Part 9

"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.

* * * * *

It should be noted that during G. P.'s life, telepathy from the sitter had been reluctantly conceded as a defense against the spiritistic hypothesis, but it was not till after his death that teloteropathy from persons at a distance had been conceded; and it was not until 1909--seven years later, that James, one of the most steadfast holders of the conservative fort, in his report on the communications from Hodgson's alleged spirit, in Pr. XXIII, admitted, as among the possible "sources other than R. H.'s surviving spirit for the veridical communications from the Hodgson control," "access to some cosmic reservoir, where the memory of all mundane facts is stored and grouped around personal centers of association."

James had a subtler mind than mine or almost anybody's. Mine is not subtle enough to be very seriously impressed by the difference between "memory of mundane facts stored and grouped around personal centers of association," and a surviving personality; and what difference does impress me, is pretty well filled up when the "personal center" also has "grouped around" it, the initiative, response, repartee and emotional and dramatic elements that, as shown not only by the G. P. control, but, years later, by the Hodgson control, and by hundreds of others, make a gallery of characters more vivid than those depicted by all the historians. But even claiming them to be historical, as in a sense they are, would not be claiming them to be surviving. Many historical characters have put in that claim through Mrs. Piper and other mediums, and while our greatest psychologist knew as much as anybody about the claims, and seemed somewhat on the road to admitting them to be from surviving personalities, he did not live to go farther than memories "stored and grouped around personal centers of association."

But _à bas_ the "memories"! one is tempted to say; credit them all to telepathy if you will: what are they beside the active and spontaneous emotions and responses?

* * * * *

Meantime in 1892 our old acquaintance Stainton Moses had "passed over," and in 1895 had ostensibly appeared through Mrs. Piper to Professor Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Newbold asked him to bring his friends Imperator, Rector, etc. These high-toned personages--none high-toneder, as John Hay of blessed memory, puts it--nor more bombastic or long-winded, had manifested before only through Moses (for convenience I am using the simple phraseology that would attend their genuineness, but do not mean to convey any opinion), and when they came through Mrs. Piper, they professed to find her in a very bad way because of the "earth-bound" Phinuit, and they professed to remove him to a higher sphere where he would be purified and disinfected and sanctified and turned from a genial sympathetic, humorous and, it must be admitted, occasionally slangy and profane soul, into a prig of purest ray serene. Rector now generally took his place with Mrs. Piper, which he had done to some extent before. The gang was very well satisfied with G. P., however, and he appeared for some years as their valued friend and collaborator, until in 1897 they declared his work done, and his proper place a "higher sphere." He bade his friends here affectionate farewells, but has occasionally sent back messages, and has once or twice spoken himself. Mind, I am throughout speaking only provisionally; but I would defy any writer to escape the verisimilitude, and even if that were possible, it would involve intolerable verbiage.

Imperator & Co. now proposed to do most of the talking themselves, and they did a frightful amount of it; and occasionally really said something.

Moreover, they took charge of Mrs. Piper and Hodgson too, in their goings and comings and all their ways, dictated their diet and exercise, and even whom they should have at sittings, giving the preference to people of exceptionally high character, and to those in deep distress from loss of friends, and eager to communicate with them.

The present writer and some others are tempted to think that these autocratic personages are products telepathically conveyed to Mrs. Piper from the unconscious imagination of Hodgson and his recollection of Moses' writings, with perhaps a little involuntary dash of Prof. Newbold. But if they are, the imagination is expanded to a degree entirely outside of ordinary experience, and its study must enlarge our conception of the range of human faculty. Whatever they were, if only an allegorized form of faith cure, there is no question about their beneficial effect on the clearness of the sittings, and on the health and happiness of Mrs. Piper and Hodgson.

* * * * *

James says something which goes to the root of the whole business, and which, though it is episodic to the Hodgson narrative, may as well be considered here (Pr. XXIII, 3):

"Dr. Hodgson was disposed to admit the claim to reality of Rector and of the whole Imperator-Band, ... while I have rather favored the idea of their all being dream-creations of Mrs. Piper.... I can see no contradiction between Rector's being on the one hand an improvised creature of this sort, and his being on the other hand the extraordinarily impressive personality which he unquestionably is.... Critical and fastidious sitters have recognized his wisdom, and confess their debt to him as a moral adviser. With all due respect to Mrs. Piper, I feel very sure that her own waking capacity for being a spiritual adviser, if it were compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind."

"With all due respect" for Professor James's opinion, I think I do "see [a] contradiction," and I see the contradiction because, with Professor James, "I feel very sure that her own waking capacity for being a spiritual adviser, if it were compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind." If the Imperator band were merely, as James suggests, "dream creations," ... and if "her own waking capacity ... compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind," how could she make anything so superior to herself? How can she do better as Rector than she can as herself? The whole scheme seems to me akin to the Du-Prel and Myers scheme of making a man lift himself higher than his head by his own boot-straps; and beside it the spiritistic hypothesis seems simplicity and probability themselves.

The simplest individual, incarnate (or discarnate?), of course manifests _himself_ in a way that the most skillful dramatist could not equal, and it may well be questioned whether it is not more rational to assume that the hundreds of alleged personalities dramatized in the words and gestures of Mrs. Piper are manifestations by the personalities themselves, than that they are creations of some as yet unknown kind of genius residing in some layer of Mrs. Piper's consciousness, and getting its material from fragments among her own memories or by telepathy from those of other living persons, present or remote.

Hodgson closes his report (Pr. XIII, 409):

"It has been stated repeatedly that the 'channel is not yet clear,' that the machine is still in process of repair; and it has been prophesied that I shall myself return eventually to America and spend several years further in the investigation of Mrs. Piper's trance, and that more remarkable evidence of identity will be given than any heretofore obtained."

He did return and continue his beloved work for several years. But the next time we meet him it will be as an alleged denizen of the spirit world, and perhaps his testimony in that capacity was part of the "more remarkable evidence of identity" promised.

* * * * *

These influences, whatever their fundamental character, having made a saint of Hodgson, as was alleged by a friend who did not believe that the influences were from a post-carnate world, the drama took a new turn on December 20, 1905, in the death which Hodgson had eagerly awaited, and his ostensible reappearances through Mrs. Piper and other mediums. The principal report of them is made by his friends Professor William James, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. J. G. Piddington and Sir Oliver Lodge in Pr. XXIII, and occupies some 170 octavo pages, most of them literal reports of sittings. Other manifestations appear in the heteromatic writing of Mrs. Holland (Pr. XX) and elsewhere. Of course but a few entirely inadequate scraps can be given here.

As in the case of G. P., the first appearance did not take place until, on Dec. 28th, a peculiarly close and congenial friend of Hodgson happened to have a sitting--an argument of course for telepathy from the friend, but an equal argument for a genuine communication that had to await a congenial sitter.

To avoid constant circumlocution, I will provisionally write as if Hodgson were really speaking. Indeed, I doubt if I could persistently do otherwise: for the utterances are so natural that all the editors of the Pr. S. P. R. unconsciously fall into that way of expression.

James says (Pr. XXIII, 7) that the first alleged appearance of Hodgson:

"was at Miss Theodate Pope's sitting on Dec. 28th, 1905 [the eighth day after Hodgson's death. Ed.] ... Rector had been writing, when the hand dropped the pencil and worked convulsively several seconds in a very excited manner.

"Miss P.: 'What is the matter?' [The hand, shaking with apparently great excitement, wrote the letter H, ... bearing down so hard on the paper that the point of the pencil was broken. It then wrote 'Hodgson.']

Was all this a "put-up job?" And if so, who put it up, and why?

"Miss P.: 'God bless you!' [The hand writes 'I am'--followed by rapid scrawls, as if regulator of machine were out of order.] Miss P.: 'Is this my friend?' [Hand assents by knocking five times on paper-pad.] (Rector): 'Peace, friends, he is here, it was he, but he could not remain, he was so choked. He is doing all in his power to return.... Better wait for a few moments until he breathes freer again.'"

Do spirits require a supply of oxygen, or is the expression metaphorical for something not accurately communicable to our intelligence? It occurs several times. Frequently the "spirits" say they are tired, especially in the transition from the body. The expression "choked" may be purely metaphorical, yet it hardly reinforces the argument for spiritism.

James says (Pr. XXIII, 13f.):

"The R. H. control suddenly wrote: 'Give ring to Margaret back to Margaret.' [Mrs. Lyman's name [pseudonym. Ed.] is not Margaret.] Miss P.: 'Who is Margaret?' R. H.: 'I was with her in summer.' Miss P.: 'All right, but the ring has not been found yet. Can you find out where it is?' R. H.: 'The undertaker got it....'"

"On January 24th, Mrs. Lyman had her first sitting. As soon as Hodgson appeared he wrote: 'The ring. You gave it me on my fiftieth birthday. When they asked I didn't want to say you gave it me.... Two palm-leaves joining each other--Greek. [Here followed an illegible word. The palms truly described the ring, which Mrs. Piper probably had seen; but it bore no Greek inscription....]' Mrs. L.: 'Yes, Dick, where is it now?' R. H.: '... They took it off my finger after I was gone.' Mrs. L.: 'No, they didn't find it on your finger.' R. H.: 'Pocket, it was in my pocket. I'll find it, you shall have it.'

"On January 29th, Mrs. L. had another sitting. The Hodgson control wrote: 'I have been trying to make clear about that ring. It is on my mind all the time. I thought if I could get Margaret B. to get it for me, I would get it to you through her, then no one would understand. I could not tell Miss Pope about you.' [Then a possible attempt to draw a symbol engraved on the ring.] 'No one living knows this but myself and yourself.' [Note the term 'living' as applied to himself. Ed.] Mrs. L.: 'That is true, but what was the motto in the ring?' R. H.: 'All will be clear to me in time. Do not ask me test questions now....'"

His failure to remember it is one of the most knock-down anti-evidential arguments, but it is equally anti-telepathic. His never speaking of the ring to other friends, the Jameses, and Mr. Dorr, seems very evidential.

* * * * *

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."

God save me from a heaven where there is no "chaff and slang"! I should fail to recognize some of my best friends among the loftiest souls who have escaped the flesh, Hodgson not the least. However intense the interest heretofore taken in a future world, I doubt if it has ever been thoroughly healthy, or ever will be before we get our conceptions of that world off stilts. James continues (pp. 37-8):

"This, however, did not exclude very serious talk with the same persons--quite the reverse sometimes, as when one sitter of this class notes: 'Then came words of kindness which were too intimate and personal to be recorded, but which left me so deeply moved that shortly afterwards, at the sitting's close, I fainted dead away--it had seemed as though he had in all reality been there and speaking to me.'"

If James ran any one of his virtues into the ground, perhaps it was his modesty concerning anything connected with himself. Instance the following introduction and what it introduces:

_W. J.'s Sitting._ (May 21st, 1906). (Pr. XXIII, 8of.)

"[J.] The evidence is so much the same sort of thing throughout, and makes such insipid reading, that I hesitate to print more of it in full. But I know that many critics insist on having the largest possible amount of _verbatim_ material on which to base their conclusions, so I select a specimen of the R. H. control's utterances when he was less 'strong.' The reader, I fear, will find it long and tedious, but he can skip.