ON THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. 253 
signifying walking in the air, applied to the manifestations 
of an occult power, occasionally acquired by human beings, 
of raising themselves for a short distance above the surface 
of the earth, without any physical support or mechanical aids. 
A good many (ignorant) people will say at once flatly : “But 
this is all humbug ; xo one ever did acquire any such power.” 
This however is a mistake ; there are at least three Yogis at this 
present moment in India, who possess this power, and you have 
only to study the question to ascertain that there is no fact in 
the history of mankind better established, by a greater number 
of reliable witnesses, than the acquisition of this power by 
exceptional individuals. This has occurred, alike in ancient 
and modern times, in Asia and Europe, in the case of men 
and women, Buddhists, Hindoos, Mahomedans, and Christians. 
An absolutely pure life and intense religious concentration 
seem necessary in most cases for the development in human 
beings of this power, which, in the case of man, is abnormal. 
It is all very well for Protestants and modern materialists 
to discard unexamined all facts of this nature as manifestly 
falsehoods or frauds, fables or dreams; but no candid person 
can examine the judicial records of the exhibition of this power 
in the case of some of the Roman Catholic Saints and Saintesses, 
without admitting that the thing is as well established as any 
single fact on record. 
Of course, it had nothing to do with the profession of any par- 
ticular creed. _Mahomedans, Hindoos and Buddhists, living 
similar, self-denying, excessively abstemious, absolutely pure 
unworldly lives, and similarly concentrating their minds and 
souls on things spiritual, have equally acquired these powers ; 
and, as I said before, there are men at this time, in this country, 
endowed with them; but I refer to Roman Catholic Saints, 
because the records of their doings are more readily available 
to Europeans, and carry more weight than those of the so- 
called miracles of Eastern Saints and Sages. 
But when we begin to study the hidden science that lies at 
the base of all these abnormal phenomena, we discover that this 
faculty of Authrobacy is susceptible of a simple scientific 
explanation ; it depends upon the power of so altering the 
magnetic polarity of the physical frame that in lieu of being 
attracted it is repelled by the earth. 
Gravity is nothing but another name for the force, which, 
viewed from different aspects, we designate heat, light, elec- 
tricity, magnetism; or at any rate, all are outward and 
appreciable manifestations of analogous impulses propelled 
through one and the same all-pervading medium. 
Now this power of modifying and reversing the polarity 
of the physical body, which is so rarely, and only under 
