Sciens. How to Speak with the Dead : A Practical Handbook. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1918.
FIRST EDITION. (190 x 130 mm) pp. xv, 136. Bright, clean text block. Dark green publisher's cloth binding with title and author in gilt on cover and spine. Small abrasion to external fore edge, some bumping to edges, darkening to spine with age. Overall a VERY GOOD example of an exceedingly rare book. No institutional holdings listed on WorldCat.
Moving fluidly between telepathy and speculative metaphysics, the work probes the nature of the spirit itself, deliberately inhabiting the liminal space between rational philosophy and spiritualist belief. At once a practical manual for communicating with the dead, a philosophical meditation on unseen forces, and a pointed engagement with theories fiercely debated in its own moment, Sciens writes in opposition to what he regarded as the naïveté and excesses of contemporary mysticism—seeking not to sensationalize the séance, but to discipline it.