But those brains perish.  Must individuality be conceded at the cost of our mental continuity?  Perhaps not.  Grant even the original mind-atom to be a constituent, or inseparable companion, of an original matter-atom (wouldn’t it be more up to date to say vibration in each case?), mind, as we have already tried to demonstrate, is not limited, as matter seems to be, to those primitive atoms.

* * * * *

The vague but almost unescapable notion of the cosmic soul also opens up some hint of an explanation of hypnotism, including, of course, thought transference.  These vague hints or gleams on the borderland of our knowledge are of course something like what must be such hints of what we know as color, as go through the pigment spots on the surface of one of the lower creatures.  Such as our limits are, we can express them only in metaphors.  But for that matter all of our language beyond a few material conceptions, is metaphor from them.  Well, on the hypothesis (or facing the fact, if you prefer) of the cosmic soul, telepathy, hypnotism and all that sort of thing at once affiliates itself with all our easy conceptions of interflow—­in fluids, gases, sounds, colors, magnetism, electricity, etc.  It’s all a vague groping, but there seems something there which, as we evolve farther, we may get clearer impressions of.

Well, to return to our sheep.  Foster didn’t get the clearness and intensity of his visions from the comparatively indistinct and placid impressions in his sitters’ minds.  There must be something more than hypnotism from the sitter.

* * * * *

Now here is a tougher case which opens a new element of the problem.  It is from The Autobiography of a Journalist, by W.J.  Stillman, Boston, 1901, Vol.  I, pp. 192-4:  Not many of our older readers will require any introduction of Stillman.  For the younger ones, we may say that he was a very eminent art-critic; spent most of the latter half of his life abroad, being part of the time our consul at Crete; wrote a history of the Cretan Rebellion, and other books; and was a regular correspondent of The Nation, and of The London Times.  We never knew his veracity questioned.

Here is the story: 

A “spiritual medium,” Miss A. was “under the control” of Stillman’s dead cousin “Harvey.”  The “possession” seems to have been throughout free from trance.  Stillman says: 

I asked Harvey if he had seen old Turner, the landscape painter, since his death, which had taken place not very long before.  The reply was “Yes,” and I then asked what he was doing, the reply being a pantomime of painting.  I then asked if Harvey could bring Turner there, to which the reply was, “I do not know; I will go and see,” upon which Miss A. said, “This influence [Harvey’s.  Editor] is going away—­it is gone”; and after a short pause added, “There is another influence