“I thought the experiment would succeed on a corpse because there was no fluid to encumber the receptacle to be filled. I had not reflected that death is not compatible with a soul--that inseparable companion of life itself. I did not get any results, and the sensation is abominable. * * * * * “Theoretically, in order that the ‘attachment’ should be suppressed, what is required? A receiving organism, which should have no soul at all (in order that one may lodge one’s own entirely), and yet which should not be dead, and in other terms, _an organized life which has never lived_. That is impossible. “So, in practice, our efforts must tend to the suppression of the ‘attachment’ by means of artifices, which I do not yet perceive.... “Not but what the experiments of this period have yielded curious results, since we have arrived at the following demonstrable conclusions: “(1) The human brain can discharge itself almost entirely into a plant. “(2) From man to man, _with mutual consent_, the passage of personality is accomplished very completely (except for ‘attachment’), which makes those souls, as it were, sister souls--Siamese mentalities. “(3) From man to man, _without mutual consent_, the compression of the receiving soul (under pressure by the other) produces, in spite of the imperfection of the process, a partial and momentary incarnation of the transmitting individual. “A very interesting incarnation this, for it satisfies some of those _desiderata_, all of which I shall satisfy if I attain the aim at which I am driving. “It seems to me unattainable.” * * * * * So this is the result of the studies which my uncle had been so ardently lauding! The theory was disconcerting. I ought to have been astounded by it; for there was revealed a tendency towards spiritualist doctrine--very strange in the case of a materialist like Lerne--and the new doctrine appeared in the light of a phantasmagoria, which would have made many eyes open wide behind learned spectacles, erudite pince-nez, and pedantic monocles. As for me, I did not discover all the subjects of wonder at first sight, being still, at that time, somewhat unwell, and I did not perceive that I had translated a Franco-German _mene mene tekel upharsin_ destined for _me_! My attention was concentrated upon these facts--that the _organized being which had never lived_, did not exist, and that, on the other hand, the Professor was doubtful of being able to suppress the “attachment.” So he was foiled. After his former triumphs I expected any miracle from him; only his inability to perform them would have astonished me. * * * * * I set off to seek my uncle, in order to give him back his note-book.