been subjected to the severest tests; their reality has been
certified to by every human sense, and when an illusion responds to
the sense of both sight and touch, when the sense of sight is
corroborated by that of touch, or by any other of the five senses,
what _better_ evidence have we of the existence of those things we
are all agreed to call real? Yes, I know what you are about to say,
you object upon the ground that only a small minority are witnesses
of the marvels of Eastern magic; but you are wrong, for I have seen
hundreds of men in a public square all eye-witnesses to precisely the
same occult phenomena at once. Now if certain hundreds could be so
impressed, why not other hundreds? And with a still more powerful
hypnotizer, why could not a majority--nay, all of those in a certain
district, a certain State, a certain country, _in the world_--be made
to see and feel things which now, and to us, have no existence? In
that case, Mr. Henley, would it be the majority or the minority who
were deceived? _All is mind_, and the hypnotizer merely alters it."

"You said just now," answered Paul, "that matter, being mind, was
governed by mind, and that the tree or chair before me, owing its
existence to mind, is subject to that mind; do you mean by that to
say that the existence of that sofa, as a sofa, may be transformed
into something else by mental action alone?"

"I do," said Ah Ben, "under certain conditions; namely, the condition
called hypnotism. On this material plane we are imprisoned; the will
is not free to operate upon its environment, but in the spiritual
state this dependence and slavery to the appearances we call
realities is cast aside; the will becomes free and controls its own
environment--in short, we are out of prison. But even here, Mr.
Henley, by practicing the self-control we were speaking of, the will