PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. 



NEVER in the history of human 

 thought has the interest in the 

 soul and its immortality been greater 

 and keener than now. The leading in- 

 vestigators of the Society of Psychical 

 Research have taken up the problem of 

 enquiring into the facts of spiritual ex- 

 periences, telepathy, forebodings and 

 kindred phenomena. The result has 

 been rather negative, for, while we have 

 received innumerable single facts, they 

 all suffer from the common fault that 

 they are too subjective in their nature 

 to furnish a proof that could be object- 

 ively valid. Moreover, many reports 

 come from witnesses whose mental con- 

 stitution is under the suspicion of being 

 pathological, and so their value is prac- 

 tically null. 



