Whatever life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly operative in the inorganic world.

They definitely mean to maintain that the process called death is a mere severence of soul and body, and that the soul is freed rather than injured thereby.

The amount of sophistication varies according to the quality of the medium, and to the state of the same medium at different times; it must be attributed in the best cases physiologically to the medium, intellectually to the control.

But although life is not energy, any more than it is matter, yet it directs energy and thereby controls arrangements of matter.

The old series of sittings with Mrs. Piper convinced me of survival for reasons which I should find it hard to formulate in any strict fashion, but that was their distinct effect.

The properties which differentiate living matter from any kind of inorganic imitation may be instinctively felt, but can hardly be formulated without expert knowledge.

The hypothesis of surviving intelligence and personality - not only surviving but anxious and able with difficulty to communicate - is the simplest and most straightforward and the only one that fits all the facts.

In other cases, when the medium becomes entranced, the demonstration of a communicator's separate intelligence may become stronger and the sophistication less.

Of mediumship there are many grades, one of the simplest forms being the capacity to receive an impression or automatic writing, under peaceful conditions, in an ordinary state; but the whole subject is too large to be treated here.

Life must be considered sui generis; it is not a form of energy, nor can it be expressed in terms of something else.