It was the wonderful influence of the speaker’s personality; it was the abundant psychic-energy that spread itself in thought-waves all through the multitude, making their hearts glow and swell with happiness.
Such are the men who win great battles, for their soldiers are ready to rush into any danger under the influence of their leader’s powerful soul-energy. Mark how these great warriors attract women. He who fights well, loves well, all chroniclers know that fact, and the unseen mind-force with which Nature has so lavishly endowed him, gives him the successful conquest of women’s hearts, equally as of men’s.
At this time thought-reading was a perfected science, and only those endowed with an extraordinary gift of psychic energy could pose with any measure of success as a professional.
So great was the perfection reached in this branch of science that a professor of thought-reading was expected to describe not only the thought of the inquirer, but also reveal the thoughts and motives of the person who formed the subject of the inquiry. Nothing less than this could satisfy the soul of the twenty-first century individual.
Once the Professor was placed en rapport with the person to be analysed and reported upon, he was expected to give every particular of his life, habits, attainments, thoughts and actions. In point of fact, he had to keep a mental diary of the watched man’s doings. Woe betide the silly swain who tried to run two sweethearts; if one of them grew jealous she had but to tell her case to the thought-reader, and with a good fee set his brain agoing, when soon she would be in possession of every particular of her lover’s perfidy.
As soon as the presence of this essence in all persons was clearly demonstrated and established, it became the ambition of the food-chemist to discover some phosphate that would increase the supply that nature had given already. Numerous were the nostrums proposed for which were claimed the power of imparting an augmented supply to man.
The newspapers teemed with advertisements of these tabloids, some of which were frequently headed with the legend ‘Ye are not men but Gods!’ And indeed, if the virtues of these chemical preparations attained only half what was claimed for them, men would have been nearly gods by this time. For the inherent desire of man to obtain power, by whatever name it might be known, prompts him to accept any theories that promise this desirable gift.
For a time large fortunes were accumulated by the manufacture of psychic-energy tabloids; enterprising chemists rivalling each other in the production of the most excellent. Notwithstanding all these deserving efforts on the part of mankind to raise himself, he remained pretty much the same as nature formed him, save by the slower processes of evolution.
Of all the persons who laid claim to the gift of thought-reading there was none so highly sensitive as the great Anglo-Indian, Dayanand Swami. It was said of him that he almost lived upon a wonderful elixir of his own manufacture, the preparation of which had been handed down to him from his Mahatma forefather some generations back.
In the solitude of the Indian jungle a hundred years previously his fore-elder had discovered this wonderful plant, which not only physically sustained him to a great extent, but furnished him with an extraordinary supply of the mystic fluid.