And so palpably do your thoughts affect one another that the shadow, or darkness, or light accompanies you the shadow enveloping you with a kind of mist, the radiance penetrating the darkness of others.

This palpable thought-substance, if any, must be that upon which spirits must work in all mental processes connected with man, and it is useless to say that it is either magnetism, electricity or nerve force merely. That particular faculty or property which you employ as individualized spirits to produce a vibration upon the brain, and through the brain upon the nervous system, must be the same force which the spirits employ to produce a vibration upon your brain.

One will ask, " How am I to be certain, if I receive what is called an impression, whether it is my own thought or the thought of another spirit?" I can explain to you so that you can perceive just as distinctly as you can between your touch, when you touch your own hand, and the touch of another person.

You are aware when you touch your own hand, by the double sensation - not only the sensation of the hand that you touch, but of the hand that touches the other portion. On the contrary, when another person touches you, you have but one line of consciousness, and that is the sensation of receiving a touch. Now, the mental process by which you arrive at any thought is a double process; you are not only aware of the thought vibrating upon the brain, or within the brain, but you are aware of the consciousness which produces the thought - a subtle thread which lays along the intelligent power which we term volition, and must be the vibration upon the brain cell. Now, when a thought enters your mind without this dual con-ciousness, without this other subtle process, a distinct thought that is just as palpable as the dropping of a drop of water upon the hand, or the touch of another person upon the body - that thought is not yours; that is an impression. Frequently such impressions come in the whirl of business, when your mind if preoccupied with something else, as distinctly as if a pebble were dropped into a clear lake.

Distrust generally those impressions which are in direct accordance with your wishes, for where human desire comes in, frequently there is lack of clearness in the perception of truth, particularly if your desire is a selfish one.

Credit your impressions and intuitions that come to you at variance with your selfish wishes, forthey are not only from the inner nature of your own spirit, but are doubtless the promptings of the guardian spirit to lead you aright. The moral energies here intervene, and frequently an impression may be in direct opposition to your individual wish and will. In that case the only option you have is, whether it be right. But in that sense you can only use the moral nature that is in your possession. But if it be upon a subject that you have no knowledge of and no judgment on, and an impression distinctly comes, I should advise obeying it. for in nearly every instance when you do not obey, you always regret it.

The power of physical control of any human organism is also just as distinctly traceable where an intelligence intervenes that causes the hand to write, the tongue to talk. There is a distinct process when you write with your own hand; you not only govern the hand to make the required motion, and letters and words, but there is a formulated process - the tracing of words upon paper, which however mechanical they may have become by long practice and use, you are particularly well aware of exercising, and especially in the construction of sentences. Now, if your hand is seized, and made to write without any of that mental or physical process being your own, it is madness to suppose it to be yourself, and only a madman could think of attributing it to your individual mind. But you ask, "In cases where the writing medium knows each word as it is written, how then are you to disentangle the message from the mind of the medium?" Here again I revert to the method which I previously referred to; that if the words come into the mind like a drop of water, and are not the result of any consecutive action of the brain vibration of the medium's own will, you can distinctly know that they are the result of another and independent will acting upon the medium; and by long continued study in mental problems of this kind, the one who addresses you feels competent in some degree to state that no man or woman of ordinarily clear intelligence can be mistaken (if he or she observe accurately) when an impression is from the spirit or when it is from their own minds. (-2)

There are many who say that these subjects are so involved in mystery, that where delusion leaves off and knowledge begins is so intricate a problem that man cannot trust to the reception of impressions. It is true that illusions occur; but it is nut so often that they occur in connection with that which is spiritual, as with that which is physical. The conjuror can deceive your senses every second, and any ordinarily clever trickster, with his lingers can make you believe and see things that have no real existence. But the mind is not so easily deceived as the senses, and a careful observer of his or her own impressions can readily distinguish between an impression that is the result of his or her own wish and thought, and that which conies from an outside source. But supposing the thought to be absurd? That does not matter. If you are gifted with very great common sense and intelligence, so much the more evidence that it is not your own thought. If a man is very wise, and an absurd thought enters his mind without any consecutive association with his daily pursuits, it may come from an outside source for the very purpose of showing it is from an outside source. But ordinarily human beings are not so very wise that they are not liable to have absurd thoughts as the result of association and comparison, and therefore it is safer to suppose, instead, that a wise thought is the result of impression. There are those who say: " But all this is in the realm of mind and of mental impression. "