Excerpt from The Vanished Friend: Evidence, Theoretical and Practical, of the Survival of Human Identity After Death In writing a foreword for l'ami Disparu, it is only frank to say that, though I share the author's belief in immortality, the scientific value of his book seems to me slight. It is one of those ethical, but for the most part unevi dential, books upon the subject of the survival of human personality after death which are just now pouring from the press. These books - largely made up of automatic writings seem to be creating a literature of feeling, not a literature of fact. They are impressive only as they indicate the honest conviction of the automatists, and the demand of human hearts for the solution of the riddle of the pain ful earth, a riddle summed up in two words, Love and Death. Efforts to solve this riddle by inspirational utterances have always had value, because they have consoled Sorrow; -just in proportion as Sorrow has had faith to believe in their authenticity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.