Part 8 (1/2)

After a while her automatic utterance announced the personality of a certain Dr. Phinuit, who was said to have been a noted French physician who had died long before. His ”spirit” controlled her for a number of years. After some time Dr. Phinuit was succeeded by one ”Pelham,” and finally by ”Imperator” and ”Rector.”

As the birth of her second child approached Mrs. Piper gave up what she considered a form of hysteria; but after the birth of the child the sittings, paid for at a dollar each, began again. Dr. Hodgson, of the London Society for Psychical Research, saw her at the house of Professor James, and he became so interested in her case that he decided to take her to London to be studied. She spent nearly a year abroad; and after her return the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research was formed, and for a long time Mrs. Piper received a salary to sit exclusively for the society. Their records and reports are full of the things she said and did.

Every one who investigated Mrs. Piper had to admit that her case was full of mystery. But if one reads the reports through from beginning to end one cannot help feeling that her spirit messages are filled with nonsense, at least of triviality. Here is a specimen--and a fair specimen, too--of the kind of communication Pelham gave. He wrote out the message. It referred to a certain famous man known in the reports as Mr.

Marte. Pelham is reported to have written by Mrs. Piper's hand:

”That he (Mr. Marte), with his keen brain and marvelous perception, will be interested, I know. He was a very dear friend of X. I was exceedingly fond of him. Comical weather interests both he and I--me--him--I know it all. Don't you see I correct these? Well, I am not less intelligent now.

But there are many difficulties. I am far clearer on all points than I was shut up in the prisoned body (prisoned, prisoning or imprisoned you ought to say). No, I don't mean, to get it that way. 'See here, H, don't view me with a critic's eye, but pa.s.s my imperfections by.' Of course, I know all that as well as anybody on your sphere (of course). Well, I think so. I tell you, old fellow, it don't do to pick all these little errors too much when they amount to nothing in one way. You have light enough and brain enough, I know, to understand my explanations of being shut up in this body, dreaming, as it were, and trying to help on science.”

Some people would say that Pelham had had a little too much whisky toddy when he wrote that rambling, meaningless string of words. Or we can suppose that Mrs. Piper was dreaming. We see in the last sentence a curious mixture of ideas that must have been in her mind. She herself says:

”I do not see how anybody can look on all that as testimony from another world. I cannot see but that it must have been an unconscious expression of my subliminal self, writing such stuff as dreams are made of.”

In another place Mrs. Piper makes the following direct statement: ”I never heard of anything being said by myself while in a trance state which might not have been latent in:

”1. My own mind.

”2. In the mind of the person in charge of the sitting.

”3. In the mind of the person who was trying to get communication with some one in another state of existence, or some companion present with such person, or,

”4. In the mind of some absent person alive somewhere else in the world.”

Writing in the Psychological Review in 1898, Professor James says:

”Mrs. Piper's trance memory is no ordinary human memory, and we have to explain its singular perfection either as the natural endowment of her solitary subliminal self, or as a collection of distinct memory systems, each with a communicating spirit as its vehicle.

”The spirit hypothesis exhibits a vacancy, triviality, and incoherence of mind painful to think of as the state of the departed, and coupled with a pretension to impress one, a disposition to 'fish' and face around and disguise the essential hollowness which is, if anything, more painful still. Mr. Hodgson has to resort to the theory that, although the communicants probably are spirits, they are in a semi-comatose or sleeping state while communicating, and only half aware of what is going on, while the habits of Mrs. Piper's neural organism largely supply the definite form of words, etc., in which the phenomenon is clothed.”

After considering other theories Professor James concludes:

”The world is evidently more complex than we are accustomed to think it, the absolute 'world ground' in particular being farther off than we are wont to think it.”

Mrs. Piper is reported to have said: