will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was
thus, whenever I meditated praying; It was always before me, and nearer
and nearer.

"It used to spring on a table, on the back of a chair, on the
chimney-piece, and slowly to swing itself from side to side, looking at me
all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to dissipate
thought, and to contract one's attention to that monotony, till the
ideas shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to nothing--and unless
I had started up, and shook off the catalepsy I have felt as if my mind
were on the point of losing itself. There are other ways," he sighed
heavily; "thus, for instance, while I pray with my eyes closed, it comes
closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is not to be accounted for
physically, but I do actually see it, though my lids are dosed, and so
it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me, and I am obliged to
rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known this, you would be
acquainted with desperation."




CHAPTER IX


_The Third Stage_


"I see, Dr. Hesselius, that you don't lose one word of my statement. I
need not ask you to listen specially to what I am now going to tell you.
They talk of the optic nerves, and of spectral illusions, as if the