Yes, they are all there--every image of the past, every face which ever smiled on us--the hopes and fears of bygone years--the rustling of grass and flowers and the roar of the sea--the sound of trumpets in processions grand--the voices of the great and good among mankind--or what you will. Every line ever read in print, every picture and face and house is there. Many an experiment has shown this to be true; also that by mesmerizing or hypnotizing processes the most hidden images or memories can be awakened. In fact, the idea has lost much of its wonder since the time of Coleridge, now that every sound can be recorded, laid away and reproduced, and we are touching closely on an age when all that lies _perdu_ in any mind can or will be set forth visibly, and all that a man has ever _seen_ be shown to the world. For this is no whit more wonderful than that we can convey images or pictures by telegraph, and when I close my eyes and recall or imagine a form it does not seem strange that there might be some process by means of which it might be photographed.
And here we touch upon the Materialization of Thought, which conception loses a part of the absurdity with which Spiritualists and Occultists have invested it, if we regard all nature as one substance. For, in truth, all that was ever perceived, even to the shadow of a dream by a lunatic, had as real an existence while it lasted as the Pyramids of Egypt, else it could not have been perceived. Sense cannot, even in dreams, observe what is not for the time an effect on matter. If a man _imagines_ or makes believe to himself that he has a fairy attendant, or a dog, and _fancies_ that he sees it, that man does really see _something_, though it be invisible to others. There is some kind of creative brain-action going on, some employment of atoms and forces, and, if this be so, we may enter it among the Possibilities of the Future that the Material in any form whatever may be advanced, or further materialized or made real.
It is curious that this idea has long been familiar to believers in magic. In more than one Italian legend which I have collected a sorceress or goddess evolves a life from her own soul, as a fire emits a spark. In fact, the fancy occurs in some form in all mythologies, great or small. In one old Irish legend a wizard turns a Thought into a watch-dog. The history of genius and of Invention is that of realizing ideas, of making them clearer and stronger and more comprehensive. Thus it seems to me that the word _Forethought_ as generally loosely understood, when compared to what it has been shown capable of expressing, is almost as much advanced as if like the fairy HERMELINA, chronicled by GROSIUS, it had been originally a vapor or mere fantasy, and gradually advanced to fairy life so as to become the companion of a wizard.