I may conclude this chapter by calling attention to an argument of a different kind, on which Mr. Gurney,[84] in reviewing the material amassed chiefly in this country, laid considerable stress, and in which he has been followed by an independent observer, Professor Royce, dealing with narratives received from correspondents in America.[85] Both these investigators have pointed out, and probably all who make an equally careful and dispassionate study of the evidence will agree with them, that the phenomena vouched for in the best-attested narratives form a true natural group. They are manifestly not the products of folk-lore, nor of popular superstition, nor of the mere love of the marvellous. They are singularly free from the more sensational and bizarre features--dramatic gestures or speech on the part of the phantasms, prophetic warnings, movement of objects, etc.--which are conspicuous in second-hand narratives. If these accounts were purely fictitious, it would be difficult to conceive by what process, coming from persons of widely separated social grades, of various degrees of education, and of different nationalities, they could have been moulded to present such strong internal resemblances; resemblances consisting not merely in the possession of many common features, but in the absence of others which, by their frequent occurrence in admittedly fictitious accounts, are proved to be the natural fruits of the unrestrained imagination. This undesigned unanimity is strong evidence that the restraint operating throughout has been the restraint of fidelity to fact, and that the narratives themselves owe little to the imagination, and much to their reflection of genuine experience. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 71: Of the _Proceedings_ of the S.P.R., published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., three or four parts are published yearly. The _Journal_, which appears monthly, contains a record of recent cases of interest, unaccompanied, for the most part, by any critical commentary, and is privately printed for circulation amongst members and associates of the Society. Any reader, however, desirous of studying the subject may procure any number of the _Journal_ referred to in this book on application at the Rooms of the S.P.R., 19 Buckingham St., Adelphi, W.C. Of the foreign periodicals referred to in the text, perhaps the most important is the _Annales des Sciences Psychiques_, edited by Dr. Dariex, and published by Germer Baillière et Cie., Paris. Cases of interest are also to be found in _Sphinx_, a German periodical, to be obtained through Kegan Paul & Co.; in the _Revue Spirite_ (Paris: 24 Rue des Petits-Champs); and elsewhere.] [Footnote 72: Professor C. Lloyd Morgan in _Mind_, 1887, p. 282.]