I can account for her now easily enough. I can assure myself that she
was really there, that she, or the like of her, pervades, haunts,
indwells all such places; but it seems that there must be a right
relation between the seer and the object before the unseen can become
the seen. Put it like this, that form is a necessary convention of our
being, a mode of consciousness just as space is, just as time, just
as rhythm are; then it is clear enough that the spirits of natural
fact must take on form and sensible body before we can apprehend them.
They take on such form for us or such body through our means; that is
what I mean by a right relation between them and ourselves. Now some
persons have the faculty of discerning spirits, that is, of clothing
them in bodily form, and others have not; but of those who have it all
do not discern them in the same form, or clothe them in the same body.
The form will be rhythmical to some, to other some audible, to others
yet again odorous, "aromatic pain," or bliss. These modes are no
matter, they are accidents of our state. They cause the form to be
relative, just as the conception of God is; but the substance is
constant. I have seen innumerable spirits, but always in bodily form.
I have never perceived them by means of any other sense, such as
hearing, though sight has occasionally been assisted by hearing. If
during an orchestral symphony you look steadily enough at one musician
or another you can always hear his instrument above the rest and
follow his part in the symphony. In the same way when I look at fairy
throngs I can hear them sing. If I single out one of them for
observation I hear him or her sing--not words, never words; they have
none. I saw once, like a driven cloud, the spirits of the North-west
wind sweep down the sky over the bare ridge of a chalk down, winged
and shrouded, eager creatures, embattled like a host. They were grey
and dun-coloured, pale in the face. Their hair swept forward, not