an man. The photographic plate can register
impressions which are beyond the perception of our highest sense
of sight. The Roentgen rays have put us into relations with a new
order of impression--records quite beyond the range of our normal
vision. The animalcule and microbic life, itself microscopic, has
yet its own order of sense-organs related to a world of vitality
beyond our ken. These, and a host of other observations, serve to
show that our normal perceptions are extremely limited, and,
further, that nature does not cease to exist where we cease to
perceive her.

The relation of our sense-organs to the several degrees of matter,
to solids, fluids, gases, atmospheric and etheric motions, vary in
different individuals to such a wide extent that the average
wool-sorter leaves many an artist behind in his perception of
colour-shades. The same odour is perceptible by one person and
unrecognisable by another. In the gradation of sound, too, the
same differences of perception will be commonly noticed. But
quite apart from the scale or range of perception, the _quality_ of a
sense-impression is found to vary with different persons. By this
we mean that the same body will affect different persons in
dissimilar manner. Hence arises the variety of "tastes" in regard to
forms, colours, flavours, scents, sounds, fabrics, etc., what is
agreeable to one being highly objectionable to another. The
experience is to common to need illustration; but the conclusion to
which we are led is that, in relation to the nervous system of man,
every material body has a variable effect. And this clears the
ground for a statement of our views in regard to the Crystal and its
effects upon the seer.

The Crystal itself is a clear pellucid piece of quartz or beryl,
sometimes oval in shape, but more generally spheroidal. It is
accredited by Reichenbach and other researchers with highly
magnetic qualities capable of producing in a suitable subject a
state analogous to the ordinary waking trance of the hypnotists. It
is believed that all bodies convey, or are the vehicles of, a certain
universal magnetic property, variously called Od, Odyle, etc.,
which is regarded as an inert and passive substance underlying the
more active forces familiar to us in kinetic, calorific, and
electrical phenomena. In this respect it bears a position analogous
to the Argon of the atmosphere. It is capable of taking up,
sympathetically, the vibrations of those bodies