The simplest plan, here, is to deny that the facts in which Dr. Nevius believes ever present themselves at all; but, if they ever do, Dr. Janet’s explanation does not explain them.

1.  His patient, Achille, did not act out a new personality.

2.  Achille displayed no knowledge or intellectual power which he did not possess in his normal state.

3.  His moral character was not completely changed; he was only more hypochondriacal and hysterical than usual.

Achille was a poor devil of a French tradesman who, like Captain Booth, had infringed the laws of strict chastity and virtue.  He brooded on this till he became deranged, and thought that Satan had him.  He was convulsed, anaesthetic, suicidal, involuntarily blasphemous.  He was not ‘exorcised’ by a prayer or by a command, but after a long course of mental and physical treatment.  His cure does not explain the cures in which Dr. Nevius believed.  His case did not present the features of which Dr. Nevius asked science for an explanation.  Dr. Janet’s essay is the dernier cri of science, and leaves Dr. Nevius just where it found him.

Science, therefore, can, and does, tell Dr. Nevius that his evidence for his facts is worthless, through the lips of Professor W. Romaine Newbold, in ‘Proceedings, S.P.R.,’ February 1898 (pp. 602-604).  And the same number of the same periodical shows us Dr. Hodgson accepting facts similar to those of Dr. Nevius, and explaining them by—­possession! (p. 406).

Dr. Nevius’s observations practically cover the whole field of ‘possession’ in non-European peoples.  But other examples from other areas are here included.

A rather impressive example of possession may be selected from Livingstone’s ‘Missionary Travels’ (p. 86).  The adventurous Sebituane was harried by the Matabele in a new land of his choice.  He thought of descending the Zambesi till he was in touch with white men; but Tlapane, ‘who held intercourse with gods,’ turned his face west-wards.  Tlapane used to retire, ’perhaps into some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric state’ until the moon was full.  Then he would return en prophete.  ’Stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or beating the ground with a club’ (to summon those under earth), ’they induce a kind of fit, and while in it pretend that their utterances are unknown to themselves,’ as they probably are, when the condition is genuine.  Tlapane, after inducing the ‘possessed’ state, pointed east:  ’There, Sebituane, I behold a fire; shun it, it may scorch thee.  The gods say, Go not thither!’ Then, pointing west, he said, ’I see a city and a nation of black men, men of the water, their cattle are red, thine own tribe are perishing, thou wilt govern black men, spare thy future tribe.’

So far, mere advice; then,

’Thou, Ramosinii, thy village will perish utterly.  If Mokari moves first from the village, he will perish first; and thou, Ramosinii, wilt be the last to die.’