“A mere matter of telepathy,” replied Ingle. “All being in the same physical condition at the particular moment of total abstraction, ready to be impressed by the same thing, by pure transmission of thought.” “I agree with you, Ingle,” said Reeve, “yet such impressions usually are only transmissible and receivable when the mind is a blank.” “That is so,” continued Ingle, “but the acme of receptiveness is reached at the identical moment of the acme of concentration, whether that state is brought about by the concentration of nothingness or that of serious abstraction. The result is the same: for that identical moment the mind is a blank.” “And that moment is when the hallucination takes place, you think?” asked Reeve. “So it seems to me,” Ingle replied. “I do not see it,” observed Rutherford, quietly; “neither in dreams nor in any other manner do people see what is beyond or, I should say, ‘above’ their actual experience.” “I fear you’ll have to explain that,” said Coombes. “What I mean is this,” continued Rutherford; “you never, say, dream of what is _beyond_ your experience, or of doing something you do not previously know how to do, or of seeing correctly something of which no previous and similar object has come within your experience or crossed your vision; when that point comes,—when all previous knowledge or suggestion ceases, then you will wake. Nor is there evidence, even in telepathy with excellent mediums, of going beyond scenes and objects which have come within the knowledge of the medium by sight or description.” “What about mediums telling of heaven—of angels—by actual sight?” queried Ingle. “Nothing of the kind! they merely relate the impressions given, and in this age of telepathy, when we can transmit thought all over the world, it is _known_ thought, and we do not get beyond it.” “But angels!” “Exactly the same thing. We cannot soar above our own knowledge, yet we want to show human beings in a higher beatitude, so we make them sexless and there arises a difficulty as to which sex they shall be like, so we clothe the body with a long, white robe, and show only the feet, making the faces clear so as to stand either for a woman or a beardless man, for you must all admit that it would look incongruous to represent angels with strongly marked features and nicely trimmed beards and waxed moustachios!” “How would you represent an angel, then, Rutherford?” asked Coombes, laughing. “I could not do better. No one could, for the simple reason I gave before. We cannot soar beyond actual experience without being ridiculous; we have never seen higher beings, and therefore what they are like we cannot even imagine, for our fancy stops at ourselves, and the best we can do is to make spirits, angels, and all higher beings, like ourselves, but shorn of our carnal portions, and compromise the matter.” “Then you think angels and spirits are not like us, and need not be of anything like our form?” questioned Ingle.