The history of all religions and analysis of their tenets reveal one great outstanding fact. There has always been an element of fear and terror connected with all conceptions of the after-life. There is nothing in revealed Spiritualism to suggest that abstract justice is more prevalent on the next plane than on this imperfect earth. The very fact of the admitted existence of bad and evil spirits capable of malice, is in itself fatal to the bed of rose-leaves theories. In science it is the abnormal properties of a new gas, compound, or element that lead scientists to study it, so in the realm of psychic science it is only through close study of the abnormal that we can attain to any clear idea of the normal. It has been cast at me as a reproach that I have pursued vain and extraordinary paths of research, not disdaining to delve into dark secrets of occultist ritual whose proceedings would be unorthodox and blasphemous if laid bare to the orthodox and anæmic Spiritualist circles of Balham. Yet Shamonnism is Spiritualism, and the old schools of sorcery and art magic held psychic secrets that are still reproducible but yet inexplicable in these twentieth-century days. One of the most wonderful automatists I ever met was the late Jules Carrier. A tall, spare figure, black-bearded, aquiline-nosed, vividly pale in complexion, he had dark hazel eyes with brown mottled rings about the pupil that suggested in a vague way something feline or leopard-like. I met him quite by chance in a bookshop in the Rue de Valenciennes whose proprietor had written to me about some curious early nineteenth-century manuscripts that had come into his possession. These books consisted of some rather commonplace manuscripts of certain philosophical transactions dealing with occult phenomena. Paris in the early thirties of the last century was seamed with secret organizations devoted to scientific and political studies. The great impulse of the Revolution had produced in turn Napoleon and then the Bourbon reaction. The strong arm of the clerical party drove the philosophers underground, and only from time to time can one find these peculiar archives of occultist activity in odd booksellers’ shops and the libraries of students. The proprietor of the shop knew my interest in these matters and had before been at pains to secure me certain personal souvenirs from his library of Eliphas Levi,[4] so whenever an odd “Grimoire,” or early matter on occultism fell to his lot he would put it by against my next visit. He it was who introduced Carrier to me as a fellow-student, but he made it abundantly clear that Carrier was too poor to be a book buyer and that he himself looked on him as a peculiar acquaintance rather than as a customer.