REAL PERSONALITY OK TBANSCENDENTAL EGO. 149 



simple experiments. I want you first to recognize that, apart 

 from its physical qualities, every material body has certain, 

 what may be called, traits of character, which belong to it alone ; 

 there is generally one special trait or partial, namely, the charac- 

 teristic, which it is easiest for the particular body to manifest, 

 but I shall be able to show you that by sympathetic action others 

 can be developed. I have here several pieces of ordinary 

 wood used for lighting fires, each of which according to its 

 size and density has its special characteristic : if you examine 

 each by itself you will hardly see that they are different from 

 one another except slightly in length, but when I throw them 

 down on the table you will hear that each of them gives out 

 a clear characteristic note of the musical scale. To carry this 

 a step forward I have here a long heavy iron bar, so rigid 

 that no ordinary manual force can move it out of the straight, 

 and, from mere handling, you would find it difficult to imagine 

 that it could be amenable to soft influences ; but I have studied 

 this inert mass, and as each person has special characteristics, 

 some being more partial than others to, say, literary pursuits, 

 athletics, music, poetry, engineering, science, or metaphysics, 

 so I shall be able to show you at the close of this meeting 

 that this iron mass has not only a number of these " partials," 

 some of which are extraordinarily beautiful and powerful, but 

 that by the lightest touch of certain instruments, each of 

 which has been put into perfect sympathy with one of those 

 traits, I can make that mass demonstrate them to you both 

 optically and audibly ; but without those sympathetic touches 

 it is silent and remains only an inert mass. This result is 

 obtained by physical contact between the instrument and the 

 mass : but we will now carry this another step forward and 

 deal with the subject of the action of Influence at a distance, 

 or what may be called Prayer, between two of these rigid masses. 

 From what we have already seen it is clear that the Soul of 

 man could not possibly pray with efficacy to a graven image — 

 there is nothing in sympathy between them, and, without 

 sympathetic action, influence is impossible, but it is quite 

 possible for Matter to pray with efficacy to Matter, provided 

 the material soul, if we may use the analogy, is brought into 

 perfect sympathy with the material god, and I can now put 

 before you an experiment showing this taking place. 



I have here another heavy bar of iron and have found its 

 strongest characteristic, I have in my hand a small instrument 

 fashioned so that its characteristic is in perfect sympathy with 

 that of the bar, namely, that the number of vibrations, in a second. 



