What rapture in thought now! What a new meaning in life! What a new universe for the heart was there in love! Henceforth the burden and the mystery of “all this unintelligible world” was lightened if not dissolved; for death was but the step to a higher plane of life. The old, trite emblem of the chrysalis was no mere barren fancy. Continuous life was now to his mind a _certainty_; arrived at, too, by the deductions of experience, sense, and reason, as well as intimated by the eager thirst of the heart. The process by which he made the phenomena he had witnessed conduce to this conclusion was briefly this. An invisible, intelligent _force_ had lifted heavy articles before his eyes, played on musical instruments, written sentences, and spoken words. This _force_ claimed to be a human spirit in a human form, of tissues too fine to be visible to our grosser senses. It could pass, like heat and electricity, through what might seem material impediments. It had a plastic power to reincarnate itself at will, and imitate human forms and colors, under certain circumstances, and it gave partial proof of this by showing a hand, an arm, or a foot undistinguishable from one of flesh and blood. On one occasion the human form entire had been displayed, been touched, and had then dissolved into invisibility and intangibility before him. Now he must either take the word of this intelligent “force,” that it was an independent spiritual entity, or he must account for its acts by some other supposition. The “force,” in its communications to his mind, had shown it was not infallible; it had erred in some of its predictions, although in others it had been wonderfully correct. If its explanation of itself was untrue,—if no outside intelligent force were operating,—the other supposition was, that the phenomena were a proceeding either from himself, the spectator, or from Corinna. And here, without knowing it, Peek found himself speculating on the theory of Count Gasparin,[8] who has had the candor to brave the laugh of modern science (a very different thing from _scientia_) by recounting as facts what Professor Faraday and our Cambridge _savans_ denounce as impositions or delusions. Peek was therefore reduced to these two explanations: either the “force” was a spirit (call it, if you please, an outside power), as it claimed to be, or it was a faculty unconsciously exerted by the mortals present. In either case, it supplied an assurance of spirit and immortality; for it might fairly be presumed that such wonderful powers would not be wrapt up in the human organism except for a purpose; and that purpose, what could it be but the future development of those powers under suitable conditions? So either of Peek’s hypotheses led to the same precious and ineffable conviction of continuous life,—of the soul’s immortality!