Meanwhile, it is saying a good deal that rigorous scientific investigations have not utterly shattered a theory which so radically confounds the idea which we were wont to form of death. We shall see presently why, in considering our destinies beyond the grave, we need have no reason to linger too long over these apparitions or these revelations, even though they should really be incontestable and to the point. They would seem, all told, to be but the incoherent and precarious manifestations of a transitory state. They would at best prove, if we were bound to admit them, that a reflexion of ourselves, an after-vibration of the nerves, a bundle of emotions, a spiritual silhouette, a grotesque and forlorn image, or, more correctly, a sort of truncated and uprooted memory can, after our death, linger and float in a space where nothing remains to feed it, where it gradually becomes wan and lifeless, but where a special fluid, emanating from an exceptional medium, succeeds, at moments, in galvanizing it. Perhaps it exists objectively, perhaps it subsists and revives only in the recollection of certain sympathies. It would, after all, be not unlikely that the memory which represents us during our life should continue to do so for a few weeks or even a few years after our decease. This would explain the evasive and deceptive character of those spirits which, possessing but a mnemonic existence, are naturally able to interest themselves only in matters within their reach. Hence their irritating and maniacal energy in clinging to the slightest facts, their sleepy dulness, their incomprehensible indifference and ignorance and all the wretched absurdities which we have noticed more than once.