Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/296

 non is not new, but as old as the world, and not supernatural, but is subject to the same eternal laws to which everything in existence is subject. This phenomenon has usually been defined as a communion with the spiritual world. This definition is not exact. According to this definition, the spiritual world is opposed to the material world, but this is not right: there is no such opposition. Both worlds are contiguous, so that it is impossible to draw a line of demarcation, which should separate the one world from the other. We say that matter is composed of molecules—

. Dull matter! (Whispering, laughter.)

(stopping, and then continuing). Molecules of atoms, but atoms, having no extension, are in reality nothing but points of application of forces, that is, strictly speaking, not of forces, but of energy, of that same energy which is as one and indestructible as matter. But just as matter is one and its forms are different, even so it is with energy. Within recent time we have been acquainted with only four forms of energy, which change one into another. We know the dynamic, thermic, electrical, and chemical energies. But these four forms of energy are far from exhausting all the varieties of its manifestations. The forms of the manifestations of energy are manifold, and one of these new, little known forms of energy is now to be investigated by us. I am speaking of the energy of mediumism.

(stops and, looking sternly around him, continues). The mediumistic energy has been known to humanity since time immemorial: predictions, presentiments, visions, and many others,—all those are nothing else but manifestations of mediumistic energy. The phenomena produced by it have been known since time immemorial. But the energy itself has not been acknowl-