Yet between these last and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity.

And hence, by tales and legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time to time, beliefs in apparitions and spectres.

If more common to the earlier and simpler tribes than to the men of your duller age, it is but that, with the first, the senses are more keen and quick.

And as the savage can see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross sense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him and the creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured.

Do you listen ?" "With my soul!" "But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlier desires.