If now we have established the balance-sheet of facts attributed to the Demonomania of the Middle Ages, and compared them to the experiences of experimental psychology, we are not only led to recognize a striking analogy between them, but also to interpret them by the hypothesis of an intelligent force of an intensity proportionate to certain nervous pathological conditions. It is necessary to remember, in fact, that, according to the Ritual of the Roman Catholic Church, the phenomena necessary to recognize possession among Demonomaniacs were:
1. The faculty of knowing thoughts, even though they are not expressed.
2. Intelligence in unknown languages.
3. The faculty of speaking foreign tongues which are unknown to the party speaking them.
4. A knowledge of future events.
5. A knowledge of what is transpiring in far-off places.
6. Development of superior psychal force.
7. Suspension of persons or bodies in the air for a considerable space of time.
No less interesting is it than to compare these phenomena to those observed by the thirty-three members of the commission appointed by the “Dialectic Society of London.” The following was this committee’s report, after eighteen months’ investigation: