delicate complexion, blue eyes,
straight fine hair, small hands, tapering fingers, cold and fleshy to
the touch; usually a thin or high voice and languid manner.

These two types of seers--of which there are many varieties--
achieve their development by quite opposite means. The positive
seer projects the mental images by a psychic process impossible
of description, but by a certain psychic metabolism by which the
apperceptions of the soul are transformed into mental images of a
purely symbolical nature. The psychic process of picture-production
is involuntary and unconscious, but the perception of the
mental pictures is a perfectly conscious process and involves
the exercise of an introspective faculty. The passive seer, on the
contrary, is effortless, and receives impressions by reflection, the
visions coming imperceptibly and having a literal interpretation.
The vision is not in this case of an allegorical or symbolic nature,
as is the case with the positive seer, but is an actual vision of a
fact or event which has already happened or as it will transpire in
the future. Thus the positive vision consists in the projection of
the mind towards the things of the soul-world, while the passive
vision in the result of a propulsion of the soul-world upon the
passive sense. Of the two kinds of vision, the passive is the more
serviceable as being the more perspicuous and literal, but it has
the disadvantage of being largely under the control of external
influences and consequently of greater variability than the
positive vision. It is, indeed, quite the common experience that
the passive medium requires "conditions" for the proper exercise
of the faculty and where these are lacking no vision can be
obtained.

The positive type of seer exercises an introspective vision,
searching inwardly towards the soul-world whence revelation
proceeds. The passive seer, on the other hand, remains in a static
condition, open to impressions coming inwards upon the mind's
eye, but making no conscious effort towards inward searching.
Those who have experienced both involuntary and voluntary
visions will readily appreciate the difference of attitude, which is
difficult to convey to others in so many words.

Now the exercise of this faculty does not exist apart from some
definite use, and it may be of advantage to consider what that use
may be. Primarily, I should be disposed to regard the mere
opening up of a channel of communication betwe