It has been successfully
attempted to give them a more or less clear idea of the value of
a few figures and perhaps of the course and nature of certain
elementary operations; and this appears to have been enough to
open up to them the most secret regions of mathematics in which
every question is answered beforehand. It is not wholly illusive
to suppose that, if we could impart to them, for instance, a
similar notion of the future, together with a manner of conveying
to us what they see there, they might also have access to strange
visions of another class, which are jealously kept from us by the
too-watchful guardians of our intelligence. There is an
opportunity here for experiments which will doubtless prove
exceedingly arduous, for the future is not so easily seen and
above all not so easily interpreted and expressed as a number. It
is possible, moreover, that, when we know how to set about it, we
shall obtain most of the human mediumistic phenomena; rapping,
the moving of objects, materialization even and Heaven knows what
other surprises held in store for us by that astounding
subliminal to whose fancy there appears to be no bounds. In any
case, if we accept the divining of numbers, as we are almost
forced to do, it is almost certain that the divining of other
matters must follow. An unexpected breach is made in the wall
behind which lie heaped the great secrets that seem to us, as our
knowledge and our civilization increase, to become stronger and
more inaccessible.
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