Posthumous humanity : a study of phantoms / by Adolphe d' Assier ; translated and annotated by Henry S. Olcott ; to which is added an appendix, shewing the popular beliefs current in India respecting the post-mortem vicissitudes of the human entity.

Adolphe d’Assier

Date:: 1887

Credit: Posthumous humanity : a study of phantoms / by Adolphe d' Assier ; translated and annotated by Henry S. Olcott ; to which is added an appendix, shewing the popular beliefs current in India respecting the post-mortem vicissitudes of the human entity. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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$rescue, but he has not the least remembrance of that which he had written upon the slate of the ship which was to save them. When he came aboard her it seemed as though he could remember her, and yet he declared that he had never been there before. He had only fragmentary, confused reminiscences of what had occurred to him while out in the Double. One would say that we have here solutions of con- tinuity in his dream. That is not surprising. The phenomena of doubling present, as\ we shall see in the course of this book, all the shades] of differ- ence, from the complete and living apparition of the human form to the simplest dreams. These differ- ent manifestations evidently depend upon the degree of moral energy in the individual, the tension of his mind toward a determined result, his physical con- stitution, his age, and probably other causes as well, of which we are ignorant. (^^) The same applies to the memory of what passes during the '* doubling. Certain persons recollect most accu- rately all that they have done, seen, or heard. Others only catch vague and broken reminiscences alternated with perfect blanks ; others have no re- membrance of the part which they have played during their lethargic sleep. Such is the case of some somnambules, about whom I shall soon have occasion to remark. Now let us open the book of a man whose name ('*) See note ante.$