must also be put
aside.

Finally, Phinuit affirms that the objects presented to him, and which he
touches, furnish him with information about their former possessors,
thanks to the "influence" such persons have left on the articles; and in
a multitude of cases we should be almost forced to admit that it may be
so. But here we are already plunged into depths of mystery. What can
this "influence" be? We know nothing about it. Must we believe in it?
Must we believe Phinuit when he says that he obtains his information
sometimes from the "influence" left upon the objects, sometimes directly
from the mouths of the disembodied spirits? Before reaching that point,
other hypotheses must be examined.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. vi. p. 438.

[11] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xvi.

CHAPTER V

A sitting with Mrs Piper--The hypothesis of
thought-transference--Incidents.

The reader may not be displeased to have a specimen of these strange
conversations between human beings and the invisible beings, who assert
that they are the disincarnated spirits of those who day by day quit
this world of woe. It will not be difficult to give the reader a
specimen of them. At least one half of the fourteen or fifteen hundred
pages dedicated to the Piper case in the _Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research_ are composed of reports of sittings, either taken
down in shorthand or given in great detail. In some of these reports
even the most insignificant exclamations of those present are noted.

I have chosen the 47th of the sittings which took place in England, not
because it is peculiarly interesting, but because Professor Lodge's
published report of it is not too long, and I have no room for more
extended developments.

The account of this sitting will perhaps disappoint some readers.
"What!" they will say, "is that all that spirits who return from the
other world have to say to us? They talk as we do. They speak of the
same things. They are not spirits." This conclusion would perhaps be too
hasty. I do not assert that they are spirits or that they return from
another world. I know nothing about it. But if this other world existed
we should expect that there would not be an abyss between it and our
own. Nature makes no leaps. That is surely a true principle in, and for,
all worlds.

We have a means, although an imperfect one, of endeavouring to discover
if the communicators are really returning spirits. It is