Psychic Science 589 



7 



Evidence for Survival 



Leaving these puzzling physical phenomena and returning 

 to the more purely psychical demonstrations, we encounter not 

 only evidence of telepathy and of clairvoyance, but of the simu- 

 lation of personal control, whereby it certainly appears as if a 

 deceased person were making use of the medium's organism, to 

 speak and write somewhat as he might have done when he 

 possessed his own physiological mechanism. The trance and the 

 hypnotic states have several points in common, though they are 

 not identical; and whereas in the hypnotic state (so long uncrit- 

 ically and stupidly denied) the patient is more or less amenable 

 to the thoughts and will of the operator, in the trance state the 

 medium is influenced by either a secondary personality or by some 

 form of controlling intelligence (not present in the flesh and some- 

 times believed to be a discarnate person once resident on the 

 earth ) , who wishes to take this indirect means of proving his con- 

 tinued existence, and of sending an assurance of help, or a mes- 

 sage of abiding affection, to members of his family. Messages of 

 affection, however, are seldom evidential, though through the use 

 of pet names, etc., they have a certain value, provided nothing 

 has been given away by an incautious sitter. Certainly a 

 strenuous effort is made sometimes to give proof of surviving 

 personal identity. All manner of trivial incidents are recalled, 

 and personal peculiarities are emphasised; and, though these 

 things are usually known to someone present, or are afterwards 

 recalled by some near relation, and therefore may be plausibly 

 attributed to telepathy from the living, an effort is evidently being 

 made to show that they are really due to telepathy from the 

 "dead" though they rather resent the application of that term 

 when they are feeling all the time active and vigorous. The 

 method of demonstration they adopt, when possible, is to mention 

 things which only they knew, in the hope that their friends will 



