inging it on; no one, for instance, would expect to experience it
while urgently occupied in affairs. Whether it is desirable to give way
to so unpractical an attitude, and to encourage the influx of ideas
through non-sensory channels, is another question which need not now
concern us. It suffices for us that the phenomenon exists, and that it
occasionally though very rarely takes on so well marked and persistent a
form as to lend itself to experimental investigation. It is true that in
these cases nothing of exceptional and world-compelling merit is
produced; the substance of the communication is often, though not
always, commonplace, and the form sometimes grotesque. It is true also
that a complete record of a conversation held under these
circumstances--perhaps a full record of a commonplace conversation held
under any circumstances--readily lends itself to cheap ridicule;
nevertheless, the evidence of intimate knowledge thus displayed becomes
often of extreme interest to the few persons for whom the disjointed
utterances have a personal meaning, although to the outsider they must
appear dull, unless he is of opinion that they help him to interpret the
more obscure workings of the human mind, or unless he thinks it possible
that the nature and meaning of inspiration in general may become better
understood by a study of this, its lowest, but at the same time its most
definite and controllable, form. Undoubtedly information is attainable
under these conditions from sources unknown, undoubtedly the entranced
or semi-conscious body or part of a body has become a vehicle or medium
for ostensible messages from other intelligences, or for impersonations;
but the cause of the lucidity so exhibited, the nature of the channel by
which the information is obtained, and the source of the information
itself, are questions which, although they are apt to be treated glibly
by a superficial critic, to whom they appear the most salient feature
and the easiest of explanation, are really the most difficult of all._

_It was to study such questions as this that a special society--the
Society for Psychical Research--was founded some twenty-two years ago._

_Perhaps the most remarkable, and certainly the most thorough, of all
the investigations made under the auspices of this Society has been the
case of the American lady, Mrs Piper; which, begun in 1887, has
continued ever since, with only such intervals as were necessitated by
the circum