Dorrien’s uneasiness and worldly care chained him to the earth, and he was a _restant_—but, being a spirit, he was inevitably inducted into some of the inherent properties of spirit; matter to him was no impediment, neither doors nor walls could keep him out; he had the intuitive perception of whom he could most easily communicate with, or he was brought into rapport with Oeder by the latter’s seeking him; and he could either so act on Oeder’s constructive imagination as to enable it to project his own figure, with the short pipe and the pictures, or he could, by the magical power of his will, build up these images out of the constituents of the atmosphere. The last seems the most probable, because, had the rapport with Oeder, or Oeder’s receptivity, been sufficient to enable the spirit to act potently upon him, it would have been also able to infuse into his mind the wishes it desired to convey, even without speech, for speech, as a means of communication between spirits, must be quite unnecessary. Even in spite of these dense bodies of ours, we have great difficulty in concealing our thoughts from each other; and the somnambule reads the thoughts of not only his magnetizer, but of others with whom he is placed in rapport. In cases where speech appears to be used by a spirit, it is frequently not audible speech, but only this transference of thought, which appears to be speech from the manner in which the thought is borne in and enters the mind of the receiver; but it is not through his ears, but through his universal supplementary sense, that he receives it; and it is no more like what we mean by _hearing_, than is the seeing of a _clairvoyant_, or a spirit, like our seeing by means of our bodily organs. In those cases where the speech is audible to other persons, we must suppose that the magical will of the spirit can, by means of the atmosphere, simulate these sounds as it can simulate others, of which I shall have to treat by-and-by. It is remarkable that, in some instances, this magical power seems to extend so far as to represent to the eye of the seer a form apparently so real, solid, and lifelike, that it is not recognisable from the living man; while in other cases the production of a shadowy figure seems to be the limit of its agency, whether limited by its own faculty or the receptivity of its subject: but we must be quite sure that the form is, in either instance, equally ethereal or immaterial. And it will not be out of place here to refer to the standing joke of the skeptics, about ghosts appearing in coats and waistcoats. Bentham thought he had settled the question for ever by that objection; and I have heard it since frequently advanced by very acute persons; but, properly considered, it has not the least validity.