The main purpose of our existence on earth—aside from the sacred and paramount duty of securing our salvation—is undoubtedly to make ourselves masters of the tangible world around us, as it stands revealed to our senses, and as it was expressly made subject to our will by the Creator. We are, however, at the same time, not left without information about the existence of certain laws and the occurrence of certain phenomena, which belong to a world not accessible to us by means of our ordinary senses, and which yet affect seriously our intercourse with Nature and our personal welfare. This knowledge we obtain sometimes, by special favor, as direct revelation, and at other times, for reasons as yet unknown, at the expense of our health and much suffering. By whatever means it may reach us, it cannot be rejected; to treat it with ridicule or to[Pg 4] decline examining it, would be as unwise as unprofitable. The least that we can do is to ascertain the precise nature of these laws, and, after stripping these phenomena of all that can be proved to be merely incidental or delusive, to compare them with each other, and to arrange them carefully according to some standard of classification. The main interest in such a task lies in the discovery of the grain of truth which is often found concealed in a mass of rubbish, and which, when thus brought to light, serves to enlarge our knowledge and to increase our power. The difficulty lies in the absence of all scientific investigation, and in the innate tendency of man to give way, wantonly or unconsciously, to mental as well as to sensual delusion.

The aim of this little work is, therefore, limited to the gathering of such facts and phenomena as may serve to throw light upon the nature of the magic powers with which man is undoubtedly endowed. Its end will be attained if it succeeds in showing that he actually does possess powers which are not subject to the general laws of nature, but more or less independent of space and time, and which yet make themselves known partly by appeals to the ordinary senses and partly by peculiar phenomena, the result of their[Pg 5] activity. These higher powers, operating exclusively through the spirit of man, are part of his nature, which has much in common with that of the Deity, since he was created by God "in His own image," and the Lord "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul." This soul is not, as materialists maintain, merely the sum of all perceptions obtained by the collective activity of bodily organs—a conclusion which would finally make it the product of mere material atoms, subject to constant physical and chemical changes. Even if it were possible—which we deny—to reduce our whole inner life, including memory, imagination, and reason, to a system of purely physical laws, and thus to admit its destruction at the moment of death, there would still remain the living soul, coming directly from the Most High, and destined to continue throughout eternity. This soul is, hence, independent of time. Nor is it bound by space, except so far as it can commune with the outer world only by means of the body, with which it is united in this life. The nature of this union is a mystery as yet unfathomed, but precisely because it is such a mystery, we have no right to assume that it is altogether indissoluble during life; or, that it ceases entirely at the moment of death. There is, on the contrary, over[Pg 6]whelming evidence that the soul may, at times, act independently of the body, and the forces developed on such occasions we have, for the sake of convenience rather than on account of the special fitness of the term, preferred to call magic powers.