Le vie est un degre de l'echelle des mondes Que nous devons franchir pour arriver ailleurs.

Lamartine.

I have finished. I pause of necessity before this incomplete synthesis in which as yet I have not spoken of death. It is in death that the immortal soul triumphs, affirming its survival by frequent manifestations, the importance of which we can measure without awaiting the verdict of science. With the proofs which they contain in germ, each one of our chapters would suffice to prove an afterlife. But if telepathy between living persons brings to us an experimental proof of the existence of the spiritual principle, it is in death that the continuity of this principle is confirmed. If the knocks, and other physical manifestations, present a certain interest, it is only in their connection with death that we find an answer to the enigma.

If the apparitions of the living may enter into the domain of scientific inquiry, it will no longer be permissible to deny the apparitions of the dead on the popular grounds that they are impossible. Recall here the conclusion of F. W. Myers. I now advance a bold proposition, for I predict that because of this new data a hundred years hence all reasonable men will believe in the Resurrection of Christ; while without this new fact no sensible person could then any longer possibly believe in it.1

One may find the proof of immortality in the study of death and the dying, on the condition that observation be extended well beyond the pathological phenomenon which has nothing to do with the fact of survival. A mystery which closely touches that of after-life, the mystery of the fecundation of bees, was solved by a blind man. As Francois Huber studied the life of the bees by weighing the observations of those who possessed the organ of which he was deprived; so we, the blind ones of "the Beyond," may utilize the faculties of those who have the gift of clairvoyancy of that Beyond. I know that we must limit ourselves, nor trust to all clairvoyancy, but no one could easily persuade me that the clairvoyant de Prevort was a dissimulator, and that Madame d'Esperance was not absolutely sincere. I believe, moreover, that somnambulistic lucidity, when it is not distorted by the interpretation of the medium, is a useful source of documentation. Since this faculty has already been employed to diagnose the internal lesions of the human body, one may also use it to observe the various changes of the separation of the psychic body when it is on the point of leaving its mortal shell.

Here is a curious experiment related by the Figaro in 1891. It is an account of a Belgian artist, Wiertz, whom Doctor D-------, his friend, put to sleep on the day of the execution of a murderer. After having experienced and described the sufferings of the condemned man, he cried out: "I am flying in space, but am I dead? Is everything finished? No, suffering may not continue always," etc. Erny, who recalled this fact, added: "Cannot this experiment be renewed, but in a less sinister fashion? Let us arrange to have a subject in a profound state of hypnosis in the room of a dying person, if the relatives will allow it. If not, let us operate in the room or hall of a hospital or sanitorium, at the moment when we know that a sick man is dying."1

1 Frederick W. Myers, Human Personality, Vol. II, p. 287.

From his point of view, Dr. Ciriax has written:

"The manner in which death is described by hundreds of clairvoyants proves that the soul or the spirit comes from its mortal envelope through the brain. These clairvoyants have remarked that, immediately after this departure, a vaporous cloud rises above the head and, taking a human form, condenses itself little by little, more and more resembling the dead person. When this fluidic body is formed it remains for some time but slightly attached to the mortal shell, by a fluidic tie from a region intermediate between the heart and the brain." 2

In 1910 there died in the United States a man who enjoyed the greatest esteem in America. He was a medium and a clairvoyant, highly intelligent and possessing rather extensive medical knowledge. His faculties of clairvoyancy were often applied in the diagnoses of illness. This man has written his memoirs and thus describes the process of death:

"My faculties of clairvoyancy permitted me to study the psychic and physiological phenomenon of death at the bedside of a dying person. It was a woman about sixty years of age to whom I had often given medical advice. When the hour of her death arrived I was very fortunately in a perfect state of health, making it possible for my faculties of clairvoyancy to function freely. I placed myself in such a manner as not to be seen nor disturbed in my psychic observation, and set myself to the task of studying the mysterious process of death.

1 Erny, Experimental Psychical Science, p. 98. E. Flam-marion, publisher. 2 Erny, P. P. pp. 99-100.

"I saw that the physical organization was no longer equal to the necessities of the intellectual principle, but the various internal organs seemed to resist the departure of the soul. The muscular system sought to retain its motive forces. The vascular tissue struggled to keep the vital principle. The nervous system contended with all its power against the annihilation of the physical senses, and the cerebral system tried to retain the intellectual principle. The body and the soul, like two spouses, resisted their final separation. These internal conflicts seemed at first to produce painful and troubled sensations. I was very glad, however, that these physical manifestations did not indicate sorrow, or discomfort, but simply the separation of the soul and the organism. A little while afterwards, the head was surrounded by a brilliant atmosphere, when suddenly, I saw the brain and the posterior part of the brain extend their inferior parts and stop their galvanic functions. They became saturated with the vital principles of electricity and of magnetism which penetrates into the secondary parts of the body. Or, in other words, the brain became suddenly ten times more preponderant than it was during its normal state. This phenomenon invariably precedes physical dissolution.