"I hasten to anticipate a criticism on the part of my readers by apprising them, on the threshold of this plea, that I am not going to take the Davenport brothers as my subject, but only as the ostensible motive or pretext of the discussion,--as they have been, for that matter, of the majority of the discussions. I shall deal in these pages with _the facts_ brought to the surface again by these two Americans,--facts inexplicable (which they have put on the stage at Herz Hall here in Paris, but which none the less existed before this _mise-en-scene_, and which none the less will exist even should the Davenport brothers' representations prove to be counterfeit),--things which others had already exhibited, and still exhibit with as much facility and under much better conditions; occurrences, in short, which constitute the domain of the unknown forces to which have been given, one after another, five or six names explaining nothing. These forces, mind you, are as real as the attraction of gravitation, and as invisible as that. It is about facts that I here concern myself. Let them be brought to the light by Peter or by Paul, it concerns us little; let them be imitated by Sosie[1] or parodied by Harlequin, still less does it concern us. The question is, Do these facts exist, and do they enter into the category of known physical forces? "It amazes me, every time I think of it, that the majority of men are so densely ignorant of the psychic phenomena in question, considering the fact that they have been known, studied, valued, and recorded for a good long time now by all who have impartially followed the movement of thought during the last few lustrums.