Contact With the Other World

“The present volume endeavors to treat every aspect of the problem regarding a future life and especially emphasizes a large mass of facts that ought to have cumulative weight in deciding the issue. The facts consist of both spontaneous and experimental experiences; the latter designed not only to add to the force of the evidence, but to suggest more problems than the mere fact of survival. It has not been possible to exhaust any one subject in in the field. That would require several volumes. But there are topics on which the public desires and needs information that I have been unable to consider in previous works and I have endeavored to sketch them as briefly as space would permit.
The work as a whole, however, makes an effort to help readers who want a scientific view of the subject into a critical way of dealing with problems which are far larger than the case of mere survival. The attitude is more conservative than many of the books that have a popular hearing. This is rendered necessary by the exceedingly complex nature of the problems before psychic research. If I succeed in leading intelligent people to take scientific interest in the phenomena while they preserve proper cautions in accepting conclusions I shall have accomplished all that can be expected in a work of this kind, and though I regard the evidence of survival after death conclusive for most people who have taken the pains to examine the evidence critically, I have endeavored in this work to canvass the subject as though it had still to be proved. The mass of facts sustaining survival is much larger and much of it better than that which I have adduced. But it is too complicated to explain, and hence I have contented myself with illustrations that can easily be made intelligible”. — Excerpt from James H. Hyslop’s Introduction