The above points have been fair matter of argument almost since our research began. But as our evidence has developed, our conception of telepathy has needed to be more and more generalised in other and new directions,--still less compatible with the vibration theory. Three such directions may be briefly specified here--namely, the relation of telepathy (_a_) to telæsthesia or clairvoyance, (_b_) to time, and (_c_) to disembodied spirits. (_a_) It is increasingly hard to refer all the scenes of which percipients become aware to the action of any given mind which is perceiving those distant scenes. This is especially noticeable in crystal-gazing experiments. (_b_) And these crystal visions also show what, from the strict telepathic point of view, we should call a great laxity of time relations. The scryer chooses his own time to look in the ball;--and though sometimes he sees events which are taking place at the moment, he may also see past events,--and even, as it seems, future events. I at least cannot deny _precognition_, nor can I draw a definite line amid these complex visions which may separate precognition from telepathy (see _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xi. pp. 408-593). (_c_) Precognition itself may be explained, if you will, as telepathy from disembodied spirits;--and this would at any rate bring it under a class of phenomena which I think all students of our subject must before long admit. Admitting here, for argument's sake, that we do receive communications from the dead which we should term telepathic if we received them from the living, it is of course open to us to conjecture that these messages also are conveyed on ether-waves. But since those waves do not at any rate emanate from material brains, we shall by this time have got so far from the original brain-wave hypothesis that few will care still to defend it. I doubt, indeed, whether we can safely say of telepathy anything more definite than this: _Life has the power of manifesting itself to life._ The laws of life, as we have thus far known them, have been only laws of life when already associated with matter. Thus limited, we have learnt little as to Life's true nature. We know not even whether Life be only a directive Force, or, on the other hand, an effective Energy. We know not in what way it operates on matter. We can in no way define the connection between our own consciousness and our organisms. Just here it is, I should say, that telepathic observations ought to supply us with some hint. From the mode in which some element of one individual life,--apart from material impact,--gets hold of another organism, we may in time learn something of the way in which our own life gets hold of our own organism,--and maintains, intermits, or abandons its organic sway.[108]