In ancient and modern times, in East and West, among Pagans, Buddhists, Brahmins, Mahomedans, Christians, Infidels, - everywhere it has seemed possible for men and women, by a certain stress of soul, to become in great measure superior to pain, and often to renew vitality with a success for which medical science cannot account. The true meaning of this far-reaching and multiplex power of self-suggestion is one of the standing puzzles - one of the growing puzzles - alike of biology and of psychology. Without pretending to solve it, I have nevertheless in an earlier chapter stated and defined it in a manner which may now serve to bring it into relation with an even wider range of phenomena. For I have spoken of it as a fluctuation in the intensity of the draft which each man's life makes upon the Unseen. I have urged that while our life is maintained by continual inflow from the World-soul, that inflow may vary in abundance or energy in correspondence with variations in the attitude of our own minds. So soon as this definition is made, we see that every form of self-suggestion falls within the limits which we have assigned to supplication.

The supplication of the Lourdes pilgrims, the adoring contemplation of the Christian Scientists, the inward concentration of the self-suggesters, the trustful anticipation of the hypnotised subject, - all these are mere shades of the same mood of mind, - of the mountain-moving faith which can in actual fact draw fresh life from the Infinite. Nor is the life thus indrawn a physical life alone. Even from the physician's post-hypnotic suggestion, - which seems the furthest removed of all these channels from a true spiritual inflow, - both moral and intellectual revivification will often follow.

But this reflection suggests afresh the question, already discussed in Chapter V (Hypnotism)., whether in some such cases of hypnotic suggestion the resultant inflow of life may not in some mediate fashion at least depend on and emanate from the physician himself. He, no doubt, must ultimately draw his own life from the Unseen; but may there not be some virtue passing from him which vivifies his patient of its own force? I have already expressed my belief that in some cases there is such virtue, - which would show from our present point of view that it is in some cases useful to supplicate finite embodied spirits for increase of life.

May it then be desirable to supplicate finite disembodied spirits not only for knowledge, but for life? Can they also transmit to us, - more directly, perhaps, than the embodied hypnotist, - some special stream of the informing energy of the universe?

I believe that there is evidence that they can sometimes produce this vivifying effect in various ways. Sometimes they seem able to transport the sensitive's spirit into their own realm, and to infuse at once a spiritual and a physical renovation. Sometimes they produce the impression of material touches or passes, like those employed by the earthly hypnotist. In that case the removal of pain, or the soothing effect, may seem to follow directly on some unseen manifestation.

And this brings us to one remaining service which we may sometimes, it seems, successfully ask disembodied spirits to perform. They will occasionally move objects for us; - thus repeating yet further the services rendered by embodied friends. Not, of course, that we shall think of asking them for movements practically useful to us, like those ascribed to the "lubber-friends" of ancient fable. It will be enough if by any displacement of matter, however trivial in itself, they can manifest their persistent power.

On the whole, then, we see that supplication obtains for us from the Unseen a certain limited extension of the benefits which we know by everyday experience that we can obtain from the Universe on the one hand and from individual spirits on the other.

As regards the human spirits, in the first place, we find that our successful supplications to them are such as they might be likely to grant, assuming that they still exist, and that they have certain continuing powers of acting upon embodied minds and upon matter in much the old way. While they were embodied they gave us knowledge, they gave us material help by moving objects and the like; they renewed our strength, it may be by touches or passes which were for us channels of the inflowing cosmic life. Disembodied now, they operate in the same way. In some respects the loss of the body is a drawback. They can but slightly and rarely move ponderable matter. They can but seldom heal or vitalise with their spirit-touch. They can communicate their knowledge only through an organism which they invade for the purpose. But on the other hand their knowledge, when they do communicate it, is of absolutely priceless worth. Fragmentary and trivial though it may seem, it constitutes the one great assurance of a providential Universe and an eternal life.

Supplication to these spirits near ourselves has, then, assuredly not been in vain, - nay, is likely to become more and more fruitful as the conditions are better understood.

At the other end of the scale, again, the prayers addressed to the Universe, - to God, - or say, rather, to the Supreme which is above personality, are now seen to be the normal development and intensification of that mysterious power of self-suggestion which we witness every day. In so saying I am far from meaning that we affect our own spirits only by our fervent prayer. On the contrary, I have insisted that even the self-suggestion which refuses to appeal to any higher power, - which believes that it is only calling up its own private resources into play, - must derive its ultimate efficacy from the increased inflow from the Infinite life which the spirit's powerful effort of attention - the faith of the suppliant - does in some manner induce. And the more penetrating this faith, the more striking the results are likely to be. Beyond this point we have no evidential warrant for going. We cannot specify from any real comparative experience what particular shade or colour of this saving faith is most effectual in evoking an answer. The great intermediate names - between the spirits of our own friends and the Source of All - have not given recognisable evidence, specific proof, of their recipience and reply.

Such proof might be given, for example, if the cures at Lourdes were really "miraculous" in the sense that they were cures of maladies never cured elsewhere; or even if patients at Lourdes were cured in markedly larger proportion than, say, the patients in a hypnotic clinique. But I have elsewhere (see 578 and 579) shown strong reasons for believing that this is not so; - nay, that the general evidence offered for the Lourdes cures needs a strict sifting before the residuum of fact can be separated from the exaggerations due to strong moral prepossession, - from which the great pecuniary interests which have grown up around that place of pilgrimage can hardly be altogether excluded. I will not say more, for my object here is not to disparage any special type of prayer or supplication, but rather to insist on their importance and efficacy in general. I wish to show that so far from our needing to suppose that an answer to prayer is an interruption of the natural order of things, many answers to prayer are, on the contrary, manifest extensions, - natural developments, - of perfectly familiar phenomena.

We already have life, and by disposing our spirits rightly, we can get more life; we already have friends who help us on earth; those friends survive bodily death, and are to some extent able to help us still. It is for us to throw ourselves into the needed mental state; - to make the heartfelt and trustful appeal. To the benefit which we may thus derive no theoretical limit can be assigned. It must needs grow with man's evolution; for the central fact of that condition is the ever-increasing closeness of the soul's communion with other souls.