When or if we succeed in getting rid of hell, the spiritual fear of death becomes less torturing, remaining only as a vague dread, as in Hamlet's soliloquy. Bacon says that we fear death as children fear to go in the dark. In my own case, it is somewhat thus that the fear now presents itself. The old hell-fear, though not utterly obliterated, is becoming less all-swallowing. This very desirable state of affairs is partly the result of the conclusions to which I have been led by psychical research. After many years of experiment and close study, I can say that I know something about after-death conditions. Not that I pretend to be able to coerce other people into a similar belief, even if I wanted to. Each must travel his own path. Moreover, psychical research being a science, its results are not more certain than those of other sciences. Alternative theories in explanation of any phenomenon are always possible. There is no such thing as knock-down proof. But for my part I can say that I know--in the same way that I know the truth of Mendeleef's law, or Avogadro's law, or Dalton's atomic theory--that human beings do not become extinct when they die, that they are often able to communicate with us after that event, and that they are not in any orthodox heaven or hell. My knowledge is based partly on a lengthy and carefully-conducted series of sittings which some intimate friends of mine have had with a medium known to me; partly on my own results over a period of several years of systematic investigation; and partly on various curious experiences of psychic friends of mine who are in no sense professional mediums. (Details to some extent in my _New Evidences in Psychical Research_ (Rider, 1911) and _Psychical Investigations_ (Cassell, 1917.) I now believe, with the Bishop of London, that a man is essentially the same five minutes after death as he was five minutes before. As the old woman says in _David Copperfield_, "death doesn't change us more than life"--no, nor as much! The upshot is, of course, that my spiritual fear of death has, I am thankful to say, almost vanished. The lurid future has taken on a milder radiance. It is not that I want assuring of "happiness" in a future state as compensation for misery in this. I should be quite contented if I could be assured that death is annihilation. It would at least be a cessation of suffering; and that is much. I could agree with Keats: "Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath. Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy. Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-- To thy high requiem become a sod!" --(_To the Nightingale_)