"So far I have been speaking of cases where the interval between the death and the manifestation was so short as to make the theory of latency possible. The rule adopted in _Phantasms of the Living_ was that this interval must not exceed twelve hours. But we have records of a few cases where this interval has been greatly exceeded, and yet where the fact of the death was still unknown to the percipient at the time of his experience. The theory of latency cannot reasonably be applied to cases where weeks or months divide the vision (or whatever it may be) from the moment of death, which is the latest at which an ordinary[135] telepathically transferred idea could have obtained access to the percipient. And the existence of such cases--so far as it tends to establish the reality of objectively-caused apparitions of the dead--diminishes the objection to conceiving that the appearances, etc., which have very shortly _followed_ death have had a different causation from those which have coincided with or very shortly _preceded_ it. For we shall not be inventing a wholly new class for the former cases, but only provisionally shifting them from one class to another--to a much smaller and much less well-evidenced class, it is true, but one nevertheless for which we have evidence enough to justify us in expecting more." This, as I conceive, is a sound method of proceeding from ground made secure in _Phantasms of the Living_--and traversed in my own just previous chapter--to cases closely analogous, save for that little difference in _time-relations_, that occurrence in the hours which follow, instead of the hours which precede, bodily dissolution, which counts for so much in our insight into cosmic law.[136] The hypothesis of _latency_ which thus meets us _in limine_ in this inquiry will soon be found inadequate to cover the facts. Yet it will be well to dwell somewhat more fully upon its possible range. If we examine the proportionate number of apparitions observed at various periods before and after death, we find that they increase very rapidly for the few hours which precede death, and decrease gradually during the hours and days which follow, until after about a year's time they become merely sporadic.