likewise at random, and taking down the medium's replies in
shorthand. Mme. M-- began by giving a very striking physical
portrait of the lady who had written the letter; followed this up
with an absolutely faithful description of her character, her
habits, her tastes, her intellectual and moral qualities; and
ended by adding a few details concerning her private life, of
which I myself was entirely unaware and of which I obtained the
confirmation shortly afterwards. The experiment yielded just as
remarkable results when continued with the two other letters.

In the face of this mystery, two explanations may be offered,
both equally perplexing. On the one hand, we shall have to admit
that the sheet of paper handed to the psychometer and impregnated
with human "fluid" contains, after the manner of some
prodigiously compressed gas, all the incessantly renewed,
incessantly recurring images that surround a person, all his past
and perhaps his future, his psychology, his state of health, his
wishes, his intentions, often unknown to himself, his most secret
instincts, his likes and dislikes, all that is bathed in light
and all that is plunged in darkness, his whole life, in short,
and more than his personal and conscious life, besides all the
lives and all the influences, good or bad, latent or manifest, of
all who approach him. We should have here a mystery as
unfathomable and at least as vast as that of generation, which
transmits, in an infinitesimal particle, the mind and matter,
with all the qualities and all the faults, all the acquirements
and all the history, of a series of lives of which none can tell
the number.

On the other hand, if we do not admit that so much energy can lie