In a third cut (Diagram No. 3) I have roughly indicated in conventional form a phenomenon which seems to me to show itself around the nodal point when a descending curve of energy meets and crosses the descending line. As the _élan vital_ that has made and characterized any period declines, it throws off reactions, the object of which is if possible to arrest, or at least delay, the fatal _glissade._ These are, in intent and in fact, reforms; conscious efforts at saving a desperate situation by regenerative methods. Trace back their lines of procedure, and in every case they will be found to issue out of the very force which is even then in process of degeneration, therefore they are poisoned at the source and no true or vital reforms, for the sudden energy that urges them is, after all, in no respect different from that which is already a failing force. [Illustration: DIAGRAM No. 3. The reactions thrown off by (a) the descending line of vital force, (b) by the ascending line.] This, I conceive, is why today the multitudinous and specious "reforms," which beat upon us from all sides, and find such ready acceptance in the enactments of law, are really no reforms at all, since each one of them is but an exaggeration or distortion of the very principles and methods that already are bending downward the curve of our progression until it disappears in the nether-world of failure, as did those of every preceding epoch of equal duration. An example of what I mean is the astute saying, frequently heard nowadays: "The cure for democracy is more democracy."