E. Thayles Emmons

“ At length the same feeling of dizziness, which I had before experienced, returned to me, and almost before I could realize what was taking place I found myself sitting upright on the bench, body and soul again united, and the form of Sayres at my feet, to convince me that all was not a hideous dream. ”

“ The human mind, or soul, with its unlimited powers, has always been regarded by me as the most wonderful of all creations. I have been able to find no entirely satisfactory definition of this ‘mind’ from a purely physical standpoint, and therefore sought to obtain one. ”

“ It is you who have stolen the honors due me; it is you who would prevent me from becoming famous; it is you, curse you, who will marry the only woman I can ever love—and then you ask me to let you live! ”

“ As a basis for the theory which I set myself to formulate, I took what I shall term 'mind atoms.' As I have before said, we cannot regard the mind force as a material thing; but, as a contradictory fact, we know that it is something, and further than that generality we are ignorant. Then, as the mind force governs alike every portion of the body, this indeterminable something of which it is composed, I reasoned, must be in one portion as in another. ”

“ As you very well know, my religious beliefs have always been skeptical; but any skepticism has arisen rather from insufficiency of faith with which to overcome the lack of direct evidence which mortals have concerning spiritual things than from stubborn unbelief. That there is a Supreme Being I have never doubted. His many works are too manifest, and it is impossible to conceive of such a creation as this earth and all its delicate mechanisms, and of the rest of the universe with all its unknown wonders, without some vast Supernatural oversight. ”

“ I then placed these mind atoms as being diffused in the space occupied by the body and lying even between the atoms of its material composition. If, at death, this mind is merely withdrawn from the body—all of which I worked upon as already determined—would it not occupy in the spirit world the same space and retain the same shape of the human form from which it had fled? ”

“ Felix Sayres possessed courage beyond that of many men, but few mortals can be brought face to face with the supernatural without experiencing fear.
All of us have at various times—sometimes by day, but more often at night—undergone the feeling of the proximity of some ghostly presence, giving rise to a sensation of coldness and choking horror. ”

“ Skeptic as I have been, I have always been willing to concede that the idea of a spiritual existence, while vague, seems no more wonderful than thousands of other things which we see about us daily, and for the reason that they are manifest, give them no thought whatever. ”

“ I then went one step further and added the supposition that as the effects of the action wore away it would be possible for the soul to re-enter the body, even as it had been driven out, and creation would again be complete.
"I have worked untiringly, and wrought experiment after experiment, until at last I have succeeded in producing a drug that will accomplish all that I have explained to you. I have used it on various animals and have seen them recover from the effects of it, and thus have ascertained that it is harmless. ”