A discovery of real and essential novelty can never be made by following a clue, but the clue does not logically lead to it.
Again, when animation has ceased, the thing we properly call dead is not the complete organism, but that material portion which is left behind; we do not or should not intend to make any assertion concerning the vivifying principle which has left it, - beyond the bare fact of its departure.
Any person without invincible prejudice who had the same experience would come to the same broad conclusion, viz., that things hitherto held impossible do actually occur.
Basing my conclusions on experience I am absolutely convinced not only of survival but of demonstrated survival, demonstrated by occasional interaction with matter in such a way as to produce physical results.
Biologists teach us that the phenomenon of old age is not evident in the case of the unicellular organisms which reproduce by fission. The cell can be killed, but it need neither grow old nor die.
But although life is not energy, any more than it is matter, yet it directs energy and thereby controls arrangements of matter.
Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is.
Death is not extinction. Neither the soul nor the body is extinguished or put out of existence.
Energy controlled by life is not random energy: the kind of self-composition or personal structure built by it depends on the kind of life-unit which is operating, not on the pabulum which is supplied.
However the facts are to be explained, the possibility of the facts I am constrained to admit; there is no further room in my mind for doubt.
I do not attach especial importance to it, but every individual case is of moment, because in such a matter the aphorism Ex uno disce omnes is Strictly applicable.
In other cases, when the medium becomes entranced, the demonstration of a communicator's separate intelligence may become stronger and the sophistication less.
Life makes use of any automatic activities, or transferences and declensions of energy, which are either potentially or actually occurring.
Life must be considered sui generis; it is not a form of energy, nor can it be expressed in terms of something else.
Mediums have perhaps but little conscious information to give us concerning their powers; we must learn from what they do, not from what they say.
Of mediumship there are many grades, one of the simplest forms being the capacity to receive an impression or automatic writing, under peaceful conditions, in an ordinary state; but the whole subject is too large to be treated here.
People of sense will not take its absurd triviality as anything but helpful in contributing to the proof of the survival of personal identity.
The amount of sophistication varies according to the quality of the medium, and to the state of the same medium at different times; it must be attributed in the best cases physiologically to the medium, intellectually to the control.
The discovery which has been pointed to by theory is always one of profound interest and importance, but it is usually the close and crown of a long and fruitful period, whereas the discovery which comes as a puzzle and surprise usually marks a fresh epoch and opens a new chapter in science.
The hypothesis of surviving intelligence and personality - not only surviving but anxious and able with difficulty to communicate - is the simplest and most straightforward and the only one that fits all the facts.
The old series of sittings with Mrs. Piper convinced me of survival for reasons which I should find it hard to formulate in any strict fashion, but that was their distinct effect.
The properties which differentiate living matter from any kind of inorganic imitation may be instinctively felt, but can hardly be formulated without expert knowledge.
They definitely mean to maintain that the process called death is a mere severence of soul and body, and that the soul is freed rather than injured thereby.
To understand the intelligent tiltings of a table in contact with human muscles is a much simpler matter.
We know that communication must be hampered, and its form largely determined, by the unconscious but inevitable influence of a transmitting mechanism, whether that be of a merely mechanical or of a physiological character.
WHATEVER Life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly operative in the inorganic world.
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