614. Hazardous as these speculations may seem, they nevertheless represent an attempt to get our notions of supersensory things as near down to our notions of sensory things as we fairly can.

I deliberately adopt the language which the percipient's own consciousness dictates as to "travelling clairvoyance" and the like; and this for two reasons. In the first place, as will be seen as we proceed, I think that this phraseology approximates as nearly as is now possible to a truth which we cannot hope to render in any adequate way; and in the second place, I cannot discover any other form of words which would in reality carry greater philosophic authority, or involve a conception in itself more definite or reasonable than that which I adopt. Any attempt to deal with these spiritual phenomena as realities - as phenomena capable of correlation with the material phenomena which we know - does at once and inevitably demonstrate the uselessness for such a purpose of ordinary metaphysical terminology. Whatever may be our ultimate conception of an ideal world, we must not for the present attempt to start from any standpoint too far removed from the spatial and temporal existence which alone we know.

We cannot, however, use these terms of "travelling clairvoyance," "psychical invasion," and the like, without making some suggestion towards an intermediate conception of space - something between space as we know it in the material world and space as we imagine it to disappear in the ideal world - which may enable the reader to grasp with less confusion the discussions which follow. Telepathy is a conception intermediate between the apparent isolation of minds here communicating only as a rule through material organs, and the ultimate conception of the unity of all mind. And similarly the conception which I am about to propose, of a recognition of space without our concomitant subjection to laws of matter, is strictly intermediate between man's incarnate condition and the condition of exemption from our present forms of thought to which we may imagine him ultimately to attain. I may go further and say that the general drift of all our evidence makes for the thesis of continuity in cosmic phenomena. We have no right to assume that our physical death is a unique crisis in our history; nor, again, if our soul survives, that death involves more of change in the soul's perceptions than we can plainly infer that it must involve.

We perceive that the material body is destroyed; and we may therefore infer that there is no further friction or inertia to overcome. We perceive that the sense-organs perish with the body; and we may therefore infer that there are new forms of perceptivity. But we cannot possibly infer à priori that all recognition of space must needs disappear with the disappearance of the particular bodily sensations by means of which our conception of space has been developed. Under new conditions, involving the absence of various limitations which now bind us, there may even be a clearer and completer perception of space than is at present possible to us. We can at least imagine that a spirit should be essentially independent of space, but yet capable of recognising space, not only while yet confined by the material body, but in such action as he may take when partially and temporarily, or wholly and permanently, delivered from the body's constraint.

615. Provisionally admitting this view, let us consider what range we are now led to assign to inner vision, when it is no longer merely subjective but veridical; bringing news to the percipient of actual fact outside his own organism.

We infer that it may represent to us (1) material objects; or (2) symbols of immaterial things; (3) in ways not necessarily accordant with optical laws; and (4) from a point of view not necessarily located within the organism. I will take an illustration from a case which will later on be quoted in detail (666 C).

A Mrs. Wilmot has a vision of her husband in a cabin in a distant steamer. Besides her husband, she sees in the cabin a stranger (who was in fact present there), with certain material details. Now here I should say that Mrs. Wilmot's inner vision discerned material objects, from a point of view outside her own organism. But, on the other hand, although the perception came to her in visual terms, I do not suppose that it was really optical, that it came through the eye.

Mrs. Wilmot might believe, say, that her husband's head concealed from her some part of the berth in which he lay; but this would not mean a real optical concealment, but only a special direction of her attention, guided by preconceived notions of what would be optically visible from a given point.

As we proceed further we shall see, I think, in many ways how needful is this excursive theory to explain many telepathic and all telæsthetic experiences; many, I mean, of the cases where two minds are in communication, and all the cases where the percipient learns material facts (as words in a book, mottoes in a nutshell, see 573 E, etc.) with which no other known mind is concerned.

Another most important corollary of this excursive theory must just be mentioned here. If there be spiritual excursion to a particular point of space, it is conceivable that this should involve not only the migrant spirit's perception from that point, but also perception of that point by persons materially present near it. That point may become a phantasmogene tic centre, as well as a centre of outlook. In plain words, if A has spiritually invaded B's room, and there sees B, B on his part may see A symbolically standing there; and C and D if present may see A as well.

This hint, here thrown out as an additional argument for the excursive theory, will fall to be developed later on. For the present we must confine our attention to our immediate subject; the range of man's inner vision, and the means which he must take to understand, to foster, and to control it.

616. The word control implies repression as well as guidance; and we have seen that there is in fact a class of inner visions where mere repression is needed. The hallucinatory delirium, indeed, of the drunkard or the maniac - the most disintegrated output of inner vision - can seldom be checked while the brain remains poisoned and unsound. But it is a noteworthy fact that such degenerative hallucinations as are at all curable are much more often curable by hypnotic suggestion than in any other way. The same kind of influence which generates harmless hallucinations can destroy harmful ones. That extension of power over submerged strata of the patient's mind, that ability to touch a deep-seated spring, which at first seemed a mere scientific curiosity, is found to have a novel practical use.

This is the first and simplest step in the control of inner vision.