When I say that I have been outside and have returned, I speak the truth, and yet my words seem to express an untruth. It is because, as I have said before, that other kind of existence is so different from this that it uses a different language to express even a simple idea, a language which the kind we know as figurative most nearly resembles, although that is far enough from being the same. I should therefore use figurative language to embody what I have to say in regard to that other life, if literary considerations were alone to be regarded; but my aim is to benefit, and I decline to use a form of speech which has been so often sold as merchandise that many people no longer believe there is any truth attached to it. I use instead the plain, everyday speech, and say without qualification that I have been away, that I am acquainted with the conditions that follow after death, that I lean on no man's theories, not even on those which I might make, if I were given to theorizing, which I am not. No, I rest on facts, plain, cold facts, which are none the less so because they are registered in the mind of one man instead of many; facts of consciousness not to be gainsaid, although, in order to express them so as to make them most useful here, it is necessary to translate them into a language so far from the original, that only those who keep the fact of the translation in mind can hope to receive the truth in something like its purity. I am well aware that I can scarcely hope to convince my reader that it could be possible under any circumstances for one to enter the kingdom of the dead, to take on the powers and conditions belonging to that realm, to become a component part of that world of mystery to the extent of dismissing all care in regard to the possibility of return, and even to transmit such a thought-message as this. The responsibility for my being out of place rests upon you all; I was compelled to undergo the pain of the passage at your will; and now that you repent and ask me to return, I will take my time and think about it. I am well housed in a good body on this side. I do not know that I would go back if I could. That, after all this, and after a succession of spiritual events which, measured by their effect on one's consciousness, should correspond to a period of centuries on earth, one should actually make his way back and take up again the broken threads of his earthly life, and weave them into something resembling an orderly design once more,--to convince my readers of the possibility of this is so nearly impossible that I shall not seriously attempt it, although it is true. It will be said that even though I suppose that this is actually true of myself, it does not follow that I am not suffering from an hallucination.