Plainly, this analogy is close enough to be likely to lead to practical confusion. On what grounds can we base our distinctions? What justifies us in saying that Félida X.'s organism was controlled only by another modification of her own personality, but that Mrs. Piper's is controlled by George Pelham (see page 330 et seq.)? May there not be any amount of self-suggestion, colouring with the fictitious hue of all kinds of identities what is in reality no more than an allotropic form of the entranced person himself? Is even the possession by the new personality of some fragments of fresh knowledge any proof of spirit-control? May not that knowledge be gained clairvoyantly or telepathically, with no intervention of any spirit other than of living men?
Yes, indeed, we must reply, there is here a danger of confusion, there is a lack of any well-defined dividing line. While we must decide on general rules, we must also keep our minds open to possible exceptions.
On the negative side, indeed, general rules will carry us a good way. We must not allow ourselves to ascribe to spirit-control cases where no new knowledge is shown in the trance state. And this rule has at once an important consequence,—a consequence which profoundly modifies the antique idea of possession. I know of no evidence,—reaching in any way our habitual standard,—either for angelic, for diabolical, or for hostile possession.
And here comes the question: What attitude are we to assume to savage cases of possession? Are we to accept as genuine the possession of the Esquimaux, the Chinaman,—nay, of the Hebrew of old days?
Chinese possession is a good example, as described in Dr. Nevius' book (on Demon Possession and Allied Themes, an account of which by Professor Newbold is given in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xiii. p. 602 [912 A]). I agree with Professor Newbold in holding that no proof has been shown that there is more in the Chinese cases than that hysterical duplication of personality with which we are so familiar in France and elsewhere.
A devil is not a creature whose existence is independently known to science; and from the accounts the behaviour of the invading devils seems due to mere self-suggestion. With uncivilised races, even more than among our own friends, we are bound to insist on the rule that there must be some supernormal knowledge shown before we may assume an external influence. It may of course be replied that the character shown by the "devils" was fiendish and actually hostile to the possessed person. Can we suppose that the tormentor was actually a fraction of the tormented?
I reply that such a supposition, so far from being absurd, is supported by well-known phenomena both in insanity and in mere hysteria.
Especially in the Middle Ages,—amid powerful self-suggestions of evil and terror,—did these quasi-possessions reach an intensity and violence which the calm and sceptical atmosphere of the modern hospital checks and discredits. The devils with terrifying names which possessed Sœur Angélique of Loudun[195] would at the Salpêtrière under Charcot in our days have figured merely as stages of "clounisme" and "attitudes passionelles."
And even now these splits of personality seem occasionally to destroy all sympathy between the normal individual and a divergent fraction. No great sympathy was felt by Léonie II. for Léonie I.[196] And Dr. Morton Prince's case[197] shows us the deepest and ablest of the personalities of his "Miss Beauchamp" positively spiteful in its relation to her main identity.
Bizarre though a house thus divided against itself may seem, the moral dissidence is merely an exaggeration of the moral discontinuity observable in the typical case of Mrs. Newnham.[198] There the secondary intelligence was merely tricky, not malevolent. But its trickiness was wholly alien from Mrs. Newnham's character,—was something, indeed, which she would have energetically repudiated.