“‘I have heard the mediums use Greek, Latin, Spanish, and French, when I knew that they had no knowledge of any language but their own; and it is a fact that can be attested by many, that often there has been speaking and writing in foreign languages and unknown tongues by those who were unacquainted with either.’ “Dr. Dexter is explicit to the same purpose. I need not multiply citations. The books of the spiritualists are full of instances in point. And as it is clear, from the phenomena presented, that the superhuman intelligence and power manifested are not Divine, I can, as a rational man, only conclude that they are Satanic. I believe the persons engaged in the unhallowed intercourse are, to a great extent, in good faith, and have no suspicion that they are really dealing with devils.” “I believe you are right,” said I. “One thing is certain, that even in mesmerizing, there is always an implicit mental evocation, and without it, I venture to say, no one was ever able to exhibit the mesmeric phenomena. The effort of the will which the mesmerizer makes, whether he uses passes or not, is at bottom an evocation, a calling up of the mesmeric spirit; and he who set the spirits a rapping, you may be sure, had made a virtual, if not an explicit, a tacit, if not an express compact with the devil. But there is one thing farther I would have you explain, that is, the connection of spirit-manifestations with so-called animal magnetism.” “That is a great subject, and would lead me too far for my time and for your strength. There are different spirits that besiege us or invade us, but those that usually do so probably, after the language of St. Paul, swarm in the air, and inhabit what the ancients called Ether. Many of the fathers, and some later doctors of the Church have believed that they are created with and inhabit fine ethereal bodies. However this may be, they no doubt, in their operation, assume such bodies, and consequently find their operations facilitated by a subtile material medium, such as the mesmeric fluid. Hence I do not regard mesmerism itself as Satanic, but as facilitating demonic invasion. “There is also in man what the ancients called the _umbra_, the shade, which is not the soul, nor the body in its mere outward sense. It is, as it were, the interior lining of the body, capable, to a certain extent, of being detached from it, without however losing its relation to it. Hence the phenomena of bi-location, so frequently noticed in the annals of sorcery or witchcraft, can be conceived as possible. The body lies in a trance, and the soul with its _umbra_ is able to carry on, by the assistance of the demon, its deviltry, even at a distance; and the wounds given to the shade will reappear on the body, as has been often observed.