912. 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 (an account of which by Professor Newbold I give in 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 creatine whose existence is independently known to science; and the accounts of 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 Soeur Angelique of Loudun (see 832 B) would at the Salpetriere 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 Leonie II. for Leonie I. (230 A). And Dr. Morton Prince's case (234 A) 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 already observable in the typical case of Mrs. Newnham (849 A). 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.

913. It seems therefore, - and the analogy of dreams points in this direction also, - that our moral nature is as easily split up as our intellectual nature, and that we cannot be any more certain that the minor current of personality which is diverted into some new channel will retain moral than that it will retain intellectual coherence.

To return once more to the Chinese devil-possessions. Dr. Nevius asserts, though without adducing definite proof, that the possessing devils sometimes showed supernormal knowledge. This is a better argument for their separate existence than their fiendish temper is; but it is not in itself enough. The knowledge does not seem to have been specially appropriate to the supposed informing spirit. It seems as though it may have depended upon heightened memory, with possibly some slight telepathic or telaesthetic perception. Heightened memory is thoroughly characteristic of some hysterical phases; and even the possible traces of telepathy (although far the most important feature of the phenomena, if they really occurred) are, as we have seen, not unknown in trance states (like Leonie's) where there is no indication of an invading spirit.

Temporary control of the organism by a widely divergent fragment of the personality, self-suggested in some dream-like manner into hostility to the main mass of the personality, and perhaps better able than that normal personality to reach and manipulate certain stored impressions, - or even certain supernormal influences, - such will be the formula to which we shall reduce the invading Chinese devil, as described by Dr. Nevius, - and probably the great majority of supposed devil-possessions of similar type.

The great majority, no doubt, but perhaps not all. It would indeed be matter for surprise if such trance-phenomena as those of Mrs. Piper and other modern cases had appeared in the world without previous parallel. Much more probable is it that similar phenomena have occurred sporadically from the earliest times, - although men have not had enough of training to analyse them.

And, in fact, among the endless descriptions of trance-phenomena with which travellers furnish us, there are many which include points so concordant with our recent observations that we cannot but attach some weight to coincidences so wholly undesigned.1 But although this may be admitted, I still maintain that the only invaders of the organism who have as yet made good their title have been human, and have been friendly. "The devils of Loudun" and the like have, I repeat, entirely failed to substantiate their independent existence. The higher influences which inspired the "Martyrs of the Cevennes" are not at this distance of time clearly separable from the inspirations of genius. The teasing, mystifying "controls" whom we have encountered so often in earlier stages of motor automatisms (deceptive written messages and the like) are perhaps the most puzzling. They suggest - nor can we absolutely disprove the suggestion - a type of intelligences inferior to human, - animal-like, and perhaps parasitic. But we have seen already that for these cases too a simpler explanation is forthcoming. There is nothing in the mere fact of the teasing annoyance to negative the supposition that these controls are also fragments - we may call them splinters - of the man's own split personality.

His will and character may divide up in manifestation just as his intellect may do.

1 One important point of similarity is the concurrence in some savage ceremonies of utterance through an invading spirit and travelling clairvoyance exercised meantime by the man whose organism is thus invaded. The uncouth spirit shouts and bellows, presumably with the lungs of the medicine-man, hidden from view in profound slumber. Then the medicine-man awakes, - and tells the listening tribe the news which his sleep-wanderings, among gods or men, have won.

If this indeed be thus, it fits in strangely with the experiences of our modern seers, - with the spiritual interchange which takes place when a discarnate intelligence occupies the organism and meantime the incarnate intelligence, temporarily freed, awakes to wider percipience, - in this or in another world.