Spontaneous cases of this kind and of this degree of evidentiality are rare, but there is a large mass of evidence of the same general character. The S.P.R. once carried out an extensive inquiry, receiving answers from 17,000 people, and tabulating the results in a volume of the _Proceedings_. The final conclusion, expressed in weighed and guarded words, was that "Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connexion exists which is not due to chance alone". This was signed, among other members of the Committee, by Professor Sidgwick, whom Professor James once called "the most exasperatingly critical mind in England". Some of the apparitions occur before the person's actual death, but usually in such cases he is already unconscious and the spirit practically free. As to those occurring after, the main difficulty about admitting them as proof of survival is, as just said, the possibility that although they may appear after the death of the person, the telepathic impulse may have been sent out before, and may have remained latent for some time in the mind of the percipient. This has been carefully considered by investigators, and in many cases there are reasons for regarding it as an insufficient theory. On the whole, the evidence tends more and more to suggest that in at least some instances these happenings are due to the agency of a discarnate mind. The proof is cumulative, and no single case can be crucial. There is no coerciveness about it, and each can invent his own hypothesis. But those who have considered the subject most carefully have come to the provisional conclusion that the agency of the so-called dead is in some cases a reasonable, and indeed the most reasonable, supposition. There are of course many narratives of this kind in the Bible,[4] the _Lives_ of the Saints, and other literature, but these records, being of pre-scientific date, and lacking the corroborative testimony which we now require, are of a lower order of evidentiality. The new evidence, however, is throwing a backward light on many of these ancient stories, and making them credible once more. To me personally, the Bible is a much more living book than it used to be. I believe that many things in it which I used to regard as myths may have been facts. [4] _E.g._, Moses and Elias on the Mount. NORMAL CLAIRVOYANCE