Hodgson (or the control, if you prefer, whatever that may mean), kept worrying about the ring through several sittings, and got so far as to imagine that he had seen it on the finger of a man who stole it. It was eventually found in Hodgson's waistcoat pocket. James comments on the case:
"The whole incident lends itself easily to a naturalistic interpretation. Mrs. Piper or her trance-consciousness may possibly have suspected the source of the ring. Mrs. Lyman's manner may have confirmed the suspicion. The manner in which the first misleading reference to 'Margaret' was afterwards explained away may well have been the cunning of a 'control' trying plausibly to cover his tracks and justify his professed identity."
But, please, what is a "control"? And why does one want to be taken for somebody else? Is this explanation "naturalistic"? It seems to my poor wits to grant the whole case, and reminds me of the deniers of telepathy availing themselves of it to explain away spiritism. Or does James mean a control faked by Mrs. Piper? If he had not already grown past that, he gave indications that he had later. He continues:
"The description of the house and of the man to whom he ascribes its [the ring's. Ed.] present possession sounds like vague groping, characteristic also of control-cunning."
But why should there be "control-cunning"? Is it anything like commentator-cunning?
James proceeds without any "cunning:"
"On the other hand, if the hypothesis be seriously entertained that Hodgson's spirit was there in a confused state, using the permanent Piper automatic machinery to communicate through, the whole record is not only plausible but natural. It presents just that mixture of truth and groping which we ought to expect. Hodgson has the ring 'on his mind' just as Mrs. Lyman has. Like her, he wishes its source not to be bruited abroad. He describes it accurately enough, truly tells of his taking it to the fatal boat-club [He died while playing hand-ball there. Ed.], and of putting it into his waistcoat-pocket there, of the waistcoat being taken from the locker, and vaguely, but not quite erroneously, indicates its present position."
And why should it not be even "quite erroneously"? Nearly all the reasoning I have seen on these matters is vitiated by the entirely gratuitous traditional assumption that if a soul survives death, it enters at once into measureless wisdom. Hodgson (?) and the rest seem pretty much the same sort of people that they were here, and I for one am glad of it.
In the sittings of many others of Hodgson's friends the control showed a similar abundant knowledge of their experiences with Hodgson living, and, most important of all, it seems to me, all of Hodgson's exceptionally marked habits of thought and expression. We have room for but little more. James says (Pr. XXIII, 36):
"Hodgson was distinguished during life by great animal spirits. He was fond of argument, chaff, and repartee, a good deal of a gesticulator, and a great laugher.... Chaff and slang from a spirit have an undignified sound for the reader, but to the interlocutors of the R. H. control they seem invariably to have been elements of verisimilitude."