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what was the matter. He answered softly (his voice was always disquietingly soft) that as the Invisible had worn his nightshirt it was up to him to destroy it. I agreed, but suggested that the offending and smouldering garment be thrown at once into the bath-tub, and that he should cover himself with an unsullied one brought from the wardrobe. He obeyed submissively, and without further ado went quietly back to bed. These incidents illustrate the tact and patience needed for dealing with my haunted brother. I was very young at the time and the nerve strain was great. His particular madness, however, seemed mild when compared with the more exacting and autocratic madness of my mother. I was completely wedged in between these two -- a small prisoner who know that no help could come from without -- and any childhood was passed in humouring and appeasing their fearful and irresponsible moods. Why from the first I was not crushed between them remains a mystery.

Perhaps the fact that I did escape this time, and subsequently many others, accounts for my leaning to a philosophy which accepts the theory of another invisible dimension of which we form an integral part. All great mental tension such as love, anguish despair, hate, resistance, inspiration, quickens the pulsations of some responsive energy which in return radiates us by its force. An individual counts only through the amount of mental effort he exerts, whether for good or evil, these being but distinctive terms in our own finite existence. In other words, help God to be and he will help you to live.

I certainly had some inner understanding of my situation. In some inarticulate and immature way I surveyed rather than lived my life, never supposing that I really belonged either to my mother or my brother. I pitied my brother; circumstances made me his keeper. My mother I first feared, then watched, then judged. I was still a child when the watching stage began, and she, feeling some intensity in my gaze, would angrily command me to turn my "Devil's eyes" away. Intuitively I knew that both my keepers were irresponsible, and this not doubt saved me.