As these pages were passing through the press, Dr. Hodgson’s last report on Mrs. Piper was published.[22] It is quite impossible, within the space allotted, to criticise this work.  It would be necessary to examine minutely scores of statements, in which many facts are suppressed as too intimate, while others are remarkably incoherent.  Dr. Hodgson deserves the praise of extraordinary patience and industry, displayed in the very distasteful task of watching an unfortunate lady in the vagaries of ‘trance.’  His reasonings are perfectly calm, perfectly unimpassioned, and his bias has not hitherto seemed to make for credulity.  We must, in fact, regard him as an expert in this branch of psychology.  But he himself makes it clear that, in his opinion, no written reports can convey the impressions produced by several years of personal experience.  The results of that experience he sums up in these words: 

’At the present time I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the chief “communicators” to whom I have referred in the foregoing pages are veritably the personalities that they claim to be, that they have survived the change we call death, and that they have directly communicated with us, whom we call living, through Mrs. Piper’s entranced organism.’[23]

This means that Dr. Hodgson, at present, in this case, accepts the hypothesis of ‘possession’ as understood by Maoris and Fijians, Chinese and Karens.

The published reports do not produce on me any such impression.  As a personal matter of opinion, I am convinced that those whom I have honoured in this life would no more avail themselves of Mrs. Piper’s ’entranced organism’ (if they had the chance) than I would voluntarily find myself in a ‘sitting’ with that lady.  It is unnecessary to wax eloquent on this head; and the curious can consult the writings of Dr. Hodgson for themselves.  Meanwhile we have only to notice that an American ‘possessed’ woman produces on a highly educated and sceptical modern intelligence the same impression as the Zulu ‘possessed’ produce on some Zulu intelligences.

The Zulus admit ‘possession’ and divination, but are not the most credulous of mankind.  The ordinary possessed person is usually consulted as to the disease of an absent patient.  The inquirers do not assist the diviner by holding his hand, but are expected to smite the ground violently if the guess made by the diviner is right; gently if it is wrong.  A sceptical Zulu, named John, having a shilling to expend on psychical research, smote violently at every guess.  The diviner was hopelessly puzzled; John kept his shilling, and laid it out on a much more meritorious exhibition of animated sticks.[24]

Uguise gave Dr. Callaway an account of a female possessed person with whom Mrs. Piper could not compete.  Her spirit spoke, not from her mouth, but from high in the roof.  It gave forth a kind of questioning remarks which were always correct.  It then reported correctly a number of singular circumstances, ordered some remedies for a diseased child, and offered to return the fee, if ample satisfaction was not given.[25]