100. Man has never yet applied the method of science to the problem of his own survival of death.

101. There has been much belief in survival, - both definite belief and vague belief, - but nevertheless no attempt to test that belief by observation and experiment.

102. In fact, the very importance of the belief has barred methodical inquiry; men have adopted it as a faith, and have then been reluctant to analyse it. The Christian Church has absorbed the question into theology, and has treated theology as based on tradition and intuition, not on fresh experiment.

103. From time to time various significant phenomena have occurred, which recall traditional marvels, but are now gradually being brought into line with the results of modern science; e.g. Witchcraft has been greatly elucidated by modern investigations into hysteria.

104. Mesmerism foreshadowed hypnotic suggestion and psycho-therapeutics.

105. Swedenborg originated the notion of science in the spiritual world, and must be regarded as a true and early precursor of our enquiry into the nature of trance manifestations.

106. Sir W. Crookes was the first who seriously endeavoured to apply scientific tests to the alleged supernormal influence of the spiritual on the material world. On these alleged facts, a scheme of belief known as Modern Spiritualism has been founded.

107. Next a group of Cambridge friends became convinced that the questions at issue could only be decided through experiment and observation of contemporary phenomena. On this basis the S.P.R. was founded. The first definite and important point towards which all the evidence converged was the thesis of Telepathy, the evidence for which was set forth in Phantasms of the Living.

108. Telepathy, rendered probable, leads on to evidence of man's survival of death; but we need first a searching review of the capacities of his incarnate personality.

109. Contrasted views of Personality from which we start. Reid: the old-fashioned view of a single unitary personality.

110. Ribot: the modern view that the self is a co-ordination.

111. The new evidence adduced in this book, while supporting the conception of the composite structure of the Ego, does also bring the strongest proof of its abiding unity, by showing that it withstands the shock of death.

112. The words supraliminal and subliminal may be used to express the mental life which goes on above and below the ordinary threshold of consciousness. The subliminal (or ultra-marginal) mental life is sufficiently complex and continuous to justify us in speaking of a subliminal Self.

113. This view may be attacked, on die one hand, as being too elaborate for the facts; on the other hand, as ascribing to some part of our own personality perceptions and impulses which are really due to extraneous and perhaps discarnate minds.

114. The theory of the subliminal self need not, however, be pushed so far as altogether to negative spirit-intervention; in fact, the two views support each other.

115. The study of these subliminal workings is the more necessary now that we realise the slow and complex evolution of man, with the probable lapse from consciousness of much that was once vividly present.

116. The difference between old and new conceptions of consciousness is like the difference between the old simple conception of sunlight and our present conception of the ray fanned out into a spectrum, and barred with lines of varying darkness.

117. Just as the solar spectrum has been prolonged by artifice beyond both red and violet ends, so may the spectrum of conscious human faculty be artificially prolonged beyond both the lower end (where consciousness merges into mere organic operation) and the higher end (where consciousness merges into reverie or ecstasy).

118. Sketch of the general line of inquiry to be pursued in this book - an advance from the analysis of normal to the evidence for supernormal faculty, ending with a discussion of the nature of the proof acquired as to the persistence of human personality after bodily death.

119. Of the chapters following on this first or introductory one, the second will contain a discussion of the ways in which human personality disintegrates and decays.

120. The third, utilising the insight thus gained, will discuss the line of evolution which enables man to maintain and intensify his true normality.

121. The fourth will discuss man's normal alternating phase of personality - sleep, and introduces us to certain supernormal phenomena, which sometimes occur in that state.

122. The fifth chapter will deal with hypnotism, considered as an empirical development of sleep. Hypnotic suggestion intensifies the physical recuperation of sleep, and aids the emergence of those supernormal phenomena which ordinary sleep and spontaneous somnambulism sometimes afford.

123. From hypnotism we pass on in the sixth chapter to a range of experiment and observation of still wider scope, namely, to the consideration of all the sensor)- messages which the subliminal sends upwards to the supraliminal self; phantasmal externalisations of internal vision and audition. Many of these messages are telepathic - involve, that is to say, direct transmission of thought from one living person to another.

124. Nor does such transmission cease with the bodily death of the trans mitting agent. The seventh chapter shows that veridical messages may be given phantasmally to mortal men by spirits after bodily death.

125. The eighth chapter introduces another class of subliminal messages those unwilled writings and utterances which may be styled motor automatisms. Automatic writing, especially, furnishes the opportunity for experiments more prolonged and continuous than the phantasms or pictures of sensory automatisms can often give.

126. These motor automatisms, moreover, as the ninth chapter shows, are apt to become more complete, more controlling, than sensory automatisms. They culminate in the possession of the sensitive by some extraneous spirit, who writes and talks through the temporarily vacated organism, giving proof of his own surviving identity.

127. The conceptions thus gained will be seen to have bearings on the fundamental problems of the relation of spiritual phenomena to Space, to Time, and to the material world.

128. Finally, we shall resume in a tenth chapter, or Epilogue, some of the reflections, philosophical or religious, to which these new facts inevitably give rise.