But we can penetrate _consciously_ into these processes. There are any number of people who, with their eyes closed, can produce phantasy-pictures surprisingly realistic; and geniuses especially have command of rich powers in this direction. George Sand's biographer tells us, that sitting at the feet of her mother before the chimney fire, she would often watch the old green-colored fire-guard in order to form from the reflections of the flames figures and scenes. And this is the case of our English lady. Just as an imaginative child tells itself stories, so she, to while away the time, builds in the twilight hours groups of figures, and projects them into her crystals; and so strange is the unconscious "I" to the conscious "I," that oftentimes the miniature drama that is unfolded is the source of the greatest surprises to its own creator. This independence of our consciousness in two spheres, is exhibited with surprising distinctness where especial aids and expedients must be employed to decipher the visions. Thus: "On March 20th, I happened to want the date of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which I could not recall, though feeling sure that I knew it, and that I associated it with some event of importance. When looking in the Crystal some hours later, I found a picture of an old man with long white hair and beard, dressed like a Lyceum Shylock, and busy writing in a large book with tarnished massive clasps. I wondered much who he was, and what he could possibly be doing, and thought it a good opportunity of carrying out a suggestion which had been made to me, of examining objects in the Crystal with a magnifying glass. The glass revealed to me that my old gentleman was writing in Greek, though the lines faded away as I looked, all but the characters he had last traced, the Latin numerals LXX. Then it flashed into my mind, that he was one of the Jewish Elders at work on the Septuagint, and that its date, 277 B. C., would serve equally well for Ptolemy Philadelphus! It may be worth while to add, though the fact was not in my conscious memory at the moment, that I had once learnt a chronology on a mnemonic system which substituted letters for figures, and that the memoria technica for this date was 'Now Jewish Elders indite a Greek copy.'" (No. 74.) The employment of a magnifying glass, which by reason of external difficulties is seldom possible, is a convincing proof of the degree of independence of the two personalities within us. Anything more marvellous than the fact before us can hardly be imagined. We create something which is immediately wrested from our control and which leads a totally independent life; we produce something which becomes for our own selves a mute enigma, and which can only be aroused by artificial means out of its ghost-like silence. "The rent that gapes throughout creation, Goes also through the human heart."