The Theosophists assume it as a fact that the soul, or the "astral body," has the power to quit the body and to clothe itself in a quasi-material form which under favourable circumstances can be visible to many. All so-called telepathic experiences are thus explained. The creations of the imagination have no reality, but some visions and hallucinations have a kind of materiality. Similarly, in optics, one distinguishes between virtual and real images, the latter of which can be projected on a screen or fixed on a sufficiently sensitive photographic plate. Suppose that an absent person thinks of me, by evoking my personality in his remembrance; he only succeeds in creating a virtual image of me by a free and conscious effort of his own. But suppose again that an old aunt of mine in a foreign country sits at the piano without thinking of me, and sees me then standing in person behind the instrument; she has _seen_ a virtual image of me. And this actually happened in the autumn of 1895. I remember that I was then passing through a dangerous illness in the French capital, when my longing to be in the bosom of my family overcame me to such a degree that I saw the inside of my house and for a moment forgot my surroundings, having lost the consciousness of where I was. I was really there behind the piano as I appeared, and the imagination of the old lady had nothing to do with the matter. But since she understood these kind of apparitions, and knew their significance, she saw in it a precursor of death and wrote to ask if I were ill. In order the better to elucidate this problem, I will insert here an essay of my own printed last year in the Initiation, which has points of contact with the above-mentioned occurrence. "OBSERVATIONS ON THE IRRADIATION AND DILATABILITY OF THE SOUL." "To be beside oneself" and "to collect oneself" are two phrases in every-day use, which express well the capacity which the soul possesses of expanding and contracting. Fear makes it shrink and contract, and joy, happiness, or success make it expand. Go alone into a full railway carriage, where no one knows another, but all are sitting silent. Each feels, according to his degree of sensibility, an extreme discomfort. There is a manifold crossing of irradiations from souls in different moods which causes a general feeling of oppression. It is not warm, but one feels as though one were stifled; the senses, charged to overflowing with magnetic fluids, feel as if they must explode; the intensity of the electric streams, strengthened by influence and condensation, perhaps also by induction, has reached its maximum. Then some one begins to speak. A discharge of electricity takes place, and the various currents neutralise each other when all present enter upon a trivial conversation to relieve a physical necessity.