I2 The Relations of Mind and Matter, [January, 
at a considerable distance to act upon a sensitive electric instru- 
ment. The matter of the earth may be still more transparent to 
psychic radiations, and permit them to spread with the utmost 
freedom and rapidity. Such impulses might touch without effect 
a multitude of minds, and yet rouse one mind to consciousness 
if it met there with conditions in harmony with the conditions of 
the vibration. A thought is an active and peculiar motor energy. | 
It carries with it, when emitted, the characteristics of its source. 
If it meets anywhere a psychic condition to which these charac- 
teristics are familiar, or with which they are harmonized, it might 
rouse a conscious response, or call up, more or less completely, 
the mental image of the emitting mind and person. 
There are other phenomena which seem to indicate the exist- 
ence of such a medium of psychic communication. And the in- 
dications are that emotion is necessary as a preliminary to distant 
and vigorous outflow of psychic energy, though not necessarily 
- so in case of contiguity. In emotion the motor conditions of the 
mind seem strongly exercised, as are those of matter in case of 
high temperature, and in both cases there seems an energetic 
outflow of vibrations. It is well known that a congregation ina 
state of emotional excitement can be swayed by an emotional 
speaker in a manner that utterly ignores all exercise of reason or 
individual intellect. The power of all great orators over an audi- 
ence has been largely of this emotional character, and audiences 
are frequently fully controlled by addresses which, read in a cool 
state, arouse surprise how they could have affected any person of 
sense. An instance of the same character is that of the sudden 
panic which has so often spread like wild fire through a whole 
army, sweeping away regiments that have not felt a bullet of the 
enemy. The-intense mental excitement seems to flow out in 
vibratory waves, affecting all minds within its influence, and 
arousing everywhere a similar excitement without regard to dif- 
ference of circumstances, 
History is full of instances of the same general character. And 
we find in every instance that it is the ignorant, or the strongly 
emotional, who are swayed by these influences, while the educated, 
the cool and the reasoning minds resist them. Several instances 
from the history of middle age Europe may be adduced. We 
might describe the epidemics of migration, as in some of the 
Crusades, of witch-craft, sorcery, lycanthrophy, ete., that have 
