2 24- POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the normal self by a mass of well co-ordinated ideas suggested 

 by the shrieks and antics of the possessed. It finds an almost 

 perfect parallel in the experience of Mr. R. L. Stevenson, which I 

 narrated in my last paper. 



In a letter to a friend, Father Surin says*: "Matters have 

 come to such a pass that God has permitted, on account of my 

 sins I suppose, something which has perhaps never before been 

 seen in the Church. During the exercise of my ministry the devil 

 passes from the body of the person possessed and, entering into 

 mine, throws me down, convulses me, visibly passes through me, 

 keeping possession of me many hours as a demoniac. ... I do 

 not know how to express to you what then takes place within 

 me ; and how that spirit unites with mine without depriving me 

 either of consciousness or of my soul's freedom, yet acting all 

 the while like another self, and as if I had two souls, of which 

 the one is deprived of its body and of the use of its organs, and 

 stands aside looking on the one that has got in. . . . The two 

 spirits struggle in the same field, that is my body, and the soul 

 is as it were divided. One part of it is the subject of diabolic 

 impressions ; another, of the motions which are proper to it, or 

 which God gives it. ... I feel that the cries which spring from 

 my lips come equally from these two souls, and I can scarcely 

 discriminate whether it is joy [allegresse'] that gives rise to them 

 or the extreme excitement [fureur] that fills me. . . . While my 

 body rolls on the ground and the ministers of the Church talk to 

 me as to a devil and heap maledictions upon me, I can not tell you 

 what joy then fills me, having become a devil, not by rebellion 

 against God, but by the misfortune which simply but clearly 

 portrays to me the state to which sin has brought me. . . . My 

 condition is such that I have few free actions ; when I wish to 

 speak, my speech is arrested; at mass I am stopped short; at 

 table I can not raise food to my mouth ; at confession I sud- 

 denly forget my sins, and I feel the devil come and go within 

 me as in his own house. ... As soon as I wake he is there, at 

 my prayers ; he takes away my thought when he pleases, when 

 my heart begins to open to God he fills it with rage, he puts me 

 to sleep when I wish to be awake, and openly, by the mouths 

 of the possessed, he boasts that he is my master." 



A parallel case is given by Henry More, the Cambridge 

 Platonist, in his Appendix (page 58) to the second edition of 

 Joseph Glanvil's book, " Saducismus Triumphatus, or. Full and 

 Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions," London, 

 1682. It is entitled, "A story of the marvelous condition of one 

 Robert Churchman of Balsham, some six or seven Miles off from 



* Gauthier. Histoire du Somnambulisme, vol. ii, pp. 164 et seq. Italics as there given. 



