pend. Even the materializations are thought to be due
to this same cause--due to the moulding, in space, of this plastic
intermediary projected beyond the limits of her bodily organism. Certain
it is that such a projection does at times take place, and it seems
rational to suppose that "raps" may be due to the explosive expulsion of
this neural energy after it has reached a certain "tension." One quite
striking incident which has been narrated to me by a physician of my
acquaintance tends rather to confirm this view. It is that, when he was
trying on various occasions to move a table, _a la_ Palladino, he failed
to do so, but whenever he lifted his hands away from the table,
"sparkling" took place between his hands and the table-top, closely
resembling the electric spark which jumps from point to point when the
tension has reached a certain limit.

Another interesting fact, related to me by the same physician, serves to
throw a light upon the connection of vital and physical energies. The
doctor in question was treating a patient, who was apparently
"obsessed," by means of electricity. The galvanometer needle showed what
slight variations in the current there were during the course of the
treatment. In the middle of the process, while the patient was
conversing with the doctor, she was suddenly "obsessed." _Coincidental_
with this obsession, the galvanometer showed a tremendous and permanent
fluctuation, indicating that the resistance of the body to the current
had suddenly and greatly changed!

Whatever view we may take of the facts, here is, at least, a striking
incident, which the current theories of the varying causes of bodily
resistance (in these psycho-galvanic reflexes) hardly serve to explain.
Can it be that the subject's "etheric body" was in some way disturbed by
an invading intelligence, and that this disturbance was manifested in
the fluctuations recorded? Is there a nervous fluid, after all, as the
magnetizers and mesmerists contend so strongly, but which has been
relegated to oblivion since the advent of suggestion and hypnotism?
Personally, I believe that there _is_, and I shall indicate very briefly
some of my reasons for thinking so.

In the _first_ place, the modern hypnotist can very rarely succeed in
cultivating clairvoyance in his subject, whereas the records of
mesmerism teem with cases which were developed under the old _regime_.
Surely the dissimilarity in the effect points to a dissimilarity