Chapter IV: Part 4

"Concerning the sitting mentioned above on March 6th, I may add
that the 'control' said, when mentioning that Aunt Kate had died,
that I would find 'a letter or telegram' when I got home, saying
she was gone.

"ALICE H. JAMES."

Now all this seems quite possibly telepathy and coincidence. But how about this?

"_July, 1890._

"Early at this sitting I inquired, 'How is Aunt Kate?' The reply
was, 'She is poorly.' This reply disappointed me, from its
baldness. Nothing more was said about Aunt Kate till towards the
close of the sitting, when I again said, 'Can you tell me nothing
more about Aunt Kate?' The medium suddenly threw back her head
and said in a startled way, 'Why, Aunt Kate's here. All round me
I hear voices saying, "Aunt Kate has come."' Then followed the
announcement that she had died very early that morning, and on
being pressed to give the time, shortly after two was named.

"A. H. J."

And here is a manifestation eight months after Mrs. Walsh's death:

_R. Hodgson. November 7th, 1889._ (Pr. VIII, 93-4.)

[From a letter written to Professor W. James on the day of the
sitting.]

"Mrs. D. and I had sitting to-day at Arlington Heights, and the
usurpation by 'Kate Walsh' was extraordinary. The personality
seemed very intense, and spoke in effortful whispers.

"'William--William--God bless you.' Sitter: 'Who are you?'
'Kate--Walsh.' (S. 'I know you.') 'Help me--help me----' [Taking
(_i. e._, Mrs. Piper "taking," &c. Ed.) my right hand with her
right, and passing it to her left and making me take hold of her
left hand.] 'That hand's dead--dead--this one's alive' [_i. e._,
the right]--'help me.'

"The left hand ... was cooler than either of my hands, while the
right hand was warmer than either of my hands [the implication
being that Mrs. Piper was possessed by Mrs. Walsh. Ed.]

"I'm alive--I'm alive--Albert's coming over soon. He can't
stay--poor boy--poor boy--Albert--Albert--Alfred--Albert--I know
you--Alice--Alice--William--Alice----' (S. 'Yes, I know. I'll
tell them. You remember me. I stayed with you in New York.')
'Yes, I know. But, oh, I can't remember. I'm so cold--I'm so
cold. Oh, help me--help me'--[making tremulous movements of
hands]. (S. 'I know. I'll tell them. You remember me; my name's
Hodgson.') 'Yes. Mr. Hodgson. Where are the girls? Yes. You had
fish for breakfast on the second day, didn't you?' (S. 'I don't
remember very well.') 'And the tea--who was it spilt the cup of
tea? Was it you or William?' [I think I remember something about
the tea, but not very clearly. R. H.] 'You were in the corner
room--bedroom--upstairs. Were you cold? Then there was some
blancmange--you didn't like that. No. It was cream--Bavarian
cream. [Is all this Mrs. Piper, or is it Shakspere, or is it the
spirit of a fussy old lady? Ed.] Albert--poor boy; he's coming
soon. William--[something about arranging the
property]--William--God bless him.'

"The above was much less than was really said. But that was the
sort of thing, and nothing _à la mode_ Phinuit at all. It was the
most strikingly personal thing I have seen."

This, some commentators want us to believe, was still "another personality" of Mrs. Piper--if Phinuit was. Four in the case of Sallie Beauchamp are well established, and nine in the case of Dr. Wilcox's patient. I wonder how many Dr. Prince would consider a probable number, and at what number the spiritistic hypothesis would begin to appear easier than the divided personality one. All unquestionable cases of secondary personality that I know of do not cross the sex, and are the results of brain injury or disease. Mrs. Piper and most of the mediums are normal people, and do their best when physically at their best.

The following report (Pr. VIII, 126f.) by Mr. T. Rogers Rich, a well known artist of Boston, made from contemporary notes of the sittings, is among the best:

"My first sitting with her was on September 6th, 1888. With
little trouble she went into the trance ... and after a moment's
silence ... I was startled by the remarkable change in her
voice--an exclamation, a sort of grunt of satisfaction, as if the
person had reached his destination and gave vent to his pleasure
thereat by this sound, uttered in an unmistakably male voice, but
rather husky. I was at once addressed in French with, 'Bonjour,
Monsieur, comment vous portez vous?' to which I gave answer in
the same language, with which I happen to be perfectly familiar.
My answer was responded to with a sort of inquiring grunt, much
like the French 'Hein?'.... Nearly all my interviews were begun
in the same manner.... I was quite unwell with nervous
troubles.... The first thing told me was of a 'great light behind
me, a good sign,' &c. Then suddenly all my ills were very clearly
and distinctly explained and so thoroughly that I felt certain
that Mrs. Piper herself would have hesitated to use such plain
language! Prescriptions were given to me...."

"_Second Sitting on October 5th._--... The 'Doctor' told me of my
niece being frequently 'in my surroundings,' and that she was
then at my side. Up to this time I had not heard my name
mentioned, so I asked for it from my niece. The 'Doctor' was
again puzzled and said, 'What a funny name--wait, I cannot go so
fast!' Then my entire name was correctly spelt out but entirely
with the French alphabet, each separate letter being clearly
pronounced in that language. My niece had been born, lived most
of her short life, and died in France. Then the attempt to
pronounce my name was amusing--finally calling me 'Thames
Rowghearce Reach.' The 'Doctor' never called me after that
anything but 'Reach.'"

The spelling of a name "entirely with the French alphabet, each separate letter being clearly pronounced in that language," is a feat that few English-speaking students could accomplish, because the matter is of little consequence, and generally neglected. I have been in France some, and have translated two French books without incurring critical censure that I am aware of, and yet that feat would be far beyond me.

"One day Mrs. Piper pointed to a plain gold ring on my finger and
said: 'C'est une alliance, how you call that? A wedding ring,
n'est-ce pas?' This was true. Now if Mrs. Piper had learned
French at school here [which she did not or anywhere else. Ed.]
she would most probably have called this ring 'un anneau de
marriage,' and not have given it the technical name 'alliance.'"

There are many cases of mediums speaking in languages which they did not know, but which the control, when incarnate, did. Mr. Rich continued:

"Breaking into the run of conversation, the 'Doctor' of a sudden
said, 'Hullo, here's Newell!' [pseudonym] (mentioning the name of
a friend who had died some months before).... 'Newell' had
frequently purported to communicate directly with his mother
through Mrs. Piper at previous sittings, but this was the first
time that any intimation of his presence was given to me. I was
totally unprepared for this, and said, 'Who did you say?' The
name was repeated with a strong foreign accent, and in the
familiar voice and tone of the 'Doctor.' Then there seemed for a
moment to be a mingling of voices as if in dispute, followed by
silence and heavy breathing of the medium. All at once I was
astonished to hear, in an entirely different tone and in the
purest English accent, 'Well, of all persons under the sun,
Rogers Rich, what brought you here? I'm glad to see you, old
fellow! How is X and Y and Z, and all the boys at the club?' Some
names were given which I knew of, but their owners I had never
met, and so reminded my friend 'Newell,' who recalled that he
followed me in college by some years and that all his
acquaintances were younger than I. I remarked an odd movement of
the medium while under this influence; she apparently was
twirling a mustache, a trick which my friend formerly practised
much."

Now if all this drama is telepathy, it certainly is not of the "common or garden variety," and if "Newell" is a secondary personality of Mrs. Piper, it is one of hundreds of instances of that woman having secondary personalities who are men. I have read accounts of a good many undoubted cases of secondary personality, and have yet to read of one where the sex was crossed. Aren't these interpretations growing to look a little absurd? Mr. Rich goes on:

"_June 3rd, 1889._--This time I asked to communicate with my
friend 'Newell.' ... The 'Doctor' said, 'I'll send for him,' and
kept on talking with me for a while. Then he said, 'Here's
Newell, and he wants to talk with you "Reach," so I'll go about
my business whilst you are talking with him, and will come back
again later.' ... My name was called clearly as 'Rogers, old
fellow!' without a sign of accent [Remember that 'Phinuit'
always pronounced it with an accent. Ed.] and the same questions
put as to how were the 'fellows at the club.' My hand was
cordially shaken [by the medium. Ed.], and I remarked the same
movement of twisting the mustache, ... When 'Newell' left me
there was the usual disturbance in the medium's condition, and
then the resumption of the familiar voice, accent and mannerisms
of Dr. Phinuit...."

Mr. Rich continues (Pr. VIII, 130):

"I produced a dog's collar. After some handling of it [by the
medium] the 'Doctor' recognized it as belonging to a dog which I
had once owned. I asked 'If there were dogs where he was?'
'Thousands of them!' and he said he would try to attract the
attention of my dog with this collar. In the midst of our
conversation he suddenly exclaimed, 'There! I think he knows you
are here, for I see [him] coming from away off!' He then
described my collie perfectly, and said, '_You_ call him, Reach,'
and I gave my whistle by which I used to call him. 'Here he
comes! Oh, how he jumps! There he is now, jumping upon and around
you. So glad to see you! Rover! Rover! No--G-rover, Grover!
That's his name!' The dog was once called Rover, but his name was
changed to Grover in 1884, in honor of the election of Grover
Cleveland."

The knowledge here may have been telepathic, but how about the dramatization?

* * * * *

Mrs. Piper's English Sittings of 1889-90 were held under the supervision of Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr. Walter Leaf, and the report of them has an introduction by Myers, and is followed by a statement of impressions of Mrs. Piper by James. All these experts expressed perfect confidence in the honesty of the medium, and that the phenomena were not explicable by any agency yet known to science.

Sir Oliver Lodge says (Pr. VI, 445):

"The details given of my family are just such as one might
imagine obtained by a perfect stranger surrounded by the whole of
one's relations in a group and able to converse freely but
hastily with one after the other; not knowing them and being
rather confused with their number and half-understood messages
and personalities, and having a special eye to their physical
weaknesses and defects. [Phinuit was (?) a doctor. Ed.] A person
in a hurry thus trying to tell a stranger as much about his
friends as he could in this way gather, would seem to me to be
likely to make much the same kind of communication as was
actually made to me."

Here is an episode explaining a nickname that Phinuit habitually applied to Sir Oliver (Pr. VI, 471f.):

"Cousin married, and the gentleman passed out at sea, round the
sea.... Hullo, he's got funny buttons, big, bright.... A uniform.
He has been a commander, an officer, a leader; not military, but
a commander.... [A little further on Phinuit suddenly brings out
the word Cap'n in connection with him, but, in a curious and half
puzzled way, applies it to me. It remained my Phinuit nickname to
the end, though quite inapplicable.] Your mother has got a good
picture of him taken a long time ago, pretty good, old-fashioned,
but not so bad of him. Yes, pretty good. He looks like that now.
He looks younger than he did...."

As in this vision, so it was in one of my own dreams which I suspect was in several respects veridical; and in two other dreams where I cannot trace any veridicity: the persons had grown young.

This recalls Peter Ibbetson's statement that he and his beloved kept themselves about twenty-seven. There are reports that Peter Ibbetson is not all fancy, but even if it were, such reports would be inevitable.

But in another dream which I fully believe to have been veridical, the person had grown older in proportion to the time since "passing over," but there was a peculiar reason for such a manifestation: I fancy that my friend may have wanted to appear to "grow old with me."

There are some things to suggest that if there are post-carnate souls, they can appear as of any age in their experience--and so show their history since separation, to anyone rejoining them.

* * * * *

Edmund Gurney, author of "Phantasms of the Living," and a very active member of the S. P. R. died in 1888. In December, 1889, his ostensible spirit communicated at several sittings with Sir Oliver Lodge through Mrs. Piper. Sir Oliver says (Pr. XXIII, 141f.):

"I learned in this way more about the life and thoughts of Edmund
Gurney than I had known in his lifetime."

And Mrs. Piper knew less. Then where did it come from? These Gurney sittings are very interesting and suggestive, but we can use our limited space to better advantage.

* * * * *

Here are some characteristic Phinuit Touches (Pr. VI, 484):

"She remembers more than you do. What do you think she says to
me? She says, don't swear, doctor; she did, sure as you live....

"Dr.: 'Do you know who Jerry--J--E--R--R--Y--is?' O. L.: 'Yes.
Tell him I want to hear from him.' U[ncle] J[erry. Ed.]: 'Tell
Robert, [his brother] Jerry still lives. I will be very glad to
hear from me. This is my watch. Uncle Jerry--my watch.'...

"P.: 'I say, Captain, your friends have a lot to tell you,
they're just clamoring to get at you. Why the devil don't you
give them a chance?' O. L.: 'Well, I will next time.' (Watch
handled again. It was a repeater, and happened to go off.) P.:
'Hullo, I didn't do that. Jerry did that, to remind you of him.
Here, take it away--it goes springing off--it's alive.' ... 'It
was Uncle Jerry, the one that had the fall. I'll bring you some
more news of him. Give me back his nine-shooter.' (Meaning the
watch.)"

Phinuit and the Lodge family and their next-door neighbors, the Thompsons, got to be great friends. Phinuit had given them much good advice, professional and other, and had really been of considerable service to them, even if only through their imaginations.

At the end of their second series of sittings, Feb. 23, 1890, he said:

"Now, all you people come here. Good-by, Susie. Good-by, Ike.
Good-by, Nelly. Now, all clear out and let me talk to Marie.
(Long conversation of a paternal kind, with thoroughly sensible
advice. Then O. L. returned.) Captain, it's not good-by, it's _au
revoir_, and you shall hear of me when I've gone away.' O. L.:
'How can I?' P.: 'Oh, I will tell some gentleman a message and he
will write it for me. You'll see.

"_Au revoir, au revoir, &c._"

Hodgson's inclination while writing his report, was to attribute the phenomena to telepathy from the sitter. This might account for a part of the knowledge which the medium displayed, but it did not account for knowledge which the sitter never had, but left such knowledge to be accounted for by the vastly less probable hypothesis of teloteropathy from absent persons, which begins to approach the improbability of spiritism itself. But after the medium's possession of the knowledge is accounted for, the main problem is yet to be approached. Knowledge of a particular circumstance is virtually the same in all minds possessing it. But after a medium, say Mrs. Piper, has obtained an item of knowledge from, let it be granted for argument's sake, the sitter's mind, what makes her emotional attitude regarding it not that of the sitter or of herself, but of some departed friend of the sitter? What makes her rejoice in it or regret it as this departed friend, alone among all intelligences, would? What makes the play of her mind regarding it--suggestion, response, appreciation or depreciation, comment and discussion of all kinds, just what would be that of the departed soul which professes to be speaking through her? And what makes all this occur with a fidelity to the character and situation worthy of the greatest dramatists? And how comes that average New England woman to display that supreme dramatic genius virtually every day for a generation? This is not telepathy or teloteropathy. When Hodgson wrote his first report, he and the researchers generally had not got as far as the questions raised by the dramatic features. But he closed with the following mysterious paragraph:

"The foregoing report is based upon sittings not later than 1891.
Mrs. Piper has given some sittings very recently which materially
strengthen the evidence for the existence of some faculty that
goes beyond thought-transference from the sitters, and which
certainly _primâ facie_ appear to render some form of the
'spiritistic' hypothesis more plausible. I hope to discuss these
among other results in a later article."

The occasion for this paragraph was made plain in his next report, issued in 1898, and published in Pr. S. P. R., Vol. XIII.

A young man alluded to in the S. P. R. reports as George Pelham, had died. He was a member of a very prominent English family, and on the distaff side, of an equally prominent family in New York. He had graduated at Harvard and spent some years as a housemate with the Howards (pseudonym) in Boston, though he died in New York, after some later years passed there. He was well known to the present writer, who finds the utterances of his alleged post-carnate self entirely in character. He was of a very philosophic bent, and no mean writer in both prose and verse. Psychical research was by no means his most prominent interest, or Hodgson his most intimate friend, though he had discussed the subject several times with Hodgson, and been introduced by him, under a pseudonym, for a single sitting with Mrs. Piper. For a month after G. P.'s death Hodgson's regular sittings with Mrs. Piper went on without there being any manifestation professing to come from G. P., when Mr. John Hart (pseudonym) who had been much more intimate with G. P. than Hodgson had, was sitting, in Hodgson's presence, with Mrs. Piper, and after Phinuit had announced a "George," an uncle of Mr. Hart, he went on, as Hodgson reports (Pr. XIII, 297f.):

"There is another George who wants to speak to you. How many
Georges are there about you any way? [Hodgson continues. Ed.]

"The rest of the sitting, until almost the close, was occupied by
statements from G. P., Phinuit acting as intermediary. George
Pelham's real name was given in full, also the names, both
Christian and surname, of several of his most intimate friends,
including the name of the sitter. Moreover, incidents were
referred to which were unknown to the sitter or myself. One of
the pair of studs which J. H. was wearing was given to Phinuit
[_i. e._ to the medium. Ed.].... '(Who gave them to me?)
[Throughout these sittings, the sitters' remarks are in
parentheses. Ed.] That's mine. Mother gave you that. (No.) Well,
father then, father and mother together. You got those after I
passed out. Mother took them. Gave them to father, and father
gave them to you. I want you to keep them. I will them to you.'
Mr. Hart notes: 'The studs were sent to me by Mr. Pelham as a
remembrance of his son....

"James and Mary [Mr. and Mrs.] Howard [Pseudonyms. Ed.] were
mentioned with strongly specific references, and in connection
with Mrs. Howard came the name Katharine. 'Tell her, she'll know.
I will solve the problems, Katharine.' Mr. Hart notes: 'George,
when he had last stayed with [the Howards], had talked frequently
with Katharine (a girl of fifteen years of age) upon such
subjects as Time, Space, God, Eternity, and pointed out to her
how unsatisfactory the commonly accepted solutions were. He added
that some time he would solve the problems.' Mr. Hart added that
he was entirely unaware of these circumstances. I was myself
unaware of them, and was not at that time acquainted with the
Howards.

No telepathy then. Phinuit continues:

"'Who's Rogets? [Phinuit tries to spell the real name.] (Spell
that again.) [At the first attempt afterwards Phinuit leaves out
a letter, then spells it correctly.] Rogers.... Rogers has got a
book of mine. (What is he going to do with it?)'

"[Both Hart and G. P. knew Rogers, who at that time had a certain
MS. book of G. P. in his possession. The book was found after G.
P.'s death and given to Rogers to be edited. G. P. had promised
during his lifetime that a particular disposition should be made
of this book after his death. This action ... was here, and in
subsequent utterances which from their private nature I cannot
quote, enjoined emphatically and repeatedly, and had it been at
once carried out, as desired by G. P., much subsequent
unhappiness and confusion might have been avoided.]

"During the latter part of the sitting, and without any relevance
to the remarks immediately before and after, which were quite
clear as expressions from G. P. came the words, 'Who's James?
Will--William.' [It must be remembered that Phinuit was reporting
G. P. throughout.] This was apparently explained by Phinuit's
further remarks at the close of the sitting.

"Phinuit: 'Who's Alice? (What do you want me to say to her?) [To
R. H.] Alice in spirit. Alice in spirit says it's all over now
and tell Alice in the body all is well. Tell Will I'll explain
things later on. He [George] calls Alice, too, in the body. I
want her to know me, too, Alice and Katharine.... He won't go
till you say good-by. [The hand then wrote: George Pelham. Good
day (?) John.] ...'

"[Alice James, the sister of Professor William James, had
recently died in England. The first name of Mrs. James is also
Alice. Alice, the sister of Katharine, is the youngest daughter
of Mr. Howard and was very fond of G. P.]

"As I have already said, the most personal references made at the
sitting cannot be quoted; they were regarded by J. H. as
profoundly characteristic of Pelham.

This was followed by the most remarkable experiences of the kind that ever occurred before Hodgson himself passed over to the majority and was ostensibly manifested to his surviving friends through Mrs. Piper and other mediums. G. P. sent for his friends the Howards (pseudonym) with whom he had been a housemate in Boston, for his parents, and for other friends. All of these came, very skeptical regarding the genuineness of the manifestations, but Mr. Howard--an eminent scholar of wide experience of the world, became convinced that he was in converse with the postcarnate intelligence of his old friend; the majority of the relatives, who were of a more orthodox habit than Mr. Howard, were brought at least to a condition of agnosticism on the subject, and the arch-critic Hodgson who had exposed more "spiritualistic" frauds than all other men put together, was turned into a militant spiritualist. G. P. was asked.

"(Can't you tell us something he or your mother has done?) 'I saw
her brush my clothes and put them away. I was by her side as she
did it. I saw her take my sleeve buttons from a small box and
give them to my father. I saw him send them to John Hart. I saw
her putting papers, etc., into a tin box.'

"The incident of the 'studs' was mentioned at the sitting of
Hart. G. P.'s clothes were brushed and put away, as Mrs. Pelham
wrote, not by herself, but by 'the man who had valeted George.'"

This incident is used by Mrs. Sidgwick in Pr. XV, 31, in support of the thesis that a medium's communications are influenced by education and social habits. I am disposed entirely to endorse this. The communications seem to me to come from a blending of the control, the medium, and the sitter. Perhaps this utterance will seem less Delphic as we go on.

The following (Pr. XIII, 416f.) does not seem much like telepathy.

"Mrs. Piper [on coming out of the trance. Ed.]: 'There is the man
with the beard' [whom she saw in the trance. Ed.] Mrs. Piper then
described what she thought was a dream. 'I saw a bright light and
a face in it, a gentleman with a beard on his face, and he had a
very high forehead and he was writing.' R. H.: 'Would you know it
again if you saw it?' Mrs. Piper: 'Oh, yes. I would know it, I
think.' R. H.: 'Well, try and recall it....'

"After Mrs. Piper comes out of [a second. Ed.] trance she is
shown a collection of thirty-two photographs, nine of them being
of men, from which she selects the picture of the person whom she
saw when coming out of trance the first time. The photograph that
she first picked out was an excellent likeness of G. P. She
afterwards picked out another photograph of him. She stated that
she never knew the gentleman when living."

Within twenty-four hours of this experience, or some other reported elsewhere, the dream recollection had, like dream recollections generally, faded away: she could not recognize the photograph. We can talk about telopsis here, if we want to, but telopsis of what? Of that photograph? Nonsense! And as strange as anything else about it, is that there is nothing strange about it. In my own dreams I see any number of people I never saw before, just as plainly as I see any number on the street, and if photographs were handed me, as those were to Mrs. Piper, immediately on awaking, I could identify them. This identification is nothing out of the ordinary course of nature, only the wit to see that it is, has but just come.

But with any sitter, Mrs. Piper _may_ have had telepathically just as definite an idea as the sitter has, or she _may_ always have been telepathically impressed in her dream by the post-carnate man himself. Each one of us will have to fumble to his own conviction, if he ever reaches one.

Hodgson continues (Pr. XIII, 321-2):

"It was during this sitting [Dec. 22, 1892] that perhaps the most
dramatic incident of the whole series occurred....

"Mr. Howard: 'Tell me something that you and I alone know,
something in our past that you and I alone know.' G. P.: 'Do you
doubt me, dear old fellow?' Mr. H.: 'I simply want something--you
have failed to answer certain questions that I have asked--now I
want you to give me the equivalent of the answers to those
questions in your own terms....' G. P.: 'You used to talk to me
about....'

"The writing which followed ... contains too much of the personal
element in G. P.'s life to be reproduced here. Several statements
were read by me, and assented to by Mr. Howard, and then was
written 'private' and the hand gently pushed me away. I retired
to the other side of the room, and Mr. Howard took my place close
to the hand where he could read the writing. He did not, of
course, read it aloud, and it was too private for my perusal. The
hand, as it reached the end of each sheet, tore it off from the
block-book, and thrust it wildly at Mr. Howard, and then
continued writing. The circumstances narrated, Mr. Howard
informed me, contained precisely the kind of test for which he
had asked, and he said that he was 'perfectly satisfied,
perfectly.'

"Characteristic also of the living G. P. was the remark made to
me later, apparently with reference to the circumstances of the
private statements:

"'Thanks, Hodgson, for your kind help and reserved manners, also
patience in this difficult matter.'"

All this, I suppose, is mere telepathy or the subliminal self, or divided self, or some other self, of an average New England housewife!

In this report the sittings take up some two hundred pages, and Hodgson devoted about fifty pages to his reasons for accepting the spiritistic hypothesis regarding them. James said: "I know of no more masterly handling anywhere of so unwieldy a mass of material"; and yet he never squarely agreed with Hodgson, though he often says he was tempted to.

Hodgson's reasons cannot be fairly understood without familiarity with the evidence. They are very ingenious and interesting, and would give the most skeptical reader pause, but we have space for only a few generalizations.

"The manifestations of this G. P. communicating have not been of
a fitful and spasmodic nature, they have exhibited the marks of a
continuous living and persistent personality ... what change has
been discernible is a change not of any process of
disintegration, but rather of integration and evolution...."

"That G. P. could get into some closer relation with his father
and the Howards than with Miss M. or myself is intelligible; but
it is not so obvious why Mrs. Piper's _secondary personality_
should...."

"... The mixtures of truth and error bear no _discernible_
relation to the consciousness of the sitters, but suggest the
action of another intelligence groping confusedly among its own
remembrances."

"We get all varieties of communication; some of them, purporting
to come from persons who when living were much mentally
disturbed, suggesting the incoherency of delirium; others of
them, purporting to come from persons who have been dead very
many years, suggesting a fainter dreaminess [or more remoteness.
Ed.]; others purporting to come from persons recently deceased
whose minds have been clear, showing a corresponding clearness.
My own conclusion ... is forced upon me by experience, and
strengthened by various statements of the communicators
themselves concerning the causes of confusion."

"Again, that persons just 'deceased' should be extremely confused
and unable to communicate directly, or even at all, seems
perfectly natural after the shock and wrench of death.

"Of such confusions as I have indicated above I cannot find any
satisfactory explanation in 'telepathy from the living,' but they
fall into a rational order when related to the personalities of
the 'dead.'"

"In cases where we should _a priori_ be led to expect that the
communicators would certainly not be confused, or, if they were
confused, the confusion would not make much difference, Phinuit
was particularly successful. The cases I refer to are those of
little children recently deceased."

This seems to me a very strong point. Its force will be realized by most of those who read the Sutton and Thaw sittings in Pr. XIII. Phinuit, the "preposterous old scoundrel," is eminently "the children's friend." Hodgson continues:

"Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for
several years, and the 'spirit' hypothesis also for several
years, I have no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute
assurance that the 'spirit' hypothesis is justified by its
fruits, and the other hypothesis is not."

"Since Phinuit's 'departure' [explained below. Ed.] the voice has
been used on a few rare occasions only, and almost exclusively by
communicators who purported to be relatives of the sitters, and
who had used the voice before Phinuit's 'departure.' ... But
there never seemed to be any confusion between the personality
using the hand, whether this was 'clear' or not, and the
personality using the voice."

This consideration and those before associated with it seem to me more for the spiritistic hypothesis than any others which we have met so far.

G. P. soon developed into the Mercury of the spiritistic Pantheon, turned up at almost all sittings, went to seek the friends of the sitters in the "spirit-world," and acted as intermediary for those who were new to the conditions of communication or had not enough of the psychokinetic power which was alleged to be necessary to use them effectively.

* * * * *

It should be noted that during G. P.'s life, telepathy from the sitter had been reluctantly conceded as a defense against the spiritistic hypothesis, but it was not till after his death that teloteropathy from persons at a distance had been conceded; and it was not until 1909--seven years later, that James, one of the most steadfast holders of the conservative fort, in his report on the communications from Hodgson's alleged spirit, in Pr. XXIII, admitted, as among the possible "sources other than R. H.'s surviving spirit for the veridical communications from the Hodgson control," "access to some cosmic reservoir, where the memory of all mundane facts is stored and grouped around personal centers of association."

James had a subtler mind than mine or almost anybody's. Mine is not subtle enough to be very seriously impressed by the difference between "memory of mundane facts stored and grouped around personal centers of association," and a surviving personality; and what difference does impress me, is pretty well filled up when the "personal center" also has "grouped around" it, the initiative, response, repartee and emotional and dramatic elements that, as shown not only by the G. P. control, but, years later, by the Hodgson control, and by hundreds of others, make a gallery of characters more vivid than those depicted by all the historians. But even claiming them to be historical, as in a sense they are, would not be claiming them to be surviving. Many historical characters have put in that claim through Mrs. Piper and other mediums, and while our greatest psychologist knew as much as anybody about the claims, and seemed somewhat on the road to admitting them to be from surviving personalities, he did not live to go farther than memories "stored and grouped around personal centers of association."

But _à bas_ the "memories"! one is tempted to say; credit them all to telepathy if you will: what are they beside the active and spontaneous emotions and responses?

* * * * *

Meantime in 1892 our old acquaintance Stainton Moses had "passed over," and in 1895 had ostensibly appeared through Mrs. Piper to Professor Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Newbold asked him to bring his friends Imperator, Rector, etc. These high-toned personages--none high-toneder, as John Hay of blessed memory, puts it--nor more bombastic or long-winded, had manifested before only through Moses (for convenience I am using the simple phraseology that would attend their genuineness, but do not mean to convey any opinion), and when they came through Mrs. Piper, they professed to find her in a very bad way because of the "earth-bound" Phinuit, and they professed to remove him to a higher sphere where he would be purified and disinfected and sanctified and turned from a genial sympathetic, humorous and, it must be admitted, occasionally slangy and profane soul, into a prig of purest ray serene. Rector now generally took his place with Mrs. Piper, which he had done to some extent before. The gang was very well satisfied with G. P., however, and he appeared for some years as their valued friend and collaborator, until in 1897 they declared his work done, and his proper place a "higher sphere." He bade his friends here affectionate farewells, but has occasionally sent back messages, and has once or twice spoken himself. Mind, I am throughout speaking only provisionally; but I would defy any writer to escape the verisimilitude, and even if that were possible, it would involve intolerable verbiage.

Imperator & Co. now proposed to do most of the talking themselves, and they did a frightful amount of it; and occasionally really said something.

Moreover, they took charge of Mrs. Piper and Hodgson too, in their goings and comings and all their ways, dictated their diet and exercise, and even whom they should have at sittings, giving the preference to people of exceptionally high character, and to those in deep distress from loss of friends, and eager to communicate with them.

The present writer and some others are tempted to think that these autocratic personages are products telepathically conveyed to Mrs. Piper from the unconscious imagination of Hodgson and his recollection of Moses' writings, with perhaps a little involuntary dash of Prof. Newbold. But if they are, the imagination is expanded to a degree entirely outside of ordinary experience, and its study must enlarge our conception of the range of human faculty. Whatever they were, if only an allegorized form of faith cure, there is no question about their beneficial effect on the clearness of the sittings, and on the health and happiness of Mrs. Piper and Hodgson.

* * * * *

James says something which goes to the root of the whole business, and which, though it is episodic to the Hodgson narrative, may as well be considered here (Pr. XXIII, 3):

"Dr. Hodgson was disposed to admit the claim to reality of Rector
and of the whole Imperator-Band, ... while I have rather favored
the idea of their all being dream-creations of Mrs. Piper.... I
can see no contradiction between Rector's being on the one hand
an improvised creature of this sort, and his being on the other
hand the extraordinarily impressive personality which he
unquestionably is.... Critical and fastidious sitters have
recognized his wisdom, and confess their debt to him as a moral
adviser. With all due respect to Mrs. Piper, I feel very sure
that her own waking capacity for being a spiritual adviser, if
it were compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind."

"With all due respect" for Professor James's opinion, I think I do "see [a] contradiction," and I see the contradiction because, with Professor James, "I feel very sure that her own waking capacity for being a spiritual adviser, if it were compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind." If the Imperator band were merely, as James suggests, "dream creations," ... and if "her own waking capacity ... compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind," how could she make anything so superior to herself? How can she do better as Rector than she can as herself? The whole scheme seems to me akin to the Du-Prel and Myers scheme of making a man lift himself higher than his head by his own boot-straps; and beside it the spiritistic hypothesis seems simplicity and probability themselves.

The simplest individual, incarnate (or discarnate?), of course manifests _himself_ in a way that the most skillful dramatist could not equal, and it may well be questioned whether it is not more rational to assume that the hundreds of alleged personalities dramatized in the words and gestures of Mrs. Piper are manifestations by the personalities themselves, than that they are creations of some as yet unknown kind of genius residing in some layer of Mrs. Piper's consciousness, and getting its material from fragments among her own memories or by telepathy from those of other living persons, present or remote.

Hodgson closes his report (Pr. XIII, 409):

"It has been stated repeatedly that the 'channel is not yet
clear,' that the machine is still in process of repair; and it
has been prophesied that I shall myself return eventually to
America and spend several years further in the investigation of
Mrs. Piper's trance, and that more remarkable evidence of
identity will be given than any heretofore obtained."

He did return and continue his beloved work for several years. But the next time we meet him it will be as an alleged denizen of the spirit world, and perhaps his testimony in that capacity was part of the "more remarkable evidence of identity" promised.

* * * * *

These influences, whatever their fundamental character, having made a saint of Hodgson, as was alleged by a friend who did not believe that the influences were from a post-carnate world, the drama took a new turn on December 20, 1905, in the death which Hodgson had eagerly awaited, and his ostensible reappearances through Mrs. Piper and other mediums. The principal report of them is made by his friends Professor William James, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. J. G. Piddington and Sir Oliver Lodge in Pr. XXIII, and occupies some 170 octavo pages, most of them literal reports of sittings. Other manifestations appear in the heteromatic writing of Mrs. Holland (Pr. XX) and elsewhere. Of course but a few entirely inadequate scraps can be given here.

As in the case of G. P., the first appearance did not take place until, on Dec. 28th, a peculiarly close and congenial friend of Hodgson happened to have a sitting--an argument of course for telepathy from the friend, but an equal argument for a genuine communication that had to await a congenial sitter.

To avoid constant circumlocution, I will provisionally write as if Hodgson were really speaking. Indeed, I doubt if I could persistently do otherwise: for the utterances are so natural that all the editors of the Pr. S. P. R. unconsciously fall into that way of expression.

James says (Pr. XXIII, 7) that the first alleged appearance of Hodgson:

"was at Miss Theodate Pope's sitting on Dec. 28th, 1905 [the
eighth day after Hodgson's death. Ed.] ... Rector had been
writing, when the hand dropped the pencil and worked convulsively
several seconds in a very excited manner.

"Miss P.: 'What is the matter?' [The hand, shaking with
apparently great excitement, wrote the letter H, ... bearing down
so hard on the paper that the point of the pencil was broken. It
then wrote 'Hodgson.']

Was all this a "put-up job?" And if so, who put it up, and why?

"Miss P.: 'God bless you!' [The hand writes 'I am'--followed by
rapid scrawls, as if regulator of machine were out of order.]
Miss P.: 'Is this my friend?' [Hand assents by knocking five
times on paper-pad.] (Rector): 'Peace, friends, he is here, it
was he, but he could not remain, he was so choked. He is doing
all in his power to return.... Better wait for a few moments
until he breathes freer again.'"

Do spirits require a supply of oxygen, or is the expression metaphorical for something not accurately communicable to our intelligence? It occurs several times. Frequently the "spirits" say they are tired, especially in the transition from the body. The expression "choked" may be purely metaphorical, yet it hardly reinforces the argument for spiritism.

James says (Pr. XXIII, 13f.):

"The R. H. control suddenly wrote: 'Give ring to Margaret back to
Margaret.' [Mrs. Lyman's name [pseudonym. Ed.] is not Margaret.]
Miss P.: 'Who is Margaret?' R. H.: 'I was with her in summer.'
Miss P.: 'All right, but the ring has not been found yet. Can you
find out where it is?' R. H.: 'The undertaker got it....'"

"On January 24th, Mrs. Lyman had her first sitting. As soon as
Hodgson appeared he wrote: 'The ring. You gave it me on my
fiftieth birthday. When they asked I didn't want to say you gave
it me.... Two palm-leaves joining each other--Greek. [Here
followed an illegible word. The palms truly described the ring,
which Mrs. Piper probably had seen; but it bore no Greek
inscription....]' Mrs. L.: 'Yes, Dick, where is it now?' R. H.:
'... They took it off my finger after I was gone.' Mrs. L.: 'No,
they didn't find it on your finger.' R. H.: 'Pocket, it was in my
pocket. I'll find it, you shall have it.'

"On January 29th, Mrs. L. had another sitting. The Hodgson
control wrote: 'I have been trying to make clear about that ring.
It is on my mind all the time. I thought if I could get Margaret
B. to get it for me, I would get it to you through her, then no
one would understand. I could not tell Miss Pope about you.'
[Then a possible attempt to draw a symbol engraved on the ring.]
'No one living knows this but myself and yourself.' [Note the
term 'living' as applied to himself. Ed.] Mrs. L.: 'That is true,
but what was the motto in the ring?' R. H.: 'All will be clear
to me in time. Do not ask me test questions now....'"

His failure to remember it is one of the most knock-down anti-evidential arguments, but it is equally anti-telepathic. His never speaking of the ring to other friends, the Jameses, and Mr. Dorr, seems very evidential.

* * * * *

Hodgson (or the control, if you prefer, whatever that may mean), kept worrying about the ring through several sittings, and got so far as to imagine that he had seen it on the finger of a man who stole it. It was eventually found in Hodgson's waistcoat pocket. James comments on the case:

"The whole incident lends itself easily to a naturalistic
interpretation. Mrs. Piper or her trance-consciousness may
possibly have suspected the source of the ring. Mrs. Lyman's
manner may have confirmed the suspicion. The manner in which the
first misleading reference to 'Margaret' was afterwards explained
away may well have been the cunning of a 'control' trying
plausibly to cover his tracks and justify his professed
identity."

But, please, what is a "control"? And why does one want to be taken for somebody else? Is this explanation "naturalistic"? It seems to my poor wits to grant the whole case, and reminds me of the deniers of telepathy availing themselves of it to explain away spiritism. Or does James mean a control faked by Mrs. Piper? If he had not already grown past that, he gave indications that he had later. He continues:

"The description of the house and of the man to whom he ascribes
its [the ring's. Ed.] present possession sounds like vague
groping, characteristic also of control-cunning."

But why should there be "control-cunning"? Is it anything like commentator-cunning?

James proceeds without any "cunning:"

"On the other hand, if the hypothesis be seriously entertained
that Hodgson's spirit was there in a confused state, using the
permanent Piper automatic machinery to communicate through, the
whole record is not only plausible but natural. It presents just
that mixture of truth and groping which we ought to expect.
Hodgson has the ring 'on his mind' just as Mrs. Lyman has. Like
her, he wishes its source not to be bruited abroad. He describes
it accurately enough, truly tells of his taking it to the fatal
boat-club [He died while playing hand-ball there. Ed.], and of
putting it into his waistcoat-pocket there, of the waistcoat
being taken from the locker, and vaguely, but not quite
erroneously, indicates its present position."

And why should it not be even "_quite_ erroneously"? Nearly all the reasoning I have seen on these matters is vitiated by the entirely gratuitous traditional assumption that if a soul survives death, it enters at once into measureless wisdom. Hodgson (?) and the rest seem pretty much the same sort of people that they were here, and I for one am glad of it.

In the sittings of many others of Hodgson's friends the control showed a similar abundant knowledge of their experiences with Hodgson living, and, most important of all, it seems to me, all of Hodgson's exceptionally marked habits of thought and expression. We have room for but little more. James says (Pr. XXIII, 36):

"Hodgson was distinguished during life by great animal spirits.
He was fond of argument, chaff, and repartee, a good deal of a
gesticulator, and a great laugher.... Chaff and slang from a
spirit have an undignified sound for the reader, but to the
interlocutors of the R. H. control they seem invariably to have
been elements of verisimilitude."

God save me from a heaven where there is no "chaff and slang"! I should fail to recognize some of my best friends among the loftiest souls who have escaped the flesh, Hodgson not the least. However intense the interest heretofore taken in a future world, I doubt if it has ever been thoroughly healthy, or ever will be before we get our conceptions of that world off stilts. James continues (pp. 37-8):

"This, however, did not exclude very serious talk with the same
persons--quite the reverse sometimes, as when one sitter of this
class notes: 'Then came words of kindness which were too intimate
and personal to be recorded, but which left me so deeply moved
that shortly afterwards, at the sitting's close, I fainted dead
away--it had seemed as though he had in all reality been there
and speaking to me.'"

If James ran any one of his virtues into the ground, perhaps it was his modesty concerning anything connected with himself. Instance the following introduction and what it introduces:

_W. J.'s Sitting._ (May 21st, 1906). (Pr. XXIII, 8of.)

"[J.] The evidence is so much the same sort of thing throughout,
and makes such insipid reading, that I hesitate to print more of
it in full. But I know that many critics insist on having the
largest possible amount of _verbatim_ material on which to base
their conclusions, so I select a specimen of the R. H. control's
utterances when he was less 'strong.' The reader, I fear, will
find it long and tedious, but he can skip.

"(R. H. enters, saying:) 'Well, well, well, well! Well, well,
well, that is--here I am. Good morning, good morning, Alice.'
Mrs. W. J.:'Good morning, Mr. Hodgson.' R. H.: 'I am right here.
Well, well, well! I am delighted!' W. J.: 'Hurrah! R. H.! Give us
your hand!' R. H.: 'Hurrah, William! God bless you. How are you?'
W. J.: 'First rate.' R. H.: 'Well, I am delighted to see you.
Well, have you solved those problems yet?' W. J.: 'Which problems
do you refer to?' R. H.: 'Did you get my messages?' W. J.: 'I got
some messages about your going to convert me.' ... [R. H. had
already sent me, through other sitters, messages about my little
faith. W. J.] W. J.: 'Yes.' R. H.: 'Well, it has amounted to
this,--that I have learned by experience that there is more truth
than error in what I have been studying.' W. J.: 'Good!' R. H.:
'I am so delighted to see you to-day that words fail me.' W. J.:
'Well, Hodgson, take your time and don't be nervous.' R. H.: 'No.
Well, I think I could ask the same of you! Well, now, tell me,--I
am very much interested in what is going on in the society, and
Myers and I are also interested in the society over here. You
understand that we have to have a medium on this side, while you
have a medium on your side, and through the two we communicate
with you.' ... W. J.: 'You don't mean Rector?' R. H.: 'No, not at
all. It is----do you remember a medium whom we called Prudens?'
'Yes.'"

From one point of view, his not naming G. P. or Rector gives food for skepticism. But why didn't Mrs. Piper do the job consistently, if it was she who did it?

"R. H.: 'What I want to know first of all is about the society. I
am sorry that it could not go on.' W. J.: 'There was nobody to
take your place....' R. H.: 'William, can't you see, don't you
understand, and don't you remember how I used to walk up and down
before that open fireplace trying to convince you of my
experiments?' W. J.: 'Certainly, certainly.' R. H.: 'And you
would stand with your hands in your trousers pockets. You got
very impatient with me sometimes, and you would wonder if I was
correct. I think you are very skeptical.' W. J.: 'Since you have
been returning I am much more near to feeling as you felt than
ever before.' R. H.: 'Good! Well, that is capital.' W. J.: 'Your
"personality" is beginning to make me feel as you felt.' R. H.:
'If you can give up to it, William, and feel the influence of it
and the reality of it, it will take away the sting of death....
Now tell me a little bit more about the Society. That will help
me keep my thoughts clear. I think, William--are you standing?'
W. J.: 'Yes, I am standing.' R. H.: 'Well, can't you sit?' W. J.:
'Yes.' R. H.: 'Well, sit. Let's have a nice talk.'..."

There is nothing "evidential" about the last couple of lines in the scientific sense, but there are several kinds of sense. James continues:

(Pr. XXIII, 109): "The following incident belongs to my wife's
and Miss Putnam's sitting of June 12th, 1906:--Mrs. J. said: 'Do
you remember what happened in our library one night when you were
arguing with Margie [Mrs. J.'s sister]?'--'I had hardly said
"remember,"' she notes, 'in asking this question, when the
medium's arm was stretched out and the fist shaken
threateningly,' then these words came: