yes, and that the
psychic could see as well behind her as in front. Mrs. Smiley has always
been able to direct me _exactly_ to the point where the cone or pencil
had been flung. How can letters within closed slates be formed so
beautifully and so precisely without some form of seeing?"

Fowler was ready with an answer: "At the final analysis all perception
is due to some form of vibration. To be clairaudient is simply to be
able to lay hold upon a different set of pulsations in the ether, and to
be clairvoyant is to perceive directly without the aid of the eye, which
is only a little camera, after all."

"All this is merely a kind of prelude," I resumed, "for Bottazzi
apparently proved that the invisible hand of Eusapia's invisible arm
could not penetrate a cage of wire mesh that covered the telegraphic key
in the cabinet. 'How, then, can we consider it to be a spirit hand--an
immaterial hand--when a wire-netting can stop it?' he very pertinently
inquires."

"That's what troubles me," said Miller. "If a phantom hand can bring a
real book and thumb its leaves, or drum with a real pencil or write, why
isn't it, for all practicable purposes, a real hand?"

"What _is_ a real hand?" retorted Fowler. "Isn't the latest word of
science to the effect that matter like the human body is only a
temporary condition of force?"

"Precisely so; and every advance along the line of these experiments
goes to prove the power of mind to transform matter. It almost seems to
me at times as though these psychic minds were able to reduce matter to
its primal atom and reshape it. In Bottazzi's seventh sitting, under the
same rigorous restraint of Eusapia, a vase of flowers was transported, a
rose was set in a lady's hair, a small drum was seized and beaten
rhythmically, an enormous black fist came out from behind the curtain,
and an open hand seized Bottazzi gently by the neck. Now listen to his
own words: 'Letting go my hold of Professor Poso's hand,' he says, 'I
felt for this ghostly hand and clasped it. _It was a left hand, neither
hot nor cold, with rough, bony fingers which dissolved under pressure.
It did not retire by producing a sensation of withdrawal--it dissolved,
"dematerialized," melted._'"

I paused to say: "Remember, this is not the tale of a perfervid
spiritist. On the contrary, it is the scientific account of a laboratory
experiment by a physiologist of high rank. The incident is not a part of
a seance in the home of a me