minds. So soon as this definition is made, we see that every form of self-suggestion falls within the limits which we have assigned to supplication. The supplication of the Lourdes pilgrims, the adoring contemplation of the Christian Scientists, the inward concentration of the self-suggesters, the trustful anticipation of the hypnotised subject,-all these are mere shades of the same mood of mind,—of the mountain-moving faith which can in actual fact draw fresh life from the Infinite. Nor is the life thus indrawn a physical life alone. Even from the physician's post-hypnotic suggestion, which seems the furthest removed of all these channels from a true spiritual inflow,-both moral and intellectual revivification will often follow. But this reflection suggests afresh the question, already discussed in Chapter V., whether in some such cases of hypnotic suggestion the resultant inflow of life may not in some mediate fashion at least depend on and emanate from the physician himself. He, no doubt, must ultimately draw his own life from the Unseen; but may there not be some virtue passing from him which vivifies his patient of its own force? I have already expressed my belief that in some cases there is such virtue, -which would show from our present point of view that it is in some cases useful to supplicate finite embodied spirits for increase of life. May it then be desirable to supplicate finite disembodied spirits not only for knowledge, but for life? Can they also transmit to us,-more directly, perhaps, than the embodied hypnotist,-some special stream of the informing energy of the universe? I believe that there is evidence that they can sometimes produce this vivifying effect in various ways. Sometimes they seem able to transport the sensitive's spirit into their own realm, and to infuse at once a spiritual and a physical renovation. Sometimes they produce the impression of material touches or passes, like those employed by the earthly hypnotist. In that case the removal of pain, or the soothing effect, may seem to follow directly on some unseen manifestation. And this brings us to one remaining service which we may sometimes, it seems, successfully ask disembodied spirits to perform. They will occasionally move objects for us ;-thus repeating yet further the services rendered by embodied friends. Not, of course, that we shall think of asking them for movements practically useful to us, like those ascribed to the "lubber-friends” of ancient fable. It will be enough if by any displacement of matter, however trivial in itself, they can manifest their persistent power. On the whole, then, we see that supplication obtains for us from the Unseen a certain limited extension of the benefits which we know by everyday experience that we can obtain from the Universe on the one hand and from individual spirits on the other. As regards the human spirits, in the first place, we find that our successful supplications to them are such as they might be likely to grant, assuming that they still exist, and that they have certain continuing powers of acting upon embodied minds and upon matter in much the old way. While they were embodied they gave us knowledge, they gave us material help by moving objects and the like; they renewed our strength, it may be by touches or passes which were for us channels of the inflowing cosmic life. Disembodied now, they operate in the same way. In some respects the loss of the body is a drawback. They can but slightly and rarely move ponderable matter. They can but seldom heal or vitalise with their spirit-touch. They can communicate their knowledge only through an organism which they invade for the purpose. But on the other hand their knowledge, when they do communicate it, is of absolutely priceless worth. Fragmentary and trivial though it may seem, it constitutes the one great assurance of a providential Universe and an eternal life. Supplication to these spirits near ourselves has, then, assuredly not been in vain,-nay, is likely to become more and more fruitful as the conditions are better understood. At the other end of the scale, again, the prayers addressed to the Universe, to God,—or say, rather, to the Supreme which is above personality, are now seen to be the normal development and intensification of that mysterious power of self-suggestion which we witness every day. In so saying I am far from meaning that we affect our own spirits only by our fervent prayer. On the contrary, I have insisted that even the selfsuggestion which refuses to appeal to any higher power,-which believes that it is only calling up its own private resources into play,-must derive its ultimate efficacy from the increased inflow from the Infinite life which the spirit's powerful effort of attention-the faith of the suppliant-does in some manner induce. And the more penetrating this faith, the more striking the results are likely to be. Beyond this point we have no evidential warrant for going. We cannot specify from any real comparative experience what particular shade or colour of this saving faith is most effectual in evoking an answer. The great intermediate names— between the spirits of our own friends and the Source of All-have not given recognisable evidence, specific proof, of their recipience and reply. Such proof might be given, for example, if the cures at Lourdes were really "miraculous" in the sense that they were cures of maladies never cured elsewhere; or even if patients at Lourdes were cured in markedly larger proportion than, say, the patients in a hypnotic clinique. But I have elsewhere (see 578 and 579) shown strong reasons for believing that this is not so;-nay, that the general evidence offered for the Lourdes cures needs a strict sifting before the residuum of fact can be separated from the exaggerations due to strong moral prepossession,-from which the great pecuniary interests which have grown up around that place of pilgrimage can hardly be altogether excluded. I will not say more, for my object here is not to disparage any special type of prayer or supplica tion, but rather to insist on their importance and efficacy in general. I wish to show that so far from our needing to suppose that an answer to prayer is an interruption of the natural order of things, many answers to prayer are, on the contrary, manifest extensions,-natural developments, -of perfectly familiar phenomena. We already have life, and by disposing our spirits rightly, we can get more life; we already have friends who help us on earth; those friends survive bodily death, and are to some extent able to help us still. It is for us to throw ourselves into the needed mental state;-to make the heartfelt and trustful appeal. To the benefit which we may thus derive no theoretical limit can be assigned. It must needs grow with man's evolution; for the central fact of that condition is the ever-increasing closeness of the soul's communion with other souls. souls./ APPENDICES ΤΟ CHAPTER VII 713 A. It is possible that we might learn much were we to question dying persons, on their awakening from some comatose condition, as to their memory of any dream or vision during that state. If there has in fact been any such experience it should be at once recorded, as it will probably fade rapidly from the patient's supraliminal memory, even if he does not die directly afterwards. A curious case was published in Phantasms of the Living (vol. ii. p. 305), where a dying man returns, as it were, from the gates of death expressly to announce that he has had a vision, or "paid a visit," of this kind-which "visit," however, it was not possible to verify. A somewhat similar instance, but with ultimate recovery of the patient, Dr. Wiltse, was printed in the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1889, and in the Mid-Continental Review, February, 1890. Dr. Wiltse has since obtained for us the sworn depositions of the witnesses of importance. The experience is long, and for the most part of a thoroughly dreamlike type; but in any view it is extremely unusual, nor can it be fairly understood from extracts alone. I quote, therefore, the essential part of the case in full (from Proceedings S.P. R., vol. viii. p. 180). [After describing his gradual sinking in the summer of 1889 under an unusual disease-typhoid fever with subnormal temperature and pulse-Dr. Wiltse (of Skiddy, Kansas) continues as follows :]-I asked if I was perfectly in possession of my mind, so that what I might say should be worthy of being relied upon. Being answered in the decided affirmative, I bade adieu to family and friends, giving such advice and consolation to each and all as I deemed best, conversed upon the proofs pro and con of immortality, and called upon each and all to take testimony for themselves by watching the action of my mind, in the bodily state in which they saw me, and finally, as my pupils fell open, and vision began to fail, and my voice to weaken, feeling a sense of drowsiness come over me, with a strong effort, I straightened my stiffened legs, got my arms over the breast, and clasped the fast stiffening fingers, and soon sank into utter unconsciousness. I passed about four hours in all without pulse or perceptible heart-beat, as I am informed by Dr. S. H. Raynes, who was the only physician present. During a portion of this time several of the bystanders thought I was dead, and such a report being carried outside, the village church bell was tolled. Dr. Raynes informs me, however, that by bringing his eyes close to my face, he could perceive an occasional short gasp, so very light as to be barely perceptible, and that he was upon the point, several times, of saying, "He is dead," when a gasp would occur in time to check him. He thrust a needle deep into the flesh at different points from the feet to the hips, but got no response. Although I was pulseless about four hours, this state of apparent death lasted only about half-an-hour. I lost, I believe, all power of thought or knowledge of existence in absolute unconsciousness. Of course, I need not guess at the time so lost, as in such a state a minute or a thousand years would appear the same. I came again into a state of conscious existence and discovered that I was still in the body, but the body and I had no longer any interests in common. I looked in astonishment and joy for the first time upon myself-the me, the real Ego, while the not me closed it upon all sides like a sepulchre of clay. With all the interest of a physician, I beheld the wonders of my bodily - anatomy, intimately interwoven with which, even tissue for tissue, was I, the living soul of that dead body. I learned that the epidermis was the outside boundary of the ultimate tissues, so to speak, of the soul. I realised my condition and reasoned calmly thus. I have died, as men term death, and yet I am as much a man as ever. I am about to get out of the body. I watched the interesting process of the separation of soul and body. By some power, apparently not my own, the Ego was rocked to and fro, laterally, as a cradle is rocked, by which process its connection with the tissues of the body was broken up. After a little time the lateral motion ceased, and along the soles of the feet beginning at the toes, passing rapidly to the heels, I felt and heard, as it seemed, the snapping of innumerable small cords. When this was accomplished I began slowly to retreat from the feet, toward the head, as a rubber cord shortens. I remember reaching the hips and saying to myself, “Now, there is no life below the hips." I can recall no memory of passing through the abdomen and chest, but recollect distinctly when my whole self was collected into the head, when I reflected thus: I am all in the head now, and I shall soon be free. I passed around the brain as if I were hollow, compressing it and its membranes, slightly, on all sides, toward the centre and peeped out between the sutures of the skull, emerging like the flattened edges of a bag of membranes. I recollect distinctly how I appeared to myself something like a jelly-fish as regards colour and form. As I emerged, I saw two ladies sitting at my head. I measured the distances between the head of my cot and the knees of the lady opposite the head and concluded there was room for me to stand, but felt considerable embarrassment as I reflected that I was about to emerge naked before her, but comforted myself with the thought that in all probability she could not see me with her bodily eyes, as I was a spirit. As I emerged from the head I floated up and down and laterally like a soap-bubble attached to the bowl of a pipe until I at last broke loose from the body and fell lightly to the floor, where I slowly rose and expanded into the full stature of a man. I seemed to be translucent, of a bluish cast and perfectly naked. With a painful sense of embarrassment I fled toward the partially opened door to escape the eyes of the two ladies whom I was facing as well as others who I knew were about me, but upon reaching the door I found myself clothed, and satisfied upon that point I turned and faced the company. As I turned, my left elbow came in contact with the arm of one of two gentlemen, who were |