The question now arises: What ought to be our own attitude towards the spirits with whom we enter into communication?

To begin with, it goes without saying that our attitude should be at once responsive and serious; - that there should be no frivolity, no credulity, and, on the other hand, no perverse or stubborn refusal to recognise the proofs which they offer.

But here a larger question opens out. What ought we to ask from them? In what way should we ask it? What does experience thus far show us that we may expect to receive? It is plain that such inquiries bring us to the threshold of the wider and deeper problem of Prayer and Supplication generally; - of our whole appeal to the Unseen.

Approaching Prayer in this generalised manner, we feel the need of a definition which shall be in some sense spiritual without being definitely theological. Or let us leave to the solemn word Prayer its highest meanings; - let us confine it to our attempts at communion - uttered or unexpressed - with the Supreme Spirit. Let us next try to define the word Supplication in such a way as to distinguish it from a request made to a living friend.

For our present purposes, at any rate, it seems best to define supplication as "an attempt to obtain benefits from unseen beings by an inward disposition of our own minds." This excludes such attempts as rest on charms or on sorcery; and at the same time begs no question as to the nature of the beings to whom we appeal. They are, at any rate, habitually unseen; it remains for us to argue from the nature of the supplication, or of the answer, who or what the beings who may have sent that answer are likely to be.

For the sake of clearness, I may observe that in excluding charms, etc, from the category of true supplication, I mean to exclude any process which is supposed to gain the desired benefit by its own virtue without the operation of our own minds. Charms and incantations may have, as we shall presently see, another kind of efficiency, as mere self-suggestions. And experience seems to show (what might antecedently have seemed improbable) that if we wish to learn something from spirits speaking through mortal organisms, there may be some gain in our definite statement, in speech or writing, of the nature of the information desired.

This, however, is a detail, and I go on to the more important question of the benefits for which our supplications may rightly be offered up. What, broadly speaking, are the benefits which we do actually receive from other souls? either from the World-Soul, or from human souls still in the flesh? We receive Life and Knowledge, which it is our business to develop into Love and Wisdom and Joy. Our own capacity of such development may still be classed as Life, - as spiritual Life, of which our physical life is but the temporary vehicle. Our spiritual life is fed by the love which we receive, our physical life by food and material aids of every kind. Knowledge, of course, is one of the main ways of feeding our spiritual life, and I have placed it apart here merely because its trace-ability through particular memories makes it the most convenient subject-matter for psychical analysis.

A definite fact, an isolable piece of knowledge, will often fulfil a requirement which we long for in vain in physical experimentation. We should greatly like to be able to follow some individual scrap or parcel of energy through its successive mutations, - to track exactly the given unit of heat which is converted into a given unit of motion. Now with definite facts we really can do something of this kind. Each piece of knowledge is more or less distinctly ear-marked, as belonging to one or more assignable human memories, each of which memories contains a selection of facts different from the selection contained in any other memory. Omniscience of course contains all the facts, but omniscience is not likely to show in each case the specific limitations.

The upshot of this is that there is a certain class of requests made to unseen agencies, the answers to which carry with them a strong presumptive proof of the identity of the minds which send them.

Such, for example, are the ordinary requests made to our discarnate friends for information on matters connected with their lives on earth, as illustrated by many cases through Mrs. Piper's trance. In these cases we have virtually supplicated these persons for certain definite knowledge, and they, - and so far as I can see, no vaster intelligence than theirs, - have directly answered our supplications. Such cases belong to the long series of requests made to the Unseen for knowledge, for truth, for light. Here is at last a definite avenue for successful supplication, - here are distinct requests granted by intelligences identifiable, although unseen.

Leaving the question of supplication for knowledge for the present, let us consider the results which have been found to attend supplications for mere physical life.

Readers of this work know what a large proportion of psychological experiment now actually going on falls under the category of supplication or prayer for life. The pilgrims of Lourdes implore the Virgin for life and health as the most urgent form of their devotions. Faith-healers pray to the Divinity for life and health, Christian Scientists meditate on the goodness of the Universe and on the love of Christ with the same practical object. And all of these groups, - as abundant testimony shows us, - are often successful in their prayers and meditations. They attain such results that (for instance) Charcot, himself no Catholic, used often to send his patients to Lourdes. Yet, as this juxtaposition of Charcot with Lourdes suggests, although we note the favourable results, we have no clear indication as to the source from whence those results come.

For we find that results equally surprising follow upon the suggestions of hypnotisers; - and even upon mere self-suggestion. Self-suggestion is (as I have often insisted) at the core of almost all these healing and vivifying processes; - and what is self-suggestion but an at present indefinable contention or disposition of the mind?