70 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEI\^. 
end epidemic. The process of contagion is easy. Through the 
ear, the eye or other sense, the brain receives marvellous as 
readily as natural or ordinary impressions. These, by repeti- 
tion, soon are properties of the brain, which, projected by the 
volition, at first vaguely or dimly, are at last, under continued 
practice, brought into material sounds and sights with such 
fidelity and readiness, as to become like external realities, to 
the possessed. 
The art of thus framing and projecting self-created exist- 
ences, and of peopling other organisms with the same, is, I 
regret to observe, a too facile art ; it is most fascinating, in 
common English, bewitching ; it has organised the illusory; 
it has led thousands of wretches to torture, thousands to death, 
thousands to that mental destruction which follows ever the 
break between healthy organic function and mental organisation. 
In this light so-called spiritual manifestations, ancient or 
modern, though they may often have mixed up with them 
gross and scandalous impostures, are, primitively, phenomena 
developed through the individual, and afterwards are extended, 
like light from one torch to another, until they reach to masses 
of mankind, and become systematised beliefs. 
In conclusion. On the perfectible view of the question, the 
argument is : 
(a) That the phenomena of mysterious manifestations are not 
those of manifested external realities ; but are the projections 
from the observer, belonging to him as surely as the picture on 
the screen belongs to the lantern. 
(b) That all such manifestations of a purely individual kind, 
are, like inevitable diseases and accidents, parts of the part that 
has to be performed by the individual in his short journey 
through the universe ; that they are not appearances to be 
feared, but to be accepted as occasional symptoms indicating 
an organic disturbance which it were wise to endeavour to re- 
move. 
(c) That although individual manifestations are too closely 
connected with physical individual errors to be universally re- 
moved, the increase of them by contagion may be, and by 
all sensible persons ought to be, kept under the stern control of 
the volition ; the volition itself,which can only be applied to 
one act at one time, being employed, at all times, to more pro- 
fitable and nobler developments of human invention and 
practice. 
