well-established, it would mean the entrance into this world,
which we believe to be our world, of a new force that would
explain more than one thing which we are still far from
understanding. If the dead interfere at one point, there is a
reason why they should not interfere at every other point. We
should no longer be alone, among ourselves, in our
hermetically-closed sphere, as we are perhaps only too ready to
imagine it. We should have to alter more than one of our physical
and moral laws, more than one of our ideas; and it would no doubt
be the most important and the most extraordinary revelation that
would be expected in the present state of our knowledge and since
the disappearance of the old positive religions. But we are not
there yet: the proof of all this is still in the nursery-stage;
and I do not know if it will ever get beyond that. Nevertheless
the fact remains that, in these impenetrable regions of mystery
which we are now exploring, the one weak spot lies here, the one
wall in which there seems to be a chink--a strange one
enough--giving a glimpse into the other world. It is narrow and
vague and behind it there is still darkness; but it is not
without significance and we shall do well not to lose sight of
it.

6

Let us observe that this survival of the dead, as the
neospiritualists conceive it, seems much less improbable since we
have been studying more closely the manifestations of the
extraordinary and incontestable spiritual force that lies hidden
within ourselves. It is not dependent in our thought, nor on our
consciousness, nor on our will; and very possibly it is not