confined, and impeded, in its operations, by the body; and whenever such abnormal states occur as enable it to act with any degree of independence, man, under the dominion of his all-sufficient reason, denies and disowns the facts. That the manifestation of a spirit to the living, whether seen or heard, is an exception, and not the rule, is evident; for, supposing the desire to exist at all, it must exist in millions and millions of instances which never take effect. The circumstances must therefore no doubt be very peculiar, as regards both parties in which such a manifestation is possible. What these are, we have very little means of knowing; but, as far as we do know, we are led to conclude that a certain magnetic rapport or polarity constitutes this condition, while, at the same time, as regards the seer, there must be what the prophet called the “opening of the eye,” which may perhaps signify the seeing of the spirit without the aid of the bodily organ—a condition which may temporarily occur to any one under we know not what influence, but which seems, to a certain degree, hereditary in some families. The following passage is quoted from Sir William Hamilton’s edition of Dr. Reid’s works, published in 1846:— “No man can show it to be impossible to the Supreme Being to have given us the power of perceiving external objects, without any such organs”—that is, our organs of sense. “We have reason to believe that when we put off these bodies, and all the organs belonging to them, our perceptive powers shall rather be improved than destroyed or impaired. We have reason to believe that the Supreme Being perceives everything in a much more perfect manner than we do, without bodily organs. We have reason to believe that there are other created beings endowed with powers of perception more perfect and more extensive than ours, without any such organs as we find necessary;” and Sir William Hamilton adds the following note:— “However astonishing, it is now proved beyond all rational doubt that in certain abnormal states of the nervous organism, perceptions are possible through other than the ordinary channels of the sense.”