124. And thus (Chapter VII (Phantasms Of The Dead).) we come face to face with the supreme problem; - if not of all theoretical knowledge, at least of all knowledge as bearing upon the fate and the duty of man. The theoretical question of primary importance may be simply that of the existence or non-existence of a spiritual world. The human or practical question of supreme importance is that of man's presence or portion in that world, if it does exist. To prove that telepathy implies a spiritual environment would be at once to lift our knowledge of the Cosmos to a higher level. To prove that man survives death would also be to transform and transfigure his whole life here and now. Before us, as of old, is that all-embracing problem; but before us also, for the first time, is some hint and indication as to the track which may be pursued towards its solution.

The old conception of the ghost - a conception which seemed to belong only to primitive animism and to modern folk-lore - has received a new meaning from observations of phenomena occurring between living men. We realise that a phantasmal figure may bear a true relation to some distant person whose semblance is thus shown; we learn by instances of directly provable coincidence that wraiths of this kind correspond with death too often to leave the correspondence attributable to chance alone. The vague question of former times narrows down, then, to the more precise question: Are there still coincidences, is there still evidence of some such definite type as this, showing that a phantasm can appear not only at but after a man's bodily death, and can still indicate connection with a persistent and individual life?

To this distinct question there can now be given, as I believe, a distinct and affirmative answer. When evidence has been duly analysed, when alternative hypotheses have been duly weighed, it seems to me that there is no real break in the appearance of veridical phantasms, or in their causation at the moment of bodily death; but rather that (after setting aside all merely subjective post-mortem apparitions) there is evidence that the self-same living spirit is still operating, and it may be in the self-same way. And thus my general dogma will have received its specific confirmation. Telepathy, I have said, looks like a law prevailing in the spiritual as well as in the material world. And that it does so prevail, I now add, is proved by the fact that those who communicated with us telepathically in this world communicate with us telepathically from the other. Man, therefore, is not a planetary or a transitory being; he persists as very man among cosmic and eternal things.

If this bare fact be gained, we have a basis for such an edifice of knowledge as will take many generations to uprear. At first, indeed, the mere observation of these phantasms does not seem as though it could lead us far. It is like the observation of shooting stars - of meteors which appear without warning and vanish in a flash of fire. Yet systematic observation has learnt much as to these meteors; has learnt, for instance, the point in heaven from which they issue; their orbital relation to earth and sun. Somewhat similarly, continuous observation of these brief phantasmal appearances may tell us much of them at last; much, for instance, as to their relative frequency at different epochs after death; something as to their apparent knowledge of what has happened on earth since they left it. From the study of meteorites, again, a further unexpected discovery has been made. "The stone that fell down from Jupiter" is nowhere alone in its glory. The solid earth, the ocean's floor, are covered with meteoric dust; - the dust of the cosmic wayside, which we have gathered in our rush through the constellations.

Even thus we come to find that there are traces over all the earth of indeterminate and unrecognised communication from a world of unembodied intelligences; - hauntings of unknown purport, and bearing no perceptible relation to the thoughts or deeds of living men.