Genre:

Short Fiction

Subjects:

Gas Chemistry, Magic, Supernaturalism

    The narrator gives a fictional account of a conversation with a spirit upon its manifestation before him. The spirit states: 'It has long been a dispute in your world, whether the air is peopled with invisible beings; and such is that philosophic pride and obstinacy which mark this age, that, along with your other monstrous theories, you have swept away all other beings but yourselves from the universe. And yet the doctrines of those sciences which you affect to have improved, may have convinced you that there exist many substances which, although endowed with definite shapes, are yet invisible, and which, although invisible, perform most important purposes in the phenomena of nature. So absurd is the argument from non-appearance to non-existence' (383).