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W. J. Colville surveys beliefs about the soul, immortality, and communication with spirits across different periods and cultures. He brings this historical and religious material into conversation with the spiritualist philosophy and psychical research of his own time.
The chapters range through Egyptian, Jewish, Persian, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Scandinavian, Etruscan, Chinese, Japanese, and Islamic traditions. Colville also discusses Vedanta, the Kabala, and early Christian ideas, presenting them as parts of a broader inquiry into humanity's spiritual nature.
Later sections turn to modern European investigations, sleep, mediumship, telepathy, and clairvoyance. An autobiographical section and accounts attributed to witnesses give the comparative discussion a more personal setting. Readers will find an extensive early twentieth-century synthesis of religious interpretation and spiritualist thought, preserved here with its original introduction, chapter sequence, and concluding testimonies.