Sensitive or Impressible Mediums
164. Persons capable of perceiving the presence of
spirits by a vague impression, a kind of feeling through-
out the whole body, for which they can give no reason,
are thus designated. This variety has no very decided
character; all mediums are necessarily impressible:
impressionability is rather a general than a particular
quality; it is the rudimentary faculty indispensable
to the development of all the others; it differs from
purely physical and nervous impressionability, with
which it must not be confounded ; for there are per-
sons who have not delicate nerves, and who yet feel,
more or less, the presence of spirits ; and others, very
irritable, who have not the slightest perception of
them.
This faculty is developed by habit, and may
acquire such a subtilty that the person endowed with it recognizes, by the-impression he feels, not only the
good or bad nature of the spirit at his side, but even
his individuality, as a blind person recognizes, by a
certain unknown sense, the approach of this or that
person ; he becomes, in relation to spirits, a veritable
sensitive plant A good spirit always makes a gentle
and agreeable impression ; that of a bad spirit, on the
contrary, is painful, anxious, and disagreeable; there
is, as it were, a scent of impurity.
