it is important to remember that the first impersonation of the kind, though showing considerable dramatic coherence and individuality, was almost certainly fictitious. Mrs. Piper's clairvoyance is on the same general lines as that of Cahagnet's subject. Her trance consciousness "sees" or receives impressions from deceased friends of those who come to consult her. The messages which she gives generally purport to pass through the mind of the chief control. Phinuit, then for a time George Pelham, and now "Rector" and Richard Hodgson, have each in turn thus professed to act as interpreter and mouthpiece for the spirits of the dead who throng round the entranced medium. In her earlier trances the utterances were mostly oral. Since 1892 they have been mainly, and of late years almost entirely, written. The strictest precautions have been taken to exclude the possibility of fraud; for years past all sittings have been arranged by some member of the Society for Psychical Research, the visitors have been introduced anonymously or under assumed names; and full notes have been taken of all the remarks made and other attendant circumstances. But the real proof that fraud is not the explanation lies in the nature of the revelations actually made. The things which a private enquiry agency could conceivably ascertain—names, dates, and other externals of personal history—are precisely the things which are generally lacking in Mrs. Piper's communications. What she does give—descriptions of the diseases, personal
