As I said above, nearly a thousand cases have been collected,
representing probably not the tenth part of those which a more
active and general search might bring together. The number is
evidently of importance and denotes the enormous pressure of the
mystery; but, if there were only half a dozen genuine cases--and
Dr. Maxwell's, Professor Flournoy's, Mrs. Verrall's, the
Marmontel, Jones and Hamilton cases and some others are
undoubtedly genuine--they would be enough to show that, under the
erroneous idea which we form of the past and the present, a new
verity is living and moving, eager to come to light.
The efforts of that verity, I need hardly say, display a very
different sort of force after we have actually and attentively
read those hundreds of extraordinary stories which, without
appearing to do so, strike to the very roots of history. We soon
lose all inclination to doubt. We penetrate into another world
and come to a stop all out of countenance. We no longer know
where we stand; before and after overlap and mingle. We no longer
distinguish the insidious and factitious but indispensable line
which separates the years that have gone by from the years that
are to come. We clutch at the hours and days of the past and
present to reassure ourselves, to fasten on to some certainty, to
convince ourselves that we are still in our right place in this
life where that which is not yet seems as substantial, as real,
as positive, as powerful as that which is no more.
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