Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/68

 from which has developed a highly important branch of psychology. The body being thrown into a peculiar state of quiescence, the mind becomes capable of efforts altogether beyond its ordinary powers. By the aid of an energetic will, Ismar attained the power of putting himself, at will, into a trance-like state, during which his mind, released from the trammels of sense, worked freely in a pre-arranged course.

"During these trances he lived, as it were, another life in those distant ages with which his studies had made him familiar. Scraps and fragments of information, laboriously gathered from the mouldering records of the past, became blended into one consistent whole. Yet it seems incredible that even the ardor of investigation could make him willing to spend so much of his existence in a past so undesirable as that portrayed so vividly in his own and his father's works.

"There then existed, as we are told, several races of men. Some of these were in a condition not greatly raised above that of the lower animals, and were treated, in fact, as such by the more favored races. The latter had attained to some knowledge of the rudiments of science, and made a fair beginning of subduing to their use the forces of nature, but were themselves a prey to monstrous moral evils. A few of the more favored by nature or fortune appear to have lived a life approximating to that now lived by all. But even they must have found any fair share of happiness difficult to attain, surrounded, as they were, by every form of misery and degradation, the fault of man himself, not of the world in which he has been placed.