I think, therefore, that, until we receive evidence to the contrary, we may be allowed to leave fraud out of the question. Another objection that might be raised, as was done with respect to the Myers phantom, is the insignificance of their revelations from beyond the grave. I would rather look on this as an argument in behalf of their good faith. Those whose imagination is rich enough to create the wonderful persons whom we see living in their sleep would doubtless find no great difficulty in inventing a few fantastic but plausible details on the subject of the next world. Not one of them thinks of it. They are Christians, and therefore carry deep down in themselves the traditional terror of hell, the fear of purgatory, and the vision of a paradise full of angels and palms. They never refer to any of it. Although they are most often ignorant of all the theories of reincarnation, they conform strictly to the theosophical or neospiritualistic hypothesis, and are unconsciously faithful to it in their very indefiniteness: they speak vaguely of “the dark” in which they find themselves. They tell nothing because they know nothing. It is apparently impossible for them to give any account of a state that is still illumined. In fact, it is very likely, if we admit the hypothesis of reincarnation and of evolution after death, that nature, here as elsewhere, does not proceed by bounds. There is no special reason why she should take a prodigious and inconceivable leap between life and death. We do not find the dramatic change which at first thought we are rather inclined to expect. The spirit is first of all confused at losing its body and every one of its familiar ways; it recovers itself only by degrees. It resumes consciousness slowly. This consciousness is subsequently purified, exalted, and extended, gradually and indefinitely, until, reaching other spheres, the principle of life that animates it ceases to reincarnate itself, and loses all contact with us. This would explain why we never have any but minor and elementary revelations. All that concerns this first phase of the survival is fairly probable, even to those who do not admit the theory of reincarnation. For the rest, we shall see presently that the solutions which man’s imagination finds there merely change the question and are inadequate and provisional. THE DANGER OF UNCONSCIOUS SUGGESTION IN MESMERIC TESTS We now come to the most serious objection, that of suggestion. Colonel de Rochas declares that he and all the other experimenters who have given themselves up to this study “have not only avoided everything that could put the subject on a definite tack, but have often tried in vain to lead him astray by different suggestions.” I am convinced of it: there can be no question of voluntary suggestion.