details which gradually produce and confirm the conviction that we are in the presence of an entirely new, improbable but genuine phenomenon, which is sometimes difficult of classification among exclusively terrestrial phenomena. I should have to devote to these “communications” a special study which would exceed the limits of this essay; and I will therefore content myself with referring those who care to know more of the subject to Sir Oliver Lodge’s book, _The Survival of Man_; and, above all, to the twenty-five bulky volumes of the _Proceedings_ of the S.P.R., notably to the report and comments of William James on the Piper-Hodgson sittings in Vol. XXIII. and to Vol. XIII., where Hodgson examines the facts and arguments that may be adduced for or against the agency of the dead; and, lastly, to Myers’ great work, _Human Personality and its Survival after Bodily Death_. 2 The “entranced” mediums are invaded or possessed by different familiar spirits to whom the new science gives the somewhat inappropriate and ambiguous name of “controls.” Thus, Mrs. Piper is visited in succession by Phinuit, George Pelham, or “G.P.,” Imperator, Doctor and Rector. Mrs. Thompson, another very celebrated medium, has Nelly for her usual tenant, while graver and more illustrious personages would take possession of Stainton Moses, a clergyman. Each of these spirits retains a sharply defined character, which is consistent throughout and which, moreover, for the most part bears no relation to that of the medium. Amongst these, Phinuit and Nelly are undoubtedly the most attractive, the most original, the most living, the most active and, above all, the most talkative. They centralize the communications after a fashion; they come and go officiously; and, should any one of those present wish to be brought into touch with the soul of a deceased relative or friend, they fly in search of it, find it amid the invisible throng, usher it in, announce its presence, speak in its name, transmit and, so to speak, translate the questions and replies; for it seems that it is very difficult for the dead to communicate with the living and that they need special aptitudes and a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances. We will not yet examine what they have to reveal to us; but to see them thus fluttering to and fro amid the multitude of their discarnate brothers and sisters gives us a first impression of the next world which is none too reassuring; and we say to ourselves that the dead of to-day are strangely like those whom Ulysses conjured up out of the Cimmerian darkness three thousand years ago: pale and empty shades, bewildered, incoherent, puerile and terror-stricken, like unto dreams, more numerous than the leaves that fall in autumn and, like them, trembling in the unknown winds from the vast plains of the other world. They no longer even have enough life to be unhappy; and they seem to drag out, we know not where, a precarious