579. These words will sound, perhaps, needlessly severe. Corruptio optimi pessima. It is hard to keep the balance when one sees, as one surely does at Lourdes, forces - which, if rightly directed, may indefinitely bless and elevate mankind - distorted and abused in such fashion as must ultimately lead to some infidel reaction, - some crushing desertion and downfall of ancient faith. It is not true, a thousand times it is not true, that a bottle of water from a spring near which a girl saw a hallucinatory figure will by miraculous virtue heal a Turk in Constantinople; but it is true that on some influx from the unseen world, - an influence dimly adumbrated in that Virgin figure and that sanctified spring, - depends the life and energy of this world of every day.

To me, at least, it seems that no real explanation of hypnotic vitalisa-tion can, in fact, be given except upon the general theory supported in this work - the theory that a world of spiritual life exists, an environment profounder than those environments of matter and ether which in a sense we know. Let us look at this hypothesis a little more closely. When we say that an organism exists in a certain environment, we mean that its energy, or some part thereof, forms an element in a certain system of cosmic forces, which represents some special modification of the ultimate energy. The life of the organism consists in its power of interchanging energy with its environment, - of appropriating by its own action some fragment of that pre-existent and limitless Power. We human beings exist in the first place in a world of matter, whence we draw the obvious sustenance of our bodily functions.

We exist also in a world of ether; - that is to say, we are constructed to respond to a system of laws, - ultimately continuous, no doubt, with the laws of matter, but affording a new, a generalised, a profounder conception of the Cosmos. So widely different, indeed, is this new aspect of things from the old, that it is common to speak of the ether as a newly-known environment. On this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on the material environment, although less obviously. In ways which we cannot fathom, the ether is at the foundation of our physical being. Perceiving heat, light, electricity, we do but recognise in certain conspicuous ways, - as in perceiving the "X rays" we recognise in a way less conspicuous, - the pervading influence of etherial vibrations which in range and variety far transcend our capacity of response.

580. Within, beyond, the world of ether, - as a still profounder, still more generalised aspect of the Cosmos, - must lie, as I believe, the world of spiritual life. That the world of spiritual life does not depend upon the existence of the material world I hold as now proved by actual evidence. That it is in some way continuous with the world of ether I can well suppose. But for our minds there must needs be a "critical point" in any such imagined continuity; so that the world where life and thought are carried on apart from matter, must certainly rank again as a new, a metetherial environment. In giving it this name I expressly imply only that from our human point of view it lies after or beyond the ether, as metaphysic lies after or beyond physics. I say only that what does not originate in matter or in ether originates there; but I well believe that beyond the ether there must be not one stage only, but countless stages in the infinity of things.

Having thus indicated this third great environment on whose pre-existent energy I conceive that our organisms do actually draw, I return to show the manner in which this hypothesis may be used to explain the hypnotic results which I have in this chapter recorded. Those results must have brought before the reader with new vividness the ancient unsolved problem of the ultimate source of energy. For what we have in effect been doing with the aid of these hypnotic artifices is simply to energise Life. What Life does for the organism, in slow imperfect fashion, we here train it to do a little faster, a little more completely. Typical of Life is its self-adaptive power, its capacity of responding to new needs, of righting the organism when it has been in any way injured; that vis medicatrix Naturoe which is the inmost secret of the living organism. Hypnotism has shown us this vis medicatrix in an unpre-cedently definite and controllable form. It has shown us in this Natura the subliminal self of the self-suggester - an intelligence no longer vague and impersonal, but bearing some analogy, some direct relation, to that which we recognise as our own.

We have here, in short, a striking picture not only of subliminal intelligence but of subliminal power. Of our submerged intelligence enough has already been said to make it conceivable that these complex therapeutical commands should be thus comprehended; but whence comes the energy needful for so effectual a response?

The word energy is, of course, open to immediate objection. It may be urged that there is here no true increase or illation of energy, but merely a translation into some fresh mode of action of energy already developed by ordinary material nutrition. Man's prayer, it is said, implies no more energy than his curse; the philosopher's theorem no more than the maniac's fancy. It is obvious, indeed, that the rapidity of organic metabolism does not vary in proportion to the value of the results obtained. In fact, the maniac's hurrying anarchic thought is probably more destructive of tissue than the steady thought of the philosopher. But plainly this mere chemical change by no means goes to the root of the matter. What I desire for my life is neither slow metabolism nor rapid metabolism as such, but metabolism guided by intelligent central force to useful ends. I desire integration of the personality, - intellectual, moral, spiritual concentration. This concentration is hard for me to maintain; I feel it to need, even in its lowest degrees, that special effort which we call attention; and I see reason to believe that there are far higher degrees which no voluntary effort of mine can reach.

Now no one can say under what cycle of forces the energy of this vital effort falls; and until it be resolved into better known forces, I cannot justly be condemned for a hypothesis which treats it as an energy sui generis, and seeks for traces of its realm of origin and hints as to its possible extent.