These are wholly automatic manifestations-the involuntary and absolutely unavoidable phenomena of the etherium in the atmosphere of the universe.

If you understand the laws of reflection and refraction in the material, these strange manifestations in the upper air will not strike you either as impossible or mysterious, and you will be saved from many contradictions and absurdities developed by seers and mediums in Spiritualism. Not only this, but better still: you will not be made insane by the supposition that “the other world is just like this;" you will not have visions of "fighting spirits;" you will not believe that you can vacate your physical temple and that another person may enter and control it; nor that every time you "dream a dream," or see a vision, that you are certainly dreaming a reality and seeing what is literally in the spirit world. "A sound mind in a sound body" is an aim worthy the best marksman. Correct impressions at the foundation, and correct reasoning from such reliable basis, is certain to bring "bodily ease and mental tranquillity."

Such sanity is the surest passport to realms of happiness in the Summerland.

sphere of mutual love," etc. The true harmonial philosopher will judge such visions in the light of mental laws and manifestations better known in this epoch.

MENTAL SUFFERING CAUSED BY EVIL SUBJECTIVE CONDITIONS.

It is my profound impression that seven-tenths of human suffering need not be-may be systematically overcome, can be mastered by science and personal practical common sense, and thus be utterly prevented, while the remaining three-tenths are incidental to this life, inevitable in the present stage of human growth, and cannot therefore be successfully avoided by individual effort. Hence, as you perceive, my guns are all trained upon the seven-tenths of avoidable human wretchedness; and it is possible that, however wellaimed and benevolently meant, some balls may strike and seriously "hurt the feelings" of persons who may chance to be too near the line of battle; in which case, if their wounds be not too severe and exasperating, I shall expect all such spectators to hasten to "the right side," and aid me to crown with victory this great war, now raging between "the flesh and the spirit."

When a man is nervously erratic, crazy in his ganglia (as highly sensitive horses and dogs are when frightened), or when man is mentally mad under the demon wizard, Alcohol, which fires his blood and loads his

brain with the "smoke of torment"-then he thinks that he distinctly sees devils in everything.* Infernal imps look fiercely out of the eyes of his best-known friend. He must look through his own conditions.

All his subjective visions are as external and material, are as real and as palpably objective, as are the material objects and the real furniture of his room. With prodigious bodily exertions, he resists the approach of the infernal imps which seem to dance and to grin at him from the backs of chairs, from the mantlepiece, from the protruding corners of picture-frames, from the posts of his bedstead, and from the faces of most familiar neighbors, who may be in his presence, performing kindly offices in his behalf. He meets your healthy scepticism with "the positive evidence of his

* Cerebral (or brain-cell madness)—an infirmity hereditarily derived, deposited by and in the sympathetic ganglia, in a germ-state, susceptible to incubation and capable of tragical excesses-was illustrated sadly enough in the case of Edgar A. Poe, who, a few months before his death, wrote as follows: "The agonies which I have lately endured have passed my soul through fire. Henceforth I am strong. This those who love me shall know as well as those who have so relentlessly sought to ruin me. I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have perilled life and reputation and reason; it has been in the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories-memories of wrong and injustice, and imputed dishonor; from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

bodily senses!" You philosophically see that his reasoning is correct, but his impressions are erroneous; so, in vain, you attempt to convince him that he is mistaken, and that he has nothing to fear.

Swedenborg accepted the testimony of the man under alcoholic insanity as literal and reliable. A few spiritualists, in both Europe and America, also believe that the alcohol-maniac is really a "medium for seeing" the depraved beings who rush down or up, before their prostrate affinity.* What folly is greater than propounding and accepting a superficial and absurd theory in order to save yourself the mental labor required to adequately and scientifically explain a phenomenon ?

*Than Swedenborg, never was honest man more misled by an erroneous theory. He was a correct reasoner, but from impressions exceedingly erroneous. In his Memorabilia, he says:

"There are with every man at least two evil spirits, and two angels; by means of the evil spirits man has communication with hell; and by means of the angels with heaven; without such communication with both, it would be impossible for man to live a moment. Thus every man is in some society of infernals, which he is entirely ignorant of. The man who has not lived in the good of charity, and does not suffer himself to be led by the Lord, is one of the infernals, and after death becomes also a devil."

There is an infallible rule which will apply here, namely: "As a man thinketh, so is he." Hence, every person, medium or not, who believes this erroneous theory expounded by Swedenborg, is continually liable to have corresponding subjective experiences.

Look now at what is well established in "Human Magnetism." Two minds may be made to feel, and think, and act as ONE. A sweet community of sensation binds together both operator and subject. What the positive mind thinks, the negative brain of the subject also thinks; what the former tastes, the latter tastes as perfectly; "when a man is in the mesmeric sleep, the operator has but to excite the organ which leads to dream-life; if it be desired to show him somebody in distress, the operator has but to touch the organ of benevolence; if veneration be excited, he will perhaps fancy that he is in church; if the organ of philoprogenitiveness be touched, and the subject be a lady, she will perhaps fancy that she has an imaginary baby, and will begin to nurse it with the greatest care. Dreamlife is a reversal of the waking state. In the former state, objects excite ideas; in the latter, ideas place objects before the consciousness."

The principle at bottom is this: Man's voluntary cerebral powers have (or may have) positive magnetic control over his involuntary cerebellum; insomuch that, if the mind be active and persistent, and inclined to interior meditation, and keenly alive to its own sensations and workings, it can elaborate its own desires, and its own perversities, into apparently objective realities. An English physician puts on record this illustrative