speak my mind of all these spiritualistic phenomena. It's just as well that we should know clearly where we are."
"That is clearly understood, my dear step-son-in-law," said Chaffery. "Our present object is discussion."
"But Ethel—"
"Ethel is yours," said Chaffery. "Ethel is yours," he repeated after an interval, and added pensively,—"to keep."
"But talking of Illusion," he resumed, dismissing the sordid with a sign of relief, "I sometimes think with Bishop Berkeley, that all experience is probably something quite different from reality. That consciousness is essentially hallucination. I, here, and you, and our talk—it is all Illusion. Bring your Science to bear—what am I? A cloudy multitude of atoms, an infinite interplay of little cells. Is this hand that I hold out me? This head? Is the surface of my skin any more than a rude average boundary? You say it is my mind that is me? But consider the war of motives. Suppose I have an impulse that I resist—it is I resist it—the impulse is outside me, eh? But suppose that impulse carries me and I do the thing—that impulse is part of me, is it not? Ah! My brain reels at these mysteries! Lord! what flimsy fluctuating things we are—first this, then that, a thought, an impulse, a
