your wound with a touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless from my
unprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth,
pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean?
How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump through the ring of
Saturn, and gather sunflowers in Sirius? There are persons now living who
profess to do no less remarkable feats, and to regard them as incidental
merely to achievements far more important. A school of hierophants or
adepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter of daily routine, quite
transcend everything that we have been accustomed to consider natural
possibility. What is the course of study, what are the ways and means
whereby such persons accomplish such results?

The conventional attitude towards such matters is, of course, that of
unconditional scepticism. But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an
airing beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own part, it is true, I
must confess my inability to believe in anything positively supernatural.
The supernatural and the illusory are to my mind convertible terms: they
cannot really exist or take place. Let us be sure, however, that we are
agreed as to what supernatural means. If a magician, before my eyes,
transformed an old man into a little girl, I should call that
supernatural; and nothing should convince me that my senses had not been
grossly deceived. But were the magician to leave the room by passing
through the solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap-bubble,--I
might think what I please, but I should not venture to dogmatically
pronounce the thing supernatural; because the phenomenon known as "matter"
is scientifically unknown, and therefore no one can tell what
modifications it may not be susceptible of:--no one, that is to say,
except the person who, like the magician of our illustration, professes to
possess, and (for aught I can affirm to the contrary) may actually possess
a knowledge unshared by the bulk of mankind. The transformation of an old