observers, be held to be something more than a mere subjective fancy; but what in reality such a picture signifies is a question which brings us at once to theories of the permanence or simultaneity of all phenomena in a timeless Universal Soul. Such conceptions, however difficult, are among the highest to which our mind can reach. Could we approach them more nearly, they might deeply influence our view, even of our own remote individual destiny. So, perhaps, shall it some day be; at present we may be well satisfied if we can push our knowledge of that destiny one step further than of old, even just behind that veil which has so long hung impenetrably before the eyes of men. Here, then, is a natural place of pause in our inquiry. The discussion of the ethical aspect of these questions I have postponed to my concluding chapter. But one point already stands out from the evidence--at once so important and so manifest that it seems well to call attention to it at once--as a solvent more potent than any Lucretius could apply to human superstition and human fears. In this long string of narratives, complex and bizarre though their details may be, we yet observe that the character of the appearance varies in a definite manner with their distinctness and individuality. Haunting phantoms, incoherent and unintelligent, may seem restless and unhappy. But as they rise into definiteness, intelligence, individuality, the phantoms rise also into love and joy. I cannot recall one single case of a proved posthumous combination of intelligence with wickedness. Such evil as our evidence will show us--we have as yet hardly come across it in this book--is scarcely more than monkeyish mischief, childish folly. In dealing with automatic script, for instance, we shall have to wonder whence come the occasional vulgar jokes or silly mystifications. We shall discuss whether they are a kind of dream of the automatist's own, or whether they indicate the existence of unembodied intelligences on the level of the dog or the ape. But, on the other hand, all that world-old conception of Evil Spirits, of malevolent Powers, which has been the basis of so much of actual devil-worship and of so much more of vague supernatural fear;--all this insensibly melts from the mind as we study the evidence before us. Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei Discutiant sed, naturæ species ratioque.