第 26 页

to a spirit; therefore, why suppose they remain on earth?"

"This is a wonderful place," said Cortlandt. "We have already

seen enough to convince us of the existence of many unknown laws.

I wish the spirit would reveal itself in some other way."

As he finished speaking, the rays of the distant and cold-looking

sun were split, and the colours of the spectrum danced upon the

linen cloth, as if obtained by a prism. In astonishment, they

rose and looked closely at the table, when suddenly a shadow that

no one recognized as his own appeared upon the cover. Tracing it

to its source, their eyes met those of an old man with a white

robe and beard and a look of great intelligence on his calm face.

They knew he had not been in the little grove thirty seconds

before, and as this was surrounded by open country there was no

place from which he could have come.

CHAPTER II.

THE SPIRIT'S FIRST VISIT.

"Greetings and congratulations," he said. "Man has

steadfastly striven to rise, and we see the results in

you."

"I have always believed in the existence of spirits," said

Cortlandt, "but never expected to see one with my natural eyes."

"And you never will, in its spiritual state," replied the shade,

"unless you supplement sight with reason. A spirit has merely

existence, entity, and will, and is entirely invisible to your

eyes."

"How is it, then, that we see and hear you?" asked Cortlandt.

"Are you a man, or a spectre that is able to affect our senses?"

"I WAS a man," replied the spirit, "and I have given myself

visible and tangible form to warn you of danger. My colleagues

and I watched you when you left the cylinder and when you shot

the birds, and, seeing your doom in the air, have been trying to

communicate with you."

"What were the strange shadows and prismatic colours that kept

passing across our table?" asked Bearwarden.

"They were the obstructions and refractions of light caused by

spirits trying to take shape," replied the shade.

"Do you mind our asking you questions?" said Cortlandt.

"No," replied their visitor. "If I can, I will answer them."

"Then," said Cortlandt, "how is it that, of the several spirits

that tried to become embodied, we see but one, namely, you?"

"That," said the shade, "is because no natural law is broken. On

earth one man can learn a handicraft better in a few days than

another in a month, while some can solve with ease a mathematical

problem that others could never grasp. So it is here. Perhaps I

was in a favourable frame of mind on dying, for the so-called

supernatural always interested me on earth, or I had a natural

aptitude for these things; for soon after death I was able to

affect the senses of the friends I had left."

"Are we to understand, then," asked Cortlandt, "that the reason

more of our departed do not reappear to us is because they

cannot?"

"Precisely," replied the shade. "But though the percentage of

those that can return and reappear on earth is small, their

number is fairly large. History has many cases. We know that

the prophet Samuel raised the witch of Endor at the behest of

Saul; that Moses and Elias became visible in the transfiguration;

and that after his crucifixion and burial Christ returned to his

disciples, and was seen and heard by many others."

"How," asked Bearwarden deferentially, "do you occupy your time?"

"Time, replied the spirit, "has not the same significance to us

that it has to you. You know that while the earth rotates in

twenty-four hours, this planet takes but about ten; and the sun

turns on its own axis but once in a terrestrial month; while the

years of the planets vary from less than three months for Mercury

to Neptune's one hundred and sixty-four years. Being insensible

to heat and cold, darkness and light, we have no more changing

seasons, neither is there any night. When a man dies," he

continued with solemnity, "he comes at once into the enjoyment of

senses vastly keener than any be possessed before. Our eyes--if

such they can be called--are both microscopes and telescopes, the

change in focus being effected as instantaneously as thought,

enabling us to perceive the smallest microbe or disease-germ, and

to see the planets that revolve about the stars. The step of a

fly is to us as audible as the tramp of a regiment, while we hear

the mechanical and chemical action of a snake's poison on the

blood of any poor creature bitten, as plainly as the waves on the

shore. We also have a chemical and electrical sense, showing us

what effect different substances will have on one another, and

what changes to expect in the weather. The most complex and

subtle of our senses, however, is a sort of second sight that we

call intuition or prescience, which we are still studying to

perfect and understand. With our eyes closed it reveals to us

approaching astronomical and other bodies, or what is happening

on the other side of the planet, and enables us to view the

future as you do the past. The eyes of all but the highest

angels require some light, and can be dazzled by an excess; but

this attribute of divinity nothing can obscure, and it is the

sense that will first enable us to know God. By means of these

new and sharpened faculties, which, like children, we are

continually learning to use to better advantage, we constantly

increase our knowledge, and this is next to our greatest

happiness."

"Is there any limit," asked Bearwarden, "to human progress on the

earth?"

"Practically none," replied the spirit. "Progress depends

largely on your command of the forces of Nature. At present your

principal sources of power are food, fuel, electricity, the heat

of the interior of the earth, wind, and tide. From the first two

you cannot expect much more than now, but from the internal heat

everywhere available, tradewinds, and falling water, as at

Niagara, and from tides, you can obtain power almost without

limit. Were this all, however, your progress would be slow; but

the Eternal, realizing the shortness of your lives, has given you

power with which to rend the globe. You have the action of all

uncombined chemicals, atmospheric electricity, the excess or

froth of which you now see in thunderstorms, and the electricity

and magnetism of your own bodies. There is also molecular and

sympathetic vibration, by which Joshua not understandingly

levelled the walls of Jericho; and the power of your minds over

matter, but little more developed now than when I moved in the

flesh upon the earth. By lowering large quantities of

high-powered explosives to the deepest parts of the ocean bed,

and exploding them there, you can produce chasms through which

some water will be forced towards the heated interior by the

enormous pressure of its own weight. At a comparatively slight

depth it will be converted into steam and produce an earthquake.

This will so enlarge your chasm, that a great volume of water

will rush into the red-hot interior, which will cause a series of

such terrific eruptions that large islands will be upheaved. By

the reduction of the heat of that part of the interior there will

also be a shrinkage, which, in connection with the explosions,

will cause the earth's solid crust to be thrown up in folds till

whole continents appear. Some of the water displaced by the new

land will also, as a result of the cooling, be able permanently

to penetrate farther, thereby decreasing by that much the amount

of water in the oceans, so that the tide-level in your existing

seaports will be but slightly changed. By persevering in this

work, you will become so skilled that it will be possible to

evoke land of whatever kind you wish, at any place; and by having

high table-land at the equator, sloping off into low plains

towards north and south, and maintaining volcanoes in eruption at

the poles to throw out heat and start warm ocean currents, it

will be possible, in connection with the change you are now

making in the axis, to render the conditions of life so easy that

the earth will support a far larger number of souls.

"With the powers at your disposal you can also alter and improve

existing continents, and thereby still further increase the

number of the children of men. Perhaps with mild climate,

fertile soil, and decreased struggle for existence, man will

develop his spiritual side.

"Finally, you have apergy, one of the highest forces, for it puts

you almost on a plane with angels, and with it you have already

visited Jupiter and Saturn. It was impossible that man should

remain chained to the earth during the entire life of his race,

like an inferior animal or a mineral, lower even in freedom of

body than birds. Heretofore you have, as I have said, seen but

one side in many workings of Nature, as if you had discovered

either negative or positive electricity, but not both; for

gravitation and apergy are as inseparably combined in the rest of

the universe as those two, separated temporarily on earth that

the discovery of the utilization of one with the other might

serve as an incentive to your minds. You saw it in Nature on

Jupiter in the case of several creatures, suspecting it in the

boa-constrictor and Will-o'-the-wisp and jelly-fish, and have

standing illustrations of it in all tailed comets-- luminosity in

the case of large bodies being one manifestation--in the rings of

this planet, and in the molecular motion and porosity of all

gases, liquids, and solids on earth; since what else is it that

keeps the molecules apart, heat serving merely to increase its

power? God made man in his own image; does it not stand to

reason that he will allow him to continue to become more and more

like himself? Would he begrudge him the power to move mountains

through the intelligent application of Nature's laws, when he

himself said they might be moved by faith? So far you have been

content to use the mechanical power of water, its momentum or

dead weight merely; to attain a much higher civilization, you

must break it up chemically and use its constituent gases."

"How," asked Bearwarden, "can this be done?"

"Force superheated steam," replied the spirit, "through an

intensely heated substance, as you now do in making

water-gas--preferably platinum heated by electricity--apply an

apergetic shock, and the oxygen and hydrogen will separate like

oil and water, the oxygen being so much the heavier. Lead them

in different directions as fast as the water is decomposed--since

otherwise they would reunite--and your supply of power will be

inexhaustible."

"Will you not stay and dine with us?" asked Ayrault. "While in

the flesh you must be subject to its laws, and must need food to

maintain your strength, like ourselves."

"It will give me great pleasure," replied the spirit, "to tarry

with you, and once more to taste earthly food, but most of all to

have the blessed joy of being of service to you. Here, all being

immaterial spirits, no physical injury can befall any of us; and

since no one wants anything that any one else can give, we have

no opportunity of doing anything for each other. You see we

neither eat nor sleep, neither can any of us again know physical

pain or death, nor can we comfort one another, for every one

knows the truth about himself and every one else, and we read one

another's thoughts as an open book."

"Do you," asked Bearwarden, "not eat at all?

"We absorb vitality in a sense," replied the spirit. "As the sun

combines certain substances into food for mortals, it also

produces molecular vibration and charges the air with magnetism

and electricity, which we absorb without effort. In fact, there

is a faint pleasure in the absorption of this strength, when, in

magnetic disturbances, there is an unusual amount of immortal

food. Should we try to resist it, there would eventually be a

greater pressure without than within, and we should assimilate

involuntarily. We are part of the intangible universe, and can

feel no hunger that is not instantly appeased, neither can we

ever more know thirst."

"Why," asked Cortlandt reverently, " did the angel with the sword

of flame drive Adam from the Tree of Life, since with his soul he

had received that which could never die?"

"That was part of the mercy of God," the shade replied; "for

immortality could be enjoyed but meagrely on earth, where natural

limitations are so abrupt. And know this, ye who are something

of chemists, that had Adam eaten of that substance called fruit,

he would have lived in the flesh to this day, and would have been

of all men the most unhappy."

"Will the Fountain of Youth ever be discovered?" asked Cortlandt.

"That substances exist," replied the spirit, "that render it

impossible for the germs of old age and decay to lodge in the

body, I know; in fact, it would be a break in the continuity and

balance of Nature did they not; but I believe their discovery

will be coincident with Christ's second visible advent on earth.

You are, however, only on the shore of the ocean of knowledge,

and, by continuing to advance in geometric ratio, will soon be

able to retain your mortal bodies till the average longevity

exceeds Methuselah's; but, except for more opportunities of doing

good, or setting a longer example to your fellows by your lives,

where would be the gain?

"I now see how what appeared to me while I lived on earth

insignificant incidents, were the acts of God, and that what I

thought injustice or misfortune was but evidence of his wisdom