HPB-SB-14-56: Difference between revisions

{{Style P-No indent|before her, and she hid her face. They picked out each letter as she fixed her mind on it, and so spelled out words which were always thought of by another person. They thus put together such words as ''Pfeifchen'', ''Entschuldigen'', ''Preghiera'', and many others equally difficult. Out of the 59 letters composing certain words “they picked out 46 right at first trial, 11 at second, and 4 at third, making only one failure.”}}

The elder boy’s account of the process is that, in guessing a card, the picture of it comes into his mind, and the name of a town appears in print. In choosing an object fixed on, both say that “their eyes wander over the whole number before them, until their attention is arrested by and fixed on a particular one, which they generally feel certain to be the right one, when it is so.” They never imagine the sound of a name. It is instructive to know that this corresponds to the way the writer visualizes for them, ''always by look, and not by sound.''

Again, only one of the boys has the faculty of receiving a purely mental picture. Neither of them is able to guess numbers. Why is this? What is the difference between a mental picture of, for instance, three figures and three letters? What between a vividly conceived imaginative picture and the mental picture of an object in some one’s pocket?

Here, again, I take it, there is some law if we could only get at it. The paper concludes with a striking case of transference of thought. The writer had in her mind a vivid picture of the Falls of Lora, which she had been to visit when some distant friends were in distress and trouble. She had allegorized the scene, and had connected it with the woes of her friends, and the idea had taken hold on her mind and become vividly present to her. Probably it was conceived with much force of imagination. Her maid, who slept in a room immediately over her mistress, dreamed that she was “in the midst of water rushing over rocks and the most dreadful whirlpools,” from which she was trying to save people. Being questioned, she gave as full and minute a description of the Falls of Lora as could be found in a local guide book. She had never seen them, nor photograph, nor picture of them. Here it is to be noted that there was no intention to convey the scene to the woman’s mind; no willing; no concentration of thought. On the contrary, the mind of the writer was deeply stirred, and her imagination was vividly excited. The deep stirring of mind probably sufficed to set the creative force of imagination at work, and reached a sympathetic mind that was in daily ''rapport'' with it. It is a striking case, and the whole paper is valuable.

{{Style P-Signature custom|M. A. ({{Style S-Small capitals|Oxon.}})|align=right|1 style=plain}}

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The ''Part'' also contains the objects, rules, and constitution of the Society, together with a list of members and associates.

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{{Style P-Title|LIFE AFTER DEATH.^{<nowiki>*</nowiki>}}}

To the translator of this little book every English Spiritualist—in the higher and wider sense—into whose hands it may come will acknowledge an obligation second only to that which will be felt to the author himself by a larger circle of readers. Herr Wernekke has performed the unusual and most acceptable service of giving in a foreign language a clear and elegant version of a native work of great merit, yet of merit not sufficiently notorious to ensure the deserved rewards of such a labour.