But, I repeat, it is much simpler to attribute these absurdities to the special character and the as yet imperfectly-recognized difficulties of telepathic communication. The unconscious suggestions of the most intelligent among those who take part in the experiment are impaired, disjointed and stripped of their main virtues in passing through the obscure intermediary of the medium. It may be that they stray, make their way into certain forgotten corners which the intelligence no longer visits and thence bring back more or less surprising discoveries; but the intellectual quality of the aggregate will always be inferior to that which a conscious mind would yield. Besides, once more, it is not yet time to draw conclusions. We must not lose sight of the fact that we have to do with a science which was born but yesterday and which is groping for its implements, its paths, its methods and its aim in a darkness denser than the earth’s. The boldest bridge that men have yet undertaken to throw across the river of death is not to be built in thirty years. Most sciences have centuries of thankless efforts and barren uncertainties behind them; and there are, I imagine, few among the younger of them that can show from the earliest hour, as this one does, promises of a harvest which may not be the harvest of their conscious sowing, but which already bids fair to yield much unknown and wondrous fruit.[15] ----- Footnote 15: To exhaust this question of survival and of communications with the dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s recent investigations, made with the assistance of the mediums Smead and Chenoweth (communications with William James). I ought also to mention Julia’s famous “bureau” and, above all, the extraordinary sittings of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet medium, who not only obtains communications in which the dead speak languages of which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises apparitions said to be extremely disturbing. I ought, lastly, to examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano and M. Rozanne and many other things besides, for spiritualistic investigation and literature are already piling volume upon volume. But it was not my intention nor my pretension to make a complete study of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential point and to give a general, but accurate idea of this posthumous atmosphere which no really new and decisive fact has come to unsettle since the manifestations of which we have spoken. ----- CHAPTER VIII REINCARNATION 1