: "I was led to this idea [of _Auslosung_] in a small essay of Robert von Mayer ("Ueber Ausloesung," 1876). Afterwards Mayer personally stated to me that he heartily approved the emphasis I had given to this idea, and said that he had only thought of the fact that psychical processes, like the action of the will, _losen aus_ (release) physiological processes, like the action of the muscles, and that I had carried the idea farther, in saying that psychical processes are _ausgelost_ (released) by physiological processes, and that this is a very important step farther on the way of investigation. Mayer himself thought it would be necessary to call the attention to this, when he further developed the ideas he had given in the before-mentioned essay; his intention to do so was prevented by his death. "_Auslosung_ is a word originated by modern mechanical science, and means: (1.) Slight mechanical operations of detaching and the like, by which another and more important action, whose forces were heretofore restrained, can be set into activity: _e.g._, the pressure which sets in motion a machine, previously at rest, is _Auslosung_; the pressure on the trigger of a gun is _Auslosung_; the friction of a match which is the beginning of a great fire is _Auslosung_. (2.) This idea may now be applied to chemical processes: _e.g._, a glass of sugar-water will remain sweet unless some foreign element is introduced into it, but the moment it receives a fermenting substance either by chance, from the air, or with intention, then the sugar water is brought into a process of chemical decomposition, and from this there results _Auslosung;_ but the introduction of the fermenting agent into the sugar-water is _Auslosung_. (3.) Von Mayer applies this idea to psycho-physical relations of life, and says: when the will acting through the agency of the motor nerves sets in motion the muscles, this is _Auslosung_."--[TRANS.]