An excellent chemist might not be just the man to analyze questions of finance or to testify as an expert on the tariff, or a suspension bridge; the "texture of his thought" would need some modifying to fit him for these duties; indeed, he is fortunate if he can even be quite sure of morphia when he sees it; it might be a ptomaine.
If, then, the objector to well authenticated facts in any department of research expects his objections to be seriously considered, he must, at least, exhibit some intelligence in that department of research to which his objection relates.
I shall then simply reiterate the statement that there is abundant evidence of visual perception by some specially constituted persons, independent of any use of the physical organ of sight.
What the exact nature or method of this supranormal vision is, may not yet be absolutely settled, any more than the exact nature of light or of life or even of electricity is settled, and each of their various methods of action known, though of the fact itself in any of these cases there is no doubt.
From a careful consideration of the best authenticated facts and examples, we are led to believe that the faculty of clairvoyance is no supernatural gift, but may be possessed, to some degree, by many, perhaps by all, people; that it is a natural condition, developed and brought into exercise by a few, but undeveloped and dormant in most; that the faculty may include not only the power of obtaining visual perceptions at a distance and under circumstances which render ordinary vision impossible, but also the perception of general truth and the relation of things in nature to such a degree as to render the person who possesses it a teacher and prophet of seemingly supernatural endowments. Carefully excluding cases of unusual extension, or skill in using normal perceptive faculties, and also thought-transference, which, although bearing a certain relation to clairvoyance, should not be confounded with it, the phenomena of independent clairvoyance appear in certain persons under the following conditions:--
In certain states, brought about by disease, and at the near approach of death, in the hypnotic condition, whether self-induced or produced by the influence of a second person, and especially in the condition known as trance; it may also appear in sleep of the ordinary kind--in dreams, and especially in the condition of reverie or the state between sleeping and waking; a few persons also possess the clairvoyant faculty while in their natural condition, without losing their normal consciousness. In general it may be said that the faculty is most likely to appear when there exists a condition of abstraction, and the mind is acting without the restraint and guidance of the usual consciousness--and it reaches its most perfect exercise when this usual guidance ceases entirely--the body becoming inactive and anæsthetic and the mind acting independent of its usual manifesting organs. Such is the condition in trance.