Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/192

 with the same ease and facility that others can who have been over the river a longer time. This I have abundantly proved; and this, too, explains a point which, as certain believers in the Spiritology of the day inform me, has puzzled thousands of investigators, i.e: why some of the dead people, with whom they claim to hold very frequent converse, can only be communicated with by means of hard labor on their part, while others readily understand and respond. Some can faintly, others clearly see and hear; some can correctly read people's thoughts; others cannot, and must be addressed vocally; others still require all questions to be written, in order that they may see and understand. The faculties and powers of dead people are doubtless as varied, dissimilar and unevenly developed as are those of persons on the hither side of Time. The study of the human soul is a great one, and entirely worthy of a life's devotion. It has been mine to seek the solution of many of its mysteries, and in a few instances success has crowned the effort and rewarded the laborer. The final answer to the question is this: the sounds were conveyed to my inner being directly, and without the need of any flesh-and-blood organ of sense. Let us now turn toward a far more sublime mystery, namely:

unmingled astonishment I gazed upon the man as he sat there in his quiet study. I had often been told that man was a microcosm, or a world in miniature; but closer observation proved to me that he was more than that—for, instead of a world, he was a universe of