t where is the evidence that
it is not? There seems to be much evidence, on the contrary, that it
_is_. It must be remembered that the camera will disclose innumerable
things quite invisible to the naked eye, or even to the eye aided by the
strongest glasses or telescopes. Normally, we can see but a few hundred
stars in the sky; with the aid of telescopes, we can see many thousand;
but the photographic camera discloses more than _twenty million_! Here,
then, is direct evidence that the camera can observe things which we
cannot see; and, indeed, this whole process of sight or "seeing" is a
far more complicated one than most persons imagine. As Sir Oliver Lodge
has pointed out, there is no reason why we should not be enabled to
photograph a spirit, when we can photograph an image in a mirror--which
is composed simply of vibrations, and reflected vibrations at that! We
are a long way from the tangible thing, in such a case; and yet we are
enabled to photograph it with an ordinary camera. Any disturbance in the
ether we should be enabled to photograph likewise--if only we had
delicate enough instruments, and if the "conditions" for the experiment
were favourable. The phenomena of spirit-photography, and especially the
experiments of Dr. Baraduc, to which I shall presently refer, would seem
to indicate this.

These experiments, as well as those that are about to follow, gain
greater credibility when considered in the light of the newer
experimental researches in physics, which demonstrate, apparently, that
matter can be made to disintegrate and disappear, and can be again
reformed from invisible vortices in the ether into sufficiently solid
bodies to be photographed by the sensitive plate. In his remarkable
work, _The Evolution of Matter_, Dr. Gustave Le Bon has devoted a whole
section of his argument to what he has denominated "the
dematerialization of matter." He proves by experiments in the physical
laboratory that matter can dissociate, and vanish into apparent
nothingness. What really takes place, however, is that the solid matter,
as we have been accustomed to conceive it, is resolved into its finer
constituent parts--not only into the material atoms of which it is
composed, but these atoms are in turn dissociated and resolved into a
series of etheric vortices, invisible to normal sense perception.
Apparently, therefore, matter has ceased to be, as such; and, in fact,
it has been resolved into energy! Conversely, Dr. L