Chapter XVI 154 Examination of the telepathic hypothesis--Some arguments which render its acceptance difficult. Chapter XVII 161 Some considerations which strongly support the spiritualistic hypothesis--Consciousness and character remain unchanged--Dramatic play--Errors and confusions. Chapter XVIII 169 Difficulties and objections--The identity of Imperator--Vision at a distance--Triviality of the messages--Spiritualist philosophy--Life in the other world. Chapter XIX 176 The medium's return to normal life--Speeches made while the medium seems to hover between the two worlds. Chapter XX 182 Encouraging results obtained--The problem must be solved. PREFACE BY THE President of the Society for Psychical Research _One of the facts which by general consent in the present stage of psychological science require study is the nature, and if possible the cause, of a special lucidity, a sensitiveness of perception, or accessibility to ideas appearing to arrive through channels other than usual organs of sense, which is sometimes met with among simple people[1] in a rudimentary form, and in a more developed form in certain exceptional individuals. This lucidity may perhaps be regarded as a modification or an exaggeration of the clearness of apprehension occasionally experienced by ordinary persons while immersed in a brown study, or while in the act of waking out of sleep, or when self-consciousness is for a time happily suspended._ _In men of genius the phenomenon occurs in the most dignified form at present known to us, and with them also it accompanies a lapse of ordinary consciousness, at least to the extent that circumstances of time and place and daily life become insignificant and trivial, or even temporarily non-existent; but the notable thing is that a few persons, not of genius at all, are liable to an access of something not altogether dissimilar, and exhibit a kind of lucidity or clairvoyant perceptivity, which, though doubtless of a lower grade, is of a well-defined and readily-investigated type, during that state of complete lapse of consciousness known to us as a specific variety of trance._