pause, "are those stupendous actions taking place between two
membranes in the tissue of the brain. We find in the unexplorable
nature of the Spiritual World certain beings armed with these wondrous
faculties, comparable only to the terrible power of certain gases in
the physical world, beings who combine with other beings, penetrate
them as active agents, and produce upon them witchcrafts, charms,
against which these helpless slaves are wholly defenceless; they are,
in fact, enchanted, brought under subjection, reduced to a condition
of dreadful vassalage. Such mysterious beings overpower others with
the sceptre and the glory of a superior nature,--acting upon them at
times like the torpedo which electrifies or paralyzes the fisherman,
at other times like a dose of phosphorous which stimulates life and
accelerates its propulsion; or again, like opium, which puts to sleep
corporeal nature, disengages the spirit from every bond, enables it to
float above the world and shows this earth to the spiritual eye as
through a prism, extracting from it the food most needed; or, yet
again, like catalepsy, which deadens all faculties for the sake of one
only vision. Miracles, enchantments, incantations, witchcrafts,
spells, and charms, in short, all those acts improperly termed
supernatural, are only possible and can only be explained by the
despotism with which some spirit compels us to feel the effects of a
mysterious optic which increases, or diminishes, or exalts creation,
moves within us as it pleases, deforms or embellishes all things to
our eyes, tears us from heaven, or drags us to hell,--two terms by
which men agree to express the two extremes of joy and misery.

"These phenomena are within us, not without us," Wilfrid went on. "The
being whom we call Seraphita seems to me one of those rare and
terrible spirits to whom power is given to bind men, to crush nature,
to enter into participation of the occult power of God. The course of