"Mrs. X was accustomed to dressing her own hair. One morning she laughingly said, 'A court hair dresser ought to arrange my hair, my arms are so tired.' Her hands immediately began to move automatically without any fatigue to her arms, which seemed sustained, and the result was a coiffure so intricate and beautiful that it was entirely different from anything she had habitually worn. The phenomena hitherto cited have been purely subjective.1

"In those which follow,'however, there is something objective. When we are treated by a celebrated physician, as remarkable as Dr. Z, it is but natural that we should wish to have our friends or neighbors enjoy the same privilege. An official in my department had been suffering from pleurisy for several years; he was forced to remain in bed, and suffered frequently from severe headaches. He consulted Dr. Z who prescribed an internal treatment, which to my great surprise consisted in certain little pills at regular intervals which this distinguished surgeon had never been known to use during his lifetime. He also had Mrs. X use mesmeric gestures of ten or fifteen minutes' duration. It is remarkable that though these passes were made with great violence, Mrs. X's hand never touched the face of the invalid, always remaining a millimeter away from it. Of herself Mrs. X could never have been able to direct her movements with such a degree of precision. Another time a servant A, whose husband was sick in a hospital, came to see Mrs. X and with tears in her eyes, told her that she had lost all hope of his recovery. Mrs. X asked Dr. Z to take him under his care, which he promised to do, and added that he would make the patient unaware of his presence. The next day A, going to the hospital, found her husband very much dejected. 'Listen,' said he. 'To my general miserable state, there is now an added nervous condition. I was shaken all through the night, my arms and legs were constantly moving absolutely beyond my control.' A smiled at this, and told her husband that Dr. Z had undertaken his cure and that he would soon be better. The invalid was restored to his normal state and is very well, as well as is possible with an incurable pulmonary affection.

1 We respect the text of the report, but we acknowledge that we do not understand how one can qualify as subjective, phenomena whose cause is visibly outside of the subject and of which the latter has neither knowledge nor direction. In any case he comes to a decision prematurely and designedly upon the question under discussion.

"As to Mrs. X's foot, I have the firm conviction that it was cured by those rhythmic movements which were imposed upon her by occult magnetism.

"You ask me if these agents belong to the human race. I answer, 'Yes,' provisionally, unless we prefer to admit that beyond our world there exists another world which, differing from humanity's world, yet knows and studies it as we study nature's realms - a world in which for amusement, or from other motive, someone plays the role of our departed friends."

I am far from exhausting the series of spontaneous facts which are attributed to occult causes. I say nothing of haunted houses where, nevertheless, the whole series of facts observed through mediums may be spontaneously produced, because I wished to limit myself to the simple facts which tend to prove the survival of departed spirits.

If I seem to have made an arbitrary division in treating as a separate group, a series of manifestations of very different kinds, it is because I have felt that these spontaneous facts, observed in all places and at different times, attested by reliable and intelligent witnesses, could not but help to convince those who find it difficult to accept proof of experimental seances. They are the only facts which are produced spontaneously with or without a medium and which are of such a nature as to silence all objection.

For myself, I maintain that these facts establish beyond the shade of a doubt that there is in us a second body, which is not the soul but which serves as a substratum to a mysterious force. This William Crookes calls the psychic force. This second body and the element of which it is composed does not arise from what we know as the real physical, but is capable of experimentation. Finally, we have stated empirically that this body obeys thought, is capable of movement, and is malleable: that it is able to exteriorize itself and even to make itself material. In its normal state, this body explains all the manifestations of organic life and produces no other exterior manifestations: but in some conditions, as yet insufficiently studied, it is easy to assert that this body is capable of exteriorization, and also that influence of every nature may act upon it and replace momentarily the normal influence that we commonly call personal action.