circumstances we see so jealously vindicating their identity,
should not here, when the occasion is so propitious, seek to
declare themselves, to manifest themselves and to make themselves
known.

7

Dismissing for the time being the intervention of the dead, I
believe then that, in most of the cases which I will call
laboratory cases, because they can be reproduced at will, we are
not necessarily reduced to the theory of the vitalized object
representing wholly, indefinitely and inexhaustibly, through all
the vicissitudes of time and spice, every one of those who have
held it in their hands for a little while. For we must not forget
that, according to this theory, the object in question will
conceal and, through the intermediary of the medium, will reveal
as many distinct and complete personalities as it has undergone
contacts. It will never confuse or mix those different
personalities. They will remain there in definite strata,
distinct one from another; and, as Dr. Osty puts it, "the medium
can interpret each of them from beginning to end, as though he
were in communication with the far-off entity."

All this makes the theory somewhat incredible, even though it be
not much more so than the many other phenomena in which the shock
of the miraculous has been softened by familiarity. We can find
more or less everywhere in nature that prodigious faculty of
storing away inexhaustible energies and ineffaceable tram,
memories and impressions in space. There is not a thing in this
world that is lost, that disappears, that ceases to be, to retain