an with the physical has been
often proved. Emanuel Swedenborg saw a fire in Stockholm
when he was resident in England and gave evidence of it before
the vision was confirmed by news from Sweden. A lady of my
acquaintance saw and described a fire taking place at a country
seat about 150 miles away, the incident being true to the
minutest details, many of which were exceptional and in a
single instance tragic. The psychic sense is younger than the
physical, as the soul is younger than the body, and its faculty
continues unimpaired long after old age and disease have made
havoc of the earthly vestment. The soul is younger at a thousand
years than the body is at sixty. Let it be admitted upon evidence
that there are two sorts of sense perception, the physical and the
psychical, and that in some persons the latter is as much in
evidence as the former. We have to enquire then what relations
the crystal or other medium has to the development and exercise
of the clairvoyant faculty. We know comparatively little about
atomic structure in relation to nervous organism. The atomicity
of certain chemical bodies does not inform us as to why one
should be a deadly poison and another perfectly innocuous. We
regard different bodies as congeries of atoms, but it is a singular
fact that of two bodies containing exactly the same elements in
the same proportions the one is poisonous and the other
harmless. The only difference between them is the atomic
arrangement.

The atomic theory refers all bodies to one homogeneous basic
substance, which has been termed protyle (proto-hyle), from
which, by means of a process loosely defined as differentiation,
all the elements are derived. These elements are the result of
atomic arrangement. The atoms have various vibrations, the
extent of which is called the mean free path of vibration;
greatest in hydrogen and least in the densest element. All matter
is indestructible, but at the same time convertible, and these
facts, together with the absolute association of matter and force,
lead to the conclusion that every change of matter implies a
change of force. Matter, therefore, is ever living and active,
and there is no such thing as dead matter anywhere. The hylo-idealists
have therefore regarded all matter as but the ultimate expression
of spirit, and primarily of a spiritual origin.

The somewhat irksome phraseology of Baron Swedenborg has dulled
many minds to a sense of his great acumen and phil