"'Some such force or power the traveller is compelled to postulate, even in the absence of proof. He finds traces of it among all peoples, savage as well as civilized; and it is evidently _not_ a "traditional supernaturalism." This all but absolute universality claims for it the right to rank in the "suprahuman category" of the late Lord Amberley, who did not hold, as I do, the superhuman and the supermundane to be the human and the mundane imperfectly understood. Even mere barbarians, as "the Earl" tells us in his last pleasant book, have learnt to juggle with it; and I fear that many a professional "medium" has, at times, when the legitimate agent failed him, learnt to supplement it by sleight-of-hand, pure and simple. In 1835 the late Mr. Lane startled the public with his account of the Cairo magician and the drop of ink in the boy's hand; and "Eothen" vainly attempted to explain the phenomenon as a "tentative miracle." Had the public read the "Qanoon-i-Islam" by Dr. Herklots, instead of passing over it as a cookery-book, they would have found the very same process everywhere utilized in India. Colonel Churchill's 'Mount Lebanon' (1853) again describes a notable feat performed by a Druze medium, which distinctly comes under the head of "Materialized Spiritualism," to use the "Irish bull" now in vogue,--I am, sir,' etc., etc. "That 'perception is possible without the ordinary channels of sensation' is a hard saying. The Press took it up; and, I am told, the small boys at Norwood amused themselves by shouting to one another, 'Take care where yer going! yer havn't got Captain Burton's six senses!' But I meant simply to state my conviction that the senses--which, little known to us as the 'Laws of Nature,' after the study of twenty-four centuries, still conceal so many secrets--sometimes are, and often may be made, independent of their organs. Who amongst you cannot quote cases of men being strangely affected by the presence of some animal? You have all heard of Henri III. and of the Duke of Schomberg, who could not sit in a room where there was a cat. A notable instance of this occurred in my own family--a brave soldier who had fought through many a campaign, and yet who turned pale and faint in the feline presence. He neither saw, smelt, heard, felt, nor tasted the cat; the fact of its being there was enough.