My Library

and interesting material is to be found in Adolphe dAssier's Posthumous Humanity, and A Hypnotist's Case-Book, by Alex Erskine. There is, of course, a magnificent amount of material in Phantasms of the Living which has been largely drawn on for this volume, but, in those early days, interest was centred on appearances rather than projection, and there was an inexorable determination to explain the phenomena by any means, comprehended or not, so long as the spirit of man, alive or dead, was kept out of it. The scientists, today, are being very helpful; Colonel de Rochas, for instance, when experimenting on the exteriorization of sensitivity, produced a phantom form which could pass through material objects, and become the seat of sensation; and Dr. Hector Durville built up a Double round his subjects capable of motor effects at a distance of several rooms. It resembled the medium, whose sensory organs it possessed, could see through opaque bodies, and proved its objectivity by the glowing up in brilliance of a calcium sulphide screen on a nearer approach to it. From these effects, and the photographic confirmation of their results, we shall doubtless acquire a closer understanding of somatic duplicity, but in this chapter we are only considering what the pioneers can tell us of the experience they have acquired in etheric aviation. SYLVAN MULDOON Sylvan Muldoon had the advantage, if advantage it be, of making a very youthful acquaintance with etheric travel, when, indeed, he was but twelve years old.