102 THE FOURTH DIMENSION. 



of the material world, and to prove that these phenomena may be 

 sufficiently and consistently explained by the effects of the activity 

 of such a world. It is impossible for us to discuss and put to the 

 test here the explanations of all these supersensuous phenomena. 

 Anything and everything can be explained by spirits who act at will 

 upon the world. There are only a few of these phenomena, namely, 

 clairvoyance and Slade's experiments, whose explanations are so 

 intimately connected with our main theme, the so-called fourth di- 

 mension, that they cannot be passed over. 



First, with respect to clairvoyance, the American visionary Da- 

 vis describes the experiences which he claims to have made in this 

 condition, induced by " magnetic sleep," as follows :* " The sphere 

 of my vision now began to expand. At first, I could only clearly 

 discern the walls of the house. At the start they seemed to me dark 

 and gloomy; but they soon became brighter and finally transparent. 

 I could now see the objects, the utensils, and the persons in the ad- 

 joining house as easily as those in the room in which I sat. But my 

 perceptions extended further still ; before my wandering glance, 

 which seemed to control a great semi-circle, the broad surface of 

 the earth, for hundreds of miles about me, grew as transparent as 

 water, and I saw the brains, the entrails, and the entire anatomy of 

 the beasts that wandered about in the forests of the Eastern Hemi- 

 sphere, hundreds and thousands of miles from the room in which I 

 sat." The belief in the possibility of such states of clairvoyance is 

 by no means new. Alexander Dumas made use of it, for example, 

 in his Mtmoires d'un mtliicin, in which Count Balsamo, afterwards 

 called Cagliostro, is said to possess the power to throw suitable 

 persons into this wonderful condition and thus to find out what 

 other persons at distant places are doing. Zollner explains clair- 

 voyance by means of the fourth dimension thus : 



A man who is accustomed to viewing things on a plain is sup- 

 posed to ascend to a considerable height in a balloon. He will 

 there enjoy a much more extended prospect than if he had remained 

 on the plain below, and will also be able to signal to greater dis- 



* Quoted by Cranz. 



