t were being enacted not on the earth, but upon other planets, where
the forms and appearances of the creatures concerned were fantastic and
strange enough, but where the motive and the emotion were all perfectly
clear. At times, too, we saw scenes that were beautiful and touching,
high and heroic beyond words. These seemed to come rather by contrast
and for encouragement; for the work was distinctly pathological, and
dealt with the disasters and complications of emotions, as a rule,
rather than with their glories and radiances. But it was all incredibly
absorbing and interesting, though what it was to lead up to I did not
quite discern. What struck me was the concentration of effort upon human
emotion, and still more the fact that other hopes and passions, such as
ambition and acquisitiveness, as well as all material and economic
problems, were treated as infinitely insignificant, as just the
framework of human life, only interesting in so far as the baser and
meaner elements of circumstance can just influence, refining or
coarsening, the highest traits of character and emotion.

We were given special cases, too, to study and consider, and here I had
the first inkling of how far it is possible for disembodied spirits to
be in touch with those who are still in the body.

As far as I can see, no direct intellectual contact is possible, except
under certain circumstances. There is, of course, a great deal of
thought-vibration taking place in the world, to which the best analogy
is wireless telegraphy. There exists an all-pervading emotional medium,
into which every thought that is tinged with emotion sends a ripple.
Thoughts which are concerned with personal emotion send the firmest
ripple into this medium, and all other thoughts and passions affect it,
not in proportion to the intensity of the thought, but to the nature of
the thought. The scale is perfectly determined and quite unalterable;
thus a thought, however strong and intense, which is concerned with
wealth or with personal ambition sends a very little ripple into the
medium, while a thought of affection is very noticeable indeed, and more
noticeable in proportion as it is purer and less concerned with any kind
of bodily passion. Thus, strange to say, the thought of a father for a
child is a stronger thought than that of a lover for his beloved. I do
not know the exact scale of force, which is as exact as that of chemical
values--and of course such emotions are a