Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/76

 died before I was born, and she was his sister, which, perhaps, accounts for it. But as I was about to say, I used occasionally to take a run down to Bristol to see my aunt. At first I always notified her of my intended visit, but upon one occasion I omitted to do so, and dropping in upon her one morning quite unexpectedly, was astonished to find a room all ready for me and breakfast prepared. ‘I knew you were coming, Miles,’ she said. ‘You were here in this room last evening and told me so.’ I was amazed; but never after that did I notify my aunt of my intended visits and never did I fail to find everything ready for my reception.”

“Oh such impressions are common enough,” said Maurice.

“I could duplicate that story and give half a dozen more just like it.”

“No doubt. So could almost any one. Let us admit, therefore, that a certain degree of intensity of thought may  command the presence of the spirit of an absent living  friend—I use the word spirit solely for want of another as  expressive—why, then, may we not conclude that a still greater intensity of thought can produce the same phenomena on a grander scale? Why not admit that it can produce, not actual presence, perhaps—that would be levitation, and I don’t admit levitation—but something so nearly akin to it that not only is our sense of sight deceived, but our senses of hearing and feeling as well.”

“It would be almost as easy to admit levitation and be done with it,” I said.

“Not at all. Bodily levitation is a manifest impossibility, but thought transference to the extent of deceiving each one of man’s senses into the belief that he can actually see, hear, and feel the person who appears before him, is almost, if not quite, a proven fact.”

“I cannot admit any such statement,” said I.

“But if you knew the Indian Buddhists as I know them you would be forced into the admission,” he replied. “I tell you the things they actually do are wonderful—totally unexplainable. Either we must admit the existence of a spiritual world which is all around us, or fall back on some such theory as this. I tell you, gentlemen, it is no uncommon thing for some of these adepts to summon into their presence not only living persons from great distances, but material forms of those who have been long dead. That