One of the most interesting of the highroads from the physical to the astral is that of the study of thought.  The Western scientist, commencing in the anatomy and physiology of the brain, endeavours to make these the basis for “a sound psychology.”  He passes then into the region of dreams, illusions, hallucinations; and as soon as he endeavours to elaborate an experimental science which shall classify and arrange these, he inevitably plunges into the astral plane.  Dr Baraduc of Paris has nearly crossed the barrier, and is well on the way towards photographing astro-mental images, to obtaining pictures of what from the materialistic standpoint would be the results of vibrations in the grey matter of the brain.

It has long been known to those who have given attention to the question that impressions were produced by the reflection of the ultra-violet rays from objects not visible by the rays of the ordinary spectrum.  Clairvoyants were occasionally justified by the appearance on sensitive photographic plates of figures seen and described by them as present with the sitter, though invisible to physical sight.  It is not possible for an unbiassed judgment to reject in toto the evidence of such occurrences proffered by men of integrity on the strength of their own experiments, oftentimes repeated.  And now we have investigators who turn their attention to the obtaining of images of subtle forms, inventing methods specially designed with the view of reproducing them.  Among these, Dr Baraduc seems to have been the most successful, and he has published a volume dealing with his investigations and containing reproductions of the photographs he has obtained.  Dr Baraduc states that he is investigating the subtle forces by which the soul—­defined as the intelligence working between the body and the spirit—­expresses itself, by seeking to record its movements by means of a needle, its “luminous” but invisible vibrations by impressions on sensitive plates.  He shuts out by non-conductors electricity and heat.  We can pass over his experiments in Biometry (measurement of life by movements), and glance at those in Iconography—­the impressions of invisible waves, regarded by him as of the nature of light, in which the soul draws its own image.  A number of these photographs represent etheric and magnetic results of physical phenomena, and these again we may pass over as not bearing on our special subject, interesting as they are in themselves.  Dr Baraduc obtained various impressions by strongly thinking of an object, the effect produced by the thought-form appearing on a sensitive plate; thus he tried to project a portrait of a lady (then dead) whom he had known, and produced an impression due to his thought of a drawing he had made of her on her deathbed.  He quite rightly says that the creation of an object is the passing out of an image from the mind and its subsequent materialisation, and he seeks the chemical effect caused on silver salts by this