ore
argument against the hypothesis of telepathy and secondary
personalities, because there is no trace of simulation. To suppose
simulation would be to accord to telepathy too much skill in the arts of
deceit.

These speeches bring into the foreground the question: "What becomes of
the medium's spirit during the trance, if there is a spirit?" The
controls say that it leaves the organism and remains in the company of
the group of communicating spirits.

"But then," it will be said, "if she lives for the time being in the
other world, why does she not relate her impressions when she wakes?"

We must not forget that for spirits our life is a sleep, and that we are
only conscious of what we acquire through the medium of our five senses.
When the spirit is again plunged into the prison of the body, after
having left it for a time, it goes to sleep once more and forgets all;
it recommences living the fragmentary life which is all that the five
senses permit. The complete absence of memory in the medium when awake
is no more astonishing than the same phenomenon in a subject coming out
of hypnosis, during which he may have talked, and even done much.

Besides, during the short instants when Mrs Piper is as if suspended
between two worlds, she still has a vague recollection of what she has
just heard; the fragments of sentences she utters bear sufficient
witness to this. She rarely fails to shed a few tears, and to say, "I
want to stop here, I don't want to go back to the dark world!" Here is a
characteristic passage, as an example. Mrs Piper, coming out of the
trance, begins to weep and murmur, "I do not want to go back to the
darkness.... Oh, it is, it is, it must be the window ... but I want to
know.... I want to know where they are all gone[88].... It is funny ...
I forgot that I was alive.... Yes, Mr Hodgson, I forgot.... I was going
to tell you something, but I have forgotten what it was.... You see,
when my head snaps, I forget what I was going to say.... It must be
night. Oh, dear! I feel so weak.... Is that my handkerchief?"

On other occasions she uses an odd figure of speech. "You see Rector
turns round a dark board and says that's your world--and he turns round
the other side and that's light, and he says that's his world. I don't
want to go back to the dark world."

Another time she says, quite at the end, "Is that my body? how it
pricks!"

It appears that Imperator, before sending her back to the "dark wor