My thanks are due also to another colleague who has passed away, my brother, Dr. A. T. Myers, F.R.C.P., who helped me for many years in all medical points arising in the work.
To the original furnishers of the evidence my obligations are great and manifest, and to the Council of the S.P.R. I also owe thanks for permission to use that evidence freely. But I must leave it to the book itself to indicate in fuller detail how much is owing to how many men and women:--how widely diffused are the work and the interest which have found in this book their temporary outcome and exposition.
The book, indeed, is an exposition rather than a proof. I cannot summarise within my modest limits the mass of evidence already gathered together in the sixteen volumes of _Proceedings_ and the nine volumes of the _Journal_ of the S.P.R., in _Phantasms of the Living_ and other books hereafter referred to, and in MS. collections. The attempt indeed would be quite out of place. This branch of knowledge, like others, must be studied carefully and in detail by those who care to understand or to advance it.
What I have tried to do here is to render that knowledge more assimilable by co-ordinating it in a form as clear and intelligible as my own limited skill and the nature of the facts themselves have permitted. I have tried to give, in text and in Appendices, enough of actual evidence to illustrate each step in my argument:--and I have constantly referred the reader to places where further evidence will be found.
In minor matters I have aimed above all things at clearness and readiness in reference. The division of the book into sections, with Appendices bearing the same numbers, will, it is hoped, facilitate the use both of syllabus and of references in general. I have even risked the appearance of pedantry in adding a glossary. Where many unfamiliar facts and ideas have to be dealt with, time is saved in the end if the writer explains precisely what his terms mean.
NOTE.--The words and phrases here included fall under three main heads:--
(1) Words common only in philosophical or medical use.
(2) Words or phrases used in psychical research with some special significance.
(3) A few words, distinguished by an asterisk, for which the author is himself responsible.