t between these last
and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. And hence, by tales and
legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time to
time, beliefs in apparitions and spectres. If more common to the earlier
and simpler tribes than to the men of your duller age, it is but that,
with the first, the senses are more keen and quick. And as the savage
can see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross
sense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him and
the creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. Do you
listen?"

"With my soul!"

"But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen
must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlier
desires. Not without reason have the so-styled magicians, in all
lands and times, insisted on chastity and abstemious reverie as the
communicants of inspiration. When thus prepared, science can be brought
to aid it; the sight itself may be rendered more subtle, the nerves more
acute, the spirit more alive and outward, and the element itself--the
air, the space--may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry,
more palpable and clear. And this, too, is not magic, as the credulous
call it; as I have so often said before, magic (or science that violates
Nature) exists not: it is but the science by which Nature can be
controlled. Now, in space there are millions of beings not literally
spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked
eye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and
subtle, that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the
spirit. Hence the Rosicrucian's lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. Yet,
in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from each,
than the Calmuc from the Greek,--differ in attributes and powers. In the
drop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible
are some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with
the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of
horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as
messengers between earth and heaven.

"He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resembles
the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed to
strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. THAT INTERCOURSE ONCE GAINED,
I CANNOT SECURE THEE FROM THE CHANCES TO WHI