that all psychism is of the same kind, that on each
plane the development of psychism has its own laws; but that it is
absurd to admire the working of consciousness on the lower plane, and
shrink from it as something dangerous, almost diabolical, when it
appears on a plane higher than the physical.

It is this rational and common-sense view which I want to impress upon
you to-night, to get you out of the region of mystery, marvel, wonder,
and fear, which to so many people surround what is called psychism; to
make you understand that you are unfolding consciousness, showing out
your powers on one plane after another according to the organisation
and the fineness of the bodies in which your consciousness is working;
and that if you will only keep your common sense and reason, if you
will only not allow yourself to be terrified by what at present is
unusual, you may then walk along the psychic pathway in the astral or
mental world, as resolutely, and with as great an absence of hysteria,
as you walk along the psychic pathway in the physical world. That is
the general idea; and, of course, this is the meaning in which, after
all, the word is often used down here. When you say "psychology" you
do not mean only the workings of consciousness in astral and mental
bodies; you mean the whole consciousness of the man, the workings of
the mind, wherever the mind is active; the whole of that you include
under "psychology." Why, then, when you change its form, should you
narrow it down, as though that which is mind on one plane is not also
mind on all planes on which the mind is able to function?

Now let us consider for a moment the workings of the mind on the
physical plane: they are familiar. There is, however, one important
point about them. In the materialistic science of the last century you
had very widely spread, amongst scientific men, the view that thought
was only the result of certain kinds of vibration in certain kinds of
matter. I need not dwell on that. But you are aware that both in
England, and more especially in France and Germany, most elaborate
disquisitions were written to prove that thought was only the product
of nervous matter. You rarely, I think never, now find a well-trained
scientist prepared to commit himself to that position. Those who
survive as representatives of that same school may do so, but they are
literally survivals. The mass of psychologists of to-day admit that
the manifestations of mind cann