d that, I fear, will be very
little without this chapter in which I shall, if I can, clear the
ground for a systematic study of the whole subject. No candid reader
can, I hope, rise from the perusal of the book without the conviction
that behind the world of appearance lies another and a vaster with a
thronging population of its own--with many populations, indeed, each
absorbed in uttering its being according to its own laws. If I have
afforded nothing else I have afforded glimpses into that world; and
the question now is, What do we precisely gather, what can we be said
to know of the laws of that world in which these swift, beautiful and
apparently ruthless creatures live and move and utter themselves? I
shall have to draw upon more than I have recorded here: cases which I
have heard of, which I have read of in other men's books, as well as
those which are related here as personal revelation. If I speak
pragmatically, _ex cathedra_, it is not intentional. If I fail
sometimes to give chapter and verse it will be because I have never
taken any notes of what has gone into my memory, and have no documents
to hand. But I don't invent; I remember.

* * * * *

There is a chain of Being of whose top alike and bottom we know
nothing at all. What we do know is that our own is a link in it, and
cannot generally, can only fitfully and rarely, have intercourse with
any other. I am not prepared with any modern instances of intercourse
with the animal and vegetable world, even to such a limited extent,
for instance, as that of Balaam with his ass, or that of Achilles with
his horses; but I suspect that there are an enormous number
unrecorded. Speech, of course, is not necessary to such an
intercourse. Speech is a vehicle of human intercourse, but not of that
of any other created order so far as we know.[8] Birds and beasts do
not converse in speech, smell or touch seems to be the sense
employed; and though the vehicles of smell and touch are unknown to
us, in moments of high emotion we ourselves converse otherwise than by
speech. Indeed, seeing that all created things possess a spirit
whereby they are what they are, it does not seem necessary to suppose
intercourse impossible without speech, and I myself have never had any
difficulty in accepting the stories of much more vital mixed
intercourse which we read of in the Greek and other mythologies. If we
read, for instance, that such and such a man or