Telepathy is another and yet more general phrase of psychic activity. It may consist in the transmission from one person to another of a feeling or impression merely, which results in a certain degree of awareness to the state of mind in which the transmitter may be at the time, as when a mother has a "feeling" that all is not well with her absent child. Or it may yet take a more definite and perspicuous form, even to the transmission of details such as the names of persons and places, of numbers, forms and incidents. Telepathy commonly exists between persons in close sympathy; and when two persons are working along separate lines toward the same result, it is quite usual that they unconsciously "telepath" with one another, their brains being for the time in synchronous vibration. Spiritual communication in any degree is nothing more or less than sympathy--those who feel together, think together. The modern development of the aerial post is a step towards the universal federation of thought, but it is not comparable with the astral post which carries a thousand miles an hour. In this sort of correspondence the communication is written like any ordinary letter designed for transmission, but instead of stamping and posting it, a lighted match is applied to the finished work. The material part is destroyed, but the intangible and only real and lasting part remains behind. This is attached, by the direction of the will, to a particular person and set in a certain direction. If all the conditions have been properly observed it will not fail to reach its destination. I have fortunately been able to demonstrate this fact in public on more than one occasion. The phenomenon is repeated in a less striking form in every case of what is called "crossing," as when one correspondent feels suddenly called upon to write urgently to another and receives a reply to his enquiries while his letter is still in course of delivery.
Nature is full of a subtle magic of this sort for which we have no organized science. It is said that if you put snails together and afterwards separate them, placing each upon a copper ground to which electric wires are attached, a shock given to one snail will be registered by the other at the same moment. I have not tried this theory, but the idea is fundamental to a mass of telepathic observations which have found practical expression in wireless telegraphy. Some thirty years ago, however, I made trial of the twin magnet theory and was entirely successful in getting wireless messages from one room to another. The performance was, however, clumsy and tedious, and I did not then know enough to see how it could be perfected. The idea is now in the very safe custody of the Patents Office.