world from knowing and using the splendid work which
they are doing. Their semi-scientific terminology also
chokes off the ordinary reader, and one might say
sometimes after reading their articles what an American
trapper in the Rocky Mountains said to me about some
University man whom he had been escorting for the
season. "He was that clever," he said, "that you
could not understand what he said." But in spite
of these little peculiarities all of us who have wanted
light in the darkness have found it by the methodical,
never-tiring work of the Society. Its influence was
one of the powers which now helped me to shape my
thoughts. There was another, however, which made a
deep impression upon me. Up to now I had read all the
wonderful experiences of great experimenters, but I had
never come across any effort upon their part to build
up some system which would cover and contain them all.
Now I read that monumental book, Myers' Human
Personality, a great root book from which a whole tree
of knowledge will grow. In this book Myers was unable
to get any formula which covered all the phenomena
called "spiritual," but in discussing that action of
mind upon mind which he has himself called telepathy he
completely proved his point, and he worked it out so
thoroughly with so many examples, that, save for those
who were wilfully blind to the evidence, it took its
place henceforth as a scientific fact. But this was
an enormous advance. If mind could act upon mind
at a distance, then there were some human powers which
were quite different to matter as we had always