led letter; with a
little practice he can find a given passage in a closed book. This
last feat, though perfectly easy to astral vision, presents
considerable difficulty to one using etheric sight, because of the
fact that each page has to be looked at _through_ all those which
happen to be superimposed upon it.

It is often asked whether under these circumstances a man sees always
with this abnormal sight, or only when he wishes to do so. The answer
is that if the faculty is perfectly developed it will be entirely
under his control, and he can use that or his more ordinary vision at
will. He changes from one to the other as readily and naturally as we
now change the focus of our eyes when we look up from our book to
follow the motions of some object a mile away. It is, as it were, a
focussing of consciousness on the one or the other aspect of what is
seen; and though the man would have quite clearly in his view the
aspect upon which his attention was for the moment fixed, he would
always be vaguely conscious of the other aspect too, just as when we
focus our sight upon any object held in our hands we yet vaguely see
the opposite wall of the room as a background.

Another curious change, which comes from the possession of this sight,
is that the solid ground upon which the man walks becomes to a certain
extent transparent to him, so that he is able to see down into it to a
considerable depth, much as we can now see into fairly clear water.
This enables him to watch a creature burrowing underground, to
distinguish a vein of coal or of metal if not too far below the
surface, and so on.

The limit of etheric sight when looking through solid matter appears
to be analogous to that imposed upon us when looking through water or
mist. We cannot see beyond a certain distance, because the medium
through which we are looking is not perfectly transparent.

The appearance of animate objects is also considerably altered for the
man who has increased his visual powers to this extent. The bodies of
men and animals are for him in the main transparent, so that he can
watch the action of the various internal organs, and to some extent
diagnose some of their diseases.

The extended sight also enables him to perceive, more or less clearly,
various classes of creatures, elemental and otherwise, whose bodies
are not capable of reflecting any of the rays within the limit of the
spectrum as ordinarily seen. Among the entities so seen will