This latter rule of assortment, carried into execution by the demon, disequalises temperature and undoes the natural diffusion of heat - the former undoes the natural diffusion of matter. By a combination of the two processes the demon can decompose water or carbonic acid, first raising a portion of the compound to dissociational temperature (that is, temperature so high that the collisions shatter the compound molecules to atoms), and then sending the oxygen atoms this way, and the hydrogen or carbon that way; or he may affect decomposition against chemical affinity otherwise thus: Let him take in a small store of energy by resisting the mutual approach of two compound molecules, letting them press as it were on his two hands, and store up energy as in a bent spring; then let him apply the two hands between the oxygen and the double hydrogen constituents of a compound molecule of vapour of water, and tear them asunder. He may repeat this process until a considerable proportion of the whole number of compound molecules in a given quantity of vapour of water, given in a fixed closed vessel, are separated into oxygen and hydrogen at the expense of energy taken from translational motions.1

Let us then consider with what degree of success a well-trained demon.

1 Having appealed to Lord Kelvin's authority in the above discussion, I feel bound at once to add that no one would probably be less willing than the illustrious author himself to sanction the use which I proceed to make of his brilliant conceptions. In a lecture, delivered 1883, and republished 1891, in the second edition of Popular Lectures and Addresses (Nature Series), vol. i. p. 265, Lord Kelvin gives his view on our whole range of subjects with perfect clearness.

"Now I have hinted at a possible seventh sense - a magnetic sense - and though out of the line I propose to follow, and although time is precious, and does not permit much of digression, I wish just to remove the idea that I am in any way suggesting anything towards that wretched superstition of animal magnetism, and table-turning, and spiritualism, and mesmerism, and clairvoyance, and spirit-rapping, of which we have from Lord Kelvin's laboratory could have acquitted himself at a seance of Mr. Moses' or of D. D. Home's.

He can cause one half of a closed jar of air or of a bar of iron to become glowing hot, and the other ice-cold.

Here at once he scores a success which will make him an almost unique "mediumistic" reputation. Among modern civilised mediums at any rate - whatever may be the case in savage countries - Home is the only one who has obtained the fire-test under good observation. When he put his own head in the glowing fire, or handed blazing coals to the company in a lady's pocket handkerchief, as described by Sir William Crookes, Lord Crawford, and others, all he needed was the familiar demon who took care that between the glow and the handkerchief there should always be a layer of slowly-moving, cool, fresh, carbon-molecules, while the frenzied spinning carbon-molecules at a red heat were kept easily and completely within their imaginary wall. Having accomplished this, it would be mere child's play for our demon to disequalise the temperature of Dr. Speer's study, and to produce the alternate belts of cold and warm air of which Mr. Moses has told us above. The recorded fall of six degrees in the minimum thermometer, and the cold winds over heads and hands, would be trifling examples of the same power.

He can direct the energy of the moving molecules of a basin of water to throw the water up to a height and leave it there proportionately cooled.

Grant him liquid scent, then, of which more presently, and he can make it fall in cool dew from the ceiling as easily as not. Or he may have been at work when the following incident, testified to by Lord Dunraven, occurred with Home. (Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 77.) "He then again raised the glass [of brandy] over his head, and the liquid was withdrawn. He then told me to come and hold my hand above the glass; I did so, and the liquid fell over and through my fingers into the glass, dropping from the air above me".

He can sort the molecules in a solution of salt, so as to reverse the natural process of diffusion, and produce concentration of the solution in one portion of the water, leaving pure water in the remainder of the space occupied.

He could, then, have continued the little experiment described above heard so much. There is no seventh sense of the mystic kind. Clairvoyance, and the like, are the result of bad observation chiefly, somewhat mixed up, however, with the effects of wilful imposture, acting on an innocent, trusting mind".

If, as to my innocent, trusting mind seems not impossible, the time should some day come when critics shall say of these Proceedings that they have merely brought out as novelties things which every one already knew, it may be of interest to refer to this utterance of the President of the Royal Society, and foremost savant of Great Britain. And if, as I also conjecture, Lord Kelvin's own speculations on matter and energy should find both confirmation and development in a better understanding of these telekinetic phenomena - we shall have a palmary example of the historic truth that a leader of thought in one age often prepares, while he protests against, the thought of the next; - may be at once its most contemptuous opponent and its most illuminating precursor.

"Home] then said, 'I am going to take the strength from the brandy,' and he began making passes over the glass and flipping his fingers, sending a strong smell of spirit through the room. In about five minutes he had made the brandy as weak as very weak brandy and water; it scarcely tasted at all of spirit. Both Lindsay [now Lord Crawford] and I tasted it at the moment, and also some after the seance was over".

A little practice would have enabled our demon to carry this trick a step further, as follows:-