is its force.  Perhaps the prayers that one prays for those whom one loves send the strongest ripple of all.  If it happens that two of these ripples of personal emotion are closely similar, a reflex action takes place; and thus is explained the phenomenon which often takes place, the sudden sense of a friend’s personality, if that friend, in absence, writes one a letter, or bends his mind intently upon one.  It also explains the way in which some national or cosmic emotion suddenly gains simultaneous force, and vibrates in thousands of minds at the same time.

The body, by its joys and sufferings alike, offers a great obstruction to these emotional waves.  In the land of spirits, as I have indicated, an intention of congenial wills gives an instantaneous perception; but this seems impossible between an embodied spirit and a disembodied spirit.  The only communication which seems possible is that of a vague emotion; and it seems quite impossible for any sort of intellectual idea to be directly communicated by a disembodied spirit to an embodied spirit.

On the other hand, the intellectual processes of an embodied spirit are to a certain extent perceptible by a disembodied spirit; but there is a condition to this, and that is that some emotional sympathy must have existed between the two on earth.  If there is no such sympathy, then the body is an absolute bar.

I could look into the mind of Amroth and see his thought take shape, as I could look into a stream, and see a fish dart from a covert of weed.  But with those still in the body it is different.  And I will therefore proceed to describe a single experience which will illustrate my point.

I was ordered to study the case of a former friend of my own who was still living upon earth.  Nothing was told me about him, but, sitting in my cell, I put myself into communication with him upon earth.  He had been a contemporary of mine at the university, and we had many interests in common.  He was a lawyer; we did not very often meet, but when we did meet it was always with great cordiality and sympathy.  I now found him ill and suffering from overwork, in a very melancholy state.  When I first visited him, he was sitting alone, in the garden of a little house in the country.  I could see that he was ill and sad; he was making pretence to read, but the book was wholly disregarded.

When I attempted to put my mind into communication with his, it was very difficult to see the drift of his thoughts.  I was like a man walking in a dense fog, who can just discern at intervals recognisable objects as they come within his view; but there was no general prospect and no distance.  His mind seemed a confused current of distressing memories; but there came a time when his thought dwelt for a moment upon myself; he wished that I could be with him, that he might speak of some of his perplexities.  In that instant, the whole grew clearer, and little by little I was enabled to trace the drift of his