There has been talk for some years about unconscious facts, about sub-consciousness, subliminal consciousness, etc. I fear that in these things also we are putting ourselves off with words which do not explain things very much. I intend some day, if the time is given me, to write a special book on Spiritualism, studied from the theoretic and doctrinal point of view, which will form a second volume of my work _The Unknown and Psychic Problems_, and which has been in preparation since the publication of that work in 1899. Mediumistic communications, dictations received (notably by Victor Hugo, Mme. de Girardin, Eugene Nus, and the Phalansterians), will be the subject of special chapters in this volume,--as well as the problem, otherwise important, of the plurality of existences. It is not my intention to enlarge in this place upon the aspects of the general question. That which I restrict myself to establishing in this book is that there are in us, about us, unknown forces capable of putting matter in motion, just as our will does. I ought, therefore, to limit myself to material phenomena. The range of that class of investigations is already immense, and the "communications" of which I have just spoken are really outside the limits of this range. But, as this subject and that of psychological experiments are continually overlapping, it was necessary to give a summary of it in this place. Let us return for the present to the material phenomena produced by mediums and to that which I have myself ascertained in my experiences with Eusapia Paladino, who unites them nearly all in her own personality and experiences. CHAPTER III MY EXPERIMENTS WITH EUSAPIA PALADINO. In the earlier pages of this volume some of my later experiments with the Neapolitan medium, Eusapia Paladino, have been described. We shall now revert to the earlier ones. My first experimental seance with this remarkable medium took place on the 27th of July, 1897. In response to the invitation of an excellent and honorable family,--that of Blech,--the name of which has for a long time been happily associated with modern researches in theosophy, occultism, and psychological studies, I betook myself to Montfort-l'Amaury, to make the personal acquaintance of this medium, whose case had already been studied in several particulars by MM. Lombroso, Charles Richet, Ochorowicz, Aksakof, Schiaparelli, Myers, Lodge, A. De Rochas, Dariex, J. Maxwell, Sabatier, De Watteville, and a great number of other scholars and scientists of high standing. Mme. Paladino's gifts had even been made the subject of a work by Count de Rochas upon _The Externalization of Motivity_, as well as of innumerable articles in the special reviews.