y have
communicated with their dead relatives. If this were true, the fact
alone would be a miracle. No genius, neither the divine Homer, nor the
calm Tacitus, nor Shakespeare, would have been a creator of men to
compare with Mrs Piper. Even were it thus, science would never have met
with a subject more worthy of its attention than this woman. But the
greater number of those who have had sittings with Mrs Piper affirm that
the information furnished was not in their consciousness. If they
themselves furnished it, the medium must have taken it, not from their
consciousness, but from their subconsciousness, from the most hidden
depths of their souls, from that abyss in which lie buried, far out of
our reach, facts which have occupied our minds for a moment even very
superficially, and have left therein, it appears, indelible traces.

Thus the mystery grows deeper and deeper. But this is not all. At every
moment Mrs Piper gives the sitters details which they maintain that they
never could have known. Consequently she must read them instantaneously
in the minds of persons, sometimes very far distant, who do know them.
This is the telepathic hypothesis, upon which for the moment we will not
insist, for we shall be obliged to study it carefully later on.

Professor Lodge has made a list, necessarily incomplete, of incidents
mentioned by the medium in the English sittings which the sitters had
entirely forgotten, or which they had every reason to suppose they had
never known, or which it was impossible they should ever have known.
This list contains forty-two such incidents. To give my readers some
idea of their nature, I will quote four or five of them. I will take
these incidents from the history of the Lodge family, in order to avoid
introducing new personages unnecessarily.

At the 16th sitting,[27] on November 30, 1889, Phinuit tells Professor
Lodge that one of his sons has something wrong in the calf of his leg.
Now at the time the child was merely complaining of pain in his heel
when he walked. The doctor consulted had pronounced it rheumatism, and
this was vaguely running in Dr Lodge's mind. However, some time after
the sitting, in May 1890, the pain localised itself in the calf. Now
there could be no auto-suggestion in this case, for Professor Lodge
tells us he had said nothing to his son.

At the 44th sitting,[28] Professor Lodge asked his Uncle Jerry, who is
supposed to be communicating, "Do you remember anything