Then,

  ’Like some bold seer in a trance,
  Seeing all his own mischance,’

  ’The gods have given other men water to drink, but to me they have given
  bitter water.  They call me away.  I go.’[13]

Tlapane died, Mokari died, Ramosinii died, their village was destroyed soon after, and so Sebituane wandered westward, not disobedient to the voice, was attacked by the Baloiana, conquered, and spared them.

Such is ‘possession’ among savages.  It is superfluous to multiply instances of this world-wide belief, so freely illustrated in the New Testament, and in trials for witchcraft.  The scientific study of the phenomena, as Littre complained, ‘had hardly been sketched’ forty years ago.  In the intervening years, psychologists and hypnotists have devoted much attention to the theme of these ‘secondary personalities,’ which Animism explains by the theory of possession.  The explanations of modern philosophers differ, and it is not our business to discuss their physiological and pathological ideas.[14] Our affair is to ask whether, in the field of experience, there is any evidence that persons thus ‘possessed’ really evince knowledge which they could not have acquired through normal channels?  If such evidence exists, the facts would naturally strengthen the conviction that the possessed person was inspired by an intelligence not his own, that is, by a spirit.  Now it is the firm conviction of several men of science that a certain Mrs. Piper, an American, does display, in her possessed condition, knowledge which she could not normally acquire.  The case of this lady is precisely on a level with that of certain savage or barbaric seers.  Thus:  ’The Fijian priest sits looking steadily at a whale’s tooth ornament, amid dead silence.  In a few minutes he trembles, slight twitchings of face and limbs come on, which increase to strong convulsions....  Now the god has entered.’[15]

In China, ’the professional woman sits at a table in contemplation, till the soul of a deceased person from whom communication is desired enters her body and talks through her to the living....’[16]

The latter account exactly describes Mrs. Piper.  When consulted she passes through convulsions into a trance, after which she talks in a new voice, assumes a fresh personality, and affects to be possessed by the spirit of a French doctor (who does not know French)—­Dr. Phinuit.  She then displays a varying amount of knowledge of dead and living people connected with her clients, who are usually strangers, often introduced under feigned names.  Mrs. Piper and her husband have been watched by detectives, and have not been discovered in any attempts to procure information.  She was for some months in England under the charge of the S.P.R.  Other ghosts, besides Dr. Phinuit, ghosts more civilised than he, now influence her, and her latest performances are said to exceed her former efforts.[17]