The Study of the human soul as a psychic and physical entity, will be the science of to-morrow.

Camille Flammarion.

Do we really die? Few persons know what answer, based upon discovered facts, may to-day be made to this important question. Many, indeed, believe that there is no longer room for doubt - that immortality of the human soul is a fallacy condemned by science.

Because thinkers and philosophers have not been able in the course of the centuries to agree upon any one conception of immortality, the spiritualistic idea is considered visionary: and curiously, few believe that science, which has already solved so many problems, can also solve this, the one most deeply significant to mankind.

Religions give us no certain knowledge, and science, accepting only demonstration, does not comprehend the language of Faith.

With respect for old philosophic and religious concepts, we desire to offend no conviction; but let those who believe that they receive light from above be willing, at least, to regard without scorn those who are seeking a solution from Nature: and who dig the soil hoping to encounter there a solid base upon which they may build.

It is the year 1916: we have seen mankind at work: murder, theft and rape have incited no awakening of conscience in the neutral nations: the frightful storm which scatters death upon Europe has revealed many powers, many weaknesses. Something seems lacking in the guidance of humanity.

Nineteenth Century Science committed this violence upon reason and denied all that makes for the moral grandeur of mankind. It accepted the lie that there is nothing else in the universe but matter such as we know it: there is no soul, no intelligence: there are only reactions. The great scientific dogma was therefore that the cause of all things exists in this matter, which is reduced by a last analysis to the indivisible, indissoluble, eternal atom. To-day the dissolution of atoms must be admitted, and as it is vain to suppose that the dispersed matter is destroyed, we may affirm that the separation of the atoms is their passage into a beyond of which science knows nothing.

There are, therefore, other physical possibilities than those admitted by or known to science.

As for spiritualistic doctrines, they are insufficient: happy are those who have the faith, but we in our researches cannot enter the domain of mysticism: we must attack the problem from the earth. Studying faculties and manifestations of the human soul we follow its deviations and aberrations, in order to show clearly that its essence is spiritual and that materialism cannot furnish its key.

We do not die! This is the certainty that we may acquire solely by observation applied to facts which are accessible to us. Knowledge may replace faith. There exists to-day a certain class of facts acquired by observation, which prove definitely that the soul exists in itself, that it exists before the creation of the body, and survives the destruction of its mortal abode.

Many scholars are aware of this: certain of the most illustrious have carefully explored the strange region of the soul and affirm that by wholly scientific methods they have reached assurances of which the world at large is ignorant.

There exists a certain class of facts acquired by science, which prove that in the living being exists an invisible substance endowed with faculties which cannot be explained in relation to matter. This also the world does not know.

Finally, we have a class of facts, more difficult to observe scientifically, which, submitted to minute examinations, have established that under certain conditions, deceased persons have been able to appear in the world of living beings.

The body dies, it is true. But we will begin by proving that the body is not all, and that we have possibilities of survival in a material substratum which never fails us; in other words, that we possess at the present time an invisible body which you perhaps do not know, and of which we shall speak.

Some may say, "I want to see before I believe," to which we may reply, "You believe in forces . . . have you ever seen them?"

Yet the undisturbed somnambulist sees the magnetic emanations, and sees also the psychic body. As for us, we cannot see even the oxygen, which is materially the most indispensable element to us, since it is nourishment of life and much more essential than food.

However, little more than a century ago men lived in absolute ignorance of this element so necessary to life, just as we live to-day in ignorance of this psychic element, the true body of the soul, indispensable to feeling and action.

Invisibility has nothing to do with the supernatural. The materialists of fifty years ago, who believed that visibility or impenetrability was the essential condition of the material, were really superstitious.

Scientific spiritualism is established upon material bases, which are the foundations of a metapsychology of the invisible world. Associated with its observations are scholars well qualified to give the facts an indisputable value.

Unfortunately, many men, led astray by the sarcasm of a press utterly ignorant of the present state of investigation, imagine that the spirits are guardians or doorkeepers of the beyond, ready to answer at the first summons if somebody or other's grandfather is among the tenants of the dwelling. There is large opportunity for wit in presenting the facts of spiritualism, which delights free thinkers.

Therefore, we must rise above vain mockery and have the courage to endure ridicule: the triumph of fools will be brief.

We must, first of all, study animism, which is at once a dogma and an established fact.

As a dogma, it holds that the soul is the animating principle of the body; as a fact, it is the exterior manifestation of forces called animic.

Materialists oppose animism to spiritualism. But this word animism can have no meaning upon their lips, since they will not admit the soul as a principle and reject as a fact the exteriorization of the sensory, motive and intellectual faculties of sensation acting outside of the human body.