,methuen's ,shilling ,novels #a ,the ,mighty ,atom ,marie ,corelli #b ,jane ,marie ,corelli #c ,boy ,marie ,corelli #d ,spanish ,gold ,g4 ,a4 ,birmingham #e ,the ,search ,party ,g4 ,a4 ,birmingham #f ,teresa of ,watling ,street ,arnold ,bennett #i ,the ,unofficial ,honeymoon ,dolf ,wyllarde #ab ,the ,demon ,c4 ,n4 and ,a4 ,m4 ,williamson #ag ,joseph ,frank ,danby #ah ,round the ,red ,lamp ,sir ,a4 ,conan ,doyle #bj ,light ,freights ,w4 ,w4 ,jacobs #bb ,the ,long ,road ,john ,oxenham #ga ,the ,gates of ,wrath ,arnold ,bennett #gb ,short ,cruises ,w4 ,w4 ,jacobs #ha ,the ,card ,arnold ,bennett #hg ,lalage's ,lovers ,g4 ,a4 ,birmingham #ib ,white ,fang ,jack ,london #aje ,the ,wallet of ,kai ,lung ,ernest ,bramah #ajh ,the ,adventures of ,dr4 ,whitty ,g4 ,a4 ,birmingham #aac ,lavender and ,old ,lace ,myrtle ,reed #aae ,old ,rose and ,silver ,myrtle ,reed #abb ,the ,double ,life of ,mr4 ,alfred ,burton ,e4 ,phillips ,oppenheim #abe ,the ,regent ,arnold ,bennett #abg ,sally ,dorothea ,conyers #abi ,the ,lodger ,mrs4 ,belloc ,lowndes #ace ,a ,spinner in the ,sun ,myrtle ,reed #acg ,the ,mystery of ,dr4 ,fu-,manchu ,sax ,rohmer #aci ,the ,golden ,centipede ,louise ,gerard #adj ,the ,love ,pirate ,c4 ,n4 and ,a4 ,m4 ,williamson #adb ,the ,way of these ,women ,e4 ,phillips ,oppenheim #adc ,sandy ,married ,dorothea ,conyers #ade ,chance ,joseph ,conrad #adh ,flower of the ,dusk ,myrtle ,reed #aej ,the ,gentleman ,adventurer ,h4 ,c4 ,bailey #aed ,the ,hyena of ,kallu ,louise ,gerard #aij ,the ,happy ,hunting ,ground ,mrs4 ,alice ,perrin #aia ,my ,lady of ,shadows ,john ,oxenham #baa ,max ,carrados ,ernest ,bramah #bab ,under ,western ,eyes ,joseph ,conrad #bac ,the ,kloof ,bride ,ernest ,glanville #bae ,mr4 ,grex of ,monte ,carlo ,e4 ,phillips ,oppenheim #baf ,the ,wonder of ,love ,e4 ,m4 ,albanesi #bag ,a ,weaver of ,dreams ,myrtle ,reed #bai ,the ,family ,elinor ,mordaunt #bbj ,a ,heritage of ,peril ,a4 ,w4 ,marchmont #bba ,the ,kinsman ,mrs4 ,sidgwick #bbb ,emmanuel ,burden ,hilaire ,belloc #bbd ,broken ,shackles ,john ,oxenham #bbe ,a ,knight of ,spain ,marjorie ,bowen #bbg ,byeways ,robert ,hichens #bbh ,gossamer ,g4 ,a4 ,birmingham #bbi ,my ,friend the ,chauffeur ,c4 ,n4 and ,a4 ,m4 ,williamson #bcj ,the ,salving of a ,derelict ,maurice ,drake #bca ,cameos ,marie ,corelli #bcb ,the ,happy ,valley ,b4 ,m4 ,croker #bcc ,victory ,joseph ,conrad ,a ,selection only4 ,methuen's ,shilling ,library #cf ,de ,profundis ,oscar ,wilde #cg ,lord ,arthur ,savile's ,crime ,oscar ,wilde #ch ,selected ,poems ,oscar ,wilde #ci ,an ,ideal ,husband ,oscar ,wilde #dj ,intentions ,oscar ,wilde #da ,lady ,windermere's ,fan ,oscar ,wilde #db ,charmides and other ,poems ,oscar ,wilde #dc ,harvest ,home ,e4 ,v4 ,lucas #dd ,a ,little of ,everything ,e4 ,v4 ,lucas #de ,vailima ,letters ,robert ,louis ,stevenson #df ,hills and the ,sea ,hilaire ,belloc #dg ,the ,blue ,bird ,maurice ,maeterlinck #ej ,charles ,dickens ,g4 ,k4 ,chesterton #ec ,letters from a ,self-,made ,merchant to his ,son ,george ,horace ,lorimer #ed ,the ,life of ,john ,ruskin ,w4 ,g4 ,collingwood #eg ,sevastopol and other ,stories ,leo ,tolstoy #eh ,the ,lore of the ,honey-,bee ,tickner ,edwardes #fj ,from ,midshipman to ,field ,marshal ,sir ,evelyn ,wood #fb ,john ,boyes1 ,king of the ,wa-,kikuyu ,john ,boyes #fc ,oscar ,wilde ,arthur ,ransome #fd ,the ,vicar of ,morwenstow ,s4 ,baring-,gould #fe ,old ,country ,life ,s4 ,baring-,gould #gf ,home ,life in ,france ,m4 ,betham-,edwards #gg ,selected ,prose ,oscar ,wilde #gh ,the ,best of ,lamb ,e4 ,v4 ,lucas #hj ,selected ,letters ,robert ,louis ,stevenson #hc ,reason and ,belief ,sir ,oliver ,lodge #he ,the ,importance of ,being ,earnest ,oscar ,wilde #ia ,social ,evils and their ,remedy ,leo ,tolstoy #ic ,the ,substance of ,faith ,sir ,oliver ,lodge #id ,all ,things ,considered ,g4 ,k4 ,chesterton #ie ,the ,mirror of the ,sea ,joseph ,conrad #if ,a ,picked ,company ,hilaire ,belloc #aaf ,the ,survival of ,man ,sir ,oliver ,lodge #abf ,science from an ,easy ,chair ,sir ,ray ,lankester #ada ,variety ,lane ,e4 ,v4 ,lucas #add ,a ,shilling for my ,thoughts ,g4 ,k4 ,chesterton #adf ,a ,woman of ,no ,importance ,oscar ,wilde #adi ,a ,shepherd's ,life ,w4 ,h4 ,hudson #aic ,on ,nothing ,hilaire ,belloc #bjj ,jane ,austen and her ,times ,g4 ,e4 ,mitton #bad ,select ,essays ,maurice ,maeterlinck #bbc ,two ,generations ,leo ,tolstoy #bbf ,on ,everything ,hilaire ,belloc #bcd ,records and ,reminiscences ,sir ,francis ,burnand ,a ,selection only4 ,,gleanings ,,from ,,maeterlinck ,,by ,,the ,,same ,,author ,,the ,,blue ,,bird ,,our ,,eternity ,,death ,,mary ,,magdalene ,,the ,,unknown ,,guest ,,the ,,wrack ,,of ,,the ,,storm ,,the ,,treasure ,,of ,,the ,,humble ,,wisdom ,,and ,,destiny ,,the ,,life ,,of ,,the ,,bee ,,the ,,buried ,,temple ,,the ,,double ,,garden ,,life ,,and ,,flowers ,,aglavaine ,,and ,,selysette ,,monna ,,vanna ,,joyzelle ,,sister ,,beatrice2 ,,and ,,ariane ,,and ,,barbe ,,bleue ,,my ,,dog ,,old-,,fashioned ,,flowers ,,hours ,,of ,,gladness ,,gleanings ,,from ,,maeterlinck ,,translated ,,and ,,compiled ,,by ,,alexander ,,teixeira ,,de ,,mattos ,,methuen ,,co4 ,,ltd4 #cf ,,essex ,,street ,w4,c4 ,,london ,first ,published in #aiag ,all rights reserved ,copyright ,u4,s4,a4 by ,dodd1 ,mead ,co4 ,inc4 #aiac to #aiag4 ,,introduction ,in the first act of ,the ,blue ,bird1 the fairy ,brylune sends ,mytyl and ,tyltyl in search of happiness4 ,shepherded and protected by ,light1 they explore the ,past and the ,future1 the ,palace of ,night1 the ,kingdoms of the ,dead and of the ,unborn4 ,at one moment they find themselves in a graveyard2 and ,mytyl grows fearful at her first contact with the great mystery of ,death4 ,yet the graveyard with its wooden crosses and grass-covered mounds is moonlit and tranquil2 and of a sudden1 as the revealing diamond is turned in ,tyltyl's fingers1 even the tombstones and #8all the grand investiture of death' disappear1 to be replaced by luxuriant1 swaying clusters of ,madonna lilies4 8,where are the dead80 asks ,mytyl1 in amazement1 searching in the grass for traces of even one tombstone4 ,her brother also looks3 8,there are no dead10 is his reply4 ,any one who was present on the first night of the play at the ,haymarket ,theatre1 in #aiji1 will not easily forget the audience's little gasp of delighted surprise4 ,yet the two lines of dialogue were more than a stage effect1 more than an aspect of mysticism2 almost they may be regarded as the essence of ,maeterlinck's later work4 ,since the ,life of the ,bee1 since the earlier essays and such pure drama as ,monna ,vanna1 ,the ,blind and ,pellas and ,mlisande1 his mind seems to have been brooding more and more on the part which ,death1 the great twin mystery of the world1 plays in the life of man and of the race4 ,in ,the ,death of ,tintagiles there is a barred and studded door1 through which1 for all its studs and bars1 there steals a miasma of dread4 ,and1 when the door opens1 it is to release a spirit of annihilation which the concerted efforts of ,tintagiles' sisters can neither restrain nor force back4 ,in ,the ,blue ,bird we are shown that a man cannot die so long as he dwells in the memory of those who loved him4 ,in his latest work ,maeterlinck gives to the dead an objective existence4 ,in part each generation survives its own death and transmits to its successors the heritage of aspiration and achievement1 of knowledge and passion1 which it has received from its predecessors2 in greater part the objective existence is founded on new modes of communication1 a new study of psychic relationship and a new belief in a subliminal state4 ,i have collected in the present volume a selection of essays illustrating the later stages of ,maeterlinck's quest4 ,never in history have so many women and men1 stricken suddenly and without warning1 sought so unanimously and painfully to penetrate the veil wherein the world's oldest mystery is shrouded4 ,the finality of death was a challenge flung down and eagerly taken up by all whom the loss of son or brother had taken unawares4 ,to ,maeterlinck the war has brought in great part the annihilation of a people1 his own people2 it has inspired him to a splendour of indignation and pity2 but1 more gravely and urgently than ever before1 it has demanded of him an answer to the question of the ,sadducees1 who 8say there is no resurrection40 ,readers wishing to study the complete series of essays from which the sixteen in this volume are taken will find them in the three books entitled1 ,our ,eternity1 ,the ,unknown ,guest and ,the ,wrack of the ,storm1 all of which are issued by the present publishers4 ,,alexander ,,teixeira ,,de ,,mattos ,,chelsea1 #i ,april #aiag ,,contents ,,page ,,introduction vii ,i4 ,,our ,,injustice ,,to ,,death #ac ,,ii4 ,,annihilation #ca ,,iii4 ,,communications ,,with ,,the ,,dead #cg ,,iv4 ,,our ,,ultimate ,,consciousness #fc ,v4 ,,the ,,two ,,aspects ,,of ,,infinity #ge ,,vi4 ,,our ,,fate ,,in ,,those ,,infinities #hi ,,vii4 ,,conclusions #aje ,,viii4 ,,the ,,knowledge ,,of ,,the ,,future #aae ,,ix4 ,,heroism #aha ,x4 ,,on ,,re-,,reading ,,thucydides #aic ,,xi4 ,,the ,,dead ,,do ,,not ,,die #bje ,,xii4 ,,in ,,memoriam #bac ,,xiii4 ,,the ,,life ,,of ,,the ,,dead #bag ,,xiv4 ,,the ,,war ,,and ,,the ,,prophets #bbe ,,xv4 ,,the ,,will ,,of ,,earth #bcg ,,xvi4 ,,when ,,the ,,war ,,is ,,over #bdg ,i ,,our ,,injustice ,,to ,,death #a ,it has been well said3 8,death and death alone is what we must consult about life2 and not some vague future or survival1 where we shall not be4 ,it is our own end2 and everything happens in the interval between death and now4 ,do not talk to me of those imaginary prolongations which wield over us the childish spell of number2 do not talk to me--to me who am to die outright--of societies and peoples6 ,there is no reality1 there is no true duration1 save that between the cradle and the grave4 ,the rest is mere bombast1 show1 delusion6 ,they call me a master because of some magic in my speech and thoughts2 but ,i am a frightened child in the presence of death60#a #b ,that is where we stand4 ,for us1 death is the one event that counts in our life and in our universe4 ,it is the point whereat all that escapes our vigilance unites and conspires against our happiness4 ,the more our thoughts struggle to turn away from it1 the closer do they press around it4 ,the more we dread it1 the more dreadful it becomes1 for it but thrives upon our fears4 ,he who seeks to forget it has his memory filled with it2 he who tries to shun it meets naught else4 ,it clouds everything with its shadow4 ,but though we think of death incessantly1 we do so unconsciously1 without learning to know death4 ,we compel our attention to turn its back upon it1 instead of going to it with uplifted head4 ,all the forces which might avail to face death we exhaust in averting our will from it4 ,we deliver it into the groping hands of instinct and we grant it not one hour of our intelligence4 ,is it surprising that the idea of death1 which should be the most perfect and the most luminous of ideas--being the most persistent and the most inevitable--remains the flimsiest and the only one that is a laggard8 ,how should we know the one power which we never look in the face8 ,how could it have profited by gleams kindled only to help us escape it8 ,to fathom its abysses1 we wait until the most enfeebled1 the most disordered moments of our life arrive4 ,we do not begin to think of death until we have no longer the strength1 ,i will not say1 to think1 but even to breathe4 ,a man returning among us from another century would have difficulty in recognizing1 in the depths of a present-day soul1 the image of his gods1 of his duty1 of his love or of his universe2 but the figure of death1 when everything has changed around it and when even that which composes it and upon which it depends has vanished1 he would find almost untouched1 rough-drawn as it was by our fathers1 hundreds1 nay1 thousands of years ago4 ,our intelligence1 grown so bold and active1 has not worked upon this figure1 has not1 so to speak1 retouched it in any way4 ,though we may no longer believe in the tortures of the damned1 all the vital cells of the most sceptical among us are still steeped in the appalling mystery of the ,hebrew ,sheol1 the pagan ,hades1 or the ,christian ,hell4 ,though it may no longer be lighted by very definite flames1 the gulf still opens at the end of life and1 if less known1 is all the more formidable4 ,and therefore1 when the impending hour strikes to which we dared not raise our eyes1 everything fails us at the same time4 ,those two or three uncertain ideas whereon1 without examining them1 we had meant to lean give way like rushes beneath the weight of the last minutes4 ,in vain we seek a refuge among reflections which are illusive or are strange to us and which do not know the roads to our heart4 ,no one awaits us on the last shore where all is unprepared1 where naught remains afoot save terror4 #c ,bossuet1 the great poet of the tomb1 says3 8,it is not worthy of a ,christian0--and ,i would add1 of a man--8to postpone his struggle with death until the moment when it arrives to carry him off40 ,it were a salutary thing for each of us to work out his idea of death in the light of his days and the strength of his intelligence and stand by it4 ,he would say to death3 8,i know not who you are1 or ,i would be your master2 but1 in days when my eyes saw clearer than to-day1 ,i learnt what you were not3 that is enough to prevent you from becoming mine40 ,he would thus bear1 graven on his memory1 a tried image against which the last agony would not prevail and from which the phantom-stricken eyes would draw fresh comfort4 ,instead of the terrible prayer of the dying1 which is the prayer of the depths1 he would say his own prayer1 that of the peaks of his existence1 where would be gathered1 like angels of peace1 the most lucid1 the most rarefied thoughts of his life4 ,is not that the prayer of prayers8 ,after all1 what is a true and worthy prayer1 if not the most ardent and disinterested effort to reach and grasp the unknown8 #d 8,the doctors and the priests10 said ,napoleon1 8have long been making death grievous40 ,and ,bacon wrote3 8,pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa40 ,let us1 then1 learn to look upon death as it is in itself1 free from the horrors of matter and stripped of the terrors of the imagination4 ,let us first get rid of all that goes before and does not belong to it4 ,thus we impute to it the tortures of the last illness2 and that is not just4 ,illnesses have nothing in common with that which ends them4 ,they form part of life and not of death4 ,we readily forget the most cruel sufferings that restore us to health2 and the first sun of convalescence destroys the most unbearable memories of the chamber of pain4 ,but let death come2 and at once we overwhelm it with all the evil done before it4 ,not a tear but is remembered and used as a reproach1 not a cry of pain but becomes a cry of accusation4 ,death alone bears the weight of the errors of nature or the ignorance of science that have uselessly prolonged torments in whose name we curse death because it puts a term to them4 #e ,in point of fact1 whereas sicknesses belong to nature or to life1 the agony1 which seems peculiar to death1 is wholly in the hands of men4 ,now what we most dread is the awful struggle at the end and especially the last1 terrible second of rupture which we shall perhaps see approaching during long hours of helplessness and which suddenly hurls us1 naked1 disarmed1 abandoned by all and stripped of everything1 into an unknown that is the home of the only invincible terrors which the soul of man has ever felt4 ,it is doubly unjust to impute the torments of that second to death4 ,we shall see presently in what manner a man of to-day1 if he would remain faithful to his ideas1 should picture to himself the unknown into which death flings us4 ,let us confine ourselves here to the last struggle4 ,as science progresses1 it prolongs the agony which is the most dreadful moment and the sharpest peak of human pain and horror1 for the watchers1 at least2 for very often the consciousness of him whom death1 in ,bossuet's phrase1 has 8brought to bay0 is already greatly dulled and perceives no more than the distant murmur of the sufferings which it seems to be enduring4 ,all doctors consider it their first duty to prolong to the uttermost even the cruellest pangs of the most hopeless agony4 ,who has not1 at the bedside of a dying man1 twenty times wished and not once dared to throw himself at their feet and implore them to show mercy8 ,they are filled with so great a certainty and the duty which they obey leaves so little room for the least doubt that pity and reason1 blinded by tears1 curb their revolt and recoil before a law which all recognize and revere as the highest law of man's conscience4 #f ,one day1 this prejudice will strike us as barbarous4 ,its roots go down to the unacknowledged fears left in the heart by religions that have long since died out in the intelligence of men4 ,that is why the doctors act as though they were convinced that there is no known torture but is preferable to those awaiting us in the unknown4 ,they seem persuaded that every minute gained amid the most intolerable sufferings is snatched from the incomparably more dreadful sufferings which the mysteries of the hereafter reserve for men2 and of two evils1 to avoid that which they know to be imaginary1 they choose the only real one4 ,besides1 in thus postponing the end of a torture1 which1 as old ,seneca says1 is the best part of that torture1 they are but yielding to the unanimous error which makes its enclosing circle more iron-bound every day3 the prolongation of the agony increasing the horror of death2 and the horror of death demanding the prolongation of the agony4 #g ,the doctors1 on their side1 say or might say that1 in the present stage of science1 two or three cases excepted1 there is never a certainty of death4 ,not to support life to its last limits1 even at the cost of insupportable torments1 might be murder4 ,doubtless there is not one chance in a hundred thousand that the patient escape4 ,no matter3 if that chance exist which1 in the majority of cases1 will give but a few days1 or1 at the utmost1 a few months of a life that will not be the real life1 but much rather1 as the ,romans called it1 8an extended death10 those hundred thousand useless torments will not have been in vain4 ,a single hour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures4 ,here we have1 face to face1 two values that cannot be compared2 and1 if we mean to weigh them in the same balance1 we must heap the scale which we see with all that remains to us1 that is to say1 with every imaginable pain1 for at the decisive hour this is the only weight which counts and which is heavy enough to raise by a hair's-breadth the other scale that dips into what we do not see and is loaded with the thick darkness of another world4 #h ,swollen by so many adventitious horrors1 the horror of death becomes such that1 without reasoning1 we accept the doctors' reasons4 ,and yet there is one point on which they are beginning to yield and to agree4 ,they are slowly consenting1 when there is no hope left1 if not to deaden1 at least to dull the last agonies4 ,formerly1 none of them would have dared to do so2 and1 even to-day1 many of them hesitate and1 like misers1 measure out niggardly drops of the clemency and peace which they ought to lavish and which they grudge in their dread of weakening the last resistance1 that is to say1 the most useless and painful quiverings of reluctant life refusing to give place to on-coming rest4 ,it is not for me to decide whether their pity might show greater daring4 ,it is enough to state once more that all this has no concern with death4 ,it happens before it and beneath it4 ,it is not the arrival of death but the departure of life that is appalling4 ,it is not death but life that we must act upon4 ,it is not death that attacks life2 it is life that wrongfully resists death4 ,evils hasten from every side at the approach of death1 but not at its call2 and1 though they gather round it1 they did not come with it4 ,do you accuse sleep of the fatigue that oppresses you if you do not yield to it8 ,all those strugglings1 those waitings1 those tossings1 those tragic cursings are on the side of the slope to which we cling and not on the other side4 ,they are1 indeed1 accidental and temporary and emanate only from our ignorance4 ,all our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing4 ,a day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes4 ,a day will come when it will dare and act with certainty2 when life1 grown wiser1 will depart silently at its hour1 knowing that it has reached its term1 even as it withdraws silently every evening1 knowing that its task is done4 ,once the doctor and the sick man have learnt what they have to learn1 there will be no physical nor metaphysical reason why the advent of death should not be as salutary as that of sleep4 ,perhaps even1 as there will be nothing else to take into consideration1 it will be possible to surround death with profounder ecstasies and fairer dreams4 ,in any case and from this day1 with death once acquitted of that which goes before1 it will be easier to look upon it without fear and to lighten that which comes after4 #i ,death1 as we usually picture it1 has two terrors looming behind it4 ,the first has neither face nor form and permeates the whole region of our mind2 the other is more definite1 more explicit1 but almost as powerful4 ,the latter strikes all our senses4 ,let us examine it first4 ,even as we impute to death all the evils that precede it1 so do we add to the dread which it inspires all that happens beyond it1 thus doing it the same injustice at its going as at its coming4 ,is it death that digs our graves and orders us to keep that which is made to disappear8 ,if we cannot think without horror of what befalls the beloved in the grave1 is it death or we that placed him there8 ,because death carries the spirit to some place unknown1 shall we reproach it with our bestowal of the body which it leaves with us8 ,death descends into our midst to change the place of a life or change its form3 let us judge it by what it does and not by what we do before it comes and after it is gone4 ,for it is already far away when we begin the frightful work which we try hard to prolong to the very utmost1 as though we were persuaded that it is our only security against forgetfulness4 ,i am well aware that1 from any other than the human point of view1 this proceeding is very innocent2 and that1 looked upon from a sufficient height1 decomposing flesh is no more repulsive than a fading flower or a crumbling stone4 ,but1 when all is said1 it offends our senses1 shocks our memory1 daunts our courage1 whereas it would be so easy for us to avoid the foul ordeal4 ,purified by fire1 the remembrance lives enthroned as a beautiful idea2 and death is naught but an immortal birth cradled in flames4 ,this has been well understood by the wisest and happiest nations in history4 ,what happens in our graves poisons our thoughts together with our bodies4 ,the figure of death1 in the imagination of men1 depends before all upon the form of burial2 and the funeral rites govern not only the fate of those who depart but also the happiness of those who stay1 for they raise in the ultimate background of life the great image upon which men's eyes linger in consolation or despair4 #aj ,there is1 therefore1 but one terror particular to death3 that of the unknown into which it hurls us4 ,in facing it1 let us lose no time in putting from our minds all that the positive religions have left there4 ,let us remember only that it is not for us to prove that they are not proved1 but for them to establish that they are true4 ,now not one of them brings us a proof before which an honest intelligence can bow4 ,nor would it suffice if that intelligence were able to bow2 for man lawfully to believe and thus to limit his endless seeking1 the proof would need to be irresistible4 ,the ,god offered to us by the best and strongest of them has given us our reason to employ loyally and fully1 that is to say1 to try to attain1 before all and in all things1 that which appears to be the truth4 ,can ,he exact that we should accept1 in spite of it1 a belief whose doubtfulness1 from the human point of view1 is not denied by its wisest and most ardent defenders8 ,he only offers us a very uncertain story1 which1 even if scientifically substantiated1 would be merely a beautiful lesson in morality and which is buttressed by prophecies and miracles no less doubtful4 ,must we here call to mind that ,pascal1 to defend that creed which was already tottering at a time when it seemed at its zenith1 vainly attempted a demonstration the mere aspect of which would be enough to destroy the last remnant of faith in a wavering mind8 ,better than any other1 he knew the stock proofs of the theologians1 for they had been the sole study of the last years of his life4 ,if but one of these proofs could have resisted examination1 his genius1 one of the three or four most profound and lucid geniuses ever known to mankind1 must have given it an irresistible force4 ,but he does not linger over these arguments1 whose weakness he feels too well2 he pushes them scornfully aside1 he glories and1 in a manner1 rejoices in their futility3 8,who then will blame ,christians for not being able to give a reason for their faith1 those who profess a religion for which they cannot give a reason8 ,they declare1 in presenting it to the world1 that it is a foolishness1 stultitiam2 and then you complain that they do not prove it6 ,if they proved it1 they would not be keeping their word2 it is in being destitute of proofs that they are not destitute of sense40 ,his solitary argument1 the one to which he clings desperately and devotes all the power of his genius1 is the very condition of man in the universe1 that incomprehensible medley of greatness and wretchedness1 for which there is no accounting save by the mystery of the first fall3 8,for man is more incomprehensible without that mystery than the mystery itself is incomprehensible to man40 ,he is therefore reduced to establishing the truth of the ,scriptures by an argument drawn from the very ,scriptures in question2 and--what is more serious--to explain a wide and great and indisputable mystery by another1 small1 narrow and crude mystery that rests only upon the legend which it is his business to prove4 ,and1 let us observe in passing1 it is a fatal thing to replace one mystery by another and lesser mystery4 ,in the hierarchy of the unknown1 mankind always ascends from the smaller to the greater4 ,on the other hand1 to descend from the greater to the smaller is to relapse into the condition of primitive man1 who carries his barbarism to the point of replacing the infinite by a fetish or an amulet4 ,the measure of man's greatness is the greatness of the mysteries which he cultivates or on which he dwells4 ,to return to ,pascal1 he feels that everything is crumbling around him2 and so1 in the collapse of human reason1 he at last offers us the monstrous wager that is the supreme avowal of the bankruptcy and despair of his faith4 ,god1 he says1 meaning his ,god and the ,christian religion with all its precepts and all its consequences1 exists or does not exist4 ,we are unable1 by human arguments1 to prove that ,he exists or that ,he does not exist4 8,if there is a ,god1 ,he is infinitely incomprehensible1 because1 having neither divisions nor bounds1 ,he has no relation to us4 ,we are therefore incapable of knowing either what ,he is or if ,he is40 ,god is or is not4 8,but to which side shall we lean8 ,reason can determine nothing about it4 ,there is an infinite gulf that separates us4 ,a game is played at the uttermost part of this infinite distance1 in which heads may turn up or tails4 ,which will you wager8 ,there is no reason for betting on either one or the other2 you cannot reasonably defend either40 ,the correct course would be not to wager at all4 8,yes1 but you must wager3 this is not a matter for your will2 you are launched in it40 ,not to wager that ,god exists means wagering that ,he does not exist1 for which ,he will punish you eternally4 ,what then do you risk by wagering1 at all hazards1 that ,he exists8 ,if ,he does not1 you lose a few small pleasures1 a few wretched comforts of this life1 because your little sacrifice will not have been rewarded2 if ,he exists1 you gain an eternity of unspeakable happiness4 8#8,it is true1 but1 in spite of all1 ,i am so made that ,i cannot believe4' 8,never mind1 follow the way in which they began who believe and who at first did not believe either1 taking holy water1 having masses said1 etc4 ,that in itself will make you believe and will reduce you to the level of the beasts40 8#8,but that is just what ,i am afraid of4' 8,why8 ,what have you to lose80 ,nearly three centuries of apologetics have not added one useful argument to that terrible and despairing page of ,pascal4 ,and this is all that human intelligence has found to compel our life4 ,if the ,god who demands our faith will not have us decide by our reason1 by what then must our choice be made8 ,by usage8 ,by the accidents of race or birth1 by some sthetic or sentimental pitch-and-toss8 ,or has ,he set within us another higher and surer faculty1 before which the understanding must yield8 ,if so1 where is it8 ,what is its name8 ,if this ,god punishes us for not having blindly followed a faith that does not force itself irresistibly upon the intelligence which ,he gave us2 if ,he chastises us for not having made1 in the presence of the great enigma with which ,he confronts us1 a choice which is rejected by that best and most divine part which ,he has implanted in us1 we have nothing left to reply3 we are the dupes of a cruel and incomprehensible sport1 we are the victims of a terrible snare and an immense injustice2 and1 whatever the torments wherewith that injustice may load us1 they will be less intolerable than the eternal presence of its ,author4 ,,ii ,,annihilation #a ,and now we stand before the abyss4 ,it is void of all the dreams with which our fathers peopled it4 ,they thought that they knew what was there2 we know only what is not there4 ,it is the vaster by all that we have learned to know nothing of4 ,while waiting for a scientific certainty to break through its darkness--for man has the right to hope for that which he does not yet conceive--the only point that interests us1 because it is situated in the little circle which our actual intelligence traces in the thickest blackness of the night1 is to know whether the unknown for which we are bound will be dreadful or not4 ,outside the religions1 there are four imaginable solutions and no more3 total annihilation2 survival with our consciousness of to-day2 survival without any sort of consciousness2 lastly1 survival in the universal consciousness1 or with a consciousness different from that which we possess in this world4 #b ,total annihilation is impossible4 ,we are the prisoners of an infinity without outlet1 wherein nothing perishes1 wherein everything is dispersed but nothing lost4 ,neither a body nor a thought can drop out of the universe1 out of time and space4 ,not an atom of our flesh1 not a quiver of our nerves will go where they will cease to be1 for there is no place where anything ceases to be4 ,the brightness of a star extinguished millions of years ago still wanders in the ether where our eyes will perhaps behold it this very night1 pursuing its endless road4 ,it is the same with all that we see1 as with all that we do not see4 ,to be able to do away with a thing1 that is to say1 to fling it into nothingness1 nothingness would have to exist2 and1 if it exists1 under whatever form1 it is no longer nothingness4 ,as soon as we try to analyse it1 to define it1 or to understand it1 thoughts and expressions fail us1 or create that which they are struggling to deny4 ,it is as contrary to the nature of our reason and probably of all imaginable reason to conceive nothingness as to conceive limits to infinity4 ,nothingness1 besides1 is but a negative infinity1 a sort of infinity of darkness opposed to that which our intelligence strives to illumine1 or rather it is but a child-name or nickname which our mind has bestowed upon that which it has not attempted to embrace1 for we call nothingness all that escapes our senses or our reason and exists without our knowledge4 #c ,but1 it will perhaps be said1 though the annihilation of every world and every thing be impossible1 it is not so certain that their death is impossible2 and1 to us1 what is the difference between nothingness and everlasting death8 ,here again we are led astray by our imagination and by words4 ,we can no more conceive death than we can conceive nothingness4 ,we use the word death to cover those fragments of nothingness which we believe that we understand2 but1 on closer examination1 we are bound to recognize that our idea of death is much too puerile to contain the least truth4 ,it reaches no higher than our own bodies and cannot measure the destinies of the universe4 ,we give the name of death to anything that has a life a little different from ours4 ,even so do we act towards a world that appears to us motionless and frozen1 the moon1 for instance1 because we are persuaded that any form of existence1 animal or vegetable1 is extinguished upon it for ever4 ,but it is now some years since we learned that the most inert matter1 to outward seeming1 is animated by movements so powerful and furious that all animal or vegetable life is no more than sleep and immobility by the side of the swirling eddies and immeasurable energy locked up in a wayside stone4 8,there is no room for death60 cried ,emily ,bront4 ,but1 even if1 in the infinite series of the centuries1 all matter should really become inert and motionless1 it would none the less persist under one form or another2 and persistence1 though it were in total immobility1 would1 after all1 be but a form of life stable and silent at last4 ,all that dies falls into life2 and all that is born is of the same age as that which dies4 ,if death carried us to nothingness1 did birth then draw us out of that same nothingness8 ,why should the second be more impossible than the first8 ,the higher human thought rises and the wider it expands1 the less comprehensible do nothingness and death become4 ,in any case--and this is what matters here--if nothingness were possible1 since it could not be anything whatever1 it could not be dreadful4 ,,iii ,,communications ,,with ,,the ,,dead #a ,the spiritualists communicate or think that they communicate with the dead by means of what they call automatic speech and writing4 ,these are obtained by the agency of a medium#b in a state of ecstasy1 or rather 8trance10 to employ the vocabulary of the new science4 ,this condition is not one of hypnotic sleep1 nor does it seem to be an hysterical manifestation2 it is often associated1 as in the case of the medium ,mrs4 ,piper1 with perfect health and complete intellectual and physical balance4 ,it is rather the more or less voluntary emergence of a second or subliminal personality or consciousness of the medium2 or1 if we admit the spiritualistic hypothesis1 his occupation1 his 8psychic invasion10 as ,myers calls it1 by forces from another world4 ,in the 8entranced0 subject1 the normal consciousness and personality are entirely done away with2 and he replies 8automatically10 sometimes by word of mouth1 more often in writing1 to the questions put to him4 ,it has happened that he speaks and writes simultaneously1 his voice being occupied by one spirit and his hand by another1 who thus carry on two independent conversations4 ,more rarely1 the voice and the two hands are 8possessed0 at one and the same time2 and we receive three different communications4 ,obviously1 manifestations of this sort lend themselves1 to frauds and impostures of all kinds2 and the distrust aroused is at first invincible4 ,but there are some that make their appearance encompassed with such guarantees of good faith and sincerity1 so often1 so long and so rigorously checked by scientific men of unimpeachable character and authority and of originally inflexible scepticism1 that it becomes difficult to maintain a suspicion at the finish4#c ,unfortunately1 ,i am not able to enter here into the details of some of these purely scientific sittings1 those for instance of ,mrs4 ,piper1 the famous medium with whom ,f4 ,w4 ,h4 ,myers1 ,richard ,hodgson1 ,professor ,newbold1 of the ,university of ,pennsylvania1 ,sir ,oliver ,lodge and ,william ,james worked during a number of years4 ,on the other hand1 it is precisely the accumulation and coincidences of these abnormal details which gradually produce and confirm the conviction that we are in the presence of an entirely new1 improbable but genuine phenomenon1 which is sometimes difficult of classification among exclusively terrestrial phenomena4 ,i should have to devote to these 8communications0 a special study which would exceed the limits of this essay2 and ,i will therefore content myself with referring those who care to know more of the subject to ,sir ,oliver ,lodge's book1 ,the ,survival of ,man2 and1 above all1 to the twenty-five bulky volumes of the ,proceedings of the ,s4,p4,r41 notably to the report and comments of ,william ,james on the ,piper-,hodgson sittings in ,vol4 ,,xxiii4 and to ,vol4 ,,xiii41 where ,hodgson examines the facts and arguments that may be adduced for or against the agency of the dead2 and1 lastly1 to ,myers' great work1 ,human ,personality and its ,survival after ,bodily ,death4 #b ,the 8entranced0 mediums are invaded or possessed by different familiar spirits to whom the new science gives the somewhat inappropriate and ambiguous name of 8controls40 ,thus1 ,mrs4 ,piper is visited in succession by ,phinuit1 ,george ,pelham1 or 8,g4,p410 ,imperator1 ,doctor and ,rector4 ,mrs4 ,thompson1 another very celebrated medium1 has ,nelly for her usual tenant1 while graver and more illustrious personages would take possession of ,stainton ,moses1 a clergyman4 ,each of these spirits retains a sharply defined character1 which is consistent throughout and which1 moreover1 for the most part bears no relation to that of the medium4 ,amongst these1 ,phinuit and ,nelly are undoubtedly the most attractive1 the most original1 the most living1 the most active and1 above all1 the most talkative4 ,they centralize the communications after a fashion2 they come and go officiously2 and1 should any one of those present wish to be brought into touch with the soul of a deceased relative or friend1 they fly in search of it1 find it amid the invisible throng1 usher it in1 announce its presence1 speak in its name1 transmit and1 so to speak1 translate the questions and replies2 for it seems that it is very difficult for the dead to communicate with the living and that they need special aptitudes and a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances4 ,we will not yet examine what they have to reveal to us2 but to see them thus fluttering to and fro amid the multitude of their discarnate brothers and sisters gives us a first impression of the next world which is none too reassuring2 and we say to ourselves that the dead of to-day are strangely like those whom ,ulysses conjured up out of the ,cimmerian darkness three thousand years ago3 pale and empty shades1 bewildered1 incoherent1 puerile and terror-stricken1 like unto dreams1 more numerous than the leaves that fall in autumn and1 like them1 trembling in the unknown winds from the vast plains of the other world4 ,they no longer even have enough life to be unhappy2 and they seem to drag out1 we know not where1 a precarious and idle existence1 to wander aimlessly1 to hover round us1 slumbering1 or chattering among one another of the minor matters of this world2 and1 when a gap is made in their darkness1 to hasten from all sides1 like flocks of famished birds1 hungering for light and the sound of a human voice4 ,and1 in spite of ourselves1 we think of the ,odyssey and the sinister words of the shade of ,achilles as it issued from ,erebus3 8,do not1 ,o illustrious ,ulysses1 speak to me of death2 ,i would wish1 being on earth1 to serve for hire with another man of no estate1 who had not much livelihood1 rather than rule over all the departed dead40 #c ,what have these latterday dead to tell us8 ,to begin with1 it is a remarkable thing that they appear to be much more interested in events here below than in those of the world wherein they move4 ,they seem1 above all1 jealous to establish their identity1 to prove that they still exist1 that they recognize us1 that they know everything2 and1 to convince us of this1 they enter into the most minute and forgotten details with extraordinary precision1 perspicacity and prolixity4 ,they are also extremely clever at unravelling the intricate family connections of the person actually questioning them1 of any of the sitters1 or even of a stranger entering the room4 ,they recall this one's little infirmities1 that one's maladies1 the eccentricities or personal tendencies of a third4 ,they have cognizance of events taking place at a distance3 they see1 for instance1 and describe to their hearers in ,london an insignificant episode in ,canada4 ,in a word1 they say and do almost all the disconcerting and inexplicable things that are sometimes obtained from a first-rate medium2 perhaps they even go a little further2 but there comes from it all no breath1 no glimmer of the hereafter1 not even the something vaguely promised and vaguely waited for4 ,we shall be told that the mediums are visited only by inferior spirits1 incapable of tearing themselves from earthly cares and soaring towards greater and loftier ideas4 ,it is possible2 and no doubt we are wrong to believe that a spirit stripped of its body can suddenly be transformed and reach1 in a moment1 the level of our imaginings2 but could they not at least inform us where they are1 what they feel and what they do8 #d ,and now it seems that death itself has elected to answer these objections4 ,frederic ,myers1 ,richard ,hodgson and ,william ,james1 who so often1 for long and ardent hours1 questioned ,mrs4 ,piper and ,mrs4 ,thompson and obliged the departed to speak by their mouths1 are now themselves among the shades1 on the other side of the curtain of darkness4 ,they at least knew exactly what to do in order to reach us1 what to reveal in order to allay the uneasy curiosity of men4 ,myers in particular1 the most ardent1 the most convinced1 the most impatient of the veil that parted him from the eternal realities1 formally promised those who were continuing his work that he would make every imaginable effort out yonder1 in the unknown1 to come to their aid in a decisive fashion4 ,he kept his word4 ,a month after his death1 when ,sir ,oliver ,lodge was questioning ,mrs4 ,thompson in her trance1 ,nelly1 the medium's familiar spirit1 suddenly declared that she had seen ,myers1 that he was not yet fully awake1 but that he hoped to come1 at nine o'clock in the evening1 and 8communicate0 with his old friend of the ,psychical ,society4 ,the sitting was suspended and resumed at half past eight2 and ,myers' 8communication0 was at last obtained4 ,he was recognized by the first few words he spoke2 it was really he2 he had not changed1 ,faithful to his idiosyncracy when on earth1 he at once insisted on the necessity for taking notes4 ,but he seemed dazed4 ,they spoke to him of the ,society for ,psychical ,research1 the sole interest of his life4 ,he had lost all recollection of it4 ,then memory gradually revived2 and there followed a quantity of post-mortem gossip on the subject of the society's next president1 the obituary article in the ,times1 the letters that should be published and so on4 ,he complained that people would not let him rest1 that there was not a place in ,england where they did not ask for him3 8,call ,myers6 ,bring ,myers60 ,he ought to be given time to collect himself1 to reflect4 ,he also complained of the difficulty of conveying his ideas through the mediums3 8they were translating like a schoolboy does his first lines of ,virgil40#d ,as for his present condition1 8he groped his way as if through passages1 before he knew he was dead4 ,he thought he had lost his way in a strange town 444 and1 even when he saw people that he knew were dead1 he thought they were only visions40 ,this1 together with more chatter of a no less trivial nature1 is about all that we obtained from ,myers' 8control0 or 8impersonation10 of which better things had been expected4 ,the 8communication0 and many others which1 it appears1 recall in a striking fashion ,myers' habits1 character and ways of thinking and speaking would possess some value if none of those by whom or to whom they were made had been acquainted with him at the time when he was still numbered among the living4 ,as they stand1 they are most probably but reminiscences of a secondary personality of the medium or unconscious suggestions of the questioner or the sitters4 #e ,a more important communication and a more perplexing1 because of the names connected with it1 is that which is known as 8,mrs4 ,piper's ,hodgson-,control40 ,professor ,william ,james devotes an account of over a hundred and twenty pages to it in ,vol4 ,,xxiii4 of the ,proceedings4 ,dr4 ,hodgson1 in his lifetime1 was secretary of the ,american branch of the ,s4,p4,r41 of which ,william ,james was vice-president4 ,for many years1 he devoted himself to ,mrs4 ,piper the medium1 working with her twice a week and thus accumulating an enormous mass of documents on the subject of posthumous manifestations1 a mass whose wealth has not yet been exhausted4 ,like ,myers1 he had promised to come back after his death2 and1 in his jovial way1 he had more than once declared to ,mrs4 ,piper that1 when he came to visit her in his turn1 as he had more experience than the other spirits1 the sittings would take a more decisive shape and that 8he would make it hot for them40 ,he did come back1 a week after his death1 and manifested himself by automatic writing 7which1 with ,mrs4 ,piper as medium1 was the most usual method of communication7 during several sittings at which ,william ,james was present4 ,i should like to give an idea of these manifestations4 ,but1 as the celebrated ,harvard professor very truly observes1 the shorthand report of a sitting of this kind at once alters its aspect from start to finish4 ,we seek in vain for the emotion experienced on thus finding yourself in the presence of an invisible but living being1 who not only answers your questions1 but anticipates your thoughts1 understands before you have finished speaking1 grasps an allusion and caps it with another allusion1 grave or smiling4 ,the life of the dead man1 which1 during a strange hour1 had1 so to speak1 surrounded and penetrated you1 seems to be extinguished for the second time4 ,stenography1 which is devoid of all emotion1 no doubt supplies the best elements for arriving at a logical conclusion2 but it is not certain that here1 as in many other cases where the unknown predominates1 logic is the only road that leads to the truth4 8,when ,i first undertook10 says ,william ,james1 8to collate this series of sittings and make the present report1 ,i supposed that my verdict would be determined by pure logic4 ,certain minute incidents1 ,i thought1 ought to make for spirit-return or against it in a #8crucial' way4 ,but watching my mind work as it goes over the data1 convinces me that exact logic plays only a preparatory part in shaping our conclusions here2 and that the decisive vote1 if there be one1 has to be cast by what ,i may call one's general sense of dramatic probability1 which sense ebbs and flows from one hypothesis to another--it does so in the present writer at least--in a rather illogical manner4 ,if one sticks to the detail1 one may draw an anti-spiritist conclusion2 if one thinks more of what the whole mass may signify1 one may well incline to spiritist interpretations40#e ,and1 at the end of his article1 he sums up in the following words3 8,i myself feel as if an external will to communicate were probably there1 that is1 ,i find myself doubting1 in consequence of my whole acquaintance with that sphere of phenomena1 that ,mrs4 ,piper's dream-life1 even equipped with #8telepathic' powers1 accounts for all the results found4 ,but if asked whether the will to communicate be ,hodgson's1 or be some mere spirit-counterfeit of ,hodgson1 ,i remain uncertain and await more facts1 facts which may not point clearly to a conclusion for fifty or a hundred years40#f ,as we see1 ,william ,james is inclined to waver2 and at certain points in his account he appears to waver still more and indeed to say deliberately that the spirits 8have a finger in the pie40 ,these hesitations on the part of a man who has revolutionized our psychological ideas and who possessed a brain as wonderfully organized and well-balanced as that of our own ,taine1 for instance1 are very significant4 ,as a doctor of medicine and a professor of philosophy1 sceptical by nature and scrupulously faithful to experimental methods1 he was thrice qualified to conduct investigations of this kind to a successful conclusion4 ,it is not a question of allowing ourselves1 in our turn1 to be unduly influenced by those hesitations2 but1 in any case1 they show that the problem is a serious one1 the gravest1 perhaps1 if the facts were beyond dispute1 which we have had to solve since the coming of ,christ2 and that we must not expect to dismiss it with a shrug or a laugh4 #f ,i am obliged1 for lack of space1 to refer those who wish to form an opinion of their own on the 8,piper-,hodgson0 case to the text of the ,proceedings4 ,the case1 at the same time1 is far from being one of the most striking2 it should rather be classed1 were it not for the importance of the sitters concerned1 among the minor successes of the ,piper series4 ,hodgson1 according to the invariable custom of the spirits1 is1 first of all1 bent on making himself recognized2 and the inevitable1 tedious string of trifling reminiscences begins twenty times over again and fills page after page4 ,as usual in such instances1 the recollections common to both the questioner and the spirit who is supposed to be replying are brought out in their most circumstantial1 their most insignificant and also their most private details with astonishing eagerness1 precision and vivacity4 ,and observe that1 for all these details1 which he discloses with such extraordinary facility1 the dead man answering seeks by preference1 one would say1 the most hidden and forgotten treasures of the living listener's memory4 ,he spares him nothing2 he harps on everything with childish satisfaction and apprehensive solicitude1 not so much to persuade others as to prove to himself that he still exists4 ,and the obstinacy of this poor invisible being1 in striving to manifest himself through the hitherto uncrannied doors that separate us from our eternal destinies1 is at once ridiculous and tragic3 8,do you remember1 ,william1 when we were in the country at ,so-and-so's1 that game we played with the children2 do you remember my saying such-and-such a thing when ,i was in that room where there was such-and-such a chair or table80 8,why1 yes1 ,hodgson1 ,i do remember now40 8,a good test1 that80 8,first-rate1 ,hodgson60 ,and so on1 indefinitely4 ,sometimes1 there is a more significant incident that seems to surpass the mere transmission of subliminal thought4 ,they are talking1 for instance1 of a frustrated marriage which was always surrounded with great mystery1 even to ,hodgson's most intimate friends3 8,do you remember a lady-doctor in ,new ,york1 a member of our society80 8,no1 but what about her80 8,her husband's name was ,blair 444 ,i think40 8,do you mean ,dr4 ,blair ,thaw80 8,oh1 yes4 ,ask ,mrs4 ,thaw if ,i did not at a dinner-party mention something about the lady4 ,i may have done so40 ,james writes to ,mrs4 ,thaw1 who declares that1 as a matter of fact1 fifteen years before1 ,hodgson had said to her that he had just proposed to a girl and been refused4 ,mrs4 ,thaw and ,dr4 ,newbold were the only people in the world who knew the particulars4 ,but to come to the further sittings4 ,among other points discussed is the financial position of the ,american branch of the ,s4,p4,r41 a position which1 at the death of the secretary1 or rather factotum1 ,hodgson1 was anything but brilliant4 ,and behold the somewhat strange spectacle of different members of the society debating its affairs with their defunct secretary4 ,shall they dissolve8 ,shall they amalgamate8 ,shall they send the materials collected1 most of which are ,hodgson's1 to ,england8 ,they consult the dead man2 he replies1 gives good advice1 seems fully aware of all the complications1 all the difficulties4 ,one day1 in ,hodgson's lifetime1 when the society was found to be short of funds1 an anonymous donor had sent the sum necessary to relieve it from embarrassment4 ,hodgson alive did not know who the donor was2 ,hodgson dead picks him out among those present1 addresses him by name and thanks him publicly4 ,on another occasion1 ,hodgson1 like all the spirits1 complains of the extreme difficulty which he finds in conveying his thought through the alien organism of the medium3 8,i find now difficulties such as a blind man would experience in trying to find his hat10 he says4 ,but1 when1 after so much idle chatter1 ,william ,james at last puts the essential questions that burn our lips--8,hodgson1 what have you to tell us about the other life80--the dead man becomes shifty and does nothing but seek evasions3 8,it is not a vague fantasy but a reality10 he replies4 8,but10 ,mrs4 ,william ,james insists1 8do you live as we do1 as men do80 8,what does she say80 asks the spirit1 pretending not to understand4 8,do you live as men do80 repeats ,william ,james4 8,do you wear clothing and live in houses80 adds his wife4 8,oh yes1 houses1 but not clothing4 ,no1 that is absurd4 ,just wait a moment1 ,i am going to get out40 8,you will come back again80 8,yes40 8,he has got to go out and get his breath10 remarks another spirit1 named ,rector1 suddenly intervening4 ,it has not been waste of time1 perhaps1 to reproduce the general features of one of these sittings which may be regarded as typical4 ,i will add1 in order to give an idea of the farthest point which it is possible to attain1 the following instance of an experiment made by ,sir ,oliver ,lodge and related by him4 ,he handed ,mrs4 ,piper1 in her 8trance10 a gold watch which had just been sent him by one of his uncles and which belonged to that uncle's twin brother1 who had died twenty years before4 ,when the watch was in her possession1 ,mrs4 ,piper1 or rather ,phinuit1 one of her familiar spirits1 began to relate a host of details concerning the childhood of this twin brother1 facts dating back for more than sixty-six years and of course unknown to ,sir ,oliver ,lodge4 ,soon after1 the surviving uncle1 who lived in another town1 wrote and confirmed the accuracy of most of these details1 which he had quite forgotten and of which he was only now reminded by the medium's revelations2 while those which he could not recollect at all were subsequently declared to be in accordance with fact by a third uncle1 an old sea-captain1 who lived in ,cornwall and who had not the least notion why such strange questions were put to him4 ,i quote this instance not because it has any exceptional or decisive value1 but simply1 ,i repeat1 by way of an example2 for1 like the case connected with ,mrs4 ,thaw1 mentioned above1 it marks pretty accurately the extreme points to which people have up to now1 thanks to spirit agency1 penetrated the mysteries of the unknown4 ,it is well to add that cases in which the supposed limits of the most far-reaching telepathy are so manifestly exceeded are fairly uncommon4 #g ,now what are we to think of all this8 ,must we1 with ,myers1 ,newbold1 ,hyslop1 ,hodgson and many others1 who studied this problem at length1 conclude in favour of the incontestable agency of forces and intelligences returning from the farther bank of the great river which it was deemed that none might cross4 ,must we acknowledge with them that there are cases ever more numerous which make it impossible for us to hesitate any longer between the telepathic theory and the spiritualistic theory8 ,i do not think so4 ,i have no prejudices--what were the use of having any1 in these mysteries8--no reluctance to admit the survival and the intervention of the dead2 but it is wise and necessary1 before leaving the terrestrial plane1 to exhaust all the suppositions1 all the explanations there to be discovered4 ,we have to make our choice between two manifestations of the unknown1 two miracles1 if you prefer1 whereof one is situated in the world which we inhabit and the other in a region which1 rightly or wrongly1 we believe to be separated from us by nameless spaces which no human being1 alive or dead1 has crossed to this day4 ,it is natural1 therefore1 that we should stay in our own world1 as long as it gives us a foothold1 as long as we are not pitilessly expelled from it by a series of irresistible and irrefutable facts issuing from the adjoining abyss4 ,the survival of a spirit is no more improbable than the prodigious faculties which we are obliged to attribute to the mediums if we deny them to the dead2 but the existence of the medium1 contrary to that of the spirit1 is unquestionable2 and therefore it is for the spirit1 or for those who make use of its name1 first to prove that it exists4 ,do the extraordinary phenomena of which we know--transmission of thought from one subconscious mind to another1 perception of events at a distance1 subliminal clairvoyance--occur when the dead are not in evidence1 when the experiments are being made exclusively between living persons8 ,this cannot be honestly contested4 ,certainly no one has ever obtained among living people any series of communications or revelations similar to those of the great spiritualistic mediums1 ,mrs4 ,piper1 ,mrs4 ,thompson and ,stainton ,moses1 nor anything that can compare with them for continuity or lucidity4 ,but1 though the quality of the phenomena will not bear comparison1 it cannot be denied that their inner nature is identical4 ,our logical inference is that the real cause lies not in the source of inspiration1 but in the personal value1 the sensitiveness1 the power of the medium4 ,for the rest1 ,mr4 ,j4 ,g4 ,piddington1 who devoted an exceedingly detailed study to ,mrs4 ,thompson1 plainly perceived in her1 when she was not 8entranced0 and when there were no spirits whatever in question1 manifestations inferior1 it is true1 but absolutely analogous to those involving the dead4#g ,these mediums are pleased1 in all good faith and probably unconsciously1 to give to their subliminal faculties1 to their secondary personalities1 or to accept1 on their behalf1 names which were borne by beings who have crossed to the farther side of the mystery3 this is a matter of vocabulary or nomenclature which neither lessens nor increases the intrinsic significance of the facts4 ,well1 in examining these facts1 however strange and really unparalleled some of them may be1 ,i never find one which proceeds frankly from this world or which comes indisputably from the other4 ,they are1 if you wish1 phenomenal border incidents2 but it cannot be said that the border has been violated4 ,in the story of ,sir ,oliver ,lodge's watch1 for instance1 which is one of the most characteristic and one which carries us farther than most1 we must attribute to the medium faculties that have ceased to be human4 ,she must have put herself in touch1 whether by perception of events at a distance1 or by transmission of thought from one subconscious mind to another1 or again by subliminal clairvoyance1 with the two surviving brothers of the deceased owner of the watch2 and1 in the past subconsciousness of those two brothers1 distant from each other1 she had to rediscover a host of circumstances which they themselves had forgotten and which lay hidden beneath the heaped-up dust and darkness of six-and-sixty years4 ,it is certain that a phenomenon of this kind passes the bounds of the imagination and that we should refuse to credit it if1 first of all1 the experiment had not been controlled and certified by a man of the standing of ,sir ,oliver ,lodge1 and if1 moreover1 it did not form one of a group of equally significant facts which clearly show that we are not here concerned with an absolutely unique miracle or with an unhoped-for and unprecedented concourse of coincidences4 ,it is simply a matter of distant perception1 subliminal clairvoyance and telepathy raised to the highest power2 and these three manifestations of the unexplored depths of man are to-day recognized and classified by science1 which is not saying that they are explained3 that is another question4 ,when1 in connection with electricity1 we use such terms as positive1 negative1 induction1 potential and resistance1 we are also applying conventional words to facts and phenomena of whose inward essence we are utterly ignorant2 and we must needs be content with these1 pending any better4 ,there is1 ,i insist1 between these extraordinary manifestations and those given to us by a medium who is not speaking in the name of the dead1 but a difference of the greater and the lesser1 a difference of extent or degree and in no wise a difference in kind4 #h ,for the proof to be more decisive1 it would be necessary that no one1 neither the medium nor the witnesses1 should ever have known of the existence of him whose past is revealed by the dead man1 in other words1 that every living link should be eliminated4 ,i do not believe that this has actually occurred up to the present1 nor even that it is possible2 in any case1 it would be very difficult to control such an experiment4 ,be this as it may1 ,dr4 ,hodgson1 who devoted part of his life to the quest of specific phenomena wherein the boundaries of mediumistic power should be plainly overstepped1 believes that he found them in certain cases1 of which--as the others were of very much the same nature--,i will merely mention one of the most striking4#h ,in a course of excellent sittings with ,mrs4 ,piper the medium1 he communicated with various dead friends who reminded him of a large number of common memories4 ,the medium1 the spirits and he himself seemed in a wonderfully accommodating mood2 and the revelations were plentiful1 exact and easy4 ,in this extremely favourable atmosphere1 he was placed in communication with the soul of one of his best friends1 who had died a year before and whom he simply calls 8,a40 ,this ,a1 whom he had known more intimately than most of the spirits with whom he had communicated previously1 behaved quite differently and1 while establishing his identity beyond dispute1 vouchsafed only incoherent replies4 ,now ,a 8had been troubled much1 for years before his death1 by headaches and occasionally mental exhaustion1 though not amounting to positive mental disturbance40 ,the same phenomenon appears to recur whenever similar troubles have come before death1 as in cases of suicide4 8,if the telepathic explanation is held to be the only one10 says ,dr4 ,hodgson 7,i give the gist of his observations71 8if it is claimed that all the communications of these discarnate minds are only suggestions from my subconscious self1 it is unintelligible that1 after having obtained satisfactory results from others whom ,i had known far less intimately than ,a and with whom ,i had consequently far fewer recollections in common1 ,i should get from him1 in the same sittings1 nothing but incoherencies4 ,i am thus driven to believe that my subliminal self is not the only thing in evidence1 that it is in the presence of a real1 living personality1 whose mental state is the same as it was at the hour of death1 a personality which remains independent of my subliminal consciousness and absolutely unaffected by it1 which is deaf to its suggestions and draws from its own resources the revelations which it makes40 ,the argument is not without value1 but its full force would be obtained only if it were certain that none of those present knew of ,a's madness2 otherwise it can be contended that1 the notion of madness having penetrated the subconscious intelligence of one of them1 it worked upon it and gave to the replies induced a form in keeping with the state of mind presupposed in the dead man4 #i ,of a truth1 by extending the possibilities of the medium to these extremes1 we furnish ourselves with explanations which forestall nearly everything1 bar every road and all but deny to the spirits any power of manifesting themselves in the manner which they appear to have chosen4 ,but why do they choose that manner8 ,why do they thus restrict themselves8 ,why do they jealously hug the narrow strip of territory which memory occupies on the confines of both worlds and from which none but indecisive or questionable evidence can reach us8 ,are there then no other outlets1 no other horizons8 ,why do they tarry around us1 stagnant in their little pasts1 when1 in their freedom from the flesh1 they ought to be able to wander at ease over the virgin stretches of space and time8 ,do they not yet know that the sign which will prove to us that they survive is to be found not with us1 but with them1 on the other side of the grave8 ,why do they come back with empty hands and empty words8 ,is that what one finds when one is steeped in infinity8 ,beyond our last hour is it all bare and shapeless and dim8 ,if it be so1 let them tell us2 and the evidence of the darkness will at least possess a grandeur that is all too absent from these cross-examining methods4 ,of what use is it to die1 if all life's trivialities continue8 ,is it really worth while to have passed through the terrifying gorges which open on the eternal fields1 in order to remember that we had a great-uncle called ,peter and that our ,cousin ,paul was afflicted with varicose veins and a gastric complaint8 ,at that rate1 ,i should choose for those whom ,i love the august and frozen solitudes of the everlasting nothing4 ,though it be difficult for them1 as they complain1 to make themselves understood through a strange and sleep-bound organism1 they tell us enough categorical details about the past to show that they could disclose similar details1 if not about the future1 which they perhaps do not yet know1 at least about the lesser mysteries which surround us on every side and which our body alone prevents us from approaching4 ,there are a thousand things1 large or small1 alike unknown to us1 which we must perceive when feeble eyes no longer arrest our vision4 ,it is in those regions from which a shadow separates us and not in foolish tittle-tattle of the past that they would at last find the clear and genuine proof which they seem to seek with such enthusiasm4 ,without demanding a great miracle1 one would nevertheless think that we had the right to expect from a mind which nothing now enthrals some other discourse than that which it avoided when it was still subject to matter4 ,,iv ,,our ,,ultimate ,,consciousness #a ,survival with our present consciousness is nearly as impossible and incomprehensible as total annihilation4 ,moreover1 even if it were admissible1 it could not be dreadful4 ,this is certain that1 when the body disappears1 all physical sufferings will disappear at the same time2 for we cannot imagine a spirit suffering in a body which it no longer possesses4 ,with them will vanish simultaneously all that we call mental or moral sufferings1 seeing that all of them1 if we examine them well1 spring from the ties and habits of our senses4 ,our spirit feels the reaction of the sufferings of our body or of the bodies that surround it2 it cannot suffer in itself or through itself4 ,slighted affection1 shattered love1 disappointments1 failures1 despair1 betrayal1 personal humiliations1 as well as the sorrows and the loss of those whom it loves1 acquire their potent sting only by passing through the body which it animates4 ,outside its own pain1 which is the pain of not knowing1 the spirit1 once delivered from its flesh1 could suffer only in the recollection of the flesh4 ,it is possible that it still grieves over the troubles of those whom it has left behind on earth4 ,but to its eyes1 since it no longer reckons the days1 these troubles will seem so brief that it will not grasp their duration2 and1 knowing what they are and knowing whither they lead1 it will not behold their severity4 ,the spirit is insensible to all that is not happiness4 ,it is made only for infinite joy1 which is the joy of knowing and understanding4 ,it can grieve only at perceiving its own limits2 but to perceive those limits1 when there are no more bonds to space and time1 is already to transcend them4 #b ,it becomes a question of knowing whether that spirit1 sheltered from all sorrow1 will remain itself1 will perceive and recognize itself in the bosom of infinity and up to what point it is important that it should recognize itself4 ,this brings us to the problems of survival without consciousness1 or survival with a consciousness different from that of to-day4 ,survival without consciousness seems at first sight the more probable4 ,from the point of view of the good or ill awaiting us on the other side of the grave1 it amounts to annihilation4 ,it is lawful1 therefore1 for those who prefer the easiest solution and that most consistent with the present state of human thought to limit their anxiety to that4 ,they have nothing to dread2 for1 on close inspection1 every fear1 if any remained1 should deck itself with hopes4 ,the body disintegrates and can no longer suffer2 the mind1 separated from the source of pleasure and pain1 is extinguished1 scattered and lost in a boundless darkness2 and what comes is the great peace so often prayed for1 the sleep without measure1 without dreams and without awakening4 ,but this is only a solution that fosters indolence4 ,if we press those who speak of survival without consciousness1 we perceive that they mean only their present consciousness1 for man conceives no other2 and we have just seen that it is almost impossible for that manner of consciousness to persist in infinity4 ,unless1 indeed1 they would deny every sort of consciousness1 even that cosmic consciousness into which their own will fall4 ,but this were to solve very quickly and very blindly1 with a stroke of the sword in the night1 the greatest and most mysterious question that can arise in a man's brain4 #c ,it is evident that1 in the depths of our thought limited on every side1 we shall never be able to form the least idea of an infinite consciousness4 ,there is even an essential antinomy between the words consciousness and infinity4 ,to speak of consciousness is to mean the most definite thing conceivable in the finite2 consciousness1 properly speaking1 is the finite self-concentrated in order to discover and feel its closest limits1 to the end that it may enjoy them as closely as possible4 ,on the other hand1 it is impossible for us to separate the idea of intelligence from the idea of consciousness4 ,any intelligence that does not seem capable of transforming itself into consciousness becomes for us a mysterious phenomenon to which we give names more mysterious still1 lest we should have to admit that we understand nothing of it at all4 ,now1 on this little earth of ours1 which is but a dot in space1 we see expended in every scale of life1 as for instance1 in the wonderful combinations and organisms of the insect world1 a mass of intelligence so vast that our human intelligence cannot even dream of assessing it4 ,everything that exists--and man first of all--is incessantly drawing upon that inexhaustible reserve4 ,we are therefore irresistibly driven to ask ourselves if that cosmic intelligence is not the emanation of an infinite consciousness1 or if it must not1 sooner or later1 elaborate one4 ,and this sets us tossing between two irreducible impossibilities4 ,what is most probable is that here again we are judging everything from the lowlands of our anthropomorphism4 ,at the summit of our infinitesimal life1 we see only intelligence and consciousness1 the extreme point of thought2 and from this we infer that1 at the summits of all lives1 there could be naught but intelligence and consciousness1 whereas these perhaps occupy only an inferior place in the hierarchy of spiritual or other possibilities4 #d ,survival absolutely denuded of consciousness would1 therefore1 be possible only if we deny the existence of a cosmic consciousness4 ,when once we admit this consciousness1 under whatsoever form1 we are bound to share in it2 and1 up to a certain point1 the question is indistinguishable from that of the continuance of a more or less modified consciousness4 ,there is1 for the moment1 no hope of solving it2 but we are free to grope in its darkness1 which is not perhaps equally dense at all points4 ,here begins the open sea4 ,here begins the splendid adventure1 the only one abreast with human curiosity1 the only one that soars as high as its highest longing4 ,let us accustom ourselves to regard death as a form of life which we do not yet understand2 let us learn to look upon it with the same eye that looks upon birth2 and soon our mind will be accompanied to the steps of the tomb with the same glad expectation that greets a birth4 ,suppose that a child in its mother's womb were endowed with a certain consciousness2 that unborn twins1 for instance1 could1 in some obscure fashion1 exchange their impressions and communicate their hopes and fears to each other4 ,having known naught but the warm maternal shades1 they would not feel straitened nor unhappy there4 ,they would probably have no other idea than to prolong as long as possible that life of abundance free from cares and of sleep free from alarms4 ,but1 if1 even as we are aware that we must die1 they too knew that they must be born1 that is to say1 that they must suddenly leave the shelter of that gentle darkness and abandon for ever that captive but peaceful existence1 to be precipitated into an absolutely different1 unimaginable and boundless world1 how great would be their anxieties and their fears6 ,and yet there is no reason why our own anxieties and fears should be more justified or less ridiculous4 ,the character1 the spirit1 the intentions1 the benevolence or the indifference of the unknown to which we are subject do not alter between our birth and our death4 ,we remain always in the same infinity1 in the same universe4 ,it is perfectly reasonable and legitimate to persuade ourselves that the tomb is no more dreadful than the cradle4 ,it would even be legitimate and reasonable to accept the cradle only on account of the tomb4 ,if1 before being born1 we were permitted to choose between the great peace of non-existence and a life that should not be completed by the glorious hour of death1 which of us1 knowing what he ought to know1 would accept the disquieting problem of an existence that would not lead to the reassuring mystery of its end8 ,which of us would wish to come into a world where we can learn so little1 if he did not know that he must enter it if he would leave it and learn more8 ,the best thing about life is that it prepares this hour for us1 that it is the one and only road leading to the magic gateway and into that incomparable mystery where misfortunes and sufferings will no longer be possible1 because we shall have lost the body that produced them2 where the worst that can befall us is the dreamless sleep which we number among the greatest boons on earth2 where1 lastly1 it is almost unimaginable that a thought should not survive to mingle with the substance of the universe1 that is to say1 with infinity1 which1 if it be not a waste of indifference can be nothing but a sea of joy4 #e ,before fathoming that sea1 let us remark to those who aspire to maintain their ego that they are calling for the sufferings which they dread4 ,the ego implies limits4 ,the ego cannot subsist except in so far as it is separated from that which surrounds it4 ,the stronger the ego1 the narrower its limits and the clearer the separation4 ,the more painful too2 for the mind1 if it remain as we know it--and we are not able to imagine it different--will no sooner have seen its limits than it will wish to overstep them2 and1 the more separated it feels1 the greater will be its longing to unite with that which lies outside4 ,there will therefore be an eternal struggle between its being and its aspirations4 ,and really it would have served no object to be born and die only to arrive at these interminable contests4 ,have we not here yet one more proof that our ego1 as we conceive it1 could never subsist in the infinity where it must needs go1 since it cannot go elsewhere8 ,it behoves us therefore to clear away conceptions that emanate only from our body1 even as the mists that veil the daylight from our sight emanate only from the lowlands4 ,pascal has said1 once and for all3 8,the narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view40 #f ,on the other hand--for we must keep nothing back1 nor turn from the adverse darkness should it seem nearest to the truth1 nor show any bias--on the other hand1 we can grant to those who yearn to remain as they are that the survival of an atom of themselves would suffice for a new entrance into an infinity from which their body no longer separates them4 ,if it seems impossible that anything--a movement1 a vibration1 a radiation--should stop or disappear1 why then should thought be lost8 ,there will1 no doubt1 subsist more than one idea powerful enough to allure the new ego1 which will nourish itself and thrive on all that it will find in that boundless environment1 just as the other ego1 on this earth1 nourished itself and throve on all that it met there4 ,since we have been able to acquire our present consciousness1 why should it be impossible for us to acquire another8 ,for that ego which is so dear to us and which we believe ourselves to possess was not made in a day2 it is not at present what it was at the hour of our birth4 ,much more chance than purpose has entered into it2 and much more alien substance than any inborn substance which it contained4 ,it is but a long series of acquisitions and transformations1 of which we do not become aware until the awakening of our memory2 and its kernel1 of which we do not know the nature1 is perhaps more immaterial and less concrete than a thought4 ,if the new environment which we enter on leaving our mother's womb transforms us to such a point that there is1 so to speak1 no connection between the embryo that we were and the man that we have become1 is it not right to think that the far newer1 stranger1 wider and richer environment which we enter on quitting life will transform us even more8 ,we can see in what happens to us here a figure of what awaits us elsewhere and can readily admit that our spiritual being1 liberated from its body1 if it does not mingle at the first onset with the infinite1 will develop itself there gradually1 will choose itself a substance and1 no longer trammelled by space and time1 will go on for ever growing4 ,it is very possible that our loftiest wishes of to-day will become the law of our future development4 ,it is very possible that our best thoughts will welcome us on the farther shore and that the quality of our intellect will determine that of the infinite which crystallizes around it4 ,every hypothesis is permissible and every question1 provided it be addressed to happiness2 for unhappiness is no longer able to answer us4 ,it finds no place in the human imagination that methodically explores the future4 ,and1 whatever be the force that survives us and presides over our existence in the other world1 this existence1 to presume the worst1 could be no less great1 no less happy than that of to-day4 ,it will have no other career than infinity2 and infinity is nothing if it be not felicity4 ,in any case1 it seems fairly certain that we spend in this world the only narrow1 grudging1 obscure and sorrowful moment of our destiny4 #g ,we have said that the peculiar sorrow of the mind is the sorrow of not knowing or not understanding1 which includes the sorrow of being powerless2 for he who knows the supreme causes1 being no longer paralysed by matter1 becomes one with them and acts with them2 and he who understands ends by approving1 or else the universe would be a mistake1 which is not possible1 an infinite mistake being inconceivable4 ,i do not believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined4 ,the only one sorrow which1 at first thought1 might seem admissible--and which1 in any case1 could be but ephemeral--would arise from the sight of the pain and misery remaining on the earth which we have left4 ,but this sorrow1 after all1 would be but one aspect and an insignificant phase of the sorrow of being powerless and of not understanding4 ,as for the latter1 though it is not only beyond the domain of our intelligence1 but even at an insuperable distance from our imagination1 we may say that it would be intolerable only if it were without hope4 ,but1 for that1 the universe would have to abandon any attempt to understand itself1 or else admit within itself an object that remained for ever foreign to it4 ,either the mind will not perceive its limits and1 consequently1 will not suffer from them1 or else it will overstep them as it perceives them2 for how could the universe have parts eternally condemned to form no part of itself and of its knowledge8 ,hence we cannot understand that the torture of not understanding1 supposing it to exist for a moment1 should not end by absorption in the state of infinity1 which1 if it be not happiness as we comprehend it1 could be naught but an indifference higher and purer than joy4 ,v ,,the ,,two ,,aspects ,,of ,,infinity #a ,let us turn our thoughts towards it4 ,the problem goes beyond humanity and embraces all things4 ,it is possible1 ,i think1 to view infinity under two distinct aspects4 ,let us contemplate the first of them4 ,we are plunged in a universe that has no limits in space or time4 ,it can neither go forward nor go back4 ,it has no origin4 ,it never began1 nor will it ever end4 ,the myriads of years behind it are even as the myriads which it has yet to unroll4 ,from all time it has been at the boundless centre of the days4 ,it could have no aim1 for1 if it had one1 it would have attained it in the infinity of the years that lie behind us2 besides1 that aim would lie outside itself and1 if anything lay outside it1 infinity would be bounded by that thing and would cease to be infinity4 ,it is not making for anywhere1 for it would have arrived there2 consequently1 all that the worlds within its pale1 all that we ourselves do can have no influence upon it4 ,all that it will do it has done4 ,all that it has not done remains undone because it can never do it4 ,if it have no mind1 it will never have one4 ,if it have one1 that mind has been at its climax from all time and will remain there1 changeless and immovable4 ,it is as young as it has ever been and as old as it will ever be4 ,it has made in the past all the efforts and all the trials which it will make in the future2 and1 as all the possible combinations have been exhausted since what we cannot even call the beginning1 it does not seem as if that which has not taken place in the eternity that stretches before our birth can happen in the eternity that will follow our death4 ,if it have not become conscious1 it will never become conscious2 if it know not what it wishes1 it will continue in ignorance1 hopelessly1 knowing all or knowing nothing and remaining as near its end as its beginning4 ,this is the gloomiest thought to which man can attain4 ,so far1 ,i do not think that its depths have been sufficiently sounded4 ,if it were really irrefutable--and some may contend that it is--if it actually contained the last word of the great riddle1 it would be almost impossible to live in its shadow4 ,naught save the certainty that our conceptions of time and space are illusive and absurd can lighten the abyss wherein our last hope would perish4 #b ,the universe thus conceived would be1 if not intelligible1 at least admissible by our reason2 but in that universe float billions of worlds limited by space and time4 ,they are born1 they die and they are born again4 ,they form part of the whole2 and we see1 therefore1 that parts of that which has neither beginning nor end themselves begin and end4 ,we1 in fact1 know only those parts2 and they are of a number so infinite that in our eyes they fill all infinity4 ,that which is going nowhere teems with that which appears to be going somewhere4 ,that which has always known what it wants1 or will never learn1 seems to be eternally experimenting with more or less ill-success4 ,at what goal is it aiming1 since it is already there8 ,everything that we discover in that which could not possibly have an object looks as though it were pursuing one with inconceivable ardour2 and the mind that animates what we see1 in that which should know everything and possess itself1 seems to know nothing and to seek itself without intermission4 ,thus all that is apparent to our senses in infinity gainsays that which our reason is compelled to ascribe to it4 ,according as we fathom it1 we come to understand how deep is our want of understanding2 and1 the more we strive to penetrate the two incomprehensible problems that stand face to face1 the more they contradict each other4 #c ,what will become of us amid all this confusion8 ,shall we leave the finite wherein we dwell to be swallowed up in this or the other infinite8 ,in other words1 shall we end by absorption in the infinite which our reason conceives1 or shall we remain eternally in that which our eyes behold1 that is to say1 in numberless changing and ephemeral worlds8 ,shall we never leave those worlds which seem doomed to die and to be reborn eternally1 to enter at last into that which1 from all eternity1 can neither have been born nor have died and which exists without either future or past8 ,shall we one day escape1 with all that surrounds us1 from this unhappy speculation1 to find our way at last into peace1 wisdom1 changeless and boundless consciousness1 or into hopeless unconsciousness8 ,shall we have the fate which our senses foretell1 or that which our intelligence demands8 ,or are both senses and intelligence only illusions1 puny implements1 vain weapons of an hour1 which were never intended to examine or defy the universe8 ,if there really be a contradiction1 is it wise to accept it and to deem impossible that which we do not understand1 seeing that we understand almost nothing8 ,is truth not at an immeasurable distance from these inconsistencies which appear to us enormous and irreducible and which1 doubtless1 are of no more importance than the rain that falls upon the sea8 #d ,but1 even to our poor understanding of to-day1 the discrepancy between the infinity conceived by our reason and that perceived by our senses is perhaps more apparent than real4 ,when we say that1 in a universe that has existed since all eternity1 every experiment1 every possible combination has been made2 when we declare that there is no chance that what has not taken place in the immeasurable past can take place in the immeasurable future1 our imagination perhaps attributes to the infinity of time a preponderance which it cannot possess4 ,in truth1 all that infinity contains must be as infinite as the time at its disposal2 and the chances1 encounters and combinations that lie therein have not been exhausted in the eternity that has gone before us any more than they could be in the eternity that will come after us4 ,the infinity of time is no vaster than the infinity of the substance of the universe4 ,events1 forces1 chances1 causes1 effects1 phenomena1 fusions1 combinations1 coincidences1 harmonies1 unions1 possibilities1 lives are represented in it by countless numbers that entirely fill a bottomless and vergeless abyss where they have been shaken together from what we call the beginning of the world that had no beginning and where they will be stirred up until the end of a world that will have no end4 ,there is1 therefore1 no climax1 no changelessness1 no immovability4 ,it is probable that the universe is seeking and finding itself every day1 that it has not become entirely conscious and does not yet know what it wants4 ,it is possible that its ideal is still veiled by the shadow of its immensity2 it is also possible that experiments and chances are following one upon the other in unimaginable worlds1 compared wherewith all those which we see on starry nights are no more than a pinch of gold-dust in the ocean depths4 ,lastly1 if either be true1 it is also true that we ourselves1 or what remains of us--it matters not--will profit one day by those experiments and those chances4 ,that which has not yet happened may suddenly supervene2 and the next state1 with the supreme wisdom which will recognize and be able to establish that state1 is perhaps ready to arise from the clash of circumstances4 ,it would not be at all astonishing if the consciousness of the universe1 in the endeavour to form itself1 had not yet encountered the combination of necessary chances and if human thought were actually supporting one of those decisive chances4 ,here there is a hope4 ,small as man and his brain may appear1 they have exactly the value of the most enormous forces that they are able to conceive1 since there is neither great nor small in the immensurable2 and1 if our body equalled the dimensions of all the worlds which our eyes can see1 it would have exactly the same weight and the same importance1 as compared with the universe1 that it has to-day4 ,the mind alone perhaps occupies in infinity a space which comparisons do not reduce to nothing4 #e ,for the rest1 if everything must be said1 at the cost of constantly and shamelessly contradicting one's self in the dark1 and to return to the first supposition1 the idea of possible progress1 it is extremely probable that this again is one of those childish disorders of our brain which prevent us from seeing the thing that is4 ,it is quite as probable1 as we have seen above1 that there never was1 that there never will be any progress1 because there could not be a goal4 ,at most there may occur a few ephemeral combinations which1 to our poor eyes1 will seem happier or more beautiful than the others4 ,even so we think gold more beautiful than the mud in the street1 or the flower in a splendid garden happier than the stone at the bottom of a drain2 but all this1 obviously1 is of no importance1 has no corresponding reality and proves nothing in particular4 ,the more we reflect upon it1 the more pronounced is the infirmity of our intelligence which cannot succeed in reconciling the idea of progress and even the idea of experiment with the supreme idea of infinity4 ,although nature has been incessantly and indefatigably repeating herself before our eyes for thousands of years1 reproducing the same trees and the same animals1 we cannot contrive to understand why the universe indefinitely recommences experiments that have been made billions of times4 ,it is inevitable that1 in the innumerable combinations that have been and are being made in termless time and boundless space1 there have been and still are millions of planets and consequently millions of human races exactly similar to our own1 side by side with myriads of others more or less different from it4 ,let us not say to ourselves that it would require an unimaginable concourse of circumstances to reproduce a globe like unto our earth in every respect4 ,we must remember that we are in the infinite and that this unimaginable concourse must necessarily take place in the innumerousness which we are unable to imagine4 ,though it need billions and billions of cases for two features to coincide1 those billions and billions will encumber infinity no more than would a single case4 ,place an infinite number of worlds in an infinite number of infinitely diverse circumstances3 there will always be an infinite number for which those circumstances will be alike2 if not1 we should be setting bounds to our idea of the universe1 which would forthwith become more incomprehensible still4 ,from the moment that we insist sufficiently upon that thought1 we necessarily arrive at these conclusions4 ,if they have not struck us hitherto1 it is because we never go to the farthest point of our imagination4 ,now the farthest point of our imagination is but the beginning of reality and gives us only a small1 purely human universe1 which1 vast as it may seem1 dances in the real universe like an apple on the sea4 ,i repeat1 if we do not admit that thousands of worlds1 similar in all points to our own1 in spite of the billions of adverse chances1 have always existed and still exist to-day1 we are sapping the foundations of the only possible conception of the universe or of infinity4 #f ,now how is it that those millions of exactly similar human races1 which from all time suffer what we have suffered and are still suffering1 profit us nothing1 that all their experiences and all their schools have had no influence upon our first efforts and that everything has to be done again and begun again incessantly8 ,as we see1 the two theories balance each other4 ,it is well to acquire by degrees the habit of understanding nothing4 ,there remains to us the faculty of choosing the less gloomy of the two or persuading ourselves that the mists of the other exist only in our brain4 ,as that strange visionary1 ,william ,blake1 said3 8,nor is it possible to thought ,a greater than itself to know40 ,let us add that it is not possible for it to know anything other than itself4 ,what we do not know would be enough to create the world afresh2 and what we do know cannot add one moment to the life of a fly4 ,who can tell but that our chief mistake lies in believing that an intelligence1 were it an intelligence thousands of times as great as ours1 directs the universe8 ,it may be a force of quite another nature1 a force that differs as widely from that on which our brain prides itself as electricity1 for instance1 differs from the wind that blows4 ,that is why it is fairly probable that our mind1 however powerful it become1 will always grope in mystery4 ,if it be certain that everything in us must also be in nature1 because everything comes to us from her1 if the mind and all the logic which it has placed at the culminating point of our being direct or seem to direct all the actions of our life1 it by no means follows that there is not in the universe a force greatly superior to thought1 a force having no imaginable relation to the mind1 a force which animates and governs all things according to other laws and of which nothing is found in us but almost imperceptible traces1 even as almost imperceptible traces of thought are all that can be found in plants and minerals4 ,in any case1 there is nothing here to make us lose courage4 ,it is necessarily the human illusion of evil1 ugliness1 uselessness and impossibility that is to blame4 ,we must wait not for the universe to be transformed1 but for our intelligence to expand or to take part in the other force2 and we must maintain our confidence in a world which knows nothing of our conceptions of purpose and progress1 because it doubtless has ideas whereof we have no idea1 a world1 moreover1 which could scarcely wish itself harm4 #g 8,these are but vain speculations10 it will be said4 8,what matters1 after all1 the idea which we form of those things which belong to the unknowable1 seeing that the unknowable1 were we a thousand times as intelligent as we are1 is closed to us for ever and that the idea which we form of it will never have any value80 ,that is true2 but there are degrees in our ignorance of the unknowable2 and each of these degrees marks a triumph of the intelligence4 ,to estimate more and more completely the extent of what it does not know is all that man's knowledge can hope for4 ,our idea of the unknowable was and always will be valueless1 ,i admit2 but it nevertheless is and will remain the most important idea of mankind4 ,all our morality1 all that is in the highest degree noble and profound in our existence has always been based on this idea devoid of real value4 ,to-day1 as yesterday1 even though it be possible to recognize more clearly that it is too incomplete and relative ever to have any actual value1 it is necessary to carry it as high and as far as we can4 ,it alone creates the only atmosphere wherein the best part of ourselves can live4 ,yes1 it is the unknowable into which we shall not enter2 but that is no reason for saying to ourselves3 8,i am closing all the doors and all the windows2 henceforth1 ,i shall interest myself only in things which my everyday intelligence can compass4 ,those things alone have the right to influence my actions and my thoughts40 ,where should we arrive at that rate8 ,what things can my intelligence compass8 ,is there a thing in this world that can be separated from the inconceivable8 ,since there is no means of eliminating that inconceivable1 it is reasonable and salutary to make the best of it and therefore to imagine it as stupendously vast as we are able4 ,the gravest reproach that can be brought against the positive religions and notably against ,christianity is that they have too often1 if not in theory1 at least in practice1 encouraged such a narrowing of the mystery of the universe4 ,by broadening it1 we broaden the space wherein our mind will move4 ,it is for us what we make it3 let us then form it of all that we can reach on the horizon of ourselves4 ,as for the mystery itself1 we shall1 of-course1 never reach it2 but we have a much greater chance of approaching it by facing it and going whither it draws us than by turning our backs upon it and returning to that place where we well know that it no longer is4 ,not by diminishing our thoughts shall we diminish the distance that separates us from the ultimate truths2 but by enlarging them as much as possible we are sure of deceiving ourselves as little as possible4 ,and the loftier our idea of the infinite1 the more buoyant and the purer becomes the spiritual atmosphere wherein we live and the wider and deeper the horizon against which our thoughts and feelings stand out1 the horizon which is all their life and which they inspire4 8,perpetually to construct ideas requiring the utmost stretch of our faculties10 wrote ,herbert ,spencer1 8and perpetually to find that such ideas must be abandoned as futile imaginations1 may realize to us more fully than any other course the greatness of that which we vainly strive to grasp4444 ,by continually seeking to know and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing1 we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as the ,unknowable40 #h ,whatever the ultimate truth may be1 whether we admit the abstract1 absolute and perfect infinity--the changeless1 immovable infinity which has attained perfection and which knows everything1 to which our reason tends--or whether we prefer that offered to us by the evidence1 undeniable here below1 of our senses--the infinity which seeks itself1 which is still evolving and not yet established--it behoves us above all to foresee in it our fate1 which1 for that matter1 must1 in either case1 end by absorption in that very infinity4 ,,vi ,,our ,,fate ,,in ,,those ,,infinities #a ,the first infinity1 the ideal infinity1 corresponds most nearly with the requirements of our reason1 which does not justify us in giving it the preference4 ,it is impossible for us to foresee what we shall become in it1 because it seems to exclude any becoming4 ,it therefore but remains for us to address ourselves to the second1 to that which we see and imagine in time and space4 ,furthermore1 it is possible that it may precede the other4 ,however absolute our conception of the universe1 we have seen that we can always admit that what has not taken place in the eternity before us will happen in the eternity after us and that there is nothing save an untold number of chances to prevent the universe from acquiring in the end that perfect consciousness which will establish it at its zenith4 #b ,behold us1 then1 in the infinity of those worlds1 the stellar infinity1 the infinity of the heavens1 which assuredly veils other things from our eyes1 but which cannot be a total illusion4 ,it seems to us to be peopled only with objects--planets1 suns1 stars1 nebul1 atoms1 imponderous fluids--which move1 unite and separate1 repel and attract one another1 which shrink and expand1 are for ever shifting and never arrive1 which measure space in that which has no confines and number the hours in that which has no term4 ,in a word1 we are in an infinity that seems to have almost the same character and the same habits as that power in the midst of which we breathe and which1 upon our earth1 we call nature or life4 ,what will be our fate in that infinity8 ,we are asking ourselves no idle question1 even if we should unite with it after losing all consciousness1 all notion of the ego1 even if we should exist there as no more than a little nameless substance--soul or matter1 we cannot tell--suspended in the equally nameless abyss that replaces time and space4 ,it is not an idle question1 for it concerns the history of the worlds or of the universe2 and this history1 far more than that of our petty existence1 is our own great history1 in which perhaps something of ourselves or something incomparably better and vaster will end by meeting us again some day4 #c ,shall we be unhappy there8 ,it is hardly reassuring when we consider the ways of nature and remember that we form part of a universe that has not yet gathered its wisdom4 ,we have seen1 it is true1 that good and bad fortune exist only in so far as regards our body and that1 when we have lost the organ of suffering1 we shall not meet any of the earthly sorrows again4 ,but our anxiety does not end here2 and will not our mind1 lingering upon our erstwhile sorrows1 drifting derelict from world to world1 unknown to itself in an unknowable that seeks itself hopelessly1 will not our mind know here the frightful torture of which we have already spoken and which is doubtless the last that imagination can touch with its wing8 ,finally1 if there were nothing left of our body and our mind1 there would still remain the matter and the spirit 7or1 at least1 the obviously single force to which we give that double name7 which composed them and whose fate must be no more indifferent to us than our own fate2 for1 let us repeat1 from our death onwards1 the adventure of the universe becomes our own adventure4 ,let us not1 therefore1 say to ourselves3 8,what can it matter8 ,we shall not be there40 ,we shall be there always1 because everything will be there4 #d ,and will this everything wherein we shall be included1 in a world ever seeking itself1 continue a prey to new and perpetual and perhaps painful experiences8 ,since the part that we were was unhappy1 why should the part that we shall be enjoy a better fortune8 ,who can assure us that yonder the unending combinations and endeavours will not be more sorrowful1 more stupid and more baneful than those which we are leaving2 and how shall we explain that these have come about after so many millions of others which ought to have opened the eyes of the genius of infinity8 ,it is idle to persuade ourselves1 as ,hindu wisdom would1 that our sorrows are but illusions and appearances3 it is none the less true that they make us very really unhappy4 ,has the universe elsewhere a more complete consciousness1 a more just and serene understanding than on this earth and in the worlds which we discern8 ,and1 if it be true that it has somewhere attained that better understanding1 why does the mind that presides over the destinies of our earth not profit by it8 ,is no communication possible between worlds which must have been born of the same idea and which lie in its depths8 ,what would be the mystery of that isolation8 ,are we to believe that the earth marks the farthest stage and the most successful experiment8 ,what1 then1 can the mind of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled1 to have come only to this8 ,but1 on the other hand1 that darkness and those barriers which can have come only from itself1 since they could have arisen no elsewhere1 have they the power to stay its progress8 ,who then could have set those insoluble problems to infinity and from what more remote and profound region than itself could they have issued8 ,some one1 after all1 must know the answer2 and1 as behind infinity there can be none that is not infinity itself1 it is impossible to imagine a malignant will in a will that leaves no point around it which is not wholly covered4 ,or are the experiments begun in the stars continued mechanically1 by virtue of the force acquired1 without regard to their uselessness and their pitiful consequences1 according to the custom of nature1 who knows nothing of our parsimony and squanders the suns in space as she does the seed on earth1 knowing that nothing can be lost8 ,or1 again1 is the whole question of our peace and happiness1 like that of the fate of the worlds1 reduced to knowing whether or not the infinity of endeavours and combinations be equal to that of eternity8 ,or1 lastly1 to come to what is most likely1 is it we who deceive ourselves1 who know nothing1 who see nothing and who consider imperfect that which is perhaps faultless1 we who are but an infinitesimal fragment of the intelligence which we judge by the aid of the little shreds of understanding which it has vouchsafed to lend us8 #e ,how could we reply1 how could our thoughts and glances penetrate the infinite and the invisible1 we who do not understand nor even see the thing by which we see and which is the source of all our thoughts8 ,in fact1 as has been very justly observed1 man does not see light itself4 ,he sees only matter1 or rather the small part of the great worlds which he knows by the name of matter1 touched by light4 ,he does not perceive the immense rays that cross the heavens save at the moment when they are stopped by an object akin to those with which his eye is familiar upon this earth3 were it otherwise1 the whole space filled with innumerable suns and boundless forces1 instead of being an abyss of absolute darkness1 absorbing and extinguishing shafts of light that shoot across it from every side1 would be but a monstrous and unbearable ocean of flashes4 ,and1 if we do not see the light1 at least we think we know a few of its rays or its reflections2 but we are absolutely ignorant of that which is unquestionably the essential law of the universe1 namely1 gravitation4 ,what is that force1 the most powerful of all and the least visible1 imperceptible to our senses1 without form1 without colour1 without temperature1 without substance1 without savour and without voice1 but so awful that it suspends and moves in space all the worlds which we see and all those which we shall never know8 ,more rapid1 more subtle1 more incorporeal than thought1 it wields such sway over everything that exists1 from the infinitely great to the infinitely small1 that there is not a grain of sand upon our earth nor a drop of blood in our veins but are penetrated1 wrought upon and quickened by it until they act at every moment upon the farthest planet of the last solar system that we struggle to imagine beyond the bounds of our imagination4 ,shakspeare's famous lines1 8,there are more things in heaven and earth1 ,horatio1 ,than are dreamt of in your philosophy10 have long since become utterly inadequate4 ,there are no longer more things than our philosophy can dream of or imagine3 there is none but things which it cannot dream of1 there is nothing but the unimaginable2 and1 if we do not even see the light1 which is the one thing that we believed we saw1 it may be said that there is nothing all around us but the invisible4 ,we move in the illusion of seeing and knowing that which is strictly indispensable to our little lives4 ,as for all the rest1 which is well-nigh everything1 our organs not only debar us from reaching1 seeing or feeling it1 but even restrain us from suspecting what it is1 just as they would prevent us from understanding it if an intelligence of a different order were to bethink itself of revealing or explaining it to us4 ,the number and volume of those mysteries is as boundless as the universe itself4 ,if mankind were one day to draw near to those which to-day it deems the greatest and the most inaccessible1 such as the origin and the aim of life1 it would at once behold rising up behind them1 like eternal mountains1 others quite as great and quite as unfathomable2 and so on1 without end4 ,in relation to that which it would have to know in order to hold the key to the riddle of this world1 it would always find itself at the same point of central ignorance4 ,it would be just the same if we possessed an intelligence several million times greater and more penetrating than ours4 ,all that its miraculously increased power could discover would encounter limits no less impassable than at present4 ,all is boundless in that which has no bounds4 ,we shall be the eternal prisoners of the universe4 ,it is therefore impossible for us to appreciate in any degree whatsoever1 in the smallest conceivable respect1 the present state of the universe and to say1 as long as we are men1 whether it follows a straight line or describes an immense circle1 whether it is growing wiser or madder1 whether it is advancing towards the eternity which has no end or retracing its steps towards that which had no beginning4 ,our sole privilege within our tiny confines is to struggle towards that which appears to us the best1 and to remain heroically persuaded that no part of what we do within those confines can ever be wholly lost4 #f ,but let not all these insoluble questions drive us towards fear4 ,from the point of view of our future beyond the grave1 it is in no way necessary that we should have an answer to everything4 ,whether the universe have already found its consciousness1 whether it find it one day or seek it everlastingly1 it could not exist for the purpose of being unhappy and of suffering1 either in its entirety1 or in any one of its parts2 and it matters little if the latter be invisible or incommensurable1 considering that the smallest is as great as the greatest in what has neither limit nor measure4 ,to torture a point is the same thing as to torture the worlds2 and1 if it torture the worlds1 it is its own substance that it tortures4 ,its very fate1 wherein we have our part1 protects us2 for we are simply morsels of infinity4 ,it is inseparable from us as we are inseparable from it4 ,its breath is our breath1 its aim is our aim and we bear within us all its mysteries4 ,we participate in it everywhere4 ,there is naught in us that escapes it2 there is naught in it but belongs to us4 ,it extends us1 fills us1 traverses us on every side4 ,in space and time and in that which1 beyond space and time1 has as yet no name1 we represent it and summarize it completely1 with all its properties and all its future2 and1 if its immensity terrifies us1 we are as terrifying as itself4 ,if1 therefore1 we had to suffer in it1 our sufferings could be but ephemeral2 and nothing matters that is not eternal4 ,it is possible1 although somewhat incomprehensible1 that parts should err and go astray2 but it is impossible that sorrow should be one of its lasting and necessary laws2 for it would have brought that law to bear against itself4 ,in like manner1 the universe is and must be its own law and its sole master3 if not1 the law or the master whom it must obey would be the universe alone2 and the centre of a word which we pronounce without being able to grasp its scope would be simply shifted4 ,if it be unhappy1 that means that it wills its own unhappiness2 if it will its unhappiness1 it is mad2 and1 if it appear to us mad1 that means that our reason works contrary to everything and to the only laws possible1 seeing that they are eternal1 or1 to speak more humbly1 that it judges what it wholly fails to understand4 #g ,everything1 therefore1 must end1 or perhaps already be1 if not in a state of happiness1 at least in a state exempt from all suffering1 all anxiety1 all lasting unhappiness2 and what1 after all1 is our happiness upon this earth1 if it be not the absence of sorrow1 anxiety and unhappiness8 ,but it is childish to talk of happiness and unhappiness where infinity is in question4 ,the idea which we entertain of happiness and unhappiness is something so special1 so human1 so fragile that it does not exceed our stature and falls to dust as soon as we take it out of its little sphere4 ,it proceeds entirely from a few contingencies of our nerves1 which are made to appreciate very slight happenings1 but which could as easily have felt everything the opposite way and taken pleasure in that which is now pain4 ,i do not know if my readers remember the striking passage in which ,sir ,william ,crookes shows how well-nigh all that we consider as essential laws of nature would be falsified in the eyes of a microscopic man1 while forces of which we are almost wholly ignorant1 such as surface-tension1 capillarity or the ,brownian movements1 would preponderate4 ,walking on a cabbage-leaf1 for instance1 after the dew had fallen1 and seeing it studded with huge crystal globes1 he would infer that water was a solid body which assumes spherical form and rises in the air4 ,at no great distance1 he might come to a pond1 when he would observe that this same matter1 instead of rising upwards1 now seems to slope downwards in a vast curve from the brink4 ,if he managed1 with the aid of his friends1 to throw into the water one of those enormous steel bars which we call needles1 he would see that it made a sort of concave trough on the surface and floated tranquilly4 ,from these experiments and a thousand others which he might make1 he would naturally deduce theories diametrically opposed to those upon which our entire existence is based4 ,it would be the same if the changes were made in the direction of time1 to take an hypothesis imagined by the philosopher ,william ,james3 8,suppose we were able1 within the length of a second1 to note distinctly ten thousand events instead of barely ten1 as now2 if our life were then destined to hold the same number of impressions it might be a thousand times as short4 ,we should live less than a month1 and personally know nothing of the change of seasons4 ,if born in winter1 we should believe in summer as we now believe in the heats of the carboniferous era4 ,the motions of organic beings would be so slow to our senses as to be inferred1 not seen4 ,the sun would stand still in the sky1 the moon be almost free from change and so on4 ,but now reverse the hypothesis1 and suppose a being to get only one thousandth part of the sensations that we get in a given time1 and consequently to live a thousand times as long4 ,winters and summers will be to him like quarters of an hour4 ,mushrooms and the swifter growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear instantaneous creations2 annual shrubs will rise and fall from the earth like restlessly boiling water-springs2 the motions of animals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and cannon-balls2 the sun will scour through the sky like a meteor1 leaving a fiery trail behind him1 etc4 ,that such imaginary cases 7barring the superhuman longevity7 may be realized somewhere in the animal kingdom1 it would be rash to deny40 #h ,we believe that we see nothing hanging over us but catastrophes1 deaths1 torments and disasters2 we shiver at the mere thought of the great interplanetary spaces1 with their intense cold and their awful and gloomy solitudes2 and we imagine that the worlds that revolve through space are as unhappy as ourselves because they freeze1 or disaggregate1 or clash together1 or are consumed in unutterable flames4 ,we infer from this that the genius of the universe is an abominable tyrant1 seized with a monstrous madness1 delighting only in the torture of itself and all that it contains4 ,to millions of stars1 each many thousand times larger than our sun1 to nebul whose nature and dimensions no figure1 no word in our language is able to express1 we attribute our momentary sensibility1 the little ephemeral play of our nerves2 and we are convinced that life there must be impossible or appalling1 because we should feel too hot or too cold4 ,it were much wiser to say to ourselves that it would need but a trifle1 a few papill more or less to our skin1 the slightest modification of our eyes and ears1 to turn the temperature of space1 its silence and its darkness into a delicious springtime1 an incomparable music1 a divine light4 8,nothing is too wonderful to be true10 said ,faraday4 ,it were much more reasonable to persuade ourselves that the catastrophes which our imagination sees there are life itself1 the joy and one or other of those immense festivals of mind and matter in which death1 thrusting aside at last our two enemies1 time and space1 will soon permit us to take part4 ,each world dissolving1 extinguished1 crumbling1 burnt or colliding with another world and pulverized means the commencement of a magnificent experiment1 the dawn of a marvellous hope and perhaps an unexpected happiness drawn direct from the inexhaustible unknown4 ,what though they freeze or flame1 collect or disperse1 pursue or flee one another3 mind and matter1 no longer united by the same pitiful hazard that joined them in us1 must rejoice at all that happens2 for all is but birth and rebirth1 a departure into an unknown filled with wonderful promises and maybe an anticipation of some ineffable event4 ,,vii ,,conclusions #a ,in order to retain a livelier image of all this and a more exact memory1 let us give a last glance at the road which we have travelled4 ,we have put aside1 for reasons which we have stated1 the religious solutions and total annihilation4 ,annihilation is physically impossible2 the religious solutions occupy a citadel without doors or windows into which human reason does not penetrate4 ,next comes the theory of the survival of our ego1 released from its body1 but retaining a full and unimpaired consciousness of its identity4 ,we have seen that this theory1 strictly defined1 has very little likelihood and is not greatly to be desired1 although1 with the surrender of the body1 the source of all our ills1 it seems less to be feared than our actual existence4 ,on the other hand1 as soon as we try to extend or to exalt it1 so that it may appear less barbarous or less crude1 we come back to the theory of a cosmic consciousness or of a modified consciousness1 which1 together with that of survival without any sort of consciousness1 closes the field to every supposition and exhausts every forecast of the imagination4 ,survival without any sort of consciousness would be tantamount for us to annihilation pure and simple1 and consequently would be no more dreadful than the latter1 that is to say1 than a sleep with no dreams and with no awakening4 ,the theory is unquestionably more acceptable than that of annihilation2 but it prejudges very rashly the questions of a cosmic consciousness and of a modified consciousness4 #b ,before replying to these1 we must choose our universe1 for we have the choice4 ,it is a matter of knowing how we propose to look at infinity4 ,is it the moveless1 immovable infinity1 from all eternity perfect and at its zenith1 and the purposeless universe that our reason will conceive at the farthest point of our thoughts8 ,do we believe that1 at our death1 the illusion of movement and progress which we see from the depths of this life will suddenly fade away8 ,if so1 it is inevitable that1 at our last breath1 we shall be absorbed in what1 for lack of a better term1 we call the cosmic consciousness4 ,are we1 on the other hand1 persuaded that death will reveal to us that the illusion lies not in our senses but in our reason and that1 in a world incontestably alive1 despite the eternity preceding our birth1 all the experiments have not been made1 that is to say that movement and evolution continue and will never and nowhere stop8 ,in that case1 we must at once accept the theory of a modified or progressive consciousness4 ,the two aspects1 after all1 are equally unintelligible but defensible2 and1 although really irreconcilable1 they agree on one point1 namely1 that unending pain and unredeemed misery are alike excluded from them both for ever4 #c ,the theory of a modified consciousness does not necessitate the loss of the tiny consciousness acquired in our body2 but it makes it almost negligible1 flings1 drowns and dissolves it in infinity4 ,it is of course impossible to support this theory with satisfactory proofs2 but it is not easy to shatter it like the others4 ,were it permissible to speak of likeness to truth in this connexion1 when our only truth is that we do not see the truth1 it is the most likely of the interim theories and gives a magnificent opening for the most plausible1 varied and alluring dreams4 ,will our ego1 our soul1 our spirit1 or whatever we call that which will survive us in order to continue us as we are1 will it find again1 on leaving the body1 the innumerable lives which it must have lived since the thousands of years that had no beginning8 ,will it continue to increase by assimilating all that it meets in infinity during the thousands of years that will have no end8 ,will it linger for a time around our earth1 leading1 in regions invisible to our eyes1 an ever higher and happier existence1 as the theosophists and spiritualists contend8 ,will it move towards other planetary systems1 will it emigrate to other worlds1 whose existence is not even suspected by our senses8 ,everything seems permissible in this great dream1 save that which might arrest its flight4 ,nevertheless1 so soon as it ventures too far in the ultramondane spaces1 it crashes into strange obstacles and breaks its wings against them4 ,if we admit that our ego does not remain eternally what it was at the moment of our death1 we can no longer imagine that1 at a given second1 it stops1 ceases to expand and rise1 attains its perfection and its fulness1 to become no more than a sort of motionless wreck suspended in eternity and a finished thing in the midst of that which will never finish4 ,that would indeed be the only real death and the more fearful inasmuch as it would set a limit to an unparalleled life and intelligence1 beside which those which we possess here below would not even weigh what a drop of water weighs when compared with the ocean1 or a grain of sand when placed in the scales with a mountain-chain4 ,in a word1 either we believe that our evolution will one day stop1 implying thereby an incomprehensible end and a sort of inconceivable death2 or we admit that it has no limit1 whereupon1 being infinite1 it assumes all the properties of infinity and must needs be lost in infinity and united with it4 ,this1 withal1 is the latter end of theosophy1 spiritualism and all the religions in which man1 in his ultimate happiness1 is absorbed by ,god4 ,and this again is an incomprehensible end1 but at least it is life4 ,and then1 taking one incomprehensibility with another1 after doing all that is humanly possible to understand one or the other riddle1 let us by preference leap into the greatest and therefore the most probable1 the one which contains all the others and after which nothing more remains4 ,if not1 the questions reappear at every stage and the answers are always conflicting4 ,and questions and answers lead us to the same inevitable abyss4 ,as we shall have to face it sooner or later1 why not make for it straightway8 ,all that happens to us in the interval interests us beyond a doubt1 but does not detain us1 because it is not eternal4 #d ,behold us then before the mystery of the cosmic consciousness4 ,although we are incapable of understanding the act of an infinity that would have to fold itself up in order to feel itself and consequently to define itself and separate itself from other things1 this is not an adequate reason for declaring it impossible2 for1 if we were to reject all the realities and impossibilities that we do not understand1 there would be nothing left for us to live upon4 ,if this consciousness exist under the form which we have conceived1 it is evident that we shall be there and take part in it4 ,if there be a consciousness somewhere1 or some thing that takes the place of consciousness1 we shall be in that consciousness or that thing1 because we cannot be elsewhere4 ,and as this consciousness or this thing cannot be unhappy1 because it is impossible that infinity should exist for its own unhappiness1 neither shall we be unhappy when we are in it4 ,lastly1 if the infinity into which we shall be projected have no sort of consciousness nor anything that stands for it1 the reason will be that consciousness1 or anything that might replace it1 is not indispensable to eternal happiness4 #e ,that1 ,i think1 is about as much as we may be permitted to declare1 for the moment1 to the spirit anxiously facing the unfathomable space wherein death will shortly hurl it4 ,it can still hope to find there the fulfilment of its dreams2 it will perhaps find less to dread than it had feared4 ,if it prefer to remain expectant and to accept none of the theories which ,i have expounded to the best of my power and without prejudice1 it nevertheless seems difficult not to welcome1 at least1 this great assurance which we find at the bottom of every one of them1 namely1 that infinity could not be malevolent1 seeing that1 if it eternally tortured the least among us1 it would be torturing something which it cannot tear out of itself and that it would therefore be torturing its very self4 ,i have added nothing to what was already known4 ,i have simply tried to separate what may be true from that which is assuredly not true2 for1 if we do not know where truth is1 we nevertheless learn to know where it is not4 ,and perhaps1 in seeking for that undiscoverable truth1 we shall have accustomed our eyes to pierce the terror of the last hour by looking it full in the face4 ,many things1 beyond a doubt1 remain to be said which others will say with greater force and brilliancy4 ,but we need have no hope that any one will utter on this earth the word that shall put an end to our uncertainties4 ,it is very probable1 on the contrary1 that no one in this world1 nor perhaps in the next1 will discover the great secret of the universe4 ,and1 if we reflect upon this even for a moment1 it is most fortunate that it should be so4 ,we have not only to resign ourselves to living in the incomprehensible1 but to rejoice that we cannot go out of it4 ,if there were no more insoluble questions nor impenetrable riddles1 infinity would not be infinite2 and then we should have for ever to curse the fate that placed us in a universe proportionate to our intelligence4 ,all that exists would be but a gateless prison1 an irreparable evil and mistake4 ,the unknown and the unknowable are necessary and will perhaps always be necessary to our happiness4 ,in any case1 ,i would not wish my worst enemy1 were his understanding a thousandfold loftier and a thousandfold mightier than mine1 to be condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which he had surprised an essential secret and of which1 as a man1 he had begun to grasp the least tittle4 ,,viii ,,the ,,knowledge ,,of ,,the ,,future #a ,what is known as premonition or precognition leads us to mysterious regions1 where stands1 half-emerging from an intolerable darkness1 the gravest problem that can thrill mankind1 the knowledge of the future4 ,the latest1 the best and the most complete study devoted to it is1 ,i believe1 that published by ,m4 ,ernest ,bozzano under the title ,des ,phnomnes prmonitoires4 ,availing himself of excellent earlier work1 notably that of ,mrs4 ,sidgwick and ,myers1#i and adding the result of his own researches1 the author collects some thousand cases of precognition1 of which he discusses one hundred and sixty1 leaving the great majority of the others on one side1 not because they are negligible1 but because he does not wish to exceed too flagrantly the normal limits of a monograph4 ,he begins by carefully eliminating all the episodes which1 though apparently premonitory1 may be explained by self-suggestion 7as in the case1 for instance1 where some one smitten with a disease still latent seems to foresee this disease and the death which will be its conclusion71 by telepathy 7when a sensitive is aware beforehand of the arrival of a person or a letter71 or lastly by clairvoyance 7when a man dreams of the spot where he will find something which he has mislaid1 or an uncommon plant1 or an insect sought for in vain1 or the unknown place which he will visit at some later date74 ,in all these cases1 we have not1 properly speaking1 to do with a pure future1 but rather with a present that is not yet known4 ,thus reduced and stripped of all foreign influences and intrusions1 the number of instances wherein there is a really clear and incontestable perception of a fragment of the future remains large enough1 contrary to what is generally believed1 to make it impossible for us to speak of extraordinary accidents or wonderful coincidences4 ,there must be a limit to everything1 even to distrust1 even to the most extensive incredulity1 otherwise all historical research and a good deal of scientific research would become decidedly impracticable4 ,and this remark applies as much to the nature of the incidents related as to the actual authenticity of the narratives4 ,we can contest or suspect any story whatever1 any written proof1 any evidence2 but thenceforward we must abandon all certainty or knowledge that is not acquired by means of mathematical operations or laboratory experiments1 that is to say1 three-fourths of the human phenomena that chiefly interest us4 ,observe that the records collected by the investigators of the ,s4 ,p4 ,r41 like those discussed by ,m4 ,bozzano1 are all told at first hand1 and that those stories of which the narrators were not the protagonists or the direct witnesses have been ruthlessly rejected4 ,furthermore1 some of these narratives are necessarily of the nature of medical observations2 as for the others1 if we attentively examine the character of those who have related them and the circumstances which corroborate them1 we shall agree that it is more just and more reasonable to believe in them than to look upon every man who has an extraordinary experience as being a priori a liar1 the victim of an hallucination1 or a wag4 #b ,there could be no question of giving here even a brief analysis of the most striking cases4 ,it would require a hundred pages and would alter the whole nature of this essay1 which1 to keep within its proper dimensions1 must take it for granted that most of the materials which it examines are familiar4 ,i therefore refer the reader who may wish to form an opinion for himself to the easily-accessible sources which ,i have mentioned above4 ,it will suffice to give an accurate idea of the gravity of the problem to any one who has not time or opportunity to consult the original documents if ,i sum up in a few words some of these pioneer adventures1 selected among those which seem least open to dispute2 for it goes without saying that all have not the same value1 otherwise the question would be settled4 ,there are some which1 while exceedingly striking at first sight and offering every guarantee that could be desired as to authenticity1 nevertheless do not imply a real knowledge of the future and can be interpreted in another manner4 ,i give one1 to serve as an instance2 it is reported by ,dr4 ,alphonse ,teste in his ,manuel pratique du magnetisme animal4 ,on the #hth of ,may1 ,dr4 ,teste magnetizes ,mme4 ,hortense in the presence of her husband4 ,she is no sooner asleep than she announces that she has been pregnant for a fortnight1 that she will not go her full time1 that 8she will take fright at something10 that she will have a fall and that the result will be a miscarriage4 ,she adds that1 on the #abth of ,may1 after having had a fright1 she will have a fainting-fit which will last for eight minutes2 and she then describes1 hour by hour1 the course of her malady1 which will end in three days' loss of reason1 from which she will recover4 ,on awaking1 she retains no recollection of anything that has passed2 it is kept from her2 and ,dr4 ,teste communicates his notes to ,dr4 ,amde ,latour4 ,on the #abth of ,may1 he calls on ,m4 and ,mme4 1 finds them at table and puts ,mme4 to sleep again1 whereupon she repeats word for word what she told him four days before4 ,they wake her up4 ,the dangerous hour is drawing near4 ,they take every imaginable precaution and even close the shutters4 ,mme4 1 made uneasy by these extraordinary measures which she is quite unable to understand1 asks what they are going to do to her4 ,half-past three o'clock strikes4 ,mme4 rises from the sofa on which they have made her sit and wants to leave the room4 ,the doctor and her husband try to prevent her4 8,but what is the matter with you80 she asks4 8,i simply must go out40 8,no1 madame1 you shall not3 ,i speak in the interest of your health40 8,well1 then1 doctor10 she replies1 with a smile1 8if it is in the interest of my health1 that is all the more reason why you should let me go out40 ,the excuse is a plausible one and even irresistible2 but the husband1 wishing to carry the struggle against destiny to the last1 declares that he will accompany his wife4 ,the doctor remains alone1 feeling somewhat anxious1 in spite of the rather farcical turn which the incident has taken4 ,suddenly1 a piercing shriek is heard and the noise of a body falling4 ,he runs out and finds ,mme4 wild with fright and apparently dying in her husband's arms4 ,at the moment when1 leaving him for an instant1 she opened the door of the place where she was going1 a rat1 the first seen there for twenty years1 rushed at her and gave her so great a start that she fell flat on her back4 ,and all the rest of the prediction was fulfilled to the letter1 hour by hour and detail by detail4 #c ,to make it quite clear in what spirit ,i am undertaking this study and to remove at the beginning any suspicion of blind or systematic credulity1 ,i am anxious1 before going any further1 to say that ,i fully realize that cases of this kind by no means carry conviction4 ,it is quite possible that everything happened in the subconscious imagination of the subject and that she herself created1 by self-suggestion her illness1 her fright1 her fall and her miscarriage and adapted herself to most of the circumstances which she had foretold in her secondary state4 ,the appearance of the rat at the fatal moment is the only thing that would suggest a precise and disquieting vision of an inevitable future event4 ,unfortunately1 we are not told that the rat was perceived by other witnesses than the patient1 so that there is nothing to prove that it also was not imaginary4 ,i have therefore quoted this inadequate instance only because it represents fairly well the general aspect and the indecisive value of many similar cases1 and enables us to note once and for all the objections which can be raised and the precautions which we should take before entering these suspicious and obscure regions4 ,we now come to an infinitely more significant and less questionable case related by ,dr4 ,joseph ,maxwell1 the learned and very scrupulous author of ,les ,phnomnes psychiques1 a work which has been translated into ,english under the title of ,metapsychical ,phenomena4 ,it concerns a vision which was described to him eight days before the event and which he told to many people before it was accomplished4 ,a sensitive perceived in a crystal the following scene3 a large steamer1 flying a flag of three horizontal bars1 black1 white and red1 and bearing the name ,leutschland1 was sailing in mid-ocean2 the boat was suddenly enveloped in smoke2 a great number of sailors1 passengers and men in uniform rushed to the upper deck2 and the boat went down4 ,eight days afterwards1 the newspapers announced the accident to the ,deutschland1 whose boiler had burst1 obliging the steamboat to stand to4 ,the evidence of a man like ,dr4 ,maxwell1 especially when we have to do with a so-to-speak personal incident1 possesses an importance on which it is needless to insist4 ,we have here1 therefore1 several days beforehand1 the very clear prevision of an event which1 moreover1 in no way concerns the percipient3 a curious detail1 but one which is not uncommon in these cases4 ,the mistake in reading ,leutschland for ,deutschland1 which would have been quite natural in real life1 adds a note of probability and authenticity to the phenomenon4 ,as for the final act1 the foundering of the vessel in the place of a simple heaving to1 we must see in this1 as ,dr4 ,j4 ,w4 ,pickering and ,w4 ,a4 ,sadgrove suggest1 8the subconscious dramatization of a subliminal inference of the percipient40 ,such dramatizations1 moreover1 are instinctive and almost general in this class of visions4 ,if this were an isolated case1 it would certainly not be right to attach decisive importance to it2 8but10 ,dr4 ,maxwell observes1 8the same sensitive has given me other curious instances2 and these cases1 compared with others which ,i myself have observed or with those of which ,i have received first-hand accounts1 render the hypothesis of coincidence very improbable1 though they do not absolutely exclude it40#aj #d ,another and perhaps more convincing case1 more strictly investigated and established1 a case which clearly does not admit of explanation by the theory of coincidence1 worthy of all respect though this theory be1 is that related by ,m4 ,thodore ,flournoy1 professor of science at the university of ,geneva1 in his remarkable work1 ,esprits et mdiums4 ,professor ,flournoy is known to be one of the most learned and critical exponents of the new science of metapsychics4 ,he even carries his fondness for natural explanations and his repugnance to admit the intervention of superhuman powers to a point whither it is often difficult to follow him4 ,i will give the narrative as briefly as possible4 ,it will be found in full on pp4 #cdh to #cfb of his masterly book4 ,in ,august #ahhc1 a certain ,mme4 ,buscarlet1 whom he knew personally1 returned to ,geneva after spending three years with the ,moratief family at ,kazan as governess to two girls4 ,she continued to correspond with the family and also with a ,mme4 ,nitchinof1 who kept a school at ,kazan to which ,mlles4 ,moratief1 ,mme4 ,buscarlet's former pupils1 went after her departure4 ,on the night of the #ith of ,december 7,o4,s47 of the same year1 ,mme4 ,buscarlet had a dream which she described the following morning in a letter to ,mme4 ,moratief1 dated #aj ,december4 ,she wrote1 to quote her own words3 8,you and ,i were on a country-road when a carriage passed in front of us and a voice from inside called to us4 ,when we came up to the carriage1 we saw ,mlle4 ,olga ,popoi lying across it1 clothed in white1 wearing a bonnet trimmed with yellow ribbons4 ,she said to you3 8#8,i called you to tell you that ,mme4 ,nitchinof will leave the school on the #agth4' 8,the carriage then drove on40 ,a week later and three days before the letter reached ,kazan1 the event foreseen in the dream was fulfilled in a tragic fashion4 ,mme4 ,nitchinof died on the #afth of an infectious disease2 and on the #agth her body was carried out of the school for fear of infection4 ,it is well to add that both ,mme4 ,buscarlet's letter and the replies which came from ,russia were communicated to ,professor ,flournoy and bear the post-mark dates4 ,such premonitory dreams are frequent2 but it does not often happen that circumstances and especially the existence of a document dated previous to their fulfilment give them such incontestable authenticity4 ,we may remark in passing the odd character of this premonition4 ,the date is fixed precisely2 but only a veiled and mysterious allusion 7the woman lying across the carriage and cloaked in white7 is made to the essential part of the prediction1 the illness and death4 ,was there a coincidence1 a vision of the future pure and simple1 or a vision of the future suggested by telepathic influence8 ,the theory of coincidence can be defended1 if need be1 here as every elsewhere1 but would be very extraordinary in this case4 ,as for telepathic influence1 we should have to suppose that1 on the #ith of ,december1 a week before her death1 ,mme4 ,nitchinof had in her subconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she transmitted this presentiment across some thousands of miles1 from ,kazan to ,geneva1 to a person with whom she had never been intimate4 ,it is very complex but possible1 for telepathy often has these disconcerting ways4 ,if this were so1 the case would be one of latent illness or even of self-suggestion2 and the preexistence of the future1 without being entirely disproved1 would be less clearly established4 #e ,let us pass to other examples4 ,i quote from an excellent article on the importance of precognitions1 by ,messrs4 ,pickering and ,sadgrove1 which appeared in the ,annales des sciences psychiques for #a ,february #aijh1 the summary of an experiment by ,mrs4 ,a4 ,w4 ,verrall told in full detail in ,vol4 ,,xx4 of the ,proceedings4 ,mrs4 ,verrall is a celebrated 8automatist02 and her 8cross-correspondences0 occupy a whole volume of the ,proceedings4 ,her good faith1 her sincerity1 her fairness and her scientific precision are above suspicion2 and she is one of the most active and respected members of the ,society for ,psychical ,research4 ,on the #aath of ,may #aija1 at #aa4aj ,p4,m41 ,mrs4 ,verrall wrote as follows3 8,do not hurry date this hoc est quod volui--tandem4 4 ,a4 ,w4 ,v4 4 calx pedibus inhaerens difficultatem superavit4 magnopere adiuvas persectando semper4 ,nomen inscribere iam possum--sic1 en tibi60#aa ,after the writing comes a humorous drawing representing a bird walking4 ,that same night1 as there were said to be 8uncanny happenings0 in some rooms near the ,london ,law ,courts1 the watchers arranged to sit through the night in the empty chambers4 ,precautions were taken to prevent intrusion and powdered chalk was spread on the floor of the two smaller rooms1 8to trace anybody or anything that might come or go40 ,mrs4 ,verrall knew nothing of the matter4 ,the phenomena began at #ab4dc ,a4,m4 and ended at #b4i ,a4,m4 ,the watchers noticed marks on the powdered chalk4 ,on examination it was seen that the marks were 8clearly defined bird's footprints in the middle of the floor1 three in the left-hand room and five in the right-hand room40 ,the marks were identical and exactly #b inches in width2 they might be compared to the footprints of a bird about the size of a turkey4 ,the footprints were observed at #b4cj ,a4,m42 the unexplained phenomena had begun at #ab4dc that same morning4 ,the words about 8chalk sticking to the feet0 are a singularly appropriate comment on the events2 but the remarkable point is that ,mrs4 ,verrall wrote what we have said one hour and thirty-three minutes before the events took place4 ,the persons who watched in the two rooms were questioned by ,mr4 ,j4 ,g4 ,piddington1 a member of the council of the ,s4 ,p4 ,r41 and declared that they had not any expectation of what they discovered4 ,i need hardly add that ,mrs4 ,verrall had never heard anything about the happenings in the haunted house and that the watchers were completely ignorant of ,mrs4 ,verrall's existence4 ,here then is a very curious prediction of an event1 insignificant in itself1 which is to happen1 in a house unknown to the one who foretells it1 to people whom she does not know either4 ,the spiritualists1 who score in this case1 not without some reason1 will have it that a spirit1 in order to prove its existence and its intelligence1 organized this little scene in which the future1 the present and the past are all mixed up together4 ,are they right8 ,or is ,mrs4 ,verrall's subconsciousness roaming like this1 at random1 in the future8 ,it is certain that the problem has seldom appeared under a more baffling aspect4 #f ,we will now take another premonitory dream1 strictly controlled by the committee of the ,s4 ,p4 ,r4#ab ,early in ,september #ahic1 ,annette1 wife of ,walter ,jones1 tobacconist1 of ,old ,gravel ,lane1 ,east ,london1 had her little boy ill4 ,one night she dreamt that she saw a cart drive up and stop near where she was4 ,it contained three coffins1 8two white and one blue4 ,one white coffin was bigger than the other2 and the blue was the biggest of the three40 ,the driver took out the bigger white coffin and left it at the mother's feet1 driving off with the others4 ,mrs4 ,jones told her dream to her husband and to a neighbour1 laying particular stress on the curious circumstance that one of the coffins was blue4 ,on the #ajth of ,september1 a friend of ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,jones was confined of a boy1 who died on the #bith of the same month4 ,their own little boy died on the following ,monday1 the #bnd of ,october1 being then sixteen months old4 ,it was decided to bury the two children on the same day4 ,on the morning of the day chosen1 the parish priest informed ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,jones that another child had died in the neighbourhood and that its body would be brought into church along with the two others4 ,mrs4 ,jones remarked to her husband3 8,if the coffin is blue1 then my dream will come true4 ,for the two other coffins were white40 ,the third coffin was brought2 it was blue4 ,it remains to be observed that the dimensions of the coffins corresponded exactly with the dream premonitions1 the smallest being that of the child who died first1 the next that of the little ,jones boy1 who was sixteen months old1 and the largest1 the blue one1 that of a boy six years of age4 ,let us take1 more or less at random1 another case from the inexhaustible ,proceedings4#ac ,the report is written by ,mr4 ,alfred ,cooper and attested by the ,duchess of ,hamilton1 the ,duke of ,manchester and another gentleman to whom the duchess related the incident before the fulfilment of the prophetic vision3 8,a fortnight before the death of the late ,earl of ,l10 says ,mr4 ,cooper1 8in #ahhb1 ,i called upon the ,duke of ,hamilton1 in ,hill ,street1 to see him professionally4 ,after ,i had finished seeing him1 we went into the drawing-room1 where the duchess was1 and the duke said to me3 8#8,oh1 ,cooper1 how is the earl8' 8,the duchess said1 #8,what earl8' and1 on my answering1 #8,lord ,l1' she replied3 8#8,that is very odd4 ,i have had a most extraordinary vision4 ,i went to bed1 but1 after being in bed a short time1 ,i was not exactly asleep1 but thought ,i saw a scene as if from a play before me4 ,the actors in it were ,lord ,l1 in a chair1 as if in a fit1 with a man standing over him with a red beard4 ,he was by the side of a bath1 over which bath a red lamp was distinctly shown4' 8,i then said3 8#8,i am attending ,lord ,l at present2 there is very little the matter with him2 he is not going to die2 he will be all right very soon4' 8,well1 he got better for a week and was nearly well1 but1 at the end of six or seven days after this1 ,i was called to see him suddenly4 ,he had inflammation of both lungs4 8,i called in ,sir ,william ,jenner1 but in six days he was a dead man4 ,there were two male nurses attending on him2 one had been taken ill4 ,but1 when ,i saw the other1 the dream of the duchess was exactly represented4 ,he was standing near a bath over the earl and1 strange to say1 his beard was red4 ,there was the bath with the red lamp over it2 and this brought the story to my mind4 8,the vision seen by the duchess was told two weeks before the death of ,lord ,l4 ,it is a most remarkable thing40 #g ,but it is impossible to find space for the many instances related4 ,as ,i have said1 there are hundreds of them1 making their tracks in every direction across the plains of the future4 ,those which ,i have quoted give a sufficient idea of the predominating tone and the general aspect of this sort of story4 ,it is nevertheless right to add that many of them are not at all tragic and that premonition opens its mysterious and capricious vistas of the future in connection with the most diverse and insignificant events4 ,it cares but little for the human value of the occurrence and puts the vision of a number in a lottery on the same plane as the most dramatic death4 ,the roads by which it reaches us are also unexpected and varied4 ,often1 as in the examples quoted1 it comes to us in a dream4 ,sometimes1 it is an auditory or visual hallucination which seizes upon us while awake2 sometimes1 an indefinable but clear and irresistible presentiment1 a shapeless but powerful obsession1 an absurd but imperative certainty which rises from the depths of our inner darkness1 where perhaps lies hidden the final answer to every riddle4 ,one might illustrate each of these manifestations with numerous examples4 ,i will mention only a few1 selected not among the most striking or the most attractive1 but among those which have been most strictly tested and investigated4#ad ,a young peasant from the neighbourhood of ,ghent1 two months before the drawing for the conscription1 announces to all and sundry that he will draw number #ij from the urn4 ,on entering the presence of the district-commissioner in charge1 he asks if number #ij is still in4 ,the answer is yes4 8,well1 then1 ,i shall have it60 ,and to the general amazement1 he does draw number #ij4 ,questioned as to the manner in which he acquired this strange certainty1 he declares that1 two months ago1 just after he had gone to bed1 he saw a huge1 indescribable form appear in a corner of his room with the number #ij standing out plainly in the middle1 in figures the size of a man's hand4 ,he sat up in bed and shut and opened his eyes to persuade himself that he was not dreaming4 ,the apparition remained in the same place1 distinctly and undeniably4 ,professor ,georges ,hulin1 of the university of ,ghent1 and ,m4 ,jules van ,dooren1 the district-commissioner1 who report the incident1 mention three other similar and equally striking cases witnessed by ,m4 van ,dooren during his term of office4 ,i am the less inclined to doubt their declaration inasmuch as ,i am personally acquainted with them and know that their statements1 as regards the objective reality of the facts1 are so to speak equivalent to a legal deposition4 ,m4 ,bozzano mentions some previsions which are quite as remarkable in connection with the gaming-tables at ,monte ,carlo4 ,i repeat1 ,i am aware that1 in the case of these occurrences and those which resemble them1 it is possible once again to invoke the theory of coincidence4 ,it will be contended that there are probably a thousand predictions of this kind which are never talked about1 because they were not fulfilled1 whereas1 if one of them is accomplished1 which is bound by the law of probabilities to happen some day or other1 the astonishment is general and free rein is given to the imagination4 ,this is true2 nevertheless1 it is well to enquire whether these predictions are as frequent as is loosely stated4 ,in the matter of those which concern the conscription-drawings1 for instance1 ,i have had the opportunity of interrogating more than one constant witness of these little dramas of fate2 and all admitted that1 on the whole1 they are much rarer than one would believe4 ,next1 we must not forget that there can be no question here of scientific proofs4 ,we are in the midst of a slippery and nebulous region1 where we would not dare to risk a step if we were not allowing ourselves to be guided by our feelings rather than by certainties which we are not forbidden to hope for1 but which are not yet in sight4 #h ,we will abridge our subject still further1 referring readers who wish to know the details to the originals1 lest we should never have done2 or rather1 instead of attempting an abridgment1 which would still be too long1 so plentiful are the materials1 we will content ourselves with enumerating a few instances1 all taken from ,bozzano's ,des ,phnomnes prmonitoires4 ,we read there of a funeral procession seen on a high-road several days before it actually passed that way2 or1 again1 of a young mechanic who1 in the beginning of ,november1 dreamt that he came home at half-past five in the afternoon and saw his sister's little girl run over by a tram-car while crossing the street in front of the house4 ,he told his dream1 in great distress2 and1 on the #acth of the same month1 in spite of all the precautions that had been taken1 the child was run over by the tram-car and killed at the hour named4 ,we find the ghost1 the phantom animal or the mysterious noise which1 in certain families1 is the traditional herald of a death or of an imminent catastrophe4 ,we find the celebrated vision which the painter ,segantini had thirteen days before his decease1 every detail of which remained in his mind and was represented in his last picture1 ,death4 ,we find the ,messina disaster clearly foreseen1 twice over1 by a little girl who perished under the ruins of the ill-fated city2 and we read of a dream which1 three months before the ,french invasion of ,russia1 foretold to ,countess ,toutschkoff that her husband would fall at ,borodino1 a village so little known at the time that those interested in the dream looked in vain for its name on the maps4 ,until now we have spoken only of the spontaneous manifestations of the future4 ,it would seem as though coming events1 gathered in front of our lives1 bear with crushing weight upon the uncertain and deceptive dike of the present1 which is no longer able to contain them4 ,they ooze through1 they seek a crevice by which to reach us4 ,but side by side with these passive1 independent and intractable premonitions1 which are but so many vagrant and furtive emanations of the unknown1 are others which do yield to entreaty1 allow themselves to be directed into channels1 are more or less obedient to our orders and will sometimes reply to the questions which we put to them4 ,they come from the same inaccessible reservoir1 are no less mysterious1 but yet appear a little more human than the others2 and1 without drugging ourselves with puerile or dangerous illusions1 we may be permitted to hope that1 if we follow them and study them attentively1 they will one day open to us the hidden paths joining that which is no more to that which is not yet4 ,it is true that here1 where we must needs mix with the somewhat lawless world of professional mystery-mongers1 we have to increase our caution and walk with measured steps on very suspicious ground4 ,but even in this region of pitfalls we glean a certain number of facts that cannot reasonably be contested4 ,it will be enough to recall1 for instance1 the symbolic premonitions of the famous 8seeress of ,prevorst10 ,frau ,hauffe1 whose prophetic spirit was awakened by soap-bubbles1 crystals and mirrors2#ae the clairvoyant who1 eighteen years before the event1 foretold the death of a girl by the hand of her rival in #aijg1 in a written prophecy which was presented to the court by the mother of the murdered girl2#af the gipsy who1 also in writing1 foretold all the events in ,miss ,isabel ,arundel's life1 including the name of her husband1 ,burton the famous explorer2#ag the sealed letter addressed to ,m4 ,morin1 vice-president of the ,socit du mesmerisme1 describing the most unexpected circumstances of a death that occurred a month later2#ah the famous 8,marmontel prediction10 obtained by ,mrs4 ,verrall's cross-correspondences1 which gives a vision1 two months and a half before their accomplishment1 of the most insignificant actions of a traveller in an hotel bedroom2#ai and many others4 #i ,i will not review the various and very often grotesque methods of interrogating the future that are most frequently practised to-day3 cards1 palmistry1 crystal-gazing1 fortune-telling by means of coffee-grounds1 tea-leaves1 magnetic needles and white of egg1 graphology1 astrology and the rest4 ,these methods1 as ,i have said before1 are worth exactly what the medium who employs them is worth4 ,they have no other object than to arouse the medium's subconsciousness and to bring it into relation with that of the person questioning him4 ,as a matter of fact1 all these purely empirical processes are but so many1 often puerile forms of self-manifestation adopted by the undeniable gift which is known as intuition1 clairvoyance or1 in certain cases1 psychometry4 ,i have written at length1 in my volume entitled ,the ,unknown ,guest1 of this last faculty and need not linger over it now4 ,all that we have still to do is to consider it for a moment in its relations with the foretelling of the future4 ,a large number of investigations1 notably those conducted by ,m4 ,duchatel and ,dr4 ,osty1 show that1 in psychometry1 the notion of time1 as ,dr4 ,joseph ,maxwell observes1 is very loose1 that is to say1 the past1 present and future nearly always overlap4 ,most of the clairvoyant or psychometric subjects1 when they are honest1 do not know1 8do not feel10 as ,m4 ,duchatel very ably remarks1 8what the future is4 ,they do not distinguish it from the other tenses2 and consequently they succeed in being prophets1 but unconscious prophets40 ,in a word--and this is a very important indication from the point of view of the probable coexistence of the three tenses--it appears that they see that which is not yet with the same clearness and on the same plane as that which is no more1 but are incapable of separating the two visions and picking out the future which alone interests us4 ,for a still stronger reason1 it is impossible for them to state dates with precision4 ,nevertheless1 the fact remains that1 when we take the trouble to sift their evidence and have the patience to await the realization of certain events which are sometimes not due for a long time to come1 the future is fairly often perceived by some of these strange soothsayers4 ,there are psychometers1 however1 and notably ,mme4 ,m1 ,dr4 ,osty's favourite medium1 who never confuse the future and the past4 ,mme4 ,m places her visions in time according to the position which they occupy in space4 ,thus she sees the future in front of her1 the past behind her and the present beside her4 ,but1 notwithstanding these distinctly-graded visions1 she also is incapable of naming her dates exactly2 in fact1 her mistakes in this respect are so general that ,dr4 ,osty looks upon it as a pure chronological coincidence when a prediction is realized at the moment foretold4 ,we should also observe that1 in psychometry1 only those events can be perceived which relate directly to the individual communicating with the percipient1 for it is not so much the percipient that sees into us as we that read in our own subconsciousness1 which is momentarily lighted by his presence4 ,we must not therefore ask him for predictions of a general character1 whether1 for instance1 there will be a war in the spring1 an epidemic in the summer or an earthquake in the autumn4 ,the moment the question concerns events1 however important1 with which we are not intimately connected1 he is bound to answer1 as do all the genuine mediums1 that he sees nothing4 ,the area of his vision being thus limited1 does he really discover the future in it8 ,after three years of numerous1 cautious and systematic experiments with some twenty mediums1 ,dr4 ,osty categorically declares that he does3 8,all the incidents10 he says1 8which filled these three years of my life1 whether wished for by me or not1 or even absolutely contrary to the ordinary routine of my life1 had always been foretold to me1 not all by each of the clairvoyant subjects1 but all by one or other of them4 ,as ,i have been practising these tests continually1 it seems to me that the experience of three years wholly devoted to this object should give some weight to my opinion on the subject of predictions40 ,this is incontestable2 and the sincerity1 scientific conscientiousness and high intellectual value of ,dr4 ,osty's fine work inspire one with the utmost confidence4 ,unfortunately1 he contents himself with quoting too summarily a few facts and does not1 as he ought1 give us in extenso the details of his experiments1 controls and tests4 ,i am well aware that this would be a thankless and wearisome task1 necessitating a large volume which a mass of puerile incidents and inevitable repetitions would make almost unreadable4 ,moreover1 it could scarcely help taking the form of an intimate and indiscreet autobiography2 and it is not easy to bring one's self to make this sort of public confession4 ,but it has to be done4 ,in a science which is only in its early stages1 it is not enough to show the object attained and to state one's conviction2 it is necessary above all to describe every path that has been taken and1 by an incessant and infinite accumulation of investigated and attested facts1 to enable every one to draw his own conclusions4 ,this has been the cumbrous and laborious method of the ,proceedings for over thirty years2 and it is the only right one4 ,discussion is possible and fruitful only at that price4 ,in all these extra-conscious matters1 we have not yet reached the stage of definite deductions1 we are still bringing up materials to the scene of operations4 ,once more1 ,i know that1 in these cases1 as ,i have seen for myself1 the really convincing facts are necessarily very rare2 indeed1 no elsewhere do we meet with the same difficulty4 ,if the medium tells you1 for instance1 as ,mme4 ,m seems easily to do1 how you will employ your day from the morning onwards1 if she sees you in a certain house in a certain street meeting this or that person1 it is impossible to say that1 on the one hand1 she is not already reading your as yet unconscious plans or intentions1 or that1 on the other hand1 by doing what she has foreseen1 you are not obeying a suggestion against which you could not fight except by violently doing the opposite to what it demands of you1 which again would be a case of inverted suggestion4 ,none therefore would have any value save predictions of unlikely happenings1 clearly defined and outside the sphere of the person interested4 ,as ,dr4 ,osty says3 8,the ideal prognostication would obviously be that of an event so rare1 so sudden and unexpected1 implying such a change in one's mode of life that the theory of coincidence could not decently be put forward4 ,but1 as everybody is not1 in the peaceful course of his existence1 threatened by such an absolutely convincing event1 the clairvoyant cannot always reveal to the person experimenting--and reveal for a more or less approximate date--one of those incidents whose accomplishment would carry irresistible conviction40 ,in any case1 the question of psychometric prognostications calls for further enquiry1 though it is easy even at the present day to foresee the results4 #aj ,let us now return to our spontaneous premonitions1 in which the future comes to seek us of its own accord and1 so to speak1 to challenge us at home4 ,i know from personal experience that when we embark upon these disconcerting matters the first impression is scarcely favourable4 ,we are very much inclined to laugh1 to treat as wearisome tales1 as hysterical hallucinations1 as ingenious or interested fictions most of the incidents that give too violent a shock to the narrow and limited idea which we have of our human life4 ,to smile1 to reject everything beforehand and to pass by with averted head1 as was done1 remember1 in the time of ,galvani and in the early days of hypnotism1 is much more easy and seems more respectable and prudent than to stop1 admit and examine4 ,nevertheless we must not forget that it is to some who did not smile so lightly that we owe the best part of the marvels from whose heights we are preparing to smile in our turn4 ,for the rest1 ,i grant that1 thus presented1 hastily and summarily1 without the details that throw light upon them and the proofs that support them1 the incidents in question do not show to advantage and1 inasmuch as they are isolated and sparingly chosen1 lose all the weight and authority derived from the compact and imposing mass whence they are arbitrarily detached4 ,as ,i said above1 nearly a thousand cases have been collected1 representing probably not the tenth part of those which a more active and general search might bring together4 ,the number is evidently of importance and denotes the enormous pressure of the mystery2 but1 if there were only half a dozen genuine cases--and ,dr4 ,maxwell's1 ,professor ,flournoy's1 ,mrs4 ,verrall's1 the ,marmontel1 ,jones and ,hamilton cases and some others are undoubtedly genuine--they would be enough to show that1 under the erroneous idea which we form of the past and the present1 a new verity is living and moving1 eager to come to light4 ,the efforts of that verity1 ,i need hardly say1 display a very different sort of force after we have actually and attentively read those hundreds of extraordinary stories which1 without appearing to do so1 strike to the very roots of history4 ,we soon lose all inclination to doubt4 ,we penetrate into another world and come to a stop all out of countenance4 ,we no longer know where we stand2 before and after overlap and mingle4 ,we no longer distinguish the insidious and factitious but indispensable line which separates the years that have gone by from the years that are to come4 ,we clutch at the hours and days of the past and present to reassure ourselves1 to fasten on to some certainty1 to convince ourselves that we are still in our right place in this life where that which is not yet seems as substantial1 as real1 as positive1 as powerful as that which is no more4 ,we discover with uneasiness that time1 on which we based our whole existence1 itself no longer exists4 ,it is no longer the swiftest of our gods1 known to us only by its flight across all things2 it alters its position no more than space1 of which it is doubtless but the incomprehensible reflex4 ,it reigns in the centre of every event2 and every event is fixed in its centre2 and all that comes and all that goes passes from end to end of our little life without moving by a hair's breadth around its motionless pivot4 ,it is entitled to but one of the thousand names which we have been wont to lavish upon its power1 a power that seemed to us manifold and innumerable3 8yesterday10 8recently10 8formerly10 8erewhile10 8after10 8before10 8to-morrow10 8soon10 8never10 8later0 fall like childish masks1 whereas 8to-day0 and 8always0 completely cover with their united shadows the idea which we form in the end of a duration which has no subdivisions1 no breaks and no stages1 but is pulseless1 motionless and boundless4 #aa ,many are the theories which men have imagined in their attempts to explain the working of the strange phenomenon2 and many others might be imagined4 ,as we have seen1 self-suggestion and telepathy explain certain cases which concern events already in existence but still latent and perceived before the knowledge of them can reach us by the normal process of the senses or the intelligence4 ,but1 even by extending these two theories to their uttermost point and positively abusing their accommodating elasticity1 we do not succeed in illumining by their aid more than a rather restricted portion of the vast undiscovered land4 ,we must therefore look for something else4 ,the first theory which suggests itself and which on the surface seems rather attractive is that of spiritualism1 which may be extended until it is scarcely distinguishable from the theosophical theory and other religious suppositions4 ,it assumes the survival of spirits1 the existence of discarnate or other superior and more mysterious entities which surround us1 interest themselves in our fate1 guide our thoughts and our actions and1 above all1 know the future4 ,it is1 as we recognize when we speak of ghosts and haunted houses1 a very acceptable theory2 and any one to whom it appeals can adopt it without doing violence to his intelligence4 ,but we must confess that it seems less necessary and perhaps even less clearly proved in this region than in that4 ,it starts by begging the question3 without the intervention of discarnate beings1 the spiritualists tell us1 it is impossible to explain the majority of the premonitory phenomena2 therefore we must admit the existence of these discarnate beings4 ,let us grant it for the moment1 for to beg the question1 which is merely an indefensible trick of the superficial logic of our brain1 does not necessarily condemn a theory and neither takes away from nor adds to the reality of things4 ,besides1 as we shall insist later1 the intervention or non-intervention of the spirits is not the point at issue2 and the crux of the mystery does not lie there4 ,what must interest us is far less the paths or intermediaries by which prophetic warnings reach us than the actual existence of the future in the present4 ,it is true--to do complete justice to neospiritualism--that its position offers certain advantages from the point of view of the almost inconceivable problem of the preexistence of the future4 ,it can evade or divert some of the consequences of that problem4 ,the spirits1 it declares1 do not necessarily see the future as a whole1 as a total past or present1 motionless and immovable1 but they know infinitely better than we do the numberless causes that determine any agent1 so that1 finding themselves at the luminous source of those causes1 they have no difficulty in foreseeing their effects4 ,they are1 with respect to the incidents still in process of formation1 in the position of an astronomer who foretells1 within a second1 all the phases of an eclipse in which a savage sees nothing but an unprecedented catastrophe which he attributes to the anger of his idols of straw or clay4 ,it is indeed possible that this acquaintance with a greater number of causes explains certain predictions2 but there are plenty of others which presume a knowledge of so many causes1 causes so remote and so profound1 that this knowledge is hardly to be distinguished from a knowledge of the future pure and simple4 ,in any case1 beyond certain limits1 the preexistence of causes seems no clearer than that of effects4 ,nevertheless it must be admitted that the spiritualists gain a slight advantage here4 ,they believe that they gain another when they say or might say that it is still possible that the spirits stimulate us to realize the events which they foretell without themselves clearly perceiving them in the future4 ,after announcing1 for instance1 that on a certain day we shall go to a certain place and do a certain thing1 they urge us irresistibly to proceed to the spot named and there to perform the act prophesied4 ,but this theory1 like those of self-suggestion and telepathy1 would explain only a few phenomena and would leave in obscurity all those cases1 infinitely more numerous because they make up almost the whole of our future1 in which either chance intervenes or some event in no way dependent upon our will or the spirit's1 unless indeed we suppose that the latter possesses an omniscience and an omnipotence which takes us back to the original mysteries of the problem4 ,besides1 in the gloomy regions of precognition1 it is almost always a matter of anticipating a misfortune and very rarely1 if ever1 of meeting with a pleasure or a joy4 ,we should therefore have to admit that the spirits which drag me to the fatal place and compel me to do the act that will have tragic consequences are deliberately hostile to me and find diversion only in the spectacle of my suffering4 ,what could those spirits be1 from what evil world would they arise and how should we explain why our brothers and friends of yesterday1 after passing through the august and peace-bestowing gates of death1 suddenly become transformed into crafty and malevolent demons8 ,can the great spiritual kingdom1 in which all passions born of the flesh should be stilled1 be but a dismal abode of hatred1 spite and envy8 ,it will perhaps be said that they lead us into misfortune in order to purify us2 but this brings us to religious theories which it is not our intention to examine4 #ab ,the only attempt at an explanation that can hold its own with spiritualism has recourse once again to the mysterious powers of our subconsciousness4 ,we must needs recognize that1 if the future exists to-day1 already such as it will be when it becomes for us the present and the past1 the intervention of discarnate minds or of any other spiritual entity adrift from another sphere is of little avail4 ,we can picture an infinite spirit indifferently contemplating the past and future in their coexistence2 we can imagine a whole hierarchy of intermediate intelligences taking a more or less extensive part in the contemplation and transmitting it to our subconsciousness4 ,but all this is practically nothing more than inconsistent speculation and ingenious dreaming in the dark2 in any case1 it is adventitious1 secondary and provisional4 ,let us keep to the facts as we see them3 an unknown faculty1 buried deep in our being and generally inactive1 perceives1 on rare occasions1 events that have not yet taken place4 ,we possess but one certainty on this subject1 namely1 that the phenomenon actually occurs within ourselves2 it is therefore within ourselves that we must first study it1 without burdening ourselves with suppositions which remove it from its centre and simply shift the mystery4 ,the incomprehensible mystery is the preexistence of the future2 once we admit this--and it seems very difficult to deny--there is no reason to attribute to imaginary intermediaries rather than to ourselves the faculty of descrying certain fragments of that future4 ,we see1 in regard to most of the mediumistic manifestations1 that we possess within ourselves all the unusual forces with which the spiritualists endow discarnate spirits2 and why should it be otherwise as concerns the powers of divination8 ,the explanation taken from the subconsciousness is the most direct1 the simplest1 the nearest1 whereas the other is endlessly circuitous1 complicated and distant4 ,until the spirits testify to their existence in an unanswerable fashion1 there is no advantage in seeking in the grave for the solution of a riddle that appears indeed to lie at the roots of our own life4 #ac ,it is true that this explanation does not explain much2 but the others are just as ineffectual and are open to the same objections4 ,these objections are many and various2 and it is easier to raise them than to reply to them4 ,for instance1 we can ask ourselves why the subconsciousness or the spirits1 seeing that they read the future and are able to announce an impending calamity1 hardly ever give us the one useful and definite indication that would allow us to avoid it4 ,what can be the childish or mysterious reason of this strange reticence8 ,in many cases it is almost criminal2 for instance1 in a case related by ,professor ,hyslop#bj we see the foreboding of the greatest misfortune than can befall a mother germinating1 growing1 sending out shoots1 developing1 like some gluttonous and deadly plant1 to stop short on the verge of the last warning1 the one detail1 insignificant in itself but indispensable1 which would have saved the child4 ,it is the case of a woman who begins by experiencing a vague but powerful impression that a grievous 8burden0 is going to fall upon her family4 ,next month1 this premonitory feeling repeats itself very frequently1 becomes more intense and ends by concentrating itself upon the poor woman's little daughter4 ,each time that she is planning something for the child's future1 she hears a voice saying3 8,she'll never need it40 ,a week before the catastrophe1 a violent smell of fire fills the house4 ,from that time the mother begins to be careful about matches1 seeing that they are in safe places and out of reach4 ,she looks all over the house for them and feels a strong impulse to burn all matches of the kind easily lighted4 ,about an hour before the fatal disaster1 she reaches for a box to destroy it2 but she says to herself that her eldest boy is gone out1 thinks that she may need the matches to light the gas-stove and decides to destroy them as soon as he comes back4 ,she takes the child up to its crib for its morning sleep and1 as she is putting it into the cradle1 she hears the usual mysterious voice whisper in her ear3 8,turn the mattress40 ,but1 being in a great hurry1 she simply says that she will turn the mattress after the child has taken its nap4 ,she then goes downstairs to work4 ,after a while1 she hears the child cry and1 hurrying up to the room1 finds the crib and its bedding on fire and the child so badly burnt that it dies in three hours4 #ad ,before going further and theorizing about this case1 let us once more state the matter precisely4 ,i know that the reader may straightway and quite legitimately deny the value of anecdotes of this kind4 ,he will say that we have to do with a neurotic who has drawn upon her imagination for all the elements that give a dramatic setting to the story and surround with a halo of mystery a sad but commonplace domestic accident4 ,this is quite possible2 and it is perfectly allowable to dismiss the case4 ,but it is none the less true that1 by thus deliberately rejecting everything that does not bear the stamp of mathematical or judicial certainty1 we risk losing1 as we go along1 most of the opportunities or clues which the great riddle of this world offers us in its moments of inattention or graciousness4 ,at the beginning of an enquiry we must know how to content ourselves with little4 ,for the incident in question to be convincing1 previous evidence in writing1 more or less official statements1 would be required1 whereas we have only the declarations of the husband1 a neighbour and a sister4 ,this is insufficient1 ,i agree2 but we must at the same time confess that the circumstances are hardly favourable to obtaining the proofs which we demand4 ,those who receive warnings of this kind either believe in them or do not believe in them4 ,if they believe in them1 it is quite natural that they should not think first of all of the scientific interest of their trouble1 or of putting down in writing and thus authenticating its premonitory symptoms and gradual evolution4 ,if they do not believe in them1 it is no less natural that they should not proceed to speak or take notice of inanities of which they do not recognize the value until after they have lost the opportunity of supplying convincing proofs of them4 ,also1 do not forget that the little story in question is selected from among a hundred others1 which in their turn are equally indecisive1 but which1 repeating the same facts and the same tendencies with a strange persistency1 end by weakening the most inveterate distrust4 #ae ,having said this much1 in order to conciliate or part company with those who have no intention of leaving the terra firma of science1 let us return to the case before us1 which is all the more disquieting inasmuch as we may consider it a sort of prototype of the tragic and almost diabolical reticence which we find in most premonitions4 ,it is probable that under the mattress there was a stray match which the child discovered and struck2 this is the only possible explanation of the catastrophe1 for there was no fire burning on that floor of the house4 ,if the mother had turned the mattress1 she would have seen the match2 and1 on the other hand1 she would certainly have turned the mattress if she had been told that there was a match underneath it4 ,why did the voice that urged her to perform the necessary action not add the one word that was capable of ensuring that action8 ,the problem moreover is equally perturbing and perhaps equally insoluble whether it concern our own subconscious faculties1 or spirits1 or strange intelligences4 ,those who give these warnings must know that they will be useless1 because they manifestly foresee the event as a whole2 but they must also know that one last word1 which they do not pronounce1 would be enough to prevent the misfortune that is already consummated in their prevision4 ,they know it so well that they bring this word to the very edge of the abyss1 hold it suspended there1 almost let it fall and recapture it suddenly at the moment when its weight would have caused happiness and life to rise once more to the surface of the mighty gulf4 ,what then is this mystery8 ,is it incapacity or hostility8 ,if they are incapable1 what is the unexpected and sovran force that interposes between them and us8 ,and1 if they are hostile1 on what1 on whom are they revenging themselves8 ,what can be the secret of those inhuman games1 of those uncanny and cruel diversions on the most slippery and dangerous peaks of fate8 ,why warn1 if they know that the warning will be in vain8 ,of whom are they making sport8 ,is there really an inflexible fatality by virtue of which that which has to be accomplished is accomplished from all eternity8 ,but then why not respect silence1 since all speech is useless8 ,or do they1 in spite of all1 perceive a gleam1 a crevice in the inexorable wall8 ,what hope do they find in it8 ,have they not seen more clearly than ourselves that no deliverance can come through that crevice8 ,one could understand this fluttering and wavering1 all these efforts of theirs1 if they did not know2 but here it is proved that they know everything1 since they foretell exactly that which they might prevent4 ,if we press them with questions1 they answer that there is nothing to be done1 that no human power could avert or thwart the issue4 ,are they mad1 bored1 irritable or accessory to a hideous pleasantry8 ,does our fate depend on the happy solution of some petty enigma or childish conundrum1 even as our salvation1 in most of the so-called revealed religions1 is settled by a blind and stupid cast of the die8 ,is all the liberty that we are granted reduced to the reading of a more or less ingenious riddle8 ,can the great soul of the universe be the soul of a great baby8 #af ,but1 rather than pursue this subject1 let us be just and admit that there is perhaps no way out of the maze and that our reproaches are as incomprehensible as the conduct of the spirits4 ,indeed1 what would you have them do in the circle in which our logic imprisons them8 ,either they foretell us a calamity which their predictions cannot avert1 in which case there is no use in foretelling it1 or1 if they announce it to us and at the same time give us the means to prevent it1 they do not really see the future and are foretelling nothing1 since the calamity is not to take place1 with the result that their action seems equally absurd in both cases4 ,it is obvious3 to whichever side we turn1 we find nothing but the incomprehensible4 ,on the one hand1 the preestablished1 unshakable1 unalterable future which we have called destiny1 fatality or what you will1 which suppresses man's entire independence and liberty of action and which is the most inconceivable and the dreariest of mysteries2 on the other1 intelligences apparently superior to our own1 since they know what we do not1 which1 while aware that their intervention is always useless and very often cruel1 nevertheless come harassing us with their sinister and ridiculous predictions4 ,must we resign ourselves once more to living with our eyes shut and our reason drowned in the boundless ocean of darkness2 and is there no outlet8 #ag ,for the moment we will not linger in the dark regions of fatality1 which is the supreme mystery1 the desolation of every effort and every thought of man4 ,what is clearest amid this incomprehensibility is that the spiritualistic theory1 at first sight the most seductive1 declares itself1 on examination1 the most difficult to justify4 ,we will also once more put aside the theosophical theory1 or any other which assumes a divine intention and which might1 to a certain extent1 explain the hesitations and anguish of the prophetic warnings1 at the cost1 however1 of other puzzles1 a thousand times as hard to solve1 which nothing authorizes us to substitute for the actual puzzle1 formless and infinite1 presented to our uninitiated vision4 ,when all is said1 it is perhaps only in the theory which attributes those premonitions to our subconsciousness that we are able to find1 if not a justification1 at least a sort of explanation of that formidable reticence4 ,they accord fairly well with the strange1 inconsistent1 whimsical and disconcerting character of the unknown entity within us that seems to live on nothing but nondescript fare borrowed from worlds to which our intelligence as yet has no access4 ,it lives under our reason1 in a sort of invisible and perhaps eternal palace1 like a casual1 unknown guest1 dropped from another planet1 whose interests1 ideas1 habits1 passions have naught in common with ours4 ,if it seems to have notions on the hereafter that are infinitely wider and more precise than those which we possess1 it has only very vague notions on the practical needs of our existence4 ,it ignores us for years1 absorbed no doubt with the numberless relations which it maintains with all the mysteries of the universe2 and1 when suddenly it remembers us1 thinking apparently to please us1 it makes an enormous1 miraculous1 but at the same time clumsy and superfluous movement1 which upsets all that we believed we knew1 without teaching us anything4 ,is it making fun of us1 is it jesting1 is it amusing itself1 is it facetious1 teasing1 arch1 or simply sleepy1 bewildered1 inconsistent1 absent-minded8 ,in any case1 it is rather remarkable that it evidently dislikes to make itself useful4 ,it readily performs the most glamorous feats of sleight-of-hand1 provided that we can derive no profit from them4 ,it lifts tables1 moves the heaviest articles1 produces flowers and hair1 sets strings vibrating1 gives life to inanimate objects and passes through solid matter1 conjures up ghosts1 subjugates time and space1 creates light2 but all1 it seems1 on one condition1 that its performances should be without rhyme or reason and keep to the province of supernaturally vain and puerile recreations4 ,the case of the divining-rod is almost the only one in which it lends us any regular assistance1 this being a sort of game1 of no great importance1 in which it appears to take pleasure4 ,sometimes1 to say all that can be said1 it consents to cure certain ailments1 cleanses an ulcer1 closes a wound1 heals a lung1 strengthens or unstiffens an arm or leg1 or even sets bones1 but always as it were by accident1 without reason1 method or object1 in a deceitful1 illogical and preposterous fashion4 ,one would set it down as a spoilt child that has been allowed to lay hands on the most tremendous secrets of heaven and earth2 it has no suspicion of their power1 jumbles them all up together and turns them into paltry1 inoffensive toys4 ,it knows everything1 perhaps1 but is ignorant of the uses of its knowledge4 ,it has its arms laden with treasures which it scatters in the wrong manner and at the wrong time1 giving bread to the thirsty and water to the hungry1 overloading those who refuse and stripping the suppliant bare1 pursuing those who flee from it and fleeing from those who pursue it4 ,lastly1 even at its best moments1 it behaves as though the fate of the being in whose depths it dwells interested it hardly at all1 as though it had but an insignificant share in his misfortunes1 feeling assured1 one might almost think1 of an independent and endless existence4 ,it is not surprising therefore1 when we know its habits1 that its communications on the subject of the future should be as fantastic as the other manifestations of its knowledge or its power4 ,let us add1 to be quite fair1 that1 in those warnings which we would wish to see efficacious1 it stumbles against the same difficulties as the spirits or other alien intelligences uselessly foretelling the event which they cannot prevent1 or annihilating the event by the very fact of foretelling it4 #ah ,and now1 to end the question1 is this unknown guest of ours alone responsible8 ,does it explain itself badly or do we not understand it8 ,when we look into the matter closely1 there is1 under those anomalous and confused manifestations1 in spite of efforts which we feel to be enormous and persevering1 a sort of incapacity for self-expression and action which is bound to attract our attention4 ,is our conscious and individual life separated by impenetrable worlds from our subconscious and probably universal life8 ,does our unknown guest speak an unknown language and do the words which it speaks and which we think that we understand disclose its thought8 ,is every direct road pitilessly barred and is there nothing left to it but narrow1 closed paths1 in which the best of what it had to reveal to us is lost8 ,is this the reason why it seeks those odd1 childish1 roundabout ways of automatic writing1 cross-correspondence1 symbolic premonition and all the rest8 ,yet1 in the typical case which we have quoted1 it seems to speak quite easily and plainly when it says to the mother3 8,turn the mattress40 ,if it can utter this sentence1 why should it find it difficult or impossible to add3 8,you will there find the matches that will set fire to the curtains40 ,what forbids it to do so and closes its mouth at the decisive moment8 ,we relapse into the everlasting question3 if it cannot complete the second sentence because it would be destroying in the womb the very event which it is foretelling1 why does it utter the first8 #ai ,but it is well1 in spite of everything1 to seek an explanation of the inexplicable2 it is by attacking it on every side1 at all hazards1 that we cherish the hope of overcoming it2 and we may therefore say to ourselves that our subconsciousness1 when it warns us of a calamity that is about to befall us1 knowing all the future as it does1 necessarily knows that the calamity is already accomplished4 ,as our conscious and unconscious lives blend in it1 it distresses itself and flutters around our overconfident ignorance4 ,it tries to inform us1 through nervousness1 through pity1 so as to mitigate the lightning cruelty of the blow4 ,it speaks all the words that can prepare us for its coming1 define it and identify it2 but it is unable to say those which would prevent it from coming1 seeing that it has come1 that it is already present and perhaps past1 manifest1 ineffaceable1 on another plane than that on which we live1 the only plane which we are capable of perceiving4 ,it finds itself1 in a word1 in the position of the man who1 in the midst of peaceful1 happy and unsuspecting folk1 alone knows some bad news4 ,he is neither able nor willing to announce it nor yet to hide it completely4 ,he hesitates1 delays1 makes more or less transparent allusions1 but refrains from saying the last word that would1 so to speak1 let loose the catastrophe in the hearts of the people around him1 for to those who do not know of it the catastrophe is still as though it were not there4 ,our subconsciousness1 in that instance1 would act towards the future as we act towards the past1 the two conditions being identical1 so much so that it often confuses them1 as we can see more particularly in the celebrated ,marmontel case1 where it evidently blunders and reports as accomplished an incident that will not take place until several months later4 ,it is of course impossible for us1 at the stage which we have reached1 to understand this confusion or this coexistence of the past1 the present and the future2 but that is no reason for denying it2 on the contrary1 what man understands least is probably that which most nearly approaches the truth4 #bj ,lastly1 to complicate the question1 it may be very justly objected that1 though premonitions in general are useless and appear systematically to withhold the only indispensable and decisive words1 there are1 nevertheless1 some that often seem to save those who obey them4 ,these1 it is true1 are rarer than the first1 but still they include a certain number that are well-authenticated4 ,it remains to be seen how far they imply a knowledge of the future4 ,here1 for instance1 is a traveller who1 arriving at night in a small unknown town and walking along the ill-lighted dock in the direction of an hotel of which he roughly knows the position1 at a given moment feels an irresistible impulse to turn and go the other way4 ,he instantly obeys1 though his reason protests and 8berates him for a fool0 in taking a roundabout way to his destination4 ,the next day he discovers that1 if he had gone a few feet farther1 he would certainly have slipped into the river2 and1 as he was but a feeble swimmer1 he would just as certainly1 being alone and unaided in the extreme darkness1 have been drowned4#ba ,but is this a prevision of an event8 ,no1 for no event is to take place4 ,there is simply an abnormal perception of the proximity of some unknown water and consequently of an imminent danger1 an unexplained but fairly frequent subliminal sensitiveness4 ,in a word1 the problem of the future is not raised in this case1 nor in any of the numerous cases that resemble it4 ,here is another which evidently belongs to the same class1 though at first sight it seems to postulate the preexistence of a fatal event and a vision of the future corresponding exactly with a vision of the past4 ,a traveller in ,south ,america is descending a river in a canoe2 the party are just about to run close to a promontory when a sort of mysterious voice1 which he has already heard at different momentous times of his life1 imperiously orders him immediately to cross the river and gain the other shore as quickly as possible4 ,this appears so absurd that he is obliged to threaten the ,indians with death to force them to take this course4 ,they have scarcely crossed more than half the river when the promontory falls at the very place where they meant to round it4#bb ,the perception of imminent danger is here1 ,i admit1 even more abnormal than in the previous example1 but it comes under the same heading4 ,it is a phenomenon of subliminal hypersensitiveness observed more than once1 a sort of premonition induced by subconscious perceptions1 which has been christened by the barbarous name of 8cryptaesthesia40 ,but the interval between the moment when the peril is signalled and that at which it is consummated is too short for those questions which relate to a knowledge or a preexistence of the future to arise in this instance4 ,the case is almost the same with the adventure of an ,american dentist1 very carefully investigated by ,dr4 ,hodgson4 ,the dentist was bending over a bench on which was a little copper in which he was vulcanizing some rubber1 when he heard a voice calling1 in a quick and imperative manner1 these words3 8,run to the window1 quick6 ,run to the window1 quick60 ,he at once ran to the window and looked out to the street below1 when suddenly he heard a tremendous report and1 looking round1 saw that the copper had exploded1 destroying a great part of the workroom4#bc ,here again1 a subconscious cautiousness was probably aroused by certain indications imperceptible to our ordinary senses4 ,it is even possible that there exists between things and ourselves a sort of sympathy or subliminal communion which makes us experience the trials and emotions of matter that has reached the limits of its existence1 unless1 as is more likely1 there is merely a simple coincidence between the chance idea of a possible explosion and its realization4 ,a last and rather more complicated case is that of ,jean ,dupr1 the sculptor1 who was driving alone with his wife along a mountain road1 skirting a perpendicular cliff4 ,suddenly they both heard a voice that seemed to come from the mountain crying3 #8,stop6' ,they turned round1 and saw nobody and continued their road4 ,but the cries were repeated again and again1 without anything to reveal the presence of a human being amid the solitude4 ,at last the sculptor alighted and saw that the left wheel of the carriage1 which was grazing the edge of the precipice1 had lost its linch-pin and was on the point of leaving the axle-tree1 which would almost inevitably have hurled the carriage into the abyss4 ,need we1 even here1 relinquish the theory of subconscious perceptions8 ,do we know and can the author of the anecdote1 whose good faith is not in question1 tell us that certain unperceived circumstances1 such as the grating of the wheel or the swaying of the carriage1 did not give him the first alarm8 ,after all1 we know how easily stories of this kind involuntarily take a dramatic turn even at the actual moment and especially afterwards4 #ba ,these examples--and there are many more of a similar kind--are enough1 ,i think1 to illustrate this class of premonitions4 ,the problem in these cases is simpler than when it relates to fruitless warnings2 at least it is simpler so long as we do not bring into discussion the question of spirits1 of unknown intelligences1 or of an actual knowledge of the future2 otherwise the same difficulty reappears and the warning1 which this time seems efficacious1 is in reality just as vain4 ,in fact1 the mysterious entity which knows that the traveller will go to the water's edge1 that the wheel will be on the point of leaving the axle1 that the copper will explode1 or that the promontory will fall at a precise moment1 must at the same time know that the traveller will not take the last fatal step1 that the carriage will not be overturned1 that the copper will not hurt anybody and that the canoe will pull away from the promontory4 ,it is inadmissible that1 seeing one thing1 it will not see the other1 since everything happens at the same point1 in the course of the same second4 ,can we say that1 if it had not given warning1 the little saving movement would not have been executed8 ,how can we imagine a future which1 at one and the same time1 has parts that are steadfast and others that are not8 ,if it is foreseen that the promontory will fall and that the traveller will escape1 thanks to the supernatural warning1 it is necessarily foreseen that the warning will be given2 and1 if so1 what is the point of this futile comedy8 ,i see no reasonable explanation of it in the spiritist or spiritualistic theory1 which postulates a complete knowledge of the future1 at least at a settled point and moment4 ,on the other hand1 if we adhere to the theory of a subliminal consciousness1 we find there an explanation which is quite worthy of acceptation4 ,this subliminal consciousness1 though1 in the majority of cases1 it has no clear and comprehensive vision of the immediate future1 can nevertheless possess an intuition of imminent danger1 thanks to indications that escape our ordinary perception4 ,it can also have a partial1 intermittent and so to speak flickering vision of the future event and1 if doubtful1 can risk giving an incoherent warning1 which1 for that matter1 will change nothing in that which already is4 #bb ,in conclusion1 let us state once more that fruitful premonitions necessarily annihilate events in the bud and consequently work their own destruction1 so that any control becomes impossible4 ,they would have an existence only if they prophesied a general event which the subject would not escape but for the warning4 ,if they had said to any one intending to go to ,messina two or three months before the catastrophe1 8,don't go1 for the town will be destroyed before the month is out10 we should have an excellent example4 ,but it is a remarkable thing that genuine premonitions of this kind are very rare and nearly always rather indefinite in regard to events of a general order4 ,in ,m4 ,bozzano's excellent collection1 which is a sort of compendium of premonitory phenomena1 the only pretty clear cases are nos4 clv4 and clviii41 both of which are taken from the ,journal of the ,s4,p4,r4 ,in the first1#bd a mother sent a servant to bring home her little daughter1 who had already left the house with the intention of going through the 8railway garden10 a strip of ground between the sea-wall and the railway-embankment1 in order to sit on the great stones by the seaside and see the trains pass by4 ,a few minutes after the little girl's departure1 the mother had distinctly and repeatedly heard a voice within her say3 8,send for her back1 or something dreadful will happen to her40 ,now1 soon after1 a train ran off the line and the engine and tender fell1 breaking through the protecting wall and crashing down on the very stones where the child was accustomed to sit4 ,in the other case1#be into which ,professor ,w4 ,f4 ,barrett made a special enquiry1 ,captain ,mac,gowan was in ,brooklyn with his two boys1 then on their holidays4 ,he promised the boys that he would take them to the theatre and booked seats on the previous day2 but on the day of the proposed visit he heard a voice within him constantly saying3 8,do not go to the theatre2 take the boys back to school40 ,he hesitated1 gave up his plan and resumed it again4 ,but the words kept repeating themselves and impressing themselves upon him2 and1 in the end1 he definitely decided not to go1 much to the two boys' disgust4 ,that night1 the theatre was destroyed by fire1 with a loss of three hundred lives4 ,we may add to this the prevision of the ,battle of ,borodino1 to which ,i have already alluded4 ,i will give the story in fuller detail1 as told in the journal of ,stephen ,grellet the ,quaker4 ,about three months before the ,french army entered ,russia1 the wife of ,general ,toutschkoff dreamt that she was at an inn in a town unknown to her and that her father came into her room1 holding her only son by the hand1 and said to her1 in a pitiful tone3 8,your happiness is at an end4 ,he0--meaning ,countess ,toutschkoff's husband--8has fallen4 ,he has fallen at ,borodino40 ,the dream was repeated a second and a third time4 ,her anguish of mind was such that she woke her husband and asked him3 8,where is ,borodino80 ,they looked for the name on the map and did not find it4 ,before the ,french armies reached ,moscow1 ,count ,toutschkoff was placed at the head of the army of reserve2 and one morning her father1 holding her son by the hand1 entered her room at the inn where she was staying4 ,in great distress1 as she had beheld him in her dream1 he cried out3 8,he has fallen4 ,he has fallen at ,borodino40 ,then she saw herself in the very same room and through the windows beheld the very same objects that she had seen in her dreams4 ,her husband was one of the many who perished in the battle fought near the ,river ,borodino1 from which an obscure village takes its name4#bf #bc ,this is evidently a very rare and perhaps solitary example of a long-dated prediction of a great historic event which nobody could foresee4 ,it stirs more deeply than any other the enormous problems of fatality1 free-will and responsibility4 ,but has it been attested with sufficient rigour for us to rely upon it8 ,that ,i cannot say4 ,in any case1 it has not been sifted by the ,s4,p4,r4 ,next1 from the special point of view that interests us for the moment1 we are unable to declare that this premonition had any chance of being of avail and preventing the general from going to ,borodino4 ,it is highly probable that he did not know where he was going or where he was2 besides1 the irresistible machinery of war held him fast and it was not his part to disengage his destiny4 ,the premonition therefore could only have been given because it was certain not to be obeyed4 ,as for the two previous cases1 nos4 clv4 and clviii41 we must here again remark the usual strange reservations and observe how difficult it is to explain these premonitions save by attributing them to our subconsciousness4 ,the main1 unavoidable event is not precisely stated2 but a subordinate consequence seems to be averted1 as though to make us believe in some definite power of free-will4 ,nevertheless1 the mysterious entity that foresaw the catastrophe must also have foreseen that nothing would happen to the person whom it was warning2 and this brings us back to the useless farce of which we spoke above4 ,whereas1 with the theory of a subconscious self1 the latter may have--as in the case of the traveller1 the promontory1 the copper or the carriage--not this time by inferences or indications that escape our perception1 but by other unknown means1 a vague presentiment of an impending peril1 or1 as ,i have already said1 a partial1 intermittent and unsettled vision of the future event1 and1 in its doubt1 may utter its cry of alarm4 ,whereupon let us recognize that it is almost forbidden to human reason to stray in these regions2 and that the part of a prophet is1 next to that of a commentator of prophecies1 one of the most difficult and thankless that a man can attempt to sustain on the world's stage4 #bd ,i am not sure if it is really necessary1 before closing this chapter1 to follow in the wake of many others and broach the problem of the preexistence of the future1 which includes those of fatality1 of free-will1 of time and of space1 that is to say1 all the points that touch the essential sources of the great mystery of the universe4 ,the theologians and the metaphysicians have tackled these problems from every side without giving us the least hope of solving them4 ,among those which life sets us1 there is none to which our brain seems more definitely and strictly closed2 and they remain1 if not as unimaginable1 at least as incomprehensible as on the day when they were first perceived4 ,what corresponds1 outside us1 with what we call time and space8 ,we know nothing about it2 and ,kant1 speaking in the name of the 8apriorists10 who hold that the idea of time is innate in us1 does not teach us much when he tells us that time1 like space1 is an a priori form of our sensibility1 that is to say1 an intuition preceding experience1 even as ,guyau1 among the 8empiricists10 who consider that this idea is acquired only by experience1 does not enlighten us any more by declaring that this same time is the abstract formula of the changes in the universe4 ,whether space1 as ,leibnitz maintains1 be an order of coexistence and time an order of sequences1 whether it be by space that we succeed in representing time or whether time be an essential form of any representation1 whether time be the father of space or space the father of time1 one thing is certain1 which is that the efforts of the ,kantian or neo-,kantian apriorists and of the pure empiricists and the idealistic empiricists all end in the same darkness2 that all the philosophers who have grappled with the formidable dual problem1 among whom one may mention indiscriminately the names of the greatest thinkers of yesterday and to-day--,herbert ,spencer1 ,helmholtz1 ,renouvier1 ,james ,sully1 ,stumpf1 ,james ,ward1 ,william ,james1 ,stuart ,mill1 ,ribot1 ,fouille1 ,guyau1 ,bain1 ,lechalas1 ,balms1 ,dunan and endless others--have been unable to tame it2 and that1 however much their theories may contradict one another1 they are all equally defensible and alike struggle vainly in the darkness against shadows that are not of our world4 #be ,to catch a glimpse of this strange problem of the preexistence of the future1 as it shows itself to each of us1 let us essay more humbly to translate it into tangible images1 to place it as it were upon the stage4 ,i am writing these lines sitting on a stone1 in the shade of some tall beeches that overlook a little ,norman village4 ,it is one of those lovely summer days when the sweetness of life is almost visible in the azure vase of earth and sky4 ,in the distance stretches the immense1 fertile valley of the ,seine1 with its green meadows planted with restful trees1 between which the river flows like a long path of gladness leading to the misty hills of the estuary4 ,i am looking down on the village-square1 with its ring of young lime-trees4 ,a procession leaves the church and1 amid prayers and chanting1 they carry the statue of the ,virgin around the sacred pile4 ,i am conscious of all the details of the ceremony3 the sly old cur perfunctorily bearing a small reliquary2 four choirmen opening their mouths to bawl forth vacantly the ,latin words which convey nothing to them2 two mischievous serving-boys in frayed cassocks2 a score of little girls1 young girls and old maids in white1 all starched and flounced1 followed by six or seven village notables in baggy frockcoats4 ,the pageant disappears behind the trees1 comes into sight again at the bend of the road and hurries back into the church4 ,the clock in the steeple strikes five1 as though to ring down the curtain and mark in the infinite history of events which none will recollect the conclusion of a spectacle which never again1 until the end of the world and of the universe of worlds1 will be just what it was during those seconds when it beguiled my wandering eyes4 ,for in vain will they repeat the procession next year and every year after3 never again will it be the same4 ,not only will several of the actors probably have disappeared1 but all those who resume their old places in the ranks will have undergone the thousand little visible and invisible changes wrought by the passing days and weeks4 ,in a word1 this insignificant moment is unique1 irrecoverable1 inimitable1 as are all the moments in the existence of all things2 and this little picture1 enduring for a few seconds suspended in boundless duration1 has lapsed into eternity1 where henceforth it will remain in its entirety to the end of time1 so much so that1 if a man could one day recapture in the past1 among what some one has called the 8astral negatives10 the image of what it was1 he would find it intact1 unchanged1 ineffaceable and undeniable4 #bf ,it is not difficult for us to conceive that one can thus go back and see again the astral negative of an event that is no more2 and retrospective clairvoyance appears to us a wonderful but not an impossible thing4 ,it astonishes but does not stagger our reason4 ,but1 when it becomes a question of discovering the same picture in the future1 the boldest imagination flounders at the first step4 ,how are we to admit that there exists somewhere a representation or reproduction of that which has not yet existed8 ,nevertheless1 some of the incidents which we have just been considering seem to prove in an almost conclusive manner not only that such representations are possible1 but that we may arrive at them more frequently1 not to say more conveniently1 than at those of the past4 ,now1 once this representation preexists1 as we are obliged to admit in the case of a certain number of premonitions1 the riddle remains the same whether the preexistence be one of a few hours1 a few years or several centuries4 ,it is therefore possible--for1 in these matters1 we must go straight to extremes or else leave them alone--it is therefore possible that a seer mightier than any of to-day1 some god1 demigod or demon1 some unknown1 universal or vagrant intelligence1 saw that procession a million years ago1 at a time when nothing existed of that which composes and surrounds it and when the very earth on which it moves had not yet risen from the ocean depths4 ,and other seers1 as mighty as the first1 who from age to age contemplated the same spot and the same moment1 would always have perceived1 through the vicissitudes and upheavals of seas1 shores and forests1 the same procession going round the same little church that still lay slumbering in the oceanic ooze and made up of the same persons sprung from a race that was perhaps not yet represented on the earth4 #bg ,it is obviously difficult for us to understand that the future can thus precede chaos1 that the present is at the same time the future and the past1 or that that which is not yet exists already at the same time at which it is no more4 ,but1 on the other hand1 it is just as hard to conceive that the future does not preexist1 that there is nothing before the present and that everything is only present or past4 ,it is very probable that1 to a more universal intelligence than ours1 everything is but an eternal present1 an immense punctum stans1 as the metaphysicians say1 in which all the events are on one plane2 but it is no less probable that we ourselves1 so long as we are men1 in order to understand anything of this eternal present1 will always be obliged to divide it into three parts4 ,thus caught between two mysteries equally baffling to our intelligence1 whether we deny or admit the preexistence of the future1 we are really only wrangling over words3 in the one case1 we give the name of 8present10 from the point of view of a perfect intelligence1 to that which to us is the future2 in the other1 we give the name of 8future0 to that which1 from the point of view of a perfect intelligence1 is the present4 ,but1 after all1 it is incontestable in both cases that1 at least from our point of view1 the future preexists1 since preexistence is the only name by which we can describe and the only form under which we can conceive that which we do not yet see in the present4 #bh ,attempts have been made to shed light on the riddle by transferring it to space4 ,it is true that it there loses the greater part of its obscurity2 but this apparently is because1 in changing its environment1 it has completely changed its nature and no longer bears any relation to what it was when it was placed in time4 ,we are told1 for instance1 that innumerable cities distributed over the surface of the earth are to us as if they were not1 so long as we have not seen them1 and only begin to exist on the day when we visit them4 ,that is true2 but space1 outside all metaphysical speculations1 has realities for us which time does not possess4 ,space1 although very mysterious and incomprehensible once we pass certain limits1 is nevertheless not1 like time1 incomprehensible and illusory in all its parts4 ,we are certainly quite able to conceive that those towns which we have never seen and doubtless never will see indubitably exist1 whereas we find it much more difficult to imagine that the catastrophe which1 fifty years hence1 will annihilate one of them already exists as really as the town itself4 ,we are capable of picturing a spot whence1 with keener eyes than those which we boast to-day1 we should see in one glance all the cities of the earth and even those of other worlds1 but it is much less easy for us to imagine a point in the ages whence we should simultaneously discover the past1 the present and the future1 because the past1 the present and the future are three orders of duration which cannot find room at the same time in our intelligence and which inevitably devour one another4 ,how can we picture to ourselves1 for instance1 a point in eternity at which our little procession already exists1 while it is not yet and although it is no more8 ,add to this the thought that it is necessary and inevitable1 from the millenaries which had no beginning1 that1 at a given moment1 at a given place1 the little procession should leave the little church in a given manner and that no known or imaginable will can change anything in it1 in the future any more than in the past2 and we begin to understand that there is no hope of understanding4 #bi ,we find among the cases collected by ,m4 ,bozzano a singular premonition wherein the unknown factors of space and time are continued in a very curious fashion4 ,in ,august #aiaj1 ,cavaliere ,giovanni de ,figueroa1 one of the most famous fencing-masters at ,palermo1 dreamt that he was in the country1 going along a road white with dust1 which brought him to a broad ploughed field4 ,in the middle of the field stood a rustic building1 with a ground-floor used for store-rooms and cow-sheds and on the right a rough hut made of branches and a cart with some harness lying in it4 ,a peasant wearing dark trousers1 with a black felt hat on his head1 came forward to meet him1 asked him to follow him and took him round behind the house4 ,through a low1 narrow door they entered a little stable with a short1 winding stone staircase leading to a loft over the entrance to the house4 ,a mule fastened to a swinging manger was blocking the bottom step2 and the chevalier had to push it aside before climbing the staircase4 ,on reaching the loft1 he noticed that from the ceiling were suspended strings of melons1 tomatoes1 onions and ,indian corn4 ,in this room were two women and a little girl2 and through a door leading to another room he caught sight of an extremely high bed1 unlike any that he had ever seen before4 ,here the dream broke off4 ,it seemed to him so strange that he spoke of it to several of his friends1 whom he mentions by name and who are ready to confirm his statements4 ,on the #abth of ,october in the same year1 in order to support a fellow-townsman in a duel1 he accompanied the seconds1 by motor-car1 from ,naples to ,marano1 a place which he had never visited nor even heard of4 ,as soon as they were some way in the country1 he was curiously impressed by the white and dusty road4 ,the car pulled up at the side of a field which he at once recognized4 ,they alighted2 and he remarked to one of the seconds3 8,this is not the first time that ,i have been here4 ,there should be a house at the end of this path and on the right a hut and a cart with some harness in it40 ,as a matter of fact1 everything was as he described it4 ,an instant later1 at the exact moment foreseen by the dream1 the peasant in the dark trousers and the black felt hat came up and asked him to follow him4 ,but1 instead of walking behind him1 the chevalier went in front1 for he already knew the way4 ,he found the stable and1 exactly at the place which it occupied two months before1 near its swinging manger1 the mule blocking the way to the staircase4 ,the fencing-master went up the steps and once more saw the loft1 with the ceiling hung with melons1 onions and tomatoes1 and1 in a corner on the right1 the two silent women and the child1 identical with the figures in his dream1 while in the next room he recognized the bed whose uncommon height had so much impressed him4 ,it really looks as if the facts themselves1 the extramundane realities1 the eternal verities1 or whatever we may be pleased to call them1 have tried to show us here that time and space are one and the same illusion1 one and the same convention and have no existence outside our little day-spanned understanding2 that 8everywhere0 and 8always0 are exactly synonymous terms and reign alone as soon as we cross the narrow boundaries of the obscure consciousness in which we live4 ,we are quite ready to admit that ,cavaliere de ,figueroa may have had by clairvoyance an exact and detailed vision of places which he was not to visit until later3 this is a pretty frequent and almost classical phenomenon1 which1 as it affects the realities of space1 does not astonish us beyond measure and1 in any case1 does not take us out of the world which our senses perceive4 ,the field1 the house1 the hut1 the loft do not move2 and it is no miracle that they should be found in the same place4 ,but1 suddenly1 quitting this domain where all is stationary1 the phenomenon is transferred to time and1 in those unknown places1 at the foretold second1 brings together all the moving actors of that little drama in two acts1 of which the first was performed some two and a half months before1 in the depths of some mysterious other life where it seemed to be motionlessly and irrevocably awaiting its terrestrial realization4 ,any explanation would but condense this vapour of petty mysteries into a few drops in the ocean of mysteries4 ,let us note again1 in passing1 the strange freakishness of these premonitions4 ,they accumulate the most precise and circumstantial details as long as the scene remains insignificant1 but come to a sudden stop before the one tragic and interesting scene of the drama3 the duel and its issue4 ,we here once more recognize the inconsistent1 impotent1 ironical or humorous habits of our unknown guest4 #cj ,but we will not prolong these somewhat vain speculations concerning space and time4 ,we are merely playing with words that represent very badly ideas which we do not put into form at all4 ,to sum up1 while it is difficult for us to conceive that the future preexists1 perhaps it is even more difficult for us to understand that it does not exist2 moreover1 a certain number of facts tend to prove that it is as real and definite and has1 both in time and in eternity1 the same permanence and the same vividness as the past4 ,now1 from the moment that it preexists1 it is not surprising that we should be able to know it2 it is even astonishing1 granted that it overhangs us on every side1 that we should not discover it oftener and more easily4 ,it remains to be learnt what would become of our life if everything were foreseen in it1 if we saw it unfolding beforehand1 in its entirety1 with its events which would have to be inevitable1 because1 if it were possible for us to avoid them1 they would not exist and we could not perceive them4 ,suppose that1 instead of being abnormal1 uncertain1 obscure1 debatable and very unusual1 prediction became1 so to speak1 scientific1 habitual1 clear and infallible3 in a short time1 having nothing more to foretell1 it would die of inanition4 ,if1 for instance1 it was prophesied to me that ,i must die in the course of a journey in ,italy1 ,i should naturally abandon the journey2 therefore it could not have been predicted to me2 and thus all life would soon be nothing but inaction1 pause and abstention1 a sort of vast desert where the embryos of still-born events would be gathered in heaps and where nothing would grow save perhaps one or two more or less fortunate enterprises and the little insignificant incidents which no one would trouble to avoid4 ,but these again are questions to which there is no solution2 and we will not pursue them further4 ,,ix ,,heroism #a ,one of the consoling surprises of the war is the unlooked-for and1 so to speak1 universal heroism which it has revealed among all the nations taking part in it4 ,we were rather inclined to believe that courage1 physical and moral fortitude1 self-denial1 stoicism1 the renunciation of every sort of comfort1 the faculty of self-sacrifice and the power of facing death belonged only to the more primitive1 the less happy1 the less intelligent nations1 to the nations least capable of reasoning1 of appreciating danger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadful abyss that separates this life from the life unknown4 ,we were even almost persuaded that war would one day cease for lack of soldiers1 that is to say1 of men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk the only absolute realities--health1 physical comfort1 an unimpaired body and1 above all1 life1 the greatest of earthly possessions--for the sake of an ideal which1 like all ideals1 is more or less invisible4 ,and this argument seemed the more natural and convincing because1 as existence grew gentler and men's nerves more sensitive1 the means of destruction by war showed themselves more cruel1 ruthless and irresistible4 ,it seemed more and more probable that no man would ever again endure the infernal horrors of a battlefield and that1 after the first slaughter1 the opposing armies1 officers and men alike1 all seized with insuppressible panic1 would turn their backs upon one another1 in simultaneous1 supernatural affright1 and flee from unearthly terrors exceeding the most monstrous anticipations of those who had let them loose4 #b ,to our great astonishment the very opposite is now proclaimed4 ,we realize with amazement that until to-day we had but an incomplete and inaccurate idea of man's courage4 ,we looked upon it as an exceptional virtue and one which is the more admired as being also the rarer the farther we go back in history4 ,remember1 for instance1 ,homer's heroes1 the ancestors of all the heroes of our day4 ,study them closely4 ,these models of antiquity1 the first professors1 the first masters of bravery1 are not really very brave4 ,they have a wholesome dread of being hit or wounded and an ingenuous and manifest fear of death4 ,their mighty conflicts are declamatory and decorative but not so very bloody2 they inflict more noise than pain upon their adversaries1 they deliver many more words than blows4 ,their defensive weapons--and this is characteristic--are greatly superior to their arms of offence2 and death is an unusual1 unforeseen and almost indecorous event which throws the ranks into disorder and most often puts a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seems quite natural4 ,as for the wounds1 these are enumerated and described1 sung and deplored as so many remarkable phenomena4 ,on the other hand1 the most discreditable routs1 the most shameful panics are frequent2 and the old poet relates them without condemning them1 as ordinary incidents to be ascribed to the gods and inevitable in any warfare4 ,this kind of courage is that of all antiquity1 more or less4 ,we will not linger over it1 nor delay to consider the battles of the ,middle ,ages or the ,renascence1 in which the fiercest hand-to-hand encounters of the mercenaries often left not more than half-a-dozen victims on the field4 ,let us rather come straight to the great wars of the ,empire4 ,here the courage displayed begins to resemble our own1 but with notable differences4 ,in the first place1 those concerned were solely professionals4 ,we see not a whole nation fighting1 but a delegation1 a martial selection1 which1 it is true1 becomes gradually more extensive1 but never1 as in our time1 embraces every man between eighteen and fifty years of age capable of shouldering a weapon4 ,again--and above all--every war was reduced to two or three pitched battles1 that is to say1 two or three culminating moments3 immense efforts1 but efforts of a few hours1 or a day at most1 towards which the combatants directed all the vigour and all the heroism accumulated during long weeks or months of preparation and waiting4 ,afterwards1 whether the result was victory or defeat1 the fighting was over2 relaxation1 respite and rest followed2 men went back to their homes4 ,destiny must not be defied more than once2 and they knew that in the most terrible affray the chances of escaping death were as twenty to one4 #c ,nowadays1 everything is changed2 and death itself is no longer what it was4 ,formerly1 you looked it in the face1 you knew whence it came and who sent it to you4 ,it had a dreadful aspect1 but one that remained human4 ,its ways were not unknown3 its long spells of sleep1 its brief awakenings1 its bad days and dangerous hours4 ,at present1 to all these horrors it adds the great1 intolerable fear of mystery4 ,it no longer has any aspect1 no longer has habits or spells of sleep and it is never still4 ,it is always ready1 always on the watch1 everywhere present1 scattered1 intangible and dense1 stealthy and cowardly1 diffuse1 all-encompassing1 innumerous1 looming at every point of the horizon1 rising from the waters and falling from the skies1 indefatigable1 inevitable1 filling the whole of space and time for days1 weeks and months without a minute's lull1 without a second's intermission4 ,men live1 move and sleep in the meshes of its fatal web4 ,they know that the least step to the right or left1 a head bowed or lifted1 a body bent or upright1 is seen by its eyes and draws its thunder4 ,hitherto we had no example of this preponderance of the destructive forces4 ,we should never have believed that man's nerves could resist so great a trial4 ,the nerves of the bravest man are tempered to face death for the space of a second1 but not to live in the hourly expectation of death and nothing else4 ,heroism was once a sharp and rugged peak1 reached for a moment but quitted forthwith1 for mountain-peaks are not inhabitable4 ,to-day it is a boundless plain1 as uninhabitable as the peaks2 but we are not permitted to descend from it4 ,and so1 at the very moment when man appeared most exhausted and enervated by the comforts and vices of civilization1 at the moment when he was happiest and therefore most selfish1 when1 possessing the minimum of faith and vainly seeking a new ideal1 he seemed less capable of sacrificing himself for an idea of any kind1 he finds himself suddenly confronted with an unprecedented danger1 which he is almost certain that the most heroic nations of history would not have faced nor even dreamed of facing1 whereas he does not even dream that it is possible to do aught but face it4 ,and let it not be said that we had no choice1 that the danger and the struggle were thrust upon us1 that we had to defend ourselves or die and that in such cases there are no cowards4 ,it is not true3 there was1 there always has been1 there still is a choice4 #d ,it is not man's life that is at stake1 but the idea which he forms of the honour1 the happiness and the duties of his life4 ,to save his life he had but to submit to the enemy2 the invader would not have exterminated him4 ,you cannot exterminate a great people2 it is not even possible to enslave it seriously or to inflict great sorrow upon it for long4 ,he had nothing to be afraid of except disgrace4 ,he did not so much as see the infamous temptation appear above the horizon of his most instinctive fears2 he does not even suspect that it is able to exist2 and he will never perceive it1 whatever sacrifices may yet await him4 ,we are not1 therefore1 speaking of a heroism that would be but the last resource of despair1 the heroism of the animal driven to bay and fighting blindly to delay death's coming for a moment4 ,no1 it is heroism freely donned1 deliberately and unanimously hailed1 heroism on behalf of an idea and a sentiment1 in other words1 heroism in its clearest1 purest and most virginal form1 a disinterested and wholehearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty to themselves1 to their kith and kin1 to mankind and to the future4 ,if life and personal safety were more precious than the idea of honour1 of patriotism and of fidelity to the tradition and the race1 there was1 ,i repeat1 and there is still a choice to be made2 and never perhaps in any war was the choice easier1 for never did men feel more free1 never indeed were they more free1 to choose4 ,but this choice1 as ,i have said1 did not dare show its faintest shadow on the lowest horizons of even the most ignoble consciences4 ,are you quite sure that in other times which we think better and more virtuous than our own men would not have seen it1 would not have spoken of it8 ,can you find a nation1 even among the greatest1 which1 after six months of a war compared with which all other wars seem child's-play1 of a war which threatens and uses up all that nation's life and all its possessions1 can you find1 ,i say1 in history1 not an instance--for there is no instance--but some similar case which allows you to presume that the nation would not have faltered1 would not at least1 were it but for a second1 have looked down and cast its eyes upon an inglorious peace8 #e ,nevertheless1 they seemed much stronger than we are1 all those who came before us4 ,they were rude1 austere1 much closer to nature1 poor and often unhappy4 ,they had a simpler and a more rigid code of thought2 they had the habit of physical suffering1 of hardship and of death4 ,but ,i do not believe that any one dares contend that these men would have done what our soldiers are now doing1 that they would have endured what is being endured all around us4 ,are we not entitled to conclude from this that civilization1 contrary to what was feared1 so far from enervating1 depraving1 weakening1 lowering and dwarfing man1 elevates him1 purifies him1 strengthens him1 ennobles him1 makes him capable of acts of sacrifice1 generosity and courage which he did not know before8 ,the fact is that civilization1 even when it seems to entail corruption1 brings intelligence with it and that intelligence1 in days of trial1 stands for potential pride1 nobility and heroism4 ,that1 as ,i said in the beginning1 is the unexpected and consoling revelation of this horrible war3 we can rely on man implicitly1 place the greatest trust in him1 nor fear lest1 in laying aside his primitive brutality1 he should lose his manly qualities4 ,the greater his progress in the conquest of nature and the greater his apparent attachment to material welfare1 the more does he become capable nevertheless1 unconsciously1 deep down in the best part of him1 of self-detachment and of self-sacrifice for the common safety and the more does he understand that he is nothing when he compares himself with the eternal life of his forbears and his children4 ,it was so great a trial that we dared not1 before this war1 have contemplated it4 ,the future of the human race was at stake2 and the magnificent response that comes to us from every side reassures us fully as to the issue of other struggles1 more formidable still1 which no doubt await us when it will be a question no longer of fighting our fellow-men but rather of facing the more powerful and cruel of the great mysterious enemies that nature holds in reserve against us4 ,if it be true1 as ,i believe1 that humanity is worth just as much as the sum total of latent heroism which it contains1 then we may declare that humanity was never stronger nor more exemplary than now and that it is at this moment reaching one of its highest points and capable of braving everything and hoping everything4 ,and it is for this reason that1 despite our present sadness1 we are entitled to congratulate ourselves and to rejoice4 ,x ,,on ,,re-,,reading ,,thucydides #a ,at moments above all when history is in the making1 in these times when great and as yet incomplete pages are being traced1 pages by the side of which all that had already been written will pale1 it is a good and salutary thing to turn to the past in search of instruction1 warning and encouragement4 ,in this respect1 the unwearying and implacable war which ,athens kept up against ,sparta for twenty-seven years1 with the hegemony of ,greece for a stake1 presents more than one analogy with that which we ourselves are waging and teaches lessons that should make us reflect4 ,the counsels which it gives us are all the more precious1 all the more striking or profound inasmuch as the war is narrated to us by a man who remains1 with ,tacitus1 despite the striving of the centuries1 the progress of life and all the opportunities of doing better1 the greatest historian that the earth has ever known4 ,thucydides is in fact the supreme historian1 at the same time swift and detailed1 scrupulously sifting his evidence but giving free play to intuition1 setting forth none but incontestable facts1 yet divining the most secret intentions and embracing at a glance all the present and future political consequences of the events which he relates4 ,he is withal one of the most perfect writers1 one of the most admirable artists in the literature of mankind2 and from this point of view1 in an entirely different and almost antagonistic world1 he has not an equal save ,tacitus4 ,but ,tacitus is before everything a wonderful tragic poet1 a painter of foul abysses1 of fire and blood1 who can lay bare the souls of monsters and their crimes1 whereas ,thucydides is above all a great political moralist1 a statesman endowed with extraordinary perspicacity1 a painter of the open air and of a free state1 who portrays the minds of those sane1 ingenious1 subtle1 generous and marvellously intelligent men who peopled ancient ,greece4 ,the one piles on the gloom with a lavish hand1 gathers dark shadows which he pierces at each sentence with lightning-flashes1 but remains sombre and oppressed on the very summits1 whereas the other condenses nothing but light1 groups together judgments that are so many radiant sheaves and remains luminous and breathes freely in the very depths4 ,the first is passionate1 violent1 fierce1 indignant1 bitter1 sincerely but pitilessly unjust and all made up of magnificent animosities2 the second is always even1 always at the same high level1 which is that which the noblest endeavour of human reason can attain4 ,he has no passion but a passion for the public weal1 for justice1 glory and intelligence4 ,it is as though all his work were spread out in the blue sky2 and even his famous picture of the plague of ,athens seems covered with sunshine4 #b ,but there is no need to follow up this parallel1 which is not my object4 ,i will not dwell any longer--though perhaps ,i may return to them one day--upon the lessons which we might derive from that ,peloponnesian ,war1 in which the position of ,athens towards ,lacedmon provides more than one point of comparison with that of ,france towards ,germany4 ,true1 we do not there see1 as in our own case1 civilized nations fighting a morally barbarian people3 it was a contest between ,greeks and ,greeks1 displaying1 however1 in the same physical race two different and incompatible spirits4 ,athens stood for human life in its happiest development1 gracious1 cheerful and peaceful4 ,she took no serious interest except in the happiness1 the imponderous riches1 the innocent and perfect beauties1 the sweet leisures1 the glories and the arts of peace4 ,when she went to war1 it was as though in play1 with the smile still on her face1 looking upon it as a more violent pleasure than the rest1 or as a duty joyfully accepted4 ,she bound herself down to no discipline1 she was never ready1 she improvised everything at the last moment1 having1 8with habits not of labour but of ease and courage not of art but of nature10 as ,pericles said1 8the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them40#bg ,for ,sparta1 on the other hand1 life was nothing but endless work1 an incessant strain1 having no other objective than war4 ,she was gloomy1 austere1 strict1 morose1 almost ascetic1 an enemy to everything that excuses man's presence on this earth1 a nation of spoilers1 looters1 incendiaries and devastators1 a nest of wasps beside a swarm of bees1 a perpetual menace and danger to everything around her1 as hard upon herself as upon others and boasting an ideal which may appear lofty if it be man's ideal to be unhappy and the contented slave of unrelenting discipline4 ,on the other hand1 she differed entirely from those whom we are now fighting in that she was generally honest1 loyal and upright and showed a certain respect for the gods and their temples1 for treaties and for international law4 ,it is none the less true that1 if she had from the beginning reigned alone or without encountering a long resistance1 ,hellas would never have been the ,hellas that we know4 ,she would have left in history but a precarious trace of useless warlike virtues and of minor combats without glory2 and mankind would not have possessed that centre of light towards which it turns to this day4 #c ,what was to be the issue of this war8 ,here begins the lesson which it were well to study thoroughly4 ,it would seem indeed as if1 with the first encounters in that conflict1 as in our own1 the inexplicable will that governs nations was favourable to the less civilized2 and in fact ,lacedmon gained the upper hand1 at least temporarily and sufficiently to abuse her victory to such a degree that she soon lost its fruits4 ,but ,athens held the evil will in check for seven-and-twenty years2 for twenty-seven summers and twenty-seven winters1 to use ,thucydides' reckoning1 she proved to us that it is possible1 in defiance of probability1 to fight against what seems written in the book of heaven and hell4 ,nay more1 at a time when ,sparta1 whose sole industry1 whose sole training1 whose only reason for existence and whose only ideal was war1 was hugging the thought of crushing in a few weeks1 under the weight of her formidable hoplites1 a frivolous1 careless and ill-organized city1 ,athens1 notwithstanding the treacherous blow which fate dealt her by sending a plague that carried off a third of her civil population and a quarter of her army1 ,athens for seventeen years definitely held victory in her grasp4 ,during this period1 she more than once had ,lacedmon at her mercy and did not begin to descend the stony path of ruin and defeat until after the disastrous expedition to ,sicily1 in which1 carried away by her rhetoricians and bitten with inconceivable folly1 she hurled all her fleet1 all her soldiers and all her wealth into a remote1 unprofitable1 unknown and desperate adventure4 ,she resisted the decline of her fortunes for yet another ten years1 heaping up her sins against wisdom and simple common sense and with her own hands drawing tighter the knot that was to strangle her1 as though to show us that destiny is for the most part but our own madness and that what we call unavoidable fatality has its root only in mistakes that might easily be avoided4 #d ,to point this moral was again not my real object4 ,in these days when we have so many sorrows to assuage and so many deaths to honour1 ,i wished merely to recall a page written over two thousand years ago1 to the glory of the ,athenian heroes who fell for their country in the first battles of that war4 ,according to the custom of the ,greeks1 the bones of the dead that had been burnt on the battlefield were solemnly brought back to ,athens at the end of the year2 and the people chose the greatest speaker in the city to deliver the funeral oration4 ,this honour fell to ,pericles son of ,xanthippus1 the ,pericles of the golden age of human beauty4 ,after pronouncing a well-merited and magnificent eulogium on the ,athenian nation and institutions1 he concluded with the following words3 8,indeed1 if ,i have dwelt at some length upon the character of our country1 it has been to show that our stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessing to lose and also that the panegyric of the men over whom ,i am now speaking might be by definite proofs established4 ,that panegyric is now in a great measure complete2 for the ,athens that ,i have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her1 men whose fame1 unlike that of most ,hellenes1 will be found to be only commensurate with their deserts4 ,and1 if a test of worth be wanted1 it is to be found in their closing scene2 and this not only in the cases in which it set the final seal upon their merit1 but also in those in which it gave the first intimation of their having any4 ,for there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country's battles should be as a cloak to cover a man's other imperfections1 since the good action has blotted out the bad and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual4 ,but none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit1 or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger4 ,no1 holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards1 they joyfully determined to accept the risk1 to make sure of their vengeance and to let their wishes wait2 and1 while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success1 in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves4 ,thus choosing to die resisting rather than to live submitting1 they fled only from dishonour1 but met danger face to face and1 after one brief moment1 while at the summit of their fortune1 escaped not from their fear but from their glory4 8,so died these men as became ,athenians4 ,you1 their survivors1 must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field1 though you may pray that it may have a happier issue4 ,and1 not contented with ideas derived only from words of the advantages which are bound up with the defence of your country1 though these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present1 you must yourselves realize the power of ,athens and feed your eyes upon her from day to day1 till love of her fills your hearts2 and then1 when all her greatness shall break upon you1 you must reflect that it was by courage1 sense of duty and a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valour1 but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer4 ,for by this offering of their lives made in common by them all they each of them individually received that renown which never grows old and1 for a sepulchre1 not so much that in which their bones have been deposited1 but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall call for its commemoration4 ,for heroes have the whole earth for their tomb2 and in lands far from their own1 where the column with its epitaph declares it1 there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it1 except that of the heart4 ,these take as your model and1 judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour1 never decline the dangers of war4 ,for it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives3 these have nothing to hope for2 it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown and to whom a fall1 if it came1 would be most tremendous in its consequences4 ,and surely1 to a man of spirit1 the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism6 8,comfort1 therefore1 not condolence1 is what ,i have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here4 ,numberless are the chances to which1 as they know1 the life of man is subject2 but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed4 ,still ,i know that this is a hard saying1 especially when those are in question of whom you will be constantly reminded by seeing in the homes of others blessings of which once you also boasted2 for grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed4 ,yet you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead3 not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost1 but they will be to the state at once a reinforcement and a security2 for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not1 like his fellows1 bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father4 ,while those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed4 ,for it is only the love of honour that never grows old2 and honour it is1 not gain1 as some would have felt it1 that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness4444 8,and1 now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your relatives1 you may depart40 ,these words spoken twenty-three centuries ago ring in our hearts as though they were uttered yesterday4 ,they celebrate our dead better than could any eloquence of ours1 however poignant it might be4 ,let us bow before their paramount beauty and before the great people that could applaud and understand4 ,,xi ,,the ,,dead ,,do ,,not ,,die #a ,when we behold the terrible loss of so many young lives1 when we see so many incarnations of physical and moral vigour1 of intellect and of glorious promise pitilessly cut off in their first flower1 we are on the verge of despair4 ,never before have the fairest energies and aspirations of men been flung recklessly and incessantly into an abyss whence comes no sound or answer4 ,never since it came into existence has humanity squandered its treasure1 its substance and its prospects so lavishly4 ,for more than twelve months1 on every battlefield1 where the bravest1 the truest1 the most ardent and self-sacrificing are necessarily the first to die and where the less courageous1 the less generous1 the weak1 the ailing1 in a word the less desirable1 alone possess some chance of escaping the carnage1 for over twelve months a sort of monstrous inverse selection has been in operation1 one which seems to be deliberately seeking the downfall of the human race4 ,and we wonder uneasily what the state of the world will be after the great trial and what will be left of it and what will be the future of this stunted race1 shorn of all the best and noblest part of it4 ,the problem is certainly one of the darkest that has ever vexed the minds of men4 ,it contains a material truth before which we remain defenceless2 and1 if we accept it as it stands1 we can discover no remedy for the evil that threatens us4 ,but material and tangible truths are never anything but a more or less salient angle of greater and deeper-lying truths4 ,and on the other hand mankind appears to be such a necessary and indestructible force of nature that it has always1 hitherto1 not only survived the most desperate ordeals1 but succeeded in benefiting by them and emerging greater and stronger than before4 #b ,we know that peace is better than war2 it were madness to compare the two4 ,we know that1 if this cataclysm let loose by an act of unutterable folly had not come upon the world1 mankind would doubtless have reached ere long a zenith of wonderful achievement whose manifestations it is impossible to foreshadow4 ,we know that1 if a third or a fourth part of the fabulous sums expended on extermination and destruction had been devoted to works of peace1 all the iniquities that poison the air we breathe would have been triumphantly redressed and that the social question1 the one great question1 that matter of life and death which justice demands that posterity should face1 would have found its definite solution1 once and for all1 in a happiness which now perhaps even our sons and grandsons will not realize4 ,we know that the disappearance of two or three million young existences1 cut down when they were on the point of bearing fruit1 will leave in history a void that will not be easily filled1 even as we know that among those dead were mighty intellects1 treasures of genius which will not come back again and which contained inventions and discoveries that will now perhaps be lost to us for centuries4 ,we know that we shall never grasp the consequences of this thrusting back of progress and of this unprecedented devastation4 ,but1 granting all this1 it is a good thing to recover our balance and stand upon our feet4 ,there is no irreparable loss4 ,everything is transformed1 nothing perishes and that which seems to be hurled into destruction is not destroyed at all4 ,our moral world1 even as our physical world1 is a vast but hermetically-sealed sphere1 whence naught can issue1 whence naught can fall to be dissolved in space4 ,all that exists1 all that comes into being upon this earth remains there and bears fruit2 and the most appalling wastage is but material or spiritual riches flung away for an instant1 to fall to the ground again in a new form4 ,there is no escape or leakage1 no filtering through cracks1 no missing the mark1 not even waste or neglect4 ,all this heroism poured out on every side does not leave our planet2 and the reason why the courage of our fighters seems so general and yet so extraordinary is that all the might of the dead has passed into those who survive4 ,all those forces of wisdom1 patience1 honour and self-sacrifice which increase day by day and which we ourselves1 who are far from the field of danger1 feel rising within us without knowing whence they come are nothing but the souls of the heroes gathered and absorbed by our own souls4 #c ,it is well at times to contemplate invisible things as though we saw them with our eyes4 ,this was the aim of all the great religions1 when they but represented under forms appropriate to the manners of their day the latent deep1 instinctive truths1 the general and essential truths which are the guiding principles of mankind4 ,all have felt and recognized that loftiest of all truths1 the communion of the living and the dead1 and have given it various names designating the same mysterious verity3 the ,christians know it as revival of merit1 the ,buddhists as reincarnation1 or transmigration of souls1 and the ,japanese as ,shintoism1 or ancestor-worship4 ,the last are more fully convinced than any other nation that the dead do not cease to live and that they direct our actions1 are exalted by our virtues and become gods4 ,lafcadio ,hearn1 the writer who has most closely studied and understood that wonderful ancestor-worship1 says3 8,one of the surprises of our future will certainly be a return to beliefs and ideas long ago abandoned upon the mere assumption that they contained no truth--beliefs still called barbarous1 pagan1 medival1 by those who condemn them out of traditional habit4 ,year after year the researches of science afford us new proof that the savage1 the barbarian1 the idolater1 the monk1 each and all have arrived1 by different paths1 as near to some one point of eternal truth as any thinker of the nineteenth century4 ,we are now learning1 also1 that the theories of the astrologers and of the alchemists were but partially1 not totally1 wrong4 ,we have reason even to suppose that no dream of the invisible world has ever been dreamed1--that no hypothesis of the unseen has ever been imagined1--which future science will not prove to have contained some germ of reality40#bh ,there are many things which might be added to these lines1 notably all that the most recent of our sciences1 metaphysics1 is engaged in discovering with regard to the miraculous faculties of our subconsciousness4 #d ,but1 to return more directly to what we were saying1 was it not observed that1 after the great battles of the ,napoleonic era1 the birth-rate increased in an extraordinary manner1 as though the lives suddenly cut short in their prime were not really dead and were eager to be back again in our midst and complete their career8 ,if we could follow with our eyes all that is happening in the spiritual world that rises above us on every side1 we should no doubt see that it is the same with the moral force that seems to be lost on the field of slaughter4 ,it knows where to go1 it knows its goal1 it does not hesitate4 ,all that our wonderful dead relinquish they bequeath to us2 and1 when they die for us1 they leave us their lives not in any strained1 metaphorical sense1 but in a very real and direct way4 ,virtue goes out of every man who falls while performing a deed of glory2 and that virtue drops down upon us2 and nothing of him is lost and nothing evaporates in the shock of a premature end4 ,he gives us in one solitary and mighty stroke what he would have given us in a long life of duty and love4 ,death does not injure life2 it is powerless against it4 ,life's aggregate never changes4 ,what death takes from those who fall enters into those who are left standing4 ,the number of lamps grows less1 but the flame rises higher4 ,death is in no wise the gainer so long as there are living men4 ,the more it exercises its ravages1 the more it increases the intensity of that which it cannot touch2 the more it pursues its phantom victories1 the better does it prove to us that man will end by conquering death4 ,,xii ,,in ,,memoriam ,those who die for their country should not be numbered with the dead4 ,we must call them by another name4 ,they have nothing in common with those who end in their beds a life that is worn out1 a life almost always too long and often useless4 ,death1 which every elsewhere is but the object of fear and horror1 bringing naught but nothingness and despair1 this death1 on the field of battle1 in the clash of glory1 becomes more beautiful than birth and exhales a grace greater than that of love4 ,no life will ever give what their youth is offering us1 that youth which gives in one moment the days and the years that lay before it4 ,there is no sacrifice to be compared with that which they have made2 for which reason there is no glory that can soar so high as theirs1 no gratitude that can surpass the gratitude which we owe them4 ,they have not only a right to the foremost place in our memories3 they have a right to all our memories and to everything that we are1 since we exist only through them4 ,and now it is in us that their life1 so suddenly cut short1 must resume its course4 ,whatever be our faith and whatever the ,god whom it adores1 one thing is almost certain and1 in spite of all appearances1 is daily becoming more certain3 it is that death and life are commingled2 the dead and the living alike are but moments1 hardly dissimilar1 of a single and infinite existence and members of one immortal family4 ,they are not beneath the earth1 in the depths of their tombs2 they lie deep in our hearts1 where all that they once were will continue to live and to act2 and they live in us even as we die in them4 ,they see us1 they understand us more nearly than when they were in our arms2 let us then keep a watch upon ourselves1 so that they witness no actions and hear no words but words and actions that shall be worthy of them4 ,,xiii ,,the ,,life ,,of ,,the ,,dead #a ,the other day ,i went to see a woman whom ,i knew before the war--she was happy then--and who had lost her only son in one of the battles in the ,argonne4 ,she was a widow1 almost a poor woman2 and1 now that this son1 her pride and her joy1 was no more1 she no longer had any reason for living4 ,i hesitated to knock at her door4 ,was ,i not about to witness one of those hopeless griefs at whose feet all words fall to the ground like shameful and insulting lies8 ,which of us to-day is not familiar with these mournful interviews1 this dismal duty8 ,to my great astonishment1 she offered me her hand with a kindly smile4 ,her eyes1 to which ,i hardly dared raise my own1 were free of tears4 8,you have come to speak of him10 she said1 in a cheerful tone2 and it was as though her voice had grown younger4 8,alas1 yes6 ,i had heard of your sorrow2 and ,i have come44440 8,yes1 ,i too believed that my unhappiness was irreparable2 but now ,i know that he is not dead40 8,what6 ,he is not dead8 ,do you mean that the news4448 ,but ,i thought that the body44440 8,yes1 his body is over there2 and ,i have even a photograph of his grave4 ,let me show it to you4 ,see1 that cross on the left1 the fourth cross3 that is where he is lying4 ,one of his friends1 who buried him1 sent me this card and gave me all the details4 ,he suffered no pain4 ,there was not even a death-struggle4 ,and he has told me so himself4 ,he is quite astonished that death should be so easy1 so slight a thing4444 ,you do not understand8 ,yes1 ,i see what it is3 you are just as ,i used to be1 as all the others are4 ,i do not explain the matter to the others2 what would be the use8 ,they do not wish to understand4 ,but you1 you will understand4 ,he is more alive than he ever was2 he is free and happy4 ,he does just as he likes4 ,he tells me that one cannot imagine what a release death is1 what a weight it removes from you1 nor the joy which it brings4 ,he comes to see me when ,i call him4 ,he loves especially to come in the evening2 and we chat as we used to4 ,he has not altered2 he is just as he was on the day when he went away1 only younger1 stronger1 handsomer4 ,we have never been happier1 more united1 nearer to one another4 ,he divines my thoughts before ,i utter them4 ,he knows everything2 he sees everything2 but he cannot tell me everything he knows4 ,he maintains that ,i must be wanting to follow him and that ,i must wait for my hour4 ,and1 while ,i wait1 we are living in a happiness greater than that which was ours before the war1 a happiness which nothing can ever trouble again44440 ,those about her pitied the poor woman2 and1 as she did not weep1 as she was gay and smiling1 they believed her mad4 #b ,was she as mad as they thought8 ,at the present moment1 the great questions of the world beyond the grave are pressing upon us from every side4 ,it is probable that1 since the world began1 there have never been so many dead as now4 ,the empire of death was never so mighty1 so terrible2 it is for us to defend and enlarge the empire of life4 ,in the presence of this mother1 which are right and which are wrong1 those who are convinced that their dead are for ever swept out of existence1 or those who are persuaded that their dead do not cease to live1 who believe that they see them and hear them8 ,do we know what it is that dies in our dead1 or even if anything dies8 ,whatever our religious faith may be1 there is at any rate one place where they cannot die4 ,that place is within ourselves2 and1 if this unhappy mother went beyond the truth1 she was yet nearer to it than those despairing ones who nourish the mournful certainty that nothing survives of those whom they loved4 ,she felt too keenly what we do not feel keenly enough4 ,she remembered too much2 and we do not know how to remember4 ,between the two errors there is room for a great truth2 and1 if we have to choose1 hers is the error towards which we should lean4 ,let us learn to acquire through reason that which a wise madness bestowed on her4 ,let us learn from her to live with our dead and to live with them without sadness and without terror4 ,they do not ask for tears1 but for a happy and confident affection4 ,let us learn from her to resuscitate those whom we regret4 ,she called to hers1 while we repulse ours2 we are afraid of them and are surprised that they lose heart and pale and fade away and leave us for ever4 ,they need love as much as do the living4 ,they die1 not at the moment when they sink into the grave1 but gradually as they sink into oblivion2 and it is oblivion alone that makes the separation irrevocable4 ,we should not allow it to heap itself above them4 ,it would be enough to vouchsafe them each day a single one of those thoughts which we bestow uncounted upon so many useless objects3 they would no longer think of leaving us2 they would remain around us and we should no longer understand what a tombstone is1 for there is no tomb1 however deep1 whose stone may not be raised and whose dust dispersed by a thought4 ,there would be no difference between the living and the dead if we but knew how to remember4 ,there would be no more dead4 ,the best of what they were dwells with us after fate has taken them from us2 all their past is ours2 and it is wider than the present1 more certain than the future4 ,material presence is not everything in this world2 and we can dispense with it without despairing4 ,we do not mourn those who live in lands which we shall never visit1 because we know that it depends on us whether we go to find them4 ,let it be the same with our dead4 ,instead of believing that they have disappeared never to return1 tell yourselves that they are in a country to which you yourself will assuredly go soon1 a country not so very far away4 ,and while waiting for the time when you will go there once and for all1 you may visit them in thought as easily as if they were still in a region inhabited by the living4 ,the memory of the dead is even more alive than that of the living2 it is as though they were assisting our memory1 as though they1 on their side1 were making a mysterious effort to join hands with us on ours4 ,one feels that they are far more powerful than the absent who continue to breathe as we do4 #c ,try then to recall those whom you have lost1 before it is too late1 before they have gone too far2 and you will see that they will come much closer to your heart1 that they will belong to you more truly1 that they are as real as when they were in the flesh4 ,in putting off this last1 they have but discarded the moments in which they loved us least or in which we did not love at all4 ,now they are pure2 they are clothed only in the fairest hours of life2 they no longer possess faults1 littlenesses1 oddities2 they can no longer fall away1 or deceive themselves1 or give us pain4 ,they care for nothing now but to smile upon us1 to encompass us with love1 to bring us a happiness drawn without stint from a past which they live again beside us4 ,,xiv ,,the ,,war ,,and ,,the ,,prophets #a ,at the end of an essay occurring in ,the ,unknown ,guest and entitled1 ,the ,knowledge of the ,future1 in which ,i examined a certain number of phenomena relating to the anticipatory perception of events1 such as presentiments1 premonitions1 precognitions1 predictions1 etc41 ,i concluded in nearly the following terms3 8,to sum up1 if it is difficult for us to conceive that the future preexists1 perhaps it is just as difficult for us to understand that it does not exist2 moreover1 many facts tend to prove that it is as real and definite and has1 both in time and eternity1 the same permanence and the same vividness as the past4 ,now1 from the moment that it preexists1 it is not surprising that we should be able to know it2 it is even astonishing1 granted that it overhangs us from every side1 that we should not discover it oftener and more easily40 ,above all is it astonishing and almost inconceivable that this universal war1 the most stupendous catastrophe that has overwhelmed humanity since the origin of things1 should not1 while it was approaching1 bearing in its womb innumerable woes which were about to affect almost every one of us1 have thrown upon us more plainly1 from the recesses of those days in which it was making ready1 its menacing shadow4 ,one would think that it ought to have overcast the whole horizon of the future1 even as it will overcast the whole horizon of the past4 ,a secret of such weight1 suspended in time1 ought surely to have weighed upon all our lives2 and presentiments or revelations should have arisen on every hand4 ,there was none of these4 ,we lived and moved without uneasiness beneath the disaster which1 from year to year1 from day to day1 from hour to hour1 was descending upon the world2 and we perceived it only when it touched our heads4 ,true1 it was more or less foreseen by our reason2 but our reason hardly believed in it2 and besides ,i am not for the moment speaking of the inductions of the understanding1 which are always uncertain and which are resigned beforehand to the capricious contradictions which they are daily accustomed to receive from facts4 #b ,but ,i repeat1 beside or above these inductions of our everyday logic1 in the less familiar domain of supernatural intuitions1 of divination1 prediction or prophecy properly so-called1 we find that there was practically nothing to warn us of the vast peril4 ,this does not mean that there was any lack of predictions or prophecies collected after the event2 these number1 it appears1 no fewer than eighty-three2 but none of them1 excepting those of ,lon ,sonrel and the ,rector of ,ars1 which we will examine in a moment1 is worthy of serious discussion4 ,i shall therefore mention1 by way of a reminder1 only the most widely known2 and1 first of all1 the famous prophecy of ,mayence or ,strasburg1 which is supposed to have been discovered by a certain ,jecker in an ancient convent founded near ,mayence by ,st4 ,hildegarde1 of which the original text could not be found and of which no one until lately had ever heard4 ,then there is another prophecy of ,mayence or ,fiensberg1 published in the ,neue ,metaphysische ,rundschau of ,berlin in ,february #aiab1 in which the end of the ,german ,empire is announced for the year #aiac4 ,next1 we have various predictions uttered by ,mme4 de ,thbes1 by ,dom ,bosco1 by ,blessed ,andrew ,bobola1 by ,korzenicki the ,polish monk1 by ,tolstoy1 by ,brother ,hermann and so on1 which are even less interesting2 and1 lastly1 the prophecy of 8,brother ,johannes10 published by ,m4 ,josphin ,peladan in the ,figaro of #af ,september #aiad1 which contains no evidence of genuineness and must therefore meanwhile be regarded merely as an ingenious literary conceit4 #c ,all these1 on examination1 leave but a worthless residuum2 but the prophecies of the ,rector of ,ars and ,lon ,sonrel are more curious and worthy of a moment's attention4 ,father ,jean-,baptiste ,vianney1 ,rector of ,ars1 was1 as everybody knows1 a very saintly priest1 who appears to have been endowed with extraordinary mediumistic faculties4 ,the prophecy in question was made public in #ahfb1 three years after the miracle-worker's death1 and was confirmed by a letter which ,mgr4 ,perriet addressed to the ,very ,rev4 ,dom ,gra on the #bdth of ,february #aijh4 ,moreover it was printed1 as far back as #ahgb1 in a collection entitled1 ,voix prophtiques1 ou signes1 apparitions et prdictions modernes4 ,it therefore has an incontestable date4 ,i pass over the part relating to the war of #ahgj1 which does not offer the same safeguards2 but ,i give that which concerns the present war1 quoting from the #ahgb text3 8,the enemies will not go altogether2 they will return again and destroy everything upon their passage2 we shall not resist them1 but will allow them to advance2 and1 after that1 we shall cut off their provisions and make them suffer great losses4 ,they will retreat towards their country2 we shall follow them and there will be hardly any who return home4 ,then we shall take back all that they took from us and much more40 ,as for the date of the event1 it is stated definitely and rather strikingly in these words3 8,they will want to canonize me1 but there will not be time40 ,now the preliminaries to the canonization of the ,rector of ,ars were begun in ,july #aiad1 but abandoned because of the war4 #d ,i now come to the ,sonrel prediction4 ,i will summarize it as briefly as possible from the admirable article which ,m4 de ,vesme devoted to it in the ,annales des ,sciences ,psychiques4#bi ,on the #crd of ,june #aiad--observe the date--,professor ,charles ,richet handed ,m4 de ,vesme1 from ,dr4 ,amde ,tardieu1 a manuscript of which the following is the substance3 on the #bcrd or #bdth of ,july #ahfi1 ,dr4 ,tardieu was strolling in the gardens of the ,luxembourg with his friend ,lon ,sonrel1 a former pupil of the ,higher ,normal ,school and teacher of natural philosophy at the ,paris ,observatory1 when the latter had a kind of vision in the course of which he predicted various precise and actual episodes of the war of #ahgj1 such as the collection on behalf of the wounded at the moment of departure and the amount of the sum collected in the soldiers' kpis2 incidents of the journey to the frontier2 the battle of ,sedan1 the rout of the ,french1 the civil war1 the siege of ,paris1 his own death1 the birth of a posthumous child1 the doctor's political career and so on3 predictions all of which were verified1 as is attested by numerous witnesses who are worthy of the fullest credence4 ,but ,i will pass over this part of the story and consider only that portion which refers to the present war3 8,i have been waiting for two years10 to quote the text of ,dr4 ,tardieu's manuscript of the #crd of ,june1 8,i have been waiting for two years for the sequel of the prediction which you are about to read4 ,i omit everything that concerns my friend ,lon's family and my own private affairs4 ,yet there is in my life at this moment a personal matter1 which1 as always happens1 agrees too closely with general occurrences for me to be able to doubt what follows3 8#8,o my ,god6 ,my country is lost3 ,france is dead6444 ,what a disaster6444 ,ah1 see1 she is saved6 ,she extends to the ,rhine6 ,o ,france1 ,o my beloved country1 you are triumphant2 you are the queen of nations6444 ,your genius shines forth over the world4444 ,all the earth wonders at you44440 ,these are the words contained in the document written at the ,mont-,dore on the #crd and handed to ,m4 de ,vesme on the #acth of ,june #aiad1 at a moment when no one was thinking of the terrible war which to-day is ravaging half the world4 ,when questioned1 after the declaration of war1 by ,m4 de ,vesme on the subject of the prophetic phrase1 8,i have been waiting for two years for the sequel of the prediction which you are about to read10 ,dr4 ,tardieu replied1 on the #abth of ,august3 8,i had been waiting for two years2 and ,i will tell you why4 ,my friend ,lon did not name the year1 but the more general events are described simultaneously with the events of my own life4 ,now the events which concern me privately and which were doubtful two years ago became certain in ,april or ,may last4 ,my friends know that since ,may last ,i have been announcing war as due before ,september1 basing my prediction on coincidences with events in my private life of which ,i do not speak40 #e ,these1 up to the present1 are the only prophecies known to us that deserve any particular attention4 ,the prediction in both is timid and laconic2 but1 in those regions where the least gleam of light assumes extraordinary importance1 it is not to be neglected4 ,i admit1 for the rest1 that there has so far been no time to carry out a serious enquiry on this point1 but ,i should be greatly surprised if any such enquiry gave positive results and if it did not allow us to state that the gigantic event1 as a whole1 as a general event1 was neither foreseen nor divined4 ,on the other hand1 we shall probably learn1 when the enquiry is completed1 that hundreds of deaths1 accidents1 wounds and cases of individual ruin and misfortune included in the great disaster were predicted by clairvoyants1 by mediums1 by dreams and by every other manner of premonition with a definiteness sufficient to eliminate any kind of doubt4 ,i have said elsewhere what ,i think of individual predictions of this kind1 which seem to be no more than the reading of the presentiments which we carry within us1 presentiments which themselves1 in the majority of cases1 are but the perception1 by the as yet imperfectly known senses of our subconsciousness1 of events in course of formation or in process of realization which escape the attention of our understanding4 ,however1 it would still remain to be explained how a wholly accidental death or wound could be perceived by these subliminal senses as an event in course of formation4 ,in any case1 it would once more be confirmed1 after this great test1 that the knowledge of the future1 so soon as it ceases to refer to a strictly personal fact and one1 moreover1 not at all remote1 is always illusory1 or rather impossible4 ,apart then from these strictly personal cases1 which for the moment we will agree to set aside1 it appears more than ever certain that there is no communication between ourselves and the vast store of events which have not yet occurred and which nevertheless seem already to exist at some place1 where they await the hour to advance upon us1 or rather the moment when we shall pass before them4 ,as for the exceptional and precarious infiltrations which belong not merely to the present that is still unknown1 veiled or disguised1 but really to the future1 apart from the two which we have just examined1 which are inconclusive1 ,i1 for my part1 know of but four or five that appear to be rigorously verified2 and these ,i have discussed in the essay which ,i have already mentioned4 ,for that matter1 they have no bearing upon the present war4 ,they are1 when all is said1 so exceptional that they do not prove much2 at the most1 they seem to confirm the idea that a store exists filled with future events as real1 as distinct and as immutable as those of the past2 and they allow us to hope that there are paths leading thither which as yet we do not know1 but which it will not be for ever impossible to discover4 ,,xv ,,the ,,will ,,of ,,earth #a ,to-day's conflict is but a revival of that which has not ceased to drench the west of ,europe in blood since the historical birth of the continent4 ,the two chief episodes in this conflict1 as we all know1 are the invasion of ,roman ,gaul1 including the north of ,italy1 by the ,franks and the successive conquests of ,england by the ,anglo-,saxons and the ,normans4 ,without delaying to consider questions of race1 which are complex1 uncertain and always open to discussion1 we may1 regarding the matter from another aspect1 perceive in the persistency and the bitterness of this conflict the clash of two wills1 of which one or the other succumbs for a moment1 only to rise up again with increased energy and obstinacy4 ,on the one hand is the will of earth or nature1 which1 in the human species as in all others1 openly favours brute or physical force2 and on the other hand is the will of humanity1 or at least of a portion of humanity1 which seeks to establish the empire of other more subtle and less animal forces4 ,it is incontestable that hitherto the former has always won the day4 ,but it is equally incontestable that its victory has always been only apparent and of brief duration4 ,it has regularly suffered defeat in its very triumph4 ,gaul1 invaded and overrun1 presently absorbs her victor1 even as ,england little by little transforms her conquerors4 ,on the morrow of victory1 the instruments of the will of earth turn upon her and arm the hand of the vanquished4 ,it is probable that the same phenomenon would recur once more to-day1 were events to follow the course prescribed by destiny4 ,germany1 after crushing and enslaving the greater part of ,europe1 after driving her back and burdening her with innumerable woes1 would end by turning against the will which she represents2 and that will1 which until to-day had always found in this race a docile tool and its favourite accomplices1 would be forced to seek these elsewhere1 a task less easy than of old4 #b ,but now1 to the amazement of all those who will one day consider them in cold blood1 events are suddenly ascending the irresistible current and1 for the first time since we have been in a position to observe it1 the adverse will is encountering an unexpected and insurmountable resistance4 ,if this resistance1 as we can now no longer doubt1 maintains itself victoriously to the end1 there will never perhaps have been such a sudden change in the history of mankind2 for man will have gained1 over the will of earth or nature or fatality1 a triumph infinitely more significant1 more heavily fraught with consequences and perhaps more decisive than all those which1 in other provinces1 appear to have crowned his efforts more brilliantly4 ,let us not then be surprised that this resistance should be stupendous1 or that it should be prolonged beyond anything that our experience of wars has taught us to expect4 ,it was our prompt and easy defeat that was written in the annals of destiny4 ,we had against us all the forces accumulated since the birth of ,europe4 ,we have to set history revolving in the reverse direction4 ,we are on the point of succeeding2 and1 if it be true that intelligent beings watch us from the vantage-point of other worlds1 they will assuredly witness the most curious spectacle that our planet has offered them since they discovered it amid the dust of stars that glitters in space around it4 ,they must be telling themselves in amazement that the ancient and fundamental laws of earth are suddenly being transgressed4 #c ,suddenly8 ,that is going too far4 ,this transgression of a lower law1 which was no longer of the stature of mankind1 had been preparing for a very long time2 but it was within an ace of being hideously punished4 ,it succeeded only by the aid of a part of those who formerly swelled the great wave which they are to-day resisting by our side1 as though something in the history of the world or the plans of destiny had altered2 or rather as though we ourselves had at last succeeded in altering that something and in modifying laws to which until this day we were wholly subject4 ,but it must not be thought that the conflict will end with the victory4 ,the deep-seated forces of earth will not be at once disarmed2 for a long time to come the invisible war will be waged under the reign of peace4 ,if we are not careful1 victory may even be more disastrous to us than defeat4 ,for defeat1 indeed1 like previous defeats1 would have been merely a victory postponed4 ,it would have absorbed1 exhausted1 dispersed the enemy1 by scattering him about the world1 whereas our victory will bring upon us a twofold peril4 ,it will leave the enemy in a state of savage isolation in which1 thrown back upon himself1 cramped1 purified by misfortune and poverty1 he will secretly reinforce his formidable virtues1 while we1 for our part1 no longer held in check by his unbearable but salutary menace1 will give rein to failings and vices which sooner or later will place us at his mercy4 ,before thinking of peace1 then1 we must make sure of the future and render it powerless to injure us4 ,we cannot take too many precautions1 for we are setting ourselves against the manifest desire of the power that bears us4 ,this is why our efforts are difficult and worthy of praise4 ,we are setting ourselves--we cannot too often repeat it--against the will of earth4 ,our enemies are urged forward by a force that drives us back4 ,they are marching with nature1 whereas we are striving against the great current that sweeps the globe4 ,the earth has an idea1 which is no longer ours4 ,she remains convinced that man is an animal in all things like other animals4 ,she has not yet observed that he is withdrawing himself from the herd4 ,she does not yet know that he has climbed her highest mountain-peaks4 ,she has not yet heard tell of justice1 pity1 loyalty and honour2 she does not realize what they are1 or confounds them with weakness1 clumsiness1 fear and stupidity4 ,she has stopped short at the original certitudes which were indispensable to the beginnings of life4 ,she is lagging behind us2 and the interval that divides us is rapidly increasing4 ,she thinks less quickly2 she has not yet had time to understand us4 ,moreover1 she does not reckon as we do2 and for her the centuries are less than our years4 ,she is slow because she is almost eternal1 while we are prompt because we have not many hours before us4 ,it may be that one day her thought will overtake ours2 in the meantime1 we have to vindicate our advance and to prove to ourselves1 as we are beginning to do1 that it is lawful to be in the right as against her1 that our advance is not fatal and that it is possible to maintain it4 #d ,for it is becoming difficult to argue that earth or nature is always right and that those who do not blindly follow earth's impulses are necessarily doomed to perish4 ,we have learned to observe her more attentively and we have won the right to judge her4 ,we have discovered that1 far from being infallible1 she is continually making mistakes4 ,she gropes and hesitates4 ,she does not know precisely what she wants4 ,she begins by making stupendous blunders4 ,she first peoples the world with uncouth and incoherent monsters1 not one of which is capable of living2 these all disappear4 ,gradually she acquires1 at the cost of the life which she creates1 an experience that is the cruel fruit of the immeasurable suffering which she unfeelingly inflicts4 ,at last she grows wiser1 curbs and amends herself1 corrects herself1 returns upon her footsteps1 repairs her errors1 expending her best energies and her highest intelligence upon the correction4 ,it is incontestable that she is improving her methods1 that she is more skilful1 more prudent and less extravagant than at the outset4 ,and yet the fact remains that1 in every department of life1 in every organism1 down to our own bodies1 there is a survival of bad workmanship1 of twofold functions1 of oversights1 changes of intention1 absurdities1 useless complications and meaningless waste4 ,we therefore have no reason to believe that our enemies are in the right because earth is with them4 ,earth does not possess the truth any more than we do4 ,she seeks it1 as do we1 and discovers it no more readily4 ,she seems to know no more than we whither she is going or whither she is being led by that which leads all things4 ,we must not listen to her without enquiry2 and we need not distress ourselves or despair because we are not of her opinion4 ,we are not dealing with an infallible and unchangeable wisdom1 to oppose which in our thoughts would be madness4 ,we are actually proving to her that it is she who is in fault2 that man's reason for existence is loftier than that which she provisionally assigned to him2 that he is already outstripping all that she foresaw2 and that she does wrong to delay his advance4 ,she is1 indeed1 full of goodwill1 is able on occasion to recognize her mistakes and to obviate their disastrous results and by no means takes refuge in majestic and inflexible self-conceit4 ,if we are able to persevere1 we shall be able to convince her4 ,much time will be needed1 for1 ,i repeat1 she is slow1 though in no wise obstinate4 ,much time will be needed because a very long future is in question1 a very great change and the most important victory that man has ever hoped to win4 ,,xvi ,,when ,,the ,,war ,,is ,,over #a ,before closing this book1 ,i wish to weigh for the last time in my conscience the words of hatred and malediction which the war has made me utter in spite of myself4 ,we have to do with the strangest of enemies4 ,he has knowingly and deliberately1 while in the full possession of his faculties and without necessity or excuse1 revived all the crimes which we supposed to be for ever buried in the barbarous past4 ,he has trampled under foot all the precepts which man had so painfully won from the cruel darkness of his beginnings2 he has violated all the laws of justice1 humanity1 loyalty and honour1 from the highest1 which are almost godlike1 to the simplest1 the most elementary1 which still belong to the lower worlds4 ,there is no longer any doubt on this point3 it has been proved over and over again until we have attained a final certitude4 #b ,on the other hand1 it is no less certain that he has displayed virtues which it would be unworthy of us to deny2 for we honour ourselves in recognizing the valour of those whom we are fighting4 ,he has gone to his death in deep1 compact1 disciplined masses1 with a blind1 hopeless1 obstinate heroism1 of which no such lurid example had ever yet been known and which has many times compelled our admiration and our pity4 ,he has known how to sacrifice himself1 with unprecedented and perhaps unequalled abnegation1 to an idea which we know to be false1 inhuman and even somewhat mean1 but which he believes to be just and lofty2 and a sacrifice of this kind1 whatever its object1 is always the proof of a force which survives those who devote themselves to making it and must command respect4 ,i know very well that this heroism is not like the heroism which we love4 ,for us1 heroism must before all be voluntary1 free from any constraint1 active1 ardent1 eager and spontaneous2 whereas with our enemies it has mingled with it a great deal of servility1 passiveness1 sadness1 gloomy1 ignorant1 massive submission and rather base fears4 ,it is nevertheless the fact that1 in the moment of supreme peril1 little remains of all these distinctions1 and that no force in the world can drive to its death a people which does not bear within itself the strength to confront it4 ,our soldiers make no mistake upon this point4 ,question the men returning from the trenches3 they detest the enemy1 they abhor the aggressor1 the unjust and arrogant aggressor1 uncouth1 too often cruel and treacherous2 but they do not hate the man3 they do him justice2 they pity him2 and1 after the battle1 in the defenceless wounded soldier or disarmed prisoner they recognize1 with astonishment1 a brother in misfortune who1 like themselves1 is submitting to duties and laws which1 like themselves1 he too believes lofty and necessary4 ,under the insufferable enemy they see an unhappy man who likewise is bearing the burden of life4 ,they forget the things that divide them to recall only those which unite them in a common destiny2 and they teach us a great lesson4 ,better than ourselves1 who are far from danger1 at the contact of profound and fearful verities and realities they are already beginning to discern something that we cannot yet perceive2 and their obscure instinct is probably anticipating the judgment of history and our own judgment1 when we see more clearly4 ,let us learn from them to be just and to distinguish that which we are bound to despise and loathe from that which we may pity1 love and respect4 ,setting aside the unpardonable aggression and the inexpiable violation of treaties1 this war1 despite its insanity1 has come near to being a bloody but magnificent proof of greatness1 heroism and the spirit of sacrifice4 ,humanity was ready to rise above itself1 to surpass all that it had hitherto accomplished4 ,it has surpassed it4 ,never before had nations been seen capable1 for months on end1 perhaps for years1 of renouncing their repose1 their security1 their wealth1 their comfort1 all that they possessed and loved1 down to their very life1 in order to do what they believed to be their duty4 ,never before had nations been seen that were able as a whole to understand and admit that the happiness of each of those who live in this time of trial is of no consequence compared with the honour of those who live no more or the happiness of those who are not yet alive4 ,we stand on heights that had not been attained before4 ,and1 if1 on the enemies' side1 this unexampled renunciation had not been poisoned at its source2 if the war which they are waging against us had been as fine1 as loyal1 as generous1 as chivalrous as that which we are waging against them1 we may well believe that it would have been the last and that it would have ended1 not in a battle1 but1 like the awakening from an evil dream1 in a noble and fraternal amazement4 ,they have made that impossible2 and this1 we may be sure1 is the disappointment which the future will find it most difficult to forgive them4 #c ,what are we to do now8 ,must we hate the enemy to the end of time8 ,the burden of hatred8 is the heaviest that man can bear upon this earth2 and we should faint under the weight of it4 ,on the other hand1 we do not wish once more to be the dupes and victims of confidence and love4 ,here again our soldiers1 in their simplicity1 which is so clear-seeing and so close to the truth1 anticipate the future and teach us what to admit and what to avoid4 ,we have seen that they do not hate the man2 but they do not trust him at all4 ,they discover the human being in him only when he is unarmed4 ,they know1 from bitter experience1 that1 so long as he possesses weapons1 he cannot resist the frenzy of destruction1 treachery and slaughter2 and that he does not become kindly until he is rendered powerless4 ,is he thus by nature1 or has he been perverted by those who lead him8 ,have the rulers dragged the whole nation after them1 or has the whole nation driven its rulers on8 ,did the rulers make the nation like unto themselves1 or did the nation select and support them because they resembled itself8 ,did the evil come from above or below1 or was it everywhere8 ,here we have the great obscure point of this terrible adventure4 ,it is not easy to throw light upon it and still less easy to find excuses for it4 ,if our enemies prove that they were deceived and corrupted by their masters1 they prove1 at the same time1 that they are less intelligent1 less firmly attached to justice1 honour and humanity1 less civilized1 in a word1 than those whom they claimed the right to enslave in the name of a superiority which they themselves have proved not to exist2 and1 unless they can establish that their errors1 perfidies and cruelties1 which can no longer be denied1 should be imputed only to those masters1 then they themselves must bear the pitiless weight4 ,i do not know how they will escape from this predicament1 nor what the future will decide1 that future which is wiser than the past1 even as1 in the words of an old ,slav proverb1 the dawn is wiser than the eve4 ,in the meanwhile1 let us copy the prudence of our soldiers1 who know what to believe far better than we do4 ,,footnotes #a ,marie ,lenru1 ,les ,affranchis1 ,act ,,iii41 sc4 iv4 #b ,those who take up the study of these supernormal manifestations usually ask themselves3 8,why mediums8 ,why make use of these often questionable and always inadequate intermediaries80 ,the reason is that1 hitherto1 no way has been discovered of doing without them4 ,if we admit the spiritualistic theory1 the discarnate spirits which surround us on every side and which are separated from us by the impenetrable and mysterious wall of death seek1 in order to communicate with us1 the line of least resistance between the two worlds and find it in the medium1 without our knowing why1 even as we do not know why an electric current passes along copper wire and is stopped by glass or porcelain4 ,if1 on the other hand1 we admit the telepathic hypothesis1 which is the more probable1 we observe that the thoughts1 intentions or suggestions transmitted are1 in the majority of cases1 not conveyed from one subconscious intelligence to another4 ,there is need of an organism that is1 at the same time1 a receiver and a transmitter2 and this organism is found in the medium4 ,why8 ,once more1 we know absolutely nothing about it1 even as we do not know why one body or combination of bodies is sensitive to concentric waves in wireless telegraphy1 while another is not affected by it4 ,we are here groping1 as indeed we grope almost everywhere1 in the obscure domain of undisputed but inexplicable facts4 ,those who care to possess more precise notions on the theory of mediumism will do well to read the admirable address delivered by ,sir ,william ,crookes1 as president of the ,s4,p4,r41 on the #bith of ,january #ahig4 #c ,the questions of fraud and imposture are naturally the first that suggest themselves when we begin to study these phenomena4 ,but the slightest acquaintance with the life1 habits and proceedings of the three or four leading mediums is enough to remove even the faintest shadow of suspicion4 ,of all the explanations conceivable1 that one which attributes everything to imposture and trickery is unquestionably the most extraordinary and the least probable4 ,moreover1 by reading ,richard ,hodgson's report entitled1 ,observations of certain ,phenomena of ,trance 7,proceedings1 ,vols4 ,,viii4 and ,,xiii47 and also ,j4 ,h4 ,hyslop's report 7,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xvi471 we can observe the precautions taken1 even to the extent of employing special detectives1 to make certain that ,mrs4 ,piper1 for instance1 was unable1 normally and humanly speaking1 to have any knowledge of the facts which she revealed4 ,i repeat1 from the moment that one enters upon this study1 all suspicions are dispelled without leaving a trace behind them2 and we are soon convinced that the key to the riddle must not be sought in imposture4 ,all the manifestations of the dumb1 mysterious and oppressed personality that lies concealed in every one of us have to undergo the same ordeal in their turn2 and those which relate to the divining-rod1 to name no others1 are at this moment passing through the same crisis of incredulity4 ,less than fifty years ago1 the most of the hypnotic phenomena which are now scientifically classified were likewise looked upon as fraudulent4 ,it seems that man is loth to admit that there lie within him many more things than he imagined4 #d ,in this and other 8communications10 ,i have quoted the actual ,english words employed1 whenever ,i have been able to discover them4--,translator4 #e ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xxiii41 p4 #cc4 #f ,ibid4 p4 #abj4 #g ,for a discussion of these cases1 which would take us too far from our subject1 see ,mr4 ,j4 ,g4 ,piddington's paper1 ,phenomena in ,mrs4 ,thompson's ,trance 7,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xviii41 pp4 #ahj et seq472 also ,professor ,a4 ,c4 ,pigou's article in ,vol4 ,,xxiii4 7,proceedings1 pp4 #bhf et seq474 #h ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xiii41 pp4 #cdi-cej and #cge4 #i ,proceedings1 ,vols4 ,v4 and ,,xi4 #aj ,maxwell1 ,metapsychical ,phenomena1 p4 #bjb4 #aa ,xenoglossy is well known not to be unusual in automatic writing2 sometimes even the 8automatist0 speaks or writes languages of which he is completely ignorant4 ,the ,latin and ,greek passages are translated as follows3 8,this is what ,i have wanted1 at last4 ,justice and joy speak a word to the wise4 ,a4 ,w4 ,v4 and perhaps some one else4 ,chalk sticking to the feet has got over the difficulty4 ,you help greatly by always persevering4 ,now ,i can write a name--thus1 here it is60 #ab ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xi41 p4 #dic4 #ac ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xi41 p4 #eje4 #ad ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xi41 p4 #ede4 #ae ,a4 ,j4 ,c4 ,,kerner1 ,die ,seherin von ,prevorst4 #af ,light1 #aijg1 p4 #bai4 ,the crime was committed in ,paris and made a great stir at the time4 #ag ,,lady ,,burton1 ,the ,life of ,captain ,sir ,richd4 ,f4 ,burton4 ,k4,c4,m4,g41 ,vol4 ,i41 p4 #bec4 #ah ,journal of the ,society for ,psychical ,research1 ,vol4 ,,ix41 p4 #ae4 #ai ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xx41 p4 #cca4 #bj ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xiv41 p4 #bff4 #ba ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xi41 p4 #dbb4 #bb ,flournoy1 ,esprits et mdiums1 p4 #caf4 #bc ,proceedings1 ,vol4 ,,xi41 p4 #dbd4 #bd ,journal1 ,vol4 ,,viii41 p4 #de4 #be ,journal1 ,vol4 ,i41 p4 #bhc4 #bf ,memoirs of the ,life and ,labours of ,stephen ,grellet1 ,vol4 ,i41 p4 #dcd4 #bg ,this and the later passage from ,pericles' funeral oration ,i have quoted from the late ,richard ,crawley's admirable translation of ,thucydides' ,peloponnesian ,war now published in the ,temple ,classics4--,a4 ,t4 de ,m4 #bh ,kokoro3 ,hints and ,echoes of ,japanese ,life1 chapter xiv43 8,some ,thoughts about ,ancestor-,worship40 #bi ,august1 ,september and ,october #aiae4 ,edinburgh3 ,t4 and ,a4 ,,constable1 ,printers to ,his ,majesty ,,seven ,,charming ,,works ,,by ,,maurice ,,maeterlinck ,,translated ,,by ,,alexander ,,teixeira ,,de ,,mattos ,,the ,,wrack ,,of ,,the ,,storm ,third ,edition4 ,crown #hvo4 #es4 net4 ,this volume contains all that ,m4 ,maeterlinck has written since the outbreak of the war2 sixteen essays1 and the three speeches delivered at ,milan1 ,rome1 and ,london respectively4 ,,the ,,blue ,,bird 7,a ,,fairy ,,play ,,in ,,six ,,acts7 ,the book is issued in three forms3 ,a sumptuous ,edition1 containing #be ,illustrations in ,colour by ,f4 ,,cayley ,,robinson1 ,a4,r4,w4,s4 ,gilt top4 ,crown #dto4 #bas4 net4 ,an ,edition in ,cloth4 ,deckle edges4 ,fcap4 #hvo4 #cs4 #f;d4 net4 ,an ,edition in ,cloth4 ,fcap4 #hvo4 #as4 net4 7,thirty-nine ,editions of this book have been issued in all47 ,,mary ,,magdalene 7,a ,,play ,,in ,,three ,,acts7 ,third ,edition4 ,fcap4 #hvo4 ,deckle edges4 #cs4 #f;d4 net4 ,an ,edition in ,cloth1 ,fcap4 #hvo1 #as4 net1 is also issued4 ,,death ,fourth ,edition4 ,fcap4 #hvo4 ,deckle edges4 #cs4 #f;d4 net4 ,a beautiful essay by this master of poetic prose4 ,,our ,,eternity ,with a ,photogravure ,frontispiece after ,g4 ,f4 ,,watts' #8,hope4' ,fcap4 #hvo4 ,deckle edges4 #es4 ,,the ,,unknown ,,guest ,second ,edition4 ,crown #hvo4 #es4 net4 ,,poems ,,done ,,into ,,english ,,verse ,,by ,,bernard ,,miall4 ,second ,edition4 ,crown #hvo4 ,gilt top4 #es4 net4 ,,methuen ,,co4 ,,ltd4 ,,london 99 99 99 99 99 ,,give ,,preference ,,to ,,british ,,goods ,,the ,empire ,typewriter ,,made ,,in ,,canada ,lightweight ,travelling ,model #ac #b #f ,weight #aj lbs4 net4 ,no4 #a ,commercial #ac #b #f ,no4 #b ,latest ,improved #ag #aj #j ,subject to ,war ,advances4 ,best ,service with ,lowest ,cost6 ,,over #e1jjj ,,empires ,,purchased ,,by ,,his ,,majesty',s ,,government ,,the ,,empire ,,typewriter ,,co41 ,,ltd4 #gg ,queen ,victoria ,street1 ,e4,c4 #d