The Making of Religion Part 14

2. Possession of knowledge and intellectual power not owned by the patient (in his normal state), nor explainable on the pathological hypothesis.

3. Complete change of moral character in the patient.

Of these notes, the second would, of course, most confirm the savage belief that a new intelligence had entered into the patient. If he displayed knowledge of the future, or of the remote, the inference that a novel and wiser intelligence had taken possession of the patient's body would be, to the savage, irresistible. But the more cautious modern, _even if he accepted the facts_, would be reduced to no such extreme conclusion.

He would say that knowledge of the remote in s.p.a.ce, or in the past, might be telepathically communicated to the brain of some living person; while, for knowledge of the future, he could fly, with Hartmann, to contact with the Absolute.

But the question of evidence for the facts is, of course, the only real question. Now, in Dr. Nevius's book, this evidence rests almost entirely on the written reports of native Christian teachers, for the Chinese were strictly reticent when questioned by Europeans. 'My heathen brother, you have a sister who is a demoniac?' asks the intelligent European. The reply of the heathen brother is best left in the obscurity of a remarkably difficult and copious Oriental language. We are thus obliged to fall back on the reports of Mr. Leng and other native Christian teachers. They are perfectly modest and rational in style. We learn that Mrs. Sen, a lady in her normal state incapable of lyrical efforts, lisped in numbers in her secondary personality, and detected the circ.u.mstance that Mr. Leng was on his way to see her, when she could not have learned the fact in any normal way.[8] 'They are now crossing the stream, and will be here when the sun is about so high;' which was correct. The other witnesses were examined, and corroborated.[9] Dr. Nevius himself examined Mrs. Kwo, when possessed, talking in verse, and, physically, limp.[10]

The narratives are of this type; the patient, on recovering consciousness, knows nothing of what has occurred; Christian prayers are often efficacious, and there are many anecdotes of movements of objects untouched.[11]

By a happy accident, as this chapter was pa.s.sing through the press, a scientific account of a demoniac and his cure was published by Dr. Pierre Janet.[12] Dr. Janet has explained, with complete success, everything in the matter of possession, except the facts which, in the opinion of Dr.

Nevius, were in need of explanation. These facts did not occur in the case of the demoniac 'exorcised' by Dr. Janet. Thus the learned essay of that eminent authority would not have satisfied Dr. Nevius. The facts in which he was interested did not present themselves in Dr. Janet's patient, and so Dr. Janet does not explain them.

The simplest plan, here, is to deny that the facts in which Dr. Nevius believes ever present themselves at all; but, if they ever do, Dr. Janet's explanation does not explain them.

1. His patient, Achille, did _not_ act out a new personality.

2. Achille displayed _no_ knowledge or intellectual power which he did not possess in his normal state.

3. His moral character was _not_ completely changed; he was only more hypochondriacal and hysterical than usual.

Achille was a poor devil of a French tradesman who, like Captain Booth, had infringed the laws of strict chast.i.ty and virtue. He brooded on this till he became deranged, and thought that Satan had him. He was convulsed, anaesthetic, suicidal, involuntarily blasphemous. He was not 'exorcised'

by a prayer or by a command, but after a long course of mental and physical treatment. His cure does not explain the cures in which Dr.

Nevius believed. His case did not present the features of which Dr.

Nevius asked science for an explanation. Dr. Janet's essay is the _dernier cri_ of science, and leaves Dr. Nevius just where it found him.

Science, therefore, can, and does, tell Dr. Nevius that his evidence for his facts is worthless, through the lips of Professor W. Romaine Newbold, in 'Proceedings, S.P.R.,' February 1898 (pp. 602-604). And the same number of the same periodical shows us Dr. Hodgson accepting facts similar to those of Dr. Nevius, and explaining them by--possession! (p. 406).

Dr. Nevius's observations practically cover the whole field of 'possession' in non-European peoples. But other examples from other areas are here included.

A rather impressive example of possession may be selected from Livingstone's 'Missionary Travels' (p. 86). The adventurous Sebituane was harried by the Matabele in a new land of his choice. He thought of descending the Zambesi till he was in touch with white men; but Tlapane, 'who held intercourse with G.o.ds,' turned his face west-wards. Tlapane used to retire, 'perhaps into some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric state' until the moon was full. Then he would return _en prophete_.

'Stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or beating the ground with a club' (to summon those under earth), 'they induce a kind of fit, and while in it pretend that their utterances are unknown to themselves,' as they probably are, when the condition is genuine. Tlapane, after inducing the 'possessed' state, pointed east: 'There, Sebituane, I behold a fire; shun it, it may scorch thee. The G.o.ds say, Go not thither!' Then, pointing west, he said, 'I see a city and a nation of black men, men of the water, their cattle are red, thine own tribe are peris.h.i.+ng, thou wilt govern black men, spare thy future tribe.'

So far, mere advice; then,

'Thou, Ramosinii, thy village will perish utterly. If Mokari moves first from the village, he will perish first; and thou, Ramosinii, wilt be the last to die.'

Then,

'Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance,'

'The G.o.ds have given other men water to drink, but to me they have given bitter water. They call me away. I go.'[13]

Tlapane died, Mokari died, Ramosinii died, their village was destroyed soon after, and so Sebituane wandered westward, not disobedient to the voice, was attacked by the Baloiana, conquered, and spared them.

Such is 'possession' among savages. It is superfluous to multiply instances of this world-wide belief, so freely ill.u.s.trated in the New Testament, and in trials for witchcraft. The scientific study of the phenomena, as Littre complained, 'had hardly been sketched' forty years ago. In the intervening years, psychologists and hypnotists have devoted much attention to the theme of these 'secondary personalities,' which Animism explains by the theory of possession. The explanations of modern philosophers differ, and it is not our business to discuss their physiological and pathological ideas.[14] Our affair is to ask whether, in the field of experience, there is any evidence that persons thus 'possessed' really evince knowledge which they could not have acquired through normal channels? If such evidence exists, the facts would naturally strengthen the conviction that the possessed person was inspired by an intelligence not his own, that is, by a spirit. Now it is the firm conviction of several men of science that a certain Mrs. Piper, an American, does display, in her possessed condition, knowledge which she could not normally acquire. The case of this lady is precisely on a level with that of certain savage or barbaric seers. Thus: 'The Fijian priest sits looking steadily at a whale's tooth ornament, amid dead silence. In a few minutes he trembles, slight twitchings of face and limbs come on, which increase to strong convulsions.... Now the G.o.d has entered.'[15]

In China, 'the professional woman sits at a table in contemplation, till the soul of a deceased person from whom communication is desired enters her body and talks through her to the living....'[16]

The latter account exactly describes Mrs. Piper. When consulted she pa.s.ses through convulsions into a trance, after which she talks in a new voice, a.s.sumes a fresh personality, and affects to be possessed by the spirit of a French doctor (who does not know French)--Dr. Phinuit. She then displays a varying amount of knowledge of dead and living people connected with her clients, who are usually strangers, often introduced under feigned names.

Mrs. Piper and her husband have been watched by detectives, and have not been discovered in any attempts to procure information. She was for some months in England under the charge of the S.P.R. Other ghosts, besides Dr. Phinuit, ghosts more civilised than he, now influence her, and her latest performances are said to exceed her former efforts.[17]

Volumes of evidence about Mrs. Piper have been published by Dr. Hodgson, who unmasked Madame Blavatsky and Eusapia Paladino.[18] He was at first convinced that Mrs. Piper, in her condition of trance, obtains knowledge not otherwise and normally accessible to her. It was admitted that her familiar spirit guesses, attempts to extract information from the people who sit with her, and tries sophistically to conceal his failures. Here follow the statements of Professor James of Harvard.

'The most convincing things said about my own immediate household were either very intimate or very trivial. Unfortunately the former things cannot well be published. Of the trivial things I have forgotten the greater number, but the following, _rarae nantes_, may serve as samples of their cla.s.s. She said that we had lost recently a rug, and I a waistcoat. (She wrongly accused a person of stealing the rug, which was afterwards found in the house.) She told of my killing a grey-and-white cat with ether, and described how it had "spun round and round" before dying. She told how my New York aunt had written a letter to my wife, warning her against all mediums, and then went off on a most amusing criticism, full of _traits vifs_, of the excellent woman's character.

(Of course, no one but my wife and I knew the existence of the letter in question.) She was strong on the events in our nursery, and gave striking advice during our first visit to her about the way to deal with certain "tantrums" of our second child--"little Billy-boy," as she called him, reproducing his nursery name. She told how the crib creaked at night, how a certain rocking-chair creaked mysteriously, how my wife had heard footsteps on a stair, &c. &c. Insignificant as these things sound when read, the acc.u.mulation of them has an irresistible effect; and I repeat again what I said before, that, taking everything that I know of Mrs.

Piper into account, the result is to make me feel as absolutely certain as I am of any personal fact in the world that she knows things in her trances which she cannot possibly have heard in her waking state, and that the definitive philosophy of her trances is yet to be found. The limitations of her trance information, its discontinuity and fitfulness, and its apparent inability to develop beyond a certain point, although they end by arousing one's moral and human impatience with the phenomenon, yet are, from a scientific point of view, amongst its most interesting peculiarities, since where there are limits there are conditions, and the discovery of them is always the beginning of an explanation.

'This is all I cam tell you of Mrs. Piper. I wish it were more "scientific." But _valcat quantum!_ it is the best I can do.'

Elsewhere Mr. James writes:

'Mr. Hodgson and others have made prolonged study of this lady's trances, and are all convinced that supernormal powers of cognition are displayed therein. They are, _prima facie_, due to "spirit control." But the conditions are so complex that a dogmatic decision either for or against the hypothesis must as yet be postponed.'[19]

Again--

'In the trances of this medium I cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears, and wits.

'The trances have broken down, for my own mind, the limits of the admitted order of nature.'

M. Paul Bourget (who is not superst.i.tious), after consulting Mrs. Piper, concludes:

'L'esprit a des procedes de connaitre non soupconnes par notre a.n.a.lyse.'[20]

In this treatise I may have shown 'the will to believe' in an unusual degree; but, for me, the interest of Mrs. Piper is purely anthropological.

She exhibits a survival or recrudescence of savage phenomena, real or feigned, of convulsion and of secondary personality, and entertains a survival of the animistic explanation.

Mrs. Piper's honesty and excellent character, in her normal condition, are vouched for by her friends and observers in England and America; nor do I impeach her normal character. But 'secondary personalities' have often more of Mr. Hyde than of Dr. Jekyll in their composition. It used to be admitted that, when 'possessed,' Mrs. Piper would cheat when she could--that is to say, she would make guesses, try to worm information out of her sitter, describe a friend of his, alive or dead, as 'Ed.,' who may be Edgar, Edmund, Edward, Edith, or anybody. She would shuffle, and repeat what she had picked up in a former sitting with the same person; and the vast majority of her answers started from vague references to probable facts (as that an elderly man is an orphan), and so worked on to more precise statements. Professor Macalister wrote:

'She is quite wide-awake enough all through to profit by suggestions. I let her see a blotch of ink on my finger, and she said that I was a writer.... Except the guess about my sister Helen, who is alive, there was not a single guess which was nearly right. Mrs. Piper is not anaesthetic during the so-called trance, and if you ask my private opinion, it is that the whole thing is an imposture, and a poor one.'[21]

Mr. Barkworth said that, as far as his experience went, 'Mrs. Piper's powers are of the ordinary thought-reading [i.e. muscle-reading] kind, dependent on her hold of the visitor's hand.' Each of these gentlemen had only one 'sitting.' M. Paul Bourget also informed me, in conversation, that Mrs. Piper held his hand while she told the melancholy tale connected with a key in his possession, and that she did not tell the story promptly and fluently, but very slowly and hesitatingly. Even so, he declared that he did not feel able to account for her performance.

As these pages were pa.s.sing through the press, Dr. Hodgson's last report on Mrs. Piper was published.[22] It is quite impossible, within the s.p.a.ce allotted, to criticise this work. It would be necessary to examine minutely scores of statements, in which many facts are suppressed as too intimate, while others are remarkably incoherent. Dr. Hodgson deserves the praise of extraordinary patience and industry, displayed in the very distasteful task of watching an unfortunate lady in the vagaries of 'trance.' His reasonings are perfectly calm, perfectly unimpa.s.sioned, and his bias has not hitherto seemed to make for credulity. We must, in fact, regard him as an expert in this branch of psychology. But he himself makes it clear that, in his opinion, no written reports can convey the impressions produced by several years of personal experience. The results of that experience he sums up in these words:

'At the present time I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the chief "communicators" to whom I have referred in the foregoing pages are veritably the personalities that they claim to be, that they have survived the change we call death, and that they have directly communicated with us, whom we call living, through Mrs. Piper's entranced organism.'[23]

This means that Dr. Hodgson, at present, in this case, accepts the hypothesis of 'possession' as understood by Maoris and Fijians, Chinese and Karens.

The published reports do not produce on me any such impression. As a personal matter of opinion, I am convinced that those whom I have honoured in this life would no more avail themselves of Mrs. Piper's 'entranced organism' (if they had the chance) than I would voluntarily find myself in a 'sitting' with that lady. It is unnecessary to wax eloquent on this head; and the curious can consult the writings of Dr. Hodgson for themselves. Meanwhile we have only to notice that an American 'possessed'

woman produces on a highly educated and sceptical modern intelligence the same impression as the Zulu 'possessed' produce on some Zulu intelligences.

The Zulus admit 'possession' and divination, but are not the most credulous of mankind. The ordinary possessed person is usually consulted as to the disease of an absent patient. The inquirers do not a.s.sist the diviner by holding his hand, but are expected to smite the ground violently if the guess made by the diviner is right; gently if it is wrong. A sceptical Zulu, named John, having a s.h.i.+lling to expend on psychical research, smote violently at _every_ guess. The diviner was hopelessly puzzled; John kept his s.h.i.+lling, and laid it out on a much more meritorious exhibition of animated sticks.[24]

Uguise gave Dr. Callaway an account of a female possessed person with whom Mrs. Piper could not compete. Her spirit spoke, not from her mouth, but from high in the roof. It gave forth a kind of questioning remarks which were always correct. It then reported correctly a number of singular circ.u.mstances, ordered some remedies for a diseased child, and offered to return the fee, if ample satisfaction was not given.[25]

In China and Zululand, as in Mrs. Piper's case, the spirits are fond of diagnosing and prescribing for absent patients.