I hope that those who have so far followed me in this brief inquiry into the mysteries of occult phenomena will recognise the impartiality with which I have endeavoured to conduct it. I said in the beginning that I set out with a light heart as well as an open mind. I had no idea of the extent of the territory, I knew little of its voluminous literature, of the extraordinary ramifications of occultism, of the labours of the many learned men who have spent their whole lives in seeking to separate fact from superstition. My mind was light because, frankly, I believed--with a sort of inherent, temperamental belief--that, however much the testimony concerning coincident dreams, hallucinations, mediumistic manifestations, materialisation, and clairvoyance might mystify, it was all capable of normal explanation--there was nothing supernatural about it. And so throughout the inquiry I sought to show how, chiefly, telepathy was a working hypothesis in most of the manifestations, while for the physical ones, such as table rapping, levitations, and the rest, an unknown extension of human muscular power might possibly exist to solve the mystery. So far I strode forward with some confidence. But now the time has come when my confidence deserts me. Telepathy breaks down. It is a key which by no amount of wriggling will turn the lock. "It is not," as one leading inquirer has said, "that telepathy is insufficient: it is superfluous." If the existence of disembodied spirits is proved, then all the other phenomena are also proved. If the case of Mrs Piper--under rigid surveillance for years--has convinced some of the profoundest intellects of the day--men who began by being sceptical--that disembodied spirits are responsible for her utterances, it would certainly tend to convince me. But I carefully guarded myself from conviction until I had read the evidence--even to a _résumé_ of this medium's utterances last year in London under the auspices of the Society for Psychical Research--and I assert with confidence that no metaphysical theory has ever been formulated that will account for these manifestations save one--the survival of the human personality after death. Once Mrs Piper is admitted as genuine, then it follows that the spiritistic manifestations which have puzzled mankind, not merely for generations or during the modern cult of spiritism, but ever since primitive times, become, as it were, emancipated.