Altogether, the notion that in the state entered upon after we leave this world, the personality and form are retained, that these shades sometimes revisit the earth, and that the memory of the past still survives, seems to be universal; for it is found to exist among all people, savage and civilized: and if not founded on observation and experience, it becomes difficult to account for such unanimity on a subject which I think, speculatively considered, would not have been productive of such results; and one proof of this is, that those who reject such testimony and tradition as we have in regard to it, and rely only on their own understandings, appear to be pretty uniformly led to form opposite conclusions. They can not discern the mode of such a phenomenon; it is open to all sorts of scientific objections, and the _cui bono_ sticks in their teeth. This position being admitted, as I think it must be, we have but one resource left, whereby to account for the universality of this persuasion—which is, that in all periods and places, both mankind and womankind, as well in health as in sickness, have been liable to a series of spectral illusions of a most extraordinary and complicated nature, and bearing such a remarkable similarity to each other in regard to the objects supposed to be seen or heard, that they have been universally led to the same erroneous interpretation of the phenomenon. It is manifestly not impossible that this may be the case; and if it be so, it becomes the business of physiologists to inquire into the matter, and give us some account of it. In the meantime, we may be permitted to take the other view of the question, and examine what probabilities seem to be in its favor. When the body is about to die, that which can not die, and which, to spare words, I will call THE SOUL, departs from it—whither? We do not know: but, in the first place, we have no reason to believe that the space destined for its habitation is far removed from the earth, since, knowing nothing about it, we are equally entitled to suppose the contrary; and, in the next, that which we call distance is a condition that merely regards material objects, and of which a spirit is quite independent, just as our thoughts are, which can travel from here to China, and back again, in a second of time.