"I deduced from this conclusion, that, thanks to that bond, I could still make use of the eyes of my body and I went down into the street. I advanced a few steps and lost consciousness. When I recovered I was floating in space sustained by hands which were holding me lightly on either side. The possessor of these hands, if there were one, was behind me, pushing me through the air, which seemed a rapid and agreeable method of locomotion. In time, I understood my situation better: I had been taken away and placed with ease at the entrance of a narrow but well arranged passage, which arose at an incline of not less than 45 degrees. Raising my eyes, I found the sky and the clouds to be at their usual height: lowering them I noticed below the verdant crest of the woods. I thought, 'The tops of these trees below are as far away as the clouds above.' I examined the materials of the road: it was made of fine sand and a kind of milky quartz. I picked up a piece and examined it quite closely. I remember very well that in the center there was a small black spot; I looked at it minutely, and it was a small cavity apparently caused by chemical action of some metal.

"It had rained and I felt the freshness of the air. I noticed that, despite the roughness of the slope I did not experience any fatigue in walking, my feet were light and my steps uncertain as those of a child. As I walked, the memory of my recent illness came back to my mind, and I was enjoying the sense of my renewed health and recovered strength. Then a feeling of loneliness overpowered me: I desired the society of some companion, and reasoned with myself: 'Some one dies every minute, I have been waiting merely 30 minutes, surely some one will die in these mountains and will come to keep me company.' Meanwhile I surveyed the space around me. Toward the east there was a long chain of mountains and a forest below extended to the side of the mountain, and beyond that, to its summit. Below me was a wooded valley through which ran a beautiful river whose multitude of tiny waves were tossing up a veil of white spray. I compared this stream to an emerald river, and the mountains seemed greatly to resemble the heights of Waldron. The abrupt slope of the black rocks which lay to the right and the left of the road called to my memory Lookout Mountain, where the railroad passes between the Tennessee River and the mountain. Thus the three great faculties of the mind - memory, judgment, and imagination - acted together in all their integrity.

"I awaited a companion for over a quarter of an hour, but no one came. Then I reasoned: 'It is probable that when one dies each has indivdually to follow his given path, and is obliged to travel alone. As there are not two men exactly alike, it follows that there cannot be two travelers faring along the same route in the other world.'

"I felt certain that some being from the other world would come to meet me, but strangely enough I was not thinking of any one person in particular that I would have preferred. 'Angel or demon,' said I to myself, 'one or the other will come: I am curious to know which it shall be.' I thought then that I had never believed in all the dogmas of the Church, but that I had by my writings and my words affirmed a belief I considered better. 'But,' I continued, 'I know nothing: is there a place for doubt and a place for error? It is possible that I am hurrying on to a terrible destination.' Then something difficult to describe took place all around me, and coming from every point, I heard expressed thoughts. 'Be without fear, you are saved!' I heard no voice, I saw no being, but I was conscious that at different points, at various distances from me, some one was thinking and expressing things that concerned me. How could I take cognizance of them? It was so very mysterious that I doubted its reality. A sensation of doubt and fear overpowered me and I began to grow very miserable, when a face stamped with ineffable love and tenderness appeared for an instant and strengthened my faith.

"Without consciousness or effort on my part my eyes reopened: I noticed my hands and the little white bed on which I lay, and realizing that I had re-entered my body, I cried out with surprise and disappointment 'What has happened? Must I die again?' I was very weak, but still strong enough to recount the preceding story in spite of all the exhortations to remain quiet."

From replies made to investigators, it was evident that the sick man had correctly seen the facts and exterior images. Thus the two gentlemen seen near the door of the room in truth occupied that place, and the puddles of water seen in the streets were really outside, since the weather had been rainy. As to the thin fluidic thread, the subject may have had some knowledge of this theory, but he did not believe in it at all, so that no one could attribute this phenomenon to the visualization of an expectant idea.

The recital of the doctor has been confirmed by five persons, who were then present, and Myers tells us that his interest was so keenly aroused that he, as well as his friend Hodgson, desired to make the personal acquaintance of the narrator.

Thus all the testimony agrees in representing the process of death as a freeing of something which is not absolutely immaterial, but which is the seat of the thinking principle. It would be wrong, therefore, to consider a phantom as an unreality. To reject a reality because it lends itself to raillery would be an attitude unworthy of a scientific mind. The histories of ghosts, "Les revenants" as they are called in French, the returning ones, find their justification in the established proof of the existence of a fluidic substratum which brings into objectivity the images of the world of thought. This has nothing of the supernatural, and there are apparitions of such an authentic character that it would be absurd not to take them into account.

Knowing that a living being may act upon another by telepathy and produce by this means a visual image, we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this vision is due to an exterior and active operation. When this operation may influence the senses of several people it does not prove as yet, perhaps, its material objectivity, but it proves at least that which I shall call essential objectivity.