r read in print, every picture and face
and house is there. Many an experiment has shown this to be true; also
that by mesmerizing or hypnotizing processes the most hidden images or
memories can be awakened. In fact, the idea has lost much of its
wonder since the time of Coleridge, now that every sound can be
recorded, laid away and reproduced, and we are touching closely on an
age when all that lies _perdu_ in any mind can or will be set forth
visibly, and all that a man has ever _seen_ be shown to the world. For
this is no whit more wonderful than that we can convey images or
pictures by telegraph, and when I close my eyes and recall or imagine
a form it does not seem strange that there might be some process by
means of which it might be photographed.

And here we touch upon the Materialization of Thought, which
conception loses a part of the absurdity with which Spiritualists and
Occultists have invested it, if we regard all nature as one substance.
For, in truth, all that was ever perceived, even to the shadow of a
dream by a lunatic, had as real an existence while it lasted as the
Pyramids of Egypt, else it could not have been perceived. Sense
cannot, even in dreams, observe what is not for the time an effect on
matter. If a man _imagines_ or makes believe to himself that he has a
fairy attendant, or a dog, and _fancies_ that he sees it, that man
does really see _something_, though it be invisible to others. There
is some kind of creative brain-action going on, some employment of
atoms and forces, and, if this be so, we may enter it among the
Possibilities of the Future that the Material in any form whatever may
be advanced, or further materialized or made real.

It is curious that this idea has long been familiar to believers in
magic. In more than one Italian legend which I have collected a
sorceress or goddess evolves a life from her own soul, as a fire emits
a spark. In fact, the fancy occurs in some form in all mythologies,
great or small. In one old Irish legend a wizard turns a Thought into
a watch-dog. The history of genius and of Invention is that of
realizing ideas, of making them clearer and stronger and more
comprehensive. Thus it seems to me that the word _Forethought_ as
generally loosely understood, when compared to what it has been shown
capable of expressing, is almost as much advanced as if like the fairy
HERMELINA, chronicled by GROSIUS, it had been originally a vapor or
mere fantasy, and gradu