"It was during this sitting [Dec. 22, 1892] that perhaps the most dramatic incident of the whole series occurred....

"Mr. Howard: 'Tell me something that you and I alone know, something in our past that you and I alone know.' G. P.: 'Do you doubt me, dear old fellow?' Mr. H.: 'I simply want something—you have failed to answer certain questions that I have asked—now I want you to give me the equivalent of the answers to those questions in your own terms....' G. P.: 'You used to talk to me about....'

"The writing which followed ... contains too much of the personal element in G. P.'s life to be reproduced here. Several statements were read by me, and assented to by Mr. Howard, and then was written 'private' and the hand gently pushed me away. I retired to the other side of the room, and Mr. Howard took my place close to the hand where he could read the writing. He did not, of course, read it aloud, and it was too private for my perusal. The hand, as it reached the end of each sheet, tore it off from the block-book, and thrust it wildly at Mr. Howard, and then continued writing. The circumstances narrated, Mr. Howard informed me, contained precisely the kind of test for which he had asked, and he said that he was 'perfectly satisfied, perfectly.'

"Characteristic also of the living G. P. was the remark made to me later, apparently with reference to the circumstances of the private statements:

"'Thanks, Hodgson, for your kind help and reserved manners, also patience in this difficult matter.'"

All this, I suppose, is mere telepathy or the subliminal self, or divided self, or some other self, of an average New England housewife!

In this report the sittings take up some two hundred pages, and Hodgson devoted about fifty pages to his reasons for accepting the spiritistic hypothesis regarding them. James said: "I know of no more masterly handling anywhere of so unwieldy a mass of material"; and yet he never squarely agreed with Hodgson, though he often says he was tempted to.

Hodgson's reasons cannot be fairly understood without familiarity with the evidence. They are very ingenious and interesting, and would give the most skeptical reader pause, but we have space for only a few generalizations.

"The manifestations of this G. P. communicating have not been of a fitful and spasmodic nature, they have exhibited the marks of a continuous living and persistent personality ... what change has been discernible is a change not of any process of disintegration, but rather of integration and evolution...."

"That G. P. could get into some closer relation with his father and the Howards than with Miss M. or myself is intelligible; but it is not so obvious why Mrs. Piper's secondary personality should...."

"... The mixtures of truth and error bear no discernible relation to the consciousness of the sitters, but suggest the action of another intelligence groping confusedly among its own remembrances."

"We get all varieties of communication; some of them, purporting to come from persons who when living were much mentally disturbed, suggesting the incoherency of delirium; others of them, purporting to come from persons who have been dead very many years, suggesting a fainter dreaminess [or more remoteness. Ed.]; others purporting to come from persons recently deceased whose minds have been clear, showing a corresponding clearness. My own conclusion ... is forced upon me by experience, and strengthened by various statements of the communicators themselves concerning the causes of confusion."

"Again, that persons just 'deceased' should be extremely confused and unable to communicate directly, or even at all, seems perfectly natural after the shock and wrench of death.

"Of such confusions as I have indicated above I cannot find any satisfactory explanation in 'telepathy from the living,' but they fall into a rational order when related to the personalities of the 'dead.'"

"In cases where we should a priori be led to expect that the communicators would certainly not be confused, or, if they were confused, the confusion would not make much difference, Phinuit was particularly successful. The cases I refer to are those of little children recently deceased."

This seems to me a very strong point. Its force will be realized by most of those who read the Sutton and Thaw sittings in Pr. XIII. Phinuit, the "preposterous old scoundrel," is eminently "the children's friend." Hodgson continues:

"Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several years, and the 'spirit' hypothesis also for several years, I have no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance that the 'spirit' hypothesis is justified by its fruits, and the other hypothesis is not."

"Since Phinuit's 'departure' [explained below. Ed.] the voice has been used on a few rare occasions only, and almost exclusively by communicators who purported to be relatives of the sitters, and who had used the voice before Phinuit's 'departure.' ... But there never seemed to be any confusion between the personality using the hand, whether this was 'clear' or not, and the personality using the voice."

This consideration and those before associated with it seem to me more for the spiritistic hypothesis than any others which we have met so far.

G. P. soon developed into the Mercury of the spiritistic Pantheon, turned up at almost all sittings, went to seek the friends of the sitters in the "spirit-world," and acted as intermediary for those who were new to the conditions of communication or had not enough of the psychokinetic power which was alleged to be necessary to use them effectively.