712. It will be seen that these phenomena are not of so simple a type as to admit of our considering them from the point of view of time-relations alone. Whatever else, indeed, a "ghost" may be, it is probably one of the most complex phenomena in nature. It is a function of two unknown variables - the incarnate spirit's sensitivity and the dis-carnate spirit's capacity of self-manifestation. Our attempt, therefore, to study such intercourse may begin at either end of the communication - with the percipient or with the agent. We shall have to ask, How does the incarnate mind receive the message? and we shall have to ask also, How does the discarnate mind originate and convey it?

Now it is by pressing the former of these two questions that we have, I think, the best chance at present of gaining fresh light. So long as we are considering the incarnate mind we are, to some extent at least, on known ground; and we may hope to discern analogies in some other among that mind's operations to that possibly most perplexing of all its operations which consists in taking cognisance of messages from unem-bodied minds, and from an unseen world. I think, therefore, that "the surest way, though most about," as Bacon would say, to the comprehension of this sudden and startling phenomenon lies in the study of other rare mental phenomena which can be observed more at leisure, just as "the surest way, though most about," to the comprehension of some blazing inaccessible star has lain in the patient study of the spectra of the incandescence of terrestrial substances which lie about our feet. I am in hopes that by the study of various forms of subliminal consciousness, subliminal faculty, subliminal perception, we may ultimately obtain a conception of our own total being and operation which may show us the incarnate mind's perception of the discarnate mind's message as no isolated anomaly, but an orderly exercise of natural and innate powers, frequently observed in action in somewhat similar ways.

It is, I say, from this human or terrene side that I should prefer, were it possible, to study in the first instance all our cases. Could we not only share but interpret the percipient's subjective feelings, could we compare those feelings with the feelings evoked by ordinary vision or telepathy among living men, we might get at a more intimate knowledge of what is happening than any observation from outside of the details of an apparition can supply. But this, of course, is not possible in any systematic way; occasional glimpses, inferences, comparisons, are all that we can attain to as yet. On the other hand, it is comparatively easy to arrange the whole group of our cases in some series depending on their observed external character and details. They can, indeed, be arranged in more than one series of this kind - the difficulty is in selecting the most instructive. That which I shall here select is in some points arbitrary, but it has the advantage of bringing out the wide range of variation in the clearness and content of these apparitional communications, here arranged mainly in a descending series, beginning with those cases where fullest knowledge or purpose is shown, and ending with those where the indication of intelligence becomes feeblest, dying away at last into vague sounds and sights without recognisable significance.

713. But I shall begin (see 713 A) with a small group of cases, which I admit to be anomalous and non-evidential - for we cannot prove that they were more than subjective experiences - yet which certainly should not be lost, filling as they do, in all their grotesqueness, a niche in our series otherwise as yet vacant. If man's spirit is separated at death from his organism, there must needs be cases where that separation, although apparently, is not really complete. There must be subjective sensations corresponding to the objective external facts of apparent death and subsequent resuscitation. Nor need it surprise those who may have followed my general argument, if those subjective sensations should prove to be dreamlike and fantastic. Here, as so often in our inquiries, the very oddity and unexpectedness of the details - the absence of that solemnity which one would think the dying man's own mind would have infused into the occasion - may point to the existence of some reality beneath the grotesque symbolism of the transitional dream.

The transitional dream, I call it, for it seems to me not improbable - remote though such a view may be from current notions - that the passage from one state to another may sometimes be accompanied with some temporary lack of adjustment between experiences taking place in such different environments - between the systems of symbolism belonging to the one and to the other state. But the reason why I refer to the cases in this place is that here we have perhaps our nearest possible approach - in M. Bertrand's case the account, but for remoteness, might have been evidential enough - to the sensations of the spirit which is endeavouring to manifest itself; - an inside view of a would-be apparition. The narratives suggest, moreover, that spirits recently freed from the body may enjoy a fuller perception of earthly scenes than it is afterwards possible to retain, and that thus the predominance of apparitions of the recently dead may be to some extent explained.