ntemporaries awakened to
the psychological value of abnormal mental states. He also loved fair
play. He made his first report on Mrs. Piper in 1886. He was unable, he
said, "to resist the conviction that knowledge appeared in her trances
which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears
and wits.... What the source of this knowledge may be, I know not, and
have not a glimmer of explanatory suggestion to make, but from admitting
the fact of such knowledge I can see no escape."

In a letter to Flourney dated August 9, 1908, James says of later
investigations: "It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in
the history of automatism.... Evidently automatism is a word that covers
an extraordinary variety of fact." The reports of Mrs. Piper's sittings
fill a large place in the Society's records. Dr. Richard Hodgson and
Professor Hyslop were finally led to accept her trance utterances and
writings as spiritistic revelations. Podmore, after a most careful
analysis, concludes that "Mrs. Piper's trance utterances indicate the
possession of some supernormal power of apprehension, at least the
capacity to read the unspoken and even unconscious thoughts and emotions
of other minds."[73] He is willing to admit that if any case in the
whole history of Spiritualism points at communication with the spirits
of the dead, hers is that case, but he adds, "to other students of the
records, including the present writer, the evidence nevertheless appears
at present insufficient to justify the spiritualistic view even of a
working hypothesis." "I cannot point to a single instance in which a
precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished, of a
kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working
upon the materials provided in the hints let drop by the sitter."[74]

[Footnote 73: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, pp. 342-343.]

[Footnote 74: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, p. 345.]

_The Limitations of the Scientist in Psychical Investigation_

It is impossible in this study to follow through the records of the
Society. A representative group of its members, some of them men whose
names carry weight in other regions, have been led by their
investigations to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis. Significantly,
however, it is generally the scientist and not the psychologist who
commits himself most strongly to Spiritism. He is strongly impressed, as
was Sir Willia