are
undoubted masters, and cases are not wanting in which they have cast
their glamour over a considerable number of people at once. It is by
invoking their aid in the exercise of this peculiar power that some of
the most wonderful feats of the Indian jugglers are performed--the
entire audience being in fact hallucinated and made to imagine that
they see and hear a whole series of events which have not really taken
place at all.

We might almost look upon the nature-spirits as a kind of astral
humanity, but for the fact that none of them--not even the highest
possess a permanent reincarnating individuality. Apparently therefore
one point in which their line of evolution differs from ours is that a
much greater proportion of intelligence is developed before permanent
individualization takes place; but of the stages through which they
have passed, and those through which they have yet to pass, we can
know little. The life-periods of the different subdivisions vary
greatly, some being quite short, others much longer than our human
lifetime. We stand so entirely outside such a life as theirs that it
is impossible for us to understand much about its conditions; but it
appears on the whole to be a simple, joyous, irresponsible kind of
existence, much such as a party of happy children might lead among
exceptionally favourable physical surroundings. Though tricky and
mischievous, they are rarely malicious unless provoked by some
unwarrantable intrusion or annoyance; but as a body they also partake
to some extent of the universal feeling of distrust for man, and they
generally seem inclined to resent somewhat the first appearance of a
neophyte on the astral plane, so that he usually makes their
acquaintance under some unpleasant or terrifying form. If, however, he
declines to be frightened by any of their freaks, they soon accept him
as a necessary evil and take no further notice of him, while some
among them may even after a time become friendly and manifest pleasure
on meeting him.

Some among the many subdivisions of this class are much less childlike
and more dignified than those we have been describing, and it is from
these sections that the entities who have sometimes been reverenced
under the name of wood-gods, or local village-gods, have been drawn.
Such entities would be quite sensible of the flattery involved in the
reverence shown to them, would enjoy it, and would no doubt be quite
ready to do any small service th