The utmost that they can do is occasionally to cause a few glimmers of their existence to penetrate the fissures of those singular organisms known as mediums. But these vagrant, fleeting, venturous, stifled, deformed glimmers can but give us a ludicrous idea of a life which has no longer anything in common with the life--purely animal for the most part- which we lead on this earth. It is possible; and there is something to be said for the theory. It is at any rate remarkable that certain communications, certain manifestations have shaken the scepticism of the coldest and most dispassionate men of science, men utterly hostile to supernatural influences. In order to some extent to understand their uneasiness and their astonishment, we need only read--to quote but one instance among a thousand--a disquieting but unassailable article, entitled, Dans les regions inexplorees de la biologic humaine. Observations et experiences sur Eusapia Paladino, by Professor Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological Institute of the University of Naples.[2] Seldom have experiments in the domain of mediums or spirits been conducted with more distrustful suspicion or with more implacable scientific strictness. Nevertheless, scattered limbs, pale, diaphanous but capable hands, suddenly appeared in the little physiological laboratory of Naples University, with its doors heavily padlocked and sealed, as it were, mathematically excluding any possibility of fraud; these same hands worked apparatus specially intended to register their touches; lastly, the outline of something black, of a head, uprose between the curtains of the mediumistic cabinet, remained visible for several seconds and did not retire until itself apparently frightened by the exclamations of surprise drawn from a group of scientists who, after all, were prepared for anything; and Professor Bottazzi confesses that it was then that, to quote his own words--measured words, as beseems a votary of science, but expressive--he felt "a shiver all through his body." [1] On the same grounds, we will also leave on one side the theosophical hypothesis, which, like the others, begins by calling for an act of adherence, of blind faith. Its explanations, though often ingenious, are no more than forcible but gratuitous asservations and, as I said in Our Eternity, do not give us the shadow of the commencement of a proof. [2] Annales des Sciences Psychiques: April November 1907.