167. Seeing mediums are endowed with the faculty of seeing spirits. There are some who enjoy this faculty in the normal state ; then they are perfectly awake, and preserve an exact remembrance of it; others have it only in a somnambulic state, or one bordering on somnambulism. This faculty is rarely permanent; it is almost always the effect of a momentary and fleet- ing crisis. All persons endowed with second sight may be placed in the category of seeing mediums. The possibility of seeing spirits in dreams most certainly results from a kind of mediumship, but does not, properly speaking, constitute seeing mediums. We have explained this phenomenon in Chapter V I , on Visual Manifestations.
The seeing medium thinks he sees with his eyes, as also those who have double sight; but in reality it is the soul that sees, because he sees as well with his eyes shut as with them open'; from whence it follows that a blind person can see spirits as well as one who has the use of his eyes. This last point might give an interesting subject for study, to know if this faculty is more frequent with the blind. Spirits who have been blind have told us that, while living, they had, by the soul, a perception of certain objects, and that they were not plunged in black obscurity.
