“They see the forces of progress gathering among you, and know that they cannot win through Germany. She still follows their methods, but without their help, while every vibration of progressive and co-operative purpose among you enables us to help you more. So they have left her to the fruits of their union, the consequence inevitable, and hatch fresh mischief themselves.” XI On the evening of his arrival, May 7th, Mr. Kendal asked his wife whether she could stay with us during his visit to New York, and she replied that she would outstay him, unless the forces attacking me were defeated before his departure. “It really helps, then, for us to get together here,” he inferred. “Yes, indeed, it helps. All combination of force adds by the sum of its participation to the original amount of force combined.” Taken in conjunction with other, similar assertions in this connection—“Its force is freed and multiplied by the sum of your participation”; “For every vibration of pure constructive purpose among the Allied forces, we have added two”; “Force united is more powerful by half than similar forces separately striving”; etc.—it seems probable that these expressions were intended as figures of speech, emphasizing the increased potency of united purpose on our plane and the ability of the free forces to reinforce it in proportion to its actual vitality, rather than as mathematical statements of the exact degree to which this reinforcement and co-operation may be carried. Mentioning that sometimes they seemed to make a distinction between purpose and force, and again to use the terms interchangeably, Mr. Kendal said he would like to know the character of each. “Is purpose like the direction of an electric current, and force like amperage and voltage?” he asked. “Or is purpose the road, and force the velocity in following it? Is purpose qualitative, and force quantitative? Is the distinction between them along some of these lines?” “It is along all those lines,” was the reply. “Purpose is the force that draws. Force is the purpose that pushes.” Like various others to whom these messages first came through me, Mr. Kendal had been trying, with some success, to obtain direct communication. Mary facetiously described his pencil as “a good burro,” and mine as “a real hawse.” I had thought this dialecticism differently spelled, but he reminded me that “hoss” belonged to New England, and “hawse” to Mary’s native state, Kentucky. While the pencil-point rested idly on the paper, we talked about the sensations accompanying its movement, and about the probable direction of the force propelling it. To him, the impulse seemed to come first and chiefly through the consciousness; to me, it seemed a physical force externally applied to the pencil, notwithstanding occasional consciousness of what the message would be; but we were agreed that it was difficult, at first, to be sure that the impulse was not in some unrecognized way our own.