ON PR A 7ER ASA FOHM OF PHYSICAL EtfERG T. 3 71 
competeuce. To the human mind belongs the faculty of 
enlarging and diminishing, of distorting and combining, 
indefinitely, the objects revealed by the senses. It can 
imagine a mouse as large as an elephant, an elephant as 
largo as a mountain, and a mountain as high as the stars. 
It can separate congruities aud unite incongruities. We 
see a fish and we see a woman; we can drop one half of 
each, and unite in idea the other two halves to a mermaid. 
We see a horse and we see a man; we are able to drop one 
half of each, and unite the other two halves to a centaur. 
Thus also the pictorial representations of the Deity, the 
bodies and wings of cherubs and seraphs, the hoofs, horns, 
and tail of the evil one, the joys of the blessed, and the 
torments of the damned, have been elaborated from ma- 
terials furnished to the imagination by the senses. It 
behoves you and me to take care that our notions of the 
Power which rules the universe are not mere fanciful or 
ignorant enlargements of human power. The capabilities 
of what you call your reason are not denied. By the exer- 
cise of the faculty here adverted to, you can picture to 
yourself a Being able and willing to do any and every con- 
ceivable thing. You are right in saying that in opposition 
to this power science is of no avail that it is "a weapon 
of air." The man of science, however, while accepting 
the figure, would probably reverse its application, thinking 
it is not science which is here the thing of air, but that 
unsubstantial pageant of the imagination to which the 
solidity of science is opposed. 
CHAPTER XXV. 
ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. 
Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. 
EMERSON. 
THE EDITOR of the Contemporary Revieio is liberal 
enough to grant me space for some remarks upon a subject, 
which, though my relation to it was simply that of a 
vehicle of transmission, has brought down upon me a con- 
siderable amount of animadversion. 
It may be interesting to some of my readers if I glance 
at a few cases illustrative of the history of the human 
