It is not the shadow of a hand: it is a hand of flesh (I do not add "and of bone," for I have the impression that it has no bones). This hand opens and closes three times, sufficiently long to permit me to say:

"Whose hand is this?—yours, Monsieur Mangin?"

"No."

"Then it is a materialization?"

"Undoubtedly: if you hold the medium's right hand, I hold the other."

I had the right hand of Eusapia on my left hand, and her fingers were interlaced with mine.

Now the hand which I saw was a right hand, stretched out and presented in profile. It remained for a moment motionless in the air, at about from twenty-four to twenty-eight inches above the table and thirty-six inches from Eusapia. As its immobility (I suppose) was the cause of my not seeing it, it therefore opened and closed: it was these movements which attracted my attention.

My favorable position in respect to the window, unfortunately permitted me alone to see this mysterious hand; but M. Mangin saw, at two separate times, not a hand, but the shadow of a hand outlined in profile upon the opposite window.

Eusapia turns her head in the direction of the curtain, behind which there is a leather-covered easy-chair, and, displacing the curtain, this chair comes and leans against me.

She takes my left hand, lifts it above the table the whole length of her right arm, and makes the feint of rapping in the air: the echo of three blows is heard on the table.

A little bell is placed before her. She stretches out her two hands to the right and the left of the bell at a distance of from three to four inches; then she draws back her hands toward her body, and, lo and behold! the bell comes gliding along over the table until it bumps against something and falls over. Eusapia repeats the experiment several times. You would think that her hands were invisibly prolonged; and that seems to me to justify the term "ectenic force," which Professor Thury, of Geneva, gave in the year 1855 to this unknown energy.

I was just asking if she did not perchance have some invisible thread between her fingers, when suddenly, an irresistible itching made her put her left hand to her nose; her right had remained upon the table near the bell; the two hands at this moment were about two feet apart. I observed carefully. Eusapia rested her left hand upon the table, some inches from the bell, and this was again set in motion. Considering the gesture made by her, it would have been necessary, in order to perform this feat, to have a wonderfully elastic thread, absolutely invisible; for our eyes were, so to speak, upon the bell, and the light was abundant. My eyes were only a foot distant from the bell, at the utmost.

This was a certain and undeniable case, and Sully-Prudhomme returned to his home with me as thoroughly convinced as I am.

After a rather long wait, an architect's stool came marching up all alone toward me. It grazed my left side, rose to the height of the table, and succeeded in placing itself upon it. As I lifted my hand, I felt it at once seized.

"Why do you take my hand?" I asked of my neighbor.

"It was not I," said he.

While these phenomena were taking place, Eusapia seemed to be suffering. It seemed as if out of her own physiological fund or stock she were furnishing all the force required to put the objects in motion.

After the sÉance, while she was still very much prostrated, we saw an easy-chair which was behind the curtain come rolling up behind her, as if to say, "Hold on there! you've forgotten me!"

My conviction is that I witnessed phenomena which I cannot relate to any ordinary physical law. My impression is that fraud, in any case, is more than improbable,—at least so far as concerns the displacement at a distance of heavy articles of furniture arranged by my companions and myself. That is all that I can say about it. For my part, I call "natural" that which is scientifically proved. So that the word "mysterious" means that which still astonishes us because it cannot be explained. I believe that the scientific spirit consists in verifying facts, in not denying a priori any fact which is not in contradiction with known laws, and in accepting none which has not been determined by safe and verifiable conditions.

SÉance of September 26.—A dark bust moves forward upon the table, coming from where Eusapia sits; then another, and still another. "They look like Chinese ghosts," says M. Mangin, with this difference, that I, who am better placed, owing to the light from the window, am able to perceive the dimensions of these singular images, and above all their thickness. All these black busts are busts of women, of life size; but, although vague, they do not look like Eusapia. The last of them, of fine shape, is that of a woman who seems young and pretty. These half-lengths, which seem to emanate from the medium, glide along between us; and, when they have gone as far as the middle of the table or two-thirds of its length, they sink down altogether (all of a piece, as it were), and vanish. This rigidity makes me think of the reproductions, or fac-similes, of a bust escaped from a sculptor's atelier, and I murmur, "One would think he was looking at busts moulded in papier-machÉ." Eusapia heard me. "No, not papier-machÉ," she says indignantly. She does not give any other explanation, but says (this time in Italian), "In order to prove to you that it is not the body of the medium, I am going to show you a man with a beard. Attention!" I do not see anything, but Dr. Dariex feels his face rubbed against for quite a while by a beard.

Nearly ten years have passed since Eusapia Paladino made her first appearance in the memorable sÉances at Milan during the course of her mediumistic tours through Europe. The object of shrewd investigations on the part of experienced and learned observers; the butt of jokes, accusations, sarcasms; exalted by certain fanatics as a personification of supernatural powers and scoffed at by others as a mountebank,—the humble haberdasher of Naples has made so much stir in the world that she is herself bored and displeased by it.

I had good proof of this when I took leave of her, after I had listened with much curiosity to the anecdotes which she related to me of her sÉances and of the well-known men with whom she has been associated,—Ch. Richet, Schiaparelli, Lombroso, Flammarion, Sardou, Aksakof, et al. She then very emphatically asked me not to speak in the journals of her presence at Genoa and of the experiments in which she should figure there. Happily, she has good reasons herself for not reading the journals.[39]

Why was an astronomer chosen to give an account of the experiments at Genoa? Because astronomers are occupied with researches into the unknown.[40]

If a man absorbed in his own private studies and attached to an austere and laborious manner of life, such as my venerated master M. Schiaparelli, has not hesitated to defy the irreverent jests of the comic journals, it behooves us to conclude that the bond between the science of the heavens and that of the human soul is more intimate than appears. The following is the most probable explanation. We have to do in these studies with phenomena which are manifested under wholly special and still undetermined conditions, in conformity with laws almost unknown and, in any case, of such a character that the will of the experimenter has but little influence upon the unshackled, self-regulating, and often adverse volitions which betray themselves at every moment in the study of these psychical marvels. Nobody is better prepared to study these things than an astronomer, possessing, as he does, a scientific education precisely adapting him to the investigation of such conditions. In fact, by the systematic observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, the astronomer contracts the habit of being a vigilant and patient spectator of phenomena, without attempting either to arrest or to accelerate their irresistible development. In other words, the study of the stars belongs to the science of observation rather than to that of experiment.

The explanation that everything is fraud, conscious or unconscious [says he], is to-day almost entirely abandoned, as much so as that which supposes that all is hallucination. In fact, neither one nor the other of these hypotheses is sufficient to throw light upon the observed facts. The hypothesis of unconscious automatic action on the part of the medium has not obtained any better fate; for the most rigorous controls have only proved that the medium finds it impossible to excite a direct dynamic effect. Physio-psychology has therefore been obliged, in these latter years, to have recourse to a supreme hypothesis, by accepting the theories of M. de Rochas, against which they had heretofore directed the fire of their heaviest guns. It has become resigned to the admission that a medium whose limbs are held motionless by a rigorous control may, under certain conditions, project outside of herself, to a distance of several yards, a force sufficient to produce certain phenomena of movement in inanimate bodies.

The boldest partisans of this hypothesis go so far as to accept the temporary creation of pseudo-human limbs,—arms, legs, heads,—in the formation of which the energies of other persons present probably co-operate with those of the medium. The theory is that as soon as the energizing power of the medium is withdrawn these phantom dynamic limbs at once dissolve and disappear.

For all that, we do not yet go so far as to admit the existence of free and independent beings who would be able to exercise their powers only through the human organism; and still less do we admit the existence of spirits who once animated the forms of human beings....

I saw, and plainly saw, the rough deal table (a table a yard long and nearly two feet wide and resting on four feet) rise up several times from the floor and, without any contact with visible objects, remain suspended in the air, several inches above the floor, during the space of two, three, and even four seconds.

This experiment was renewed in full light without the hands of the medium and of the five persons who formed the chain about the table touching the latter in any way. Eusapia's hands were looked after by her neighbors, who controlled also her legs and her feet in such a way that no part of her body was able to exercise the least pressure for the lifting or maintaining in the air of the rather heavy article of furniture used in the experiments.It was under such absolutely trustworthy conditions as these that I was able to see inflated a very thick piece of black cloth and the red curtains which were behind the medium, and which served to close the embrasure of the window. The casement was carefully closed, there was no current of air in the room, and it is absurd to suppose that persons were hidden in the embrasure of the window. I believe, then, that I can affirm with the utmost confidence that a force, analogous to that which had produced the levitation of the table, was manifested in the curtains, inflated them, shook them, and pushed them out in such a way that they touched now one and now another of the company.

During the sitting an event took place which deserves to be mentioned as a proof, or at least as an indication, of the intelligent character of the force in question.

Being face to face with Mme. Paladino, at a point in the table the most removed from her, I complained that I had not been touched as had the four other persons who formed the company. No sooner had I said this than I saw the heavy curtain sweep out and come and hit me in the face with its lower edge, at the same time that I felt a light blow upon the knuckles of my fingers, as if from a very fragile and light piece of wood.

Next a formidable blow, like the stroke of the fist of an athlete, is struck in the middle of the table. The person seated at the right of the medium feels that he is grasped in the side; the chair in which he was seated is taken away and placed upon the table, from which it then returns to its place without having been touched by anybody. The experimenter in question, who has remained standing, is able to take his seat in the chair again. The control of this phenomenon left nothing to desire.

The blows are now redoubled, and are so terrific that it seems as if they would split the table. We begin to perceive hands lifting and inflating the curtains and advancing so far as to touch first one, then the other, of the company, caressing them, pressing their hands, daintily pulling their ears or clapping hands merrily in the air above their heads.

It seems to me very singular and perhaps intentional,—this contrast between the touches (sometimes nervous and energetic, and again delicate and gentle, but always friendly) and the deafening, violent, brutal blows struck upon the table.

A single one of these fist-blows, planted in the back, would suffice to break the vertebral column.

The hands that perform these feats are the strong and brawny hands of a man, the daintier hands are those of a woman, the very small hands those of children.

The darkness is rendered a little less dense, and at once the chair of No. 5 (Professor Morselli), which had already made a jump to one side, is slipped from under him, while a hand is placed on his back and on his shoulder. The chair gets up on the table, comes down again to the floor, and, after different horizontal and vertical oscillations, soars up and rests upon the head of the professor, who has remained standing. It remains there for some minutes in a state of very unstable equilibrium.

The loud blows and the delicate touches of hands, large and small, succeed each other uninterruptedly in such a way that, without our being able mathematically to prove the simultaneousness of different phenomena, it is yet almost certain in several cases.

While our opportunities for obtaining so valuable a subject of demonstration increase, the simultaneity which we ask for is at last granted; for the table raps, the bell sounds, and the tambourine is carried tinkling over our heads all about the room, rests for a moment on the table, and then resumes its flight in the air....

A bouquet of flowers, placed in a carafe on the larger table, comes over onto ours, preceded by an agreeable perfume. Stems of flowers are placed in the mouth of No. 5; and No. 8 is hit by a rubber ball, which rebounds upon the table. The carafe comes over to join the flowers on our table; it is then immediately lifted and put to the mouth of the medium, and she is made to drink from it twice; between the two times it sinks down to the table and stands there for a moment right side up. We distinctly hear the swallowing of the water, after which Mme. Paladino asks some one to wipe her mouth with a handkerchief. Finally, the carafe returns to the large table.But a transfer of a totally different character is effected in the following way. I had complained several times that my position in the chain at a distance from the medium had hindered me from being touched during the sÉance. Suddenly, I hear a noise on the wall of the room, followed by the tinkling of the strings of the guitar, which vibrate as if some one were trying to take down the instrument from the wall on which it hung. At last the effort succeeds, and the guitar comes toward me in an oblique direction. I distinctly saw it come between me and No. 8, with a rapidity which rendered the impact of it rather unpleasant. Not being able at first to account to myself for this dim black object which was driving at me, I slipped to one side (No. 8 was seated at my left). Then the guitar, changing its route, struck forcibly with its handle three blows upon my forehead (which remained a little bruised for two or three days), after which it came to a rest with delicate precision upon the table. It did not remain there very long before it began to circle about the hall, with a rotation to the right, quite high above our heads, and at great speed.

It is proper to remark that, in this rotation of the guitar, the vibration of its own strings was added to the sound of the tambourine struck sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, in the air; and the guitar, bulky as it was, never once struck the central supporting electric-light rod, nor the three gas lamps fixed on the walls of the chamber. When we take into consideration the contracted dimensions of the room, we see that it was very difficult to avoid these obstacles, since the space remaining free was very limited.

The guitar took its flight twice around the room, coming to a stand-still (between the two times) in the middle of the table, where finally it came to a rest. In a final supreme effort, Eusapia turns toward the left, where upon a table is a typewriting machine weighing fifteen pounds. During the effort the medium falls exhausted and nervous upon the floor; but the machine rises from its place and betakes itself to the middle of our table, near the guitar.

In full light, Eusapia calls M. Morselli, and, controlled by the two persons next her, brings him with her toward the table, upon which is placed a mass of modelling-plaster. She takes his open hand and pushes it three times toward the plaster, as if to sink the hand into it and leave upon it an impression. M. Morselli's hand remains at a distance of more than four inches from the mass: nevertheless, at the end of the sÉance, the experimenters ascertain that the lump of plaster contains the impression of three fingers,—deeper prints than it is possible to obtain directly by means of voluntary pressure.

The medium lifts her two hands, all the time clasped in mine and in those of No. 5 (Morselli), and uttering groans, cries, exhortations, she rises with her chair, so far as to place its two feet and the ends of its two front cross-bars upon the top of the table. It was a moment of great anxiety. The levitation was accomplished rapidly, but without any jarring or jolting or jerking. In other words, if, in an effort of extreme distrust you insisted on supposing that she employed some artifice to obtain the result, you would rather have to think of a pulling up, by means of a cord and pulley, rather than of a pushing from beneath.

But neither of these hypotheses can stand the most elementary examination of the facts....

There is more to follow. Eusapia was lifted up still farther with her chair, from the upper part of the table, in such a way that No. 11 on one side and I on the other were able to pass our hands under her feet and under those of the chair.

Moreover, the fact that the posterior feet of the chair were entirely off of the table, without any visible support makes this levitation still more irreconcilable with the supposition that Eusapia could have made her body and the chair take an upward leap.

Eusapia [adds M. Porro] descended without any jolting, little by little, No. 5 and I never letting go her hands. The chair, having risen up a little higher, turned over and placed itself on my head, whence it spontaneously returned to the floor.

This thing was tried again. Eusapia and her chair were transported again to the top of the table, only, this time, the result of the fatigue undergone by her was such that the poor woman fell in a faint upon the table. We lifted her down with all due care.

The experimenters desired to know whether these phenomena, the success of which depends in so great measure upon the conditions of light, could not have better success in the white and quiet light of the moon.

They were obliged to admit that there was no appreciable difference between the lunar light and other kinds. But the table around which they had formed the chain quitted the veranda where the sitting was being held, and, in spite of the strongly expressed wishes of the sitters and of the medium herself, betook itself into the neighboring room, where the sitting then continued.

This room was a little salon crowded with elegant furniture and fragile objects, such as crystal chandeliers, porcelain vases, bric-À-brac, etc. The experimenters feared very much that these things would suffer damage in the bustle of the sÉance; but not the slightest object suffered any damage.

Mme. Paladino, who was now herself again, took the hand of No. 11 and placed it gently upon the back of a chair, at the same time placing her own hand upon his. Then, as she lifted her hand and that of No. 11, the chair followed the same ascending movement several times in succession.

This thing was repeated in full light.

No. 5, as well as other gentlemen, perceived, in a manner that admitted of no doubt, a vague, indistinct figure thrown upon the air in the doorway of an antechamber which was feebly illuminated. The figure consisted of changing and fugitive silhouettes, sometimes with the outline of a human head and body, sometimes like hands reaching out from the curtains. Their objective character was demonstrated by the agreement of impressions, which were controlled in their turn by means of continual inquiries. There was no possibility of their being shadows voluntarily or involuntarily projected by the bodies of the experimenters, since we were mutually watching each other.

Scarcely has the electric light been extinguished when we remark an automatic movement of the chair upon which a lump of plaster has been placed, while the hands and feet of Eusapia are watchfully controlled by me and by No. 3. However, as we wish to forestall the objection of critics that the phenomena take place in the dark, the table typtologically (that is, by taps) asks for light, and the experimenters light the electric lamp.

Presently, all the company see the chair on which the lump of plaster lies (not at all a light chair) moving between myself and the medium, without our being able to understand the determining cause of the movement.

Mme. Paladino puts her outspread hand upon the back of the chair and her left above it. When our hands rise up, the chair rises also without contact, reaching a height of about six inches. This performance is several times repeated, with the addition of the intervention of the hand of No. 5, under conditions of light and of control which leave nothing to be desired.

The room is again almost completely darkened.... A current of cold air upon the table precedes the arrival of a little branch with two green leaves. We know that there are no plants in the neighborhood of the company: it appears then that we have here a case of bringing-in from the outside.

No. 3 is greatly exhausted with the heat. And, lo! a hand, which takes his handkerchief from his neck and with it dries the perspiration on his face. He tries to seize the handkerchief with his teeth, but it is snatched from him. A big hand lifts his left hand and makes him rap several strokes with it on the table.

Gleams of light begin to appear, at first on the right hand of No. 5, then in different parts of the hall. They are perceived by everybody.The curtain is inflated, as if it were pushed against by a strong wind, and touches No. 11, who is seated in a small easy-chair a yard and a half from the medium. The same person is touched by a hand, while another hand pulls a fan from the inside pocket of his jacket, carries it to No. 5 and then to No. 11. The fan is soon returned to its owner, and is moved to and fro above our heads, to the great satisfaction of all of us. A tobacco pouch is taken from the pocket of No. 3: the Invisible empties it on the table, and then gives it to No. 10. Various stems of plants drop upon the table.

Transfers of the fan from one hand to another begin again. Then No. 11 believes that he ought to announce that the fan had been offered to him by a young girl who had expressed the wish that it be transferred to No. 11, then given back to No. 5. Nobody knew about this except No. 11.

No. 5, who at present occupies the small arm-chair where formerly No. 11 was seated, a yard and a half from the medium, feels the edge of the curtain touching him and then perceives the presence of the body of a woman whose hair rests on his head.

The sÉance is adjourned about one o'clock.

At the moment of parting, Eusapia sees a bell on the piano; she extends her hand; the bell glides along on the piano, turns over, and falls on the floor. The experiment is renewed, in full light as before, the hand of the medium remaining several inches from the bell....

The phenomena are real. They cannot be explained either by fraud or by hallucination. Do they find their explanation in certain strata of the unconscious (the subliminal), in some latent faculty of the human soul, or indeed do they reveal the existence of other entities living under conditions wholly different from ours and normally inaccessible to our senses? In other words, will the animistic hypothesis suffice to solve the problem and to do away with the Spiritualistic hypothesis? Or, rather, do not the phenomena serve here, as in the psychology of dreams, to complicate the problem by hiding the Spiritualistic solution within them? It is to this formidable query that I am going to attempt a reply.

When, eleven years ago, Alexander Aksakof stated the dilemma between Animism and Spiritism, and in a masterly work clearly proved that purely animistic manifestations were inseparable from those which direct our thoughts to a belief in the existence of independent, intelligent, and active entities, no one could have expected that the first term of the dilemma would be disputed and criticised in a thousand ways, under a thousand varying forms, by persons who would be dismayed at the second term.

In fact, what are all the hypotheses which for ten years now have been invented in order to reduce mediumistic phenomena to the simple manifestation of qualities latent in the human psyche (or soul), if not different forms of the animistic hypothesis, so jeered at when it appeared in the work of Aksakof?

From the idea of the unconscious muscular action of the spectators (put forth half a century ago by Faraday) to the projection of protoplasmic activity or to the temporary emanation from the body of the medium imagined by Lodge; from the psychiatric doctrine of Lombroso to the psycho-physiology of Ochorowicz; from the externalization admitted by Rochas to the eso-psychism of Morselli; from the automatism of Pierre Janet to the duplication of personality of Alfred Binet,—there was a perfect flood of explanations, having for their end the elimination of an exterior personality.

The process was logical and in agreement with the principles of scientific philosophy, which instructs us to exhaust the possibilities of what is already known before having recourse to the unknown.

But this principle, unassailable in theory, may lead to erroneous results when it is wilfully stretched too far into a given field of research. Vallati has cited, in this connection, a curious marginal note of Galileo, recently published in the third volume of the national edition of his works:"If we heat amber, the diamond, and certain other very dense substances by chafing them, they attract small light bodies, because, in cooling off, they attract the air, which draws these corpuscles along with it." Thus the desire to bring still unexplained material facts under the known physical laws of his day led an observer and thinker so prudent and practical as Galileo to formulate a false proposition. If anybody had said to him that in the attraction exercised by amber there was the germ of a new branch of science and the rudimentary manifestation of an energy (electricity) then unknown, he would have replied that it was useless to "have recourse to the aid of the unknown."

But the analogy between the error committed by the great physicist and that which modern scholars commit can be pushed still farther.

Galileo was familiar with a form of energy which the natural philosophy of our times investigates simultaneously with electric energy, with which it has close relations confirmed by all recent discoveries. If it had been perceived that the explanation which he gave of the phenomenon of amber had no foundation, he would have been able to give his attention to the analogies which the attraction exercised by amber rubbed over light bodies presents with the attraction exercised by the loadstone upon iron filings. When he had got so far, he would very probably have discarded his first hypothesis and would have admitted that the attractive power of amber is a magnetic phenomenon. He would have been deceived, however, for it is an electric phenomenon.

In the same way might not those persons deceive themselves who, in order to escape at any cost the necessity of the hypothesis of spiritistic entities, should insist with a too persistent predilection upon the animistic hypothesis, even when this would be found insufficient to explain all mediumistic manifestations? Might it not be true that, like electric and magnetic phenomena, which are in close interchangeable connection, and frequently appear to us inseparable, animistic and spiritistic phenomena have a common bond? And let us well note that a single fact, inexplicable by the animistic hypothesis and explicable by the spiritistic hypothesis, would suffice to confer upon the latter that degree of scientific value which up to the present time has been so energetically denied to it, just as the discovery of a secondary phenomenon, that of the polarization of light, sufficed to make Fresnel reject the Newtonian theory of emission and admit that of undulation.

Did we obtain, during the course of our ten sÉances with Eusapia, the one fact which is enough to make the spiritistic hypothesis necessarily take precedence of all others?

It is impossible to reply categorically to this question because it is not possible, and never will be, to have a scientific proof of the identity of the beings who manifest themselves.

The fact that I hear, that I see, that I touch a phantom; that I recognize in it the form and the attitude of persons whom I have known and whom the medium has neither known nor of whom she has even heard the names; that I have the most lively and affecting testimony to the presence of this ephemeral apparition,—all that will not be sufficient to constitute the scientific fact which none can refute, and which shall be worthy to remain in the annals of science along with the experiments of Torricelli, Archimedes and Galvani. It will always be possible to imagine an unknown mechanism by the aid of which elemental substance and power may be drawn from the medium and the sitters and combined in such a way as to produce the indicated effects. It will always be possible to find in the special aptitudes of the medium, in the thought of the sitters, and even in their attitude of expectant attention, the cause of the human origin of the phenomena. It will always be possible to unearth from the arsenal of the attacks made upon these studies during the last fifty years, some generic or specific argument, either ad rem or ad hominem, while ignoring or feigning to ignore the refutation of the argument which has already been made.

The question, then, reduces itself at once to an individual study of cases either directly observed or obtained from some sure hand, in order on the one hand, to create a personal conviction capable of resisting the scathing ridicule of the sceptics, and, on the other hand, to prepare public opinion to admit the truth of cases observed by persons worthy of credence.

With regard to the first of these, the illustrious experimenter Sidgwick, has already said that no fact or case exists capable of convincing everybody, but that each one, by patiently and calmly observing, may find such fact or case as will suffice to establish his own conviction. I may say that for myself such a case exists. I need only refer to the phenomena in which I have personally participated in the sÉances with Eusapia.

With regard to the second point I could say much, but that would lead me beyond the subject matter and the limits of this study.

On the one hand, we have the universal belief in the objective existence of a world unknown to us in our normal state; that faith (the basis of all religions) in a future life where the injustices of this one will be atoned for and where we shall be confronted with the good or evil deeds that we have done on earth; that uninterrupted tradition of systematic or spontaneous observances and rituals, thanks to which man is constantly kept in relation more or less with that unknown world.

On the other hand, we have the sceptical and disheartening negation of systems of pessimistic philosophy and of atheism, a negation which takes its rise in the absence of positive proofs of the survival of the soul; the ever more and more marked tendency of science toward a monistic interpretation of the enigma of human life; and the belief that all the known phenomena of life appear only in connection with special organs.

In order to decide in so abstruse a matter as this, mediumistic experiments do not suffice; everyone may draw from these as much of credence or of incredulity as he may need in order to resolve his doubts in one way or another; but he will never divest himself of the substratum of temperamental tendencies which the more or less scientific education of his mind or the more or less mystical inclinations of his nature shall have developed in him.

One word more and I have done.

While admitting it as the most probable hypothesis that the intelligent beings to whom we owe these psychical phenomena are pre-existing, independent entities, and that they only derive from us the conditions necessary for their manifestation in a physical plane accessible to our senses, ought we to admit also that they are really the spirits of the dead?

To this question I will reply that I do not feel that I am as yet capable of giving a decisive answer.

Still I should be inclined to admit it, if I did not see the possibility that these phenomena might form part of a scheme of things still more vast. In fact, nothing hinders us from believing in the existence of forms of life wholly different from those which we know, and of which the life of human beings before birth and after death forms only a special case, just as the organic life of man is a special case of animal life in general.

But I am leaving the solid ground of facts to explore that of the most hazardous hypotheses. I have already spoken at too great length, and will therefore close the discussion of this particular topic.