Lost Legacy
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Lost Legacy (1941) is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein. It tells of the rediscovery of psychic powers by a trio from a California university (a student, an MD/instructor at the medical college and a Psychology professor), and the attempts of a corrupt elite to silence them. It is collected in the book Assignment in Eternity.
The novella is an exploration of the possibilities that people, with the proper training, have the potential to make use of a wide range of telepathic and telekinetic abilities. It is based on the presumption that most, if not all, humans have innate psychic abilities, but simply don't know it and therefore do not make use of them. This ignorance is encouraged by a mysterious and powerful cabal which benefits from keeping people unaware of their abilities. There is also a group of individuals that have developed their telepathic and other powers living in secrecy. The three main characters stumble upon them and receive training. This group claims Mark Twain was one of them, as was Walt Whitman, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Abraham Lincoln.
This story is part of Heinlein's "Future History", but is written in a way that is not easily dated.
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