and hearing. Perception is a faculty of the
soul--often undeveloped; rarely developed to anything like its full
possibilities, but capable of locating objects or of discerning persons
and events, or of apprehending states of mind in others, regardless of
space, as the ship's detector and the shore stations become aware of
each other through their relation of finer vibrations. A recent
experimenter in electric and super-physical force, M. Tessier
d'Helbaicy, states this theory: "Taking as his premise the fundamental
law of physical science, that all chemical reaction is accompanied by a
generation of heat and electricity, he said to himself that the human
body, with the innumerable and incessant chemical reactions presented by
all its cells, should create a thermo-electric pile of great power. In
any case, the Austrian savant, Reichenbach, in his remarkable series of
experiments, has already proved, fifty years ago, that we radiate
electric waves of a special kind, visible in the dark under certain
conditions, and these present positive and negative poles." This being
granted, M. d'Helbaicy has measured the yielding power of the human
machine in heat and electricity, and has compared these with what the
heat industrial machines can do, such as those run by steam, dynamos,
and electric piles.

[Sidenote: A Glorious Inauguration.]

The new year of 1903 was inaugurated by the scientific success of the
most remarkable, the most marvellous achievement of any age,--that of
wireless telegraphy. "Before you write 1903 I will have demonstrated the
success of wireless communication," exclaimed Marconi, early in 1902;
and ten days before the dawning of the year he named, the achievement
was an undisputed success. It is so marvellous a thing that thought,
without visible mechanism, can be flashed through the air, across the
ocean, and record itself, that the success of Marconi can be held as
nothing less than sublime. It is the most impressive of all the
realizations of the past decade in entering on the unseen and intangible
potencies. It has become a familiar thing to see the cars in city
streets, and carriages move swiftly by a motor power that is invisible
to the eye; a power that no one can analyze or detect save in its
effects and its results. It has become so familiar a thing that one can
carry on a conversation with a friend at a thousand miles' distance,
that one forgets how wonderful it really is. Within the memory of me