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:
“Of what occurs after I enter the trance period I remember nothing—nothing of what I said or what was said to me. I am but a passive agent in the hands of powers that control me. I can give no account of what becomes of me during a trance. The wisdom and inspired eloquence which of late has been conveyed to Dr. Hodgson through my mediumship is entirely beyond my understanding. I do not pretend to understand it, and can give no explanation—I simply know that I have the power of going into a trance when I wish.”
Professor James says: “The Piper phenomena are the most absolutely baffling thing I know.”
Professor Hudson, Ph.D., LL.D., author of “The Law of Psychic Phenomena,” comes as near giving an explanation of “spiritualism,” so called, as any one. He begins by saying:
“All things considered, Mrs. Piper is probably the best ‘psychic’ now before the public for the scientific investigation of spiritualism and it must be admitted that if her alleged communications from discarnate spirits cannot be traced to any other source, the claims of spiritism have been confirmed.”