ther the
one nor the other, although I am not able to explain what it was.'"

"Oh, lame and impotent conclusion!" exclaimed Brierly. "After that
superb test, why didn't he frankly say the discarnate had been proved?"

"Because his proof, his knowledge, was not yet sufficient. Besides, it
requires heroic courage to admit our ignorance. 'I don't know,' he says,
and that is the attitude of Morselli. Dr. Foa believes the phenomena to
come within the domain of natural law, and to result from a
transmutation of energy accumulated in the medium. He calls this 'vital
energy' or 'psychic energy,' and adds: 'If these phenomena appear
strange by virtue of their comparative rarity, they are not really more
marvellous than the biological phenomena which we witness every day.'"

"According to this theory, then," said Miller, "Mrs. Smiley has
remained, as you believe, motionless in her chair, but has been able to
'energize' at a distance."

"More than that. She has been able to emit supernumerary etheric limbs,
perhaps a complete material double of herself, which is able to move
with lightning speed and perfect precision. It is this actual
externalization of both matter and sense that makes darkness so
essential to the medium. Vivid light forces this effluvia, this
mysterious double, back into its originating body with disrupting haste.
Witness the several times when Mrs. Smiley was convulsed merely by being
touched at the wrong moment."

"There is a different interpretation to be put upon the psychic's hatred
of light," remarked Howard.

"By-the-way, yet bearing on this very subject, I read in the _Annals of
Psychic Science_ the account of a singular experiment in the matter of
independent writing. A certain Dr. Encausse, in giving a lecture before
the Society for Psychical Research at Nancy, said that in 1889, having
heard that a professional magnetizer named Robert was able to put a
subject into such a state of hypnosis that he could project lines of
writing on paper without use of pen or pencil, he was curious to see the
performance. Together with a colleague, Dr. Gibier, Encausse hastened
to witness this marvel. One of the subjects was a girl of seventeen. The
magnetizer put her to sleep, 'and during this seance,' says Dr.
Encausse, 'we were able to obtain in full light on a sheet of paper
signed by twenty witnesses, the precipitation of a whole page of written
verses signed "Corneille." I examined under the microscope the