A second hypothesis regards the phenomena as manifestations of the Devil or the work of spirits. Dr. Dee gives a very minute description of his regular spirit visitors. He tells of an old woman in a red petticoat, and of a pretty little girl with her hair rolled up in front and hanging down very long behind. This constant personification is very significant, since it indicates the approach of recognised forms of mental alienation; however, the "Daimon" of Socrates proves that it does not in every case necessarily lead to this. We are come, here, into a border-land, from which some roads lead into the dark regions of insanity and others up to the luminous heights of inspired genius: but in every case we are concerned with a region in _our own_ mind, and no natural propensity to externalisation must be allowed to deceive us with regard to it. The intrusion of foreign "spirits" into our psycho-physical organism, the assumption that incorporeal beings influence our nervous system so as to produce external effects, violently contradicts all human experience. If the spiritist doctrine could be mathematically proved it would be the most interesting solution imaginable of all these problems; and I must confess, the establishment of the existence of intelligent incorporeal beings would in my opinion eclipse all other events of our time. But the probability of this is at present _very_ small.
A third theory, of modern origin, seeks the explanation of the question in a species of magic power inherent in man, as yet unfathomed, which is manifested especially in ecstatic conditions. The vehicles of the _magic gaze_ are shining mirrors or reflecting surfaces, which forming a means of attraction for individuals of the proper constitution induce that peculiar state of alienation from every other subject, that concentration in the innermost self, which often rises to insensibility and unconsciousness, or even to cataleptic torpidity, wherein the consciousness of All-existence is liberated. Future events and distant occurrences are seen in pictures which appear to be reflected in the mirror or the fluid employed, but which in reality exist in the person gazing and are represented by projection outwards. Thus Perty.