Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/622

600. It is well known to physicists that these molecules nowhere actually touch each other, nor do they come near doing so. The spaces between them are filled up by ether. Into the interstices of the ether it is easy for the odic force to introduce itself. It is, in fact, unlikely that the gross particles of stone exist at all; for, as some physicists have shown, these are but eddies or vortex-rings in the ether itself, which is the only material reality.

Mr. Marvin showed very clearly that this supposed legend was not lightly to be set aside as mythology; or, rather, that it is likely that mythology is the only true history. The same psychic strength and wisdom which have caused Odin to be remembered and revered as a god by our ancestors, was the same psychic force by which he overcame the cohesion of matter. For us all to do this is doubtless only a question of time. Many adepts are already able to do more wonderful things than these. In time the evolution of man will bring these latent powers to light, superseding our common reason with astral intuition as reason has supplanted mere animal instinct.

Having thus shown the broad principles on which studies in the new psycho-physics must rest, Mr. Marvin described a special contrivance or application of these principles to the work of the Camera Club.

He had devised a camera with a lens having curved facets arranged on the plan of the eye of the fly. To each one of the seven facets led an insulated tube provided within by an electric connection, so that electric or odic impulses could be transferred from the brain or retina through the eye of each different observer to the many-faced lens. From the lens these impulses would be converged on a sensitive plate, as the rays of light are gathered together in ordinary photography.

From the members of the Camera Club, seven of those having greatest animal magnetism and greatest power of mental concentration were chosen for the experiment. Connection was made from the eye of these observers to the corresponding parts of the lens; then all were to remain in utter darkness and perfect silence, each person fixing his mind on a cat. They were not to think of any particular cat, but of a cat as represented by the innate idea of the mind or ego itself. This was highly important, for the purpose of Mr. Marvin was not simply to fix by photography an ephemeral recollection, as Mr. Rogers and Mr. Lee had done; it was to bring out the impression of ultimate feline reality. The innate image in the mind was the object desired. One man's thought of a cat would be individual, ephemeral, a recollection of some cat which he had some time seen, and which by the mind's eye would be seen again. From seven ideals, sympathetically combined, the true cat would be developed. This