id._ p. 503.

[29] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. vi. p. 514.

[30] _Ibid._, p. 549.

[31] _Proc. of S.P.R._, p. 627.

CHAPTER VI

Phinuit--His probable origin--His character--What he says of
himself--His French--His medical diagnosis--Is he merely a secondary
personality of Mrs Piper?

An interesting question arises at the point we have reached--"What is
Phinuit? Whence his name? Whence does he come? Should we believe that he
is a disincarnated human spirit, as he himself obstinately affirms, or
must we think him a secondary personality of Mrs Piper?" If he is a
spirit, that spirit is not endowed with a love of truth, as we shall
see, and on this point he too much resembles many of ourselves. In any
case we may notice in passing the obstinacy of these controls in wishing
to pass for disincarnated spirits; the fact is at least worthy of
attention. I am willing to allow that this may be a suggestion imposed
by the medium on her secondary personalities; but I ask myself why this
suggestion can never be annulled. Numerous efforts have been made, above
all in the case of Phinuit; they have ended only in provoking jests from
the disincarnated doctor, who absolutely insists on remaining a spirit.
However this may be, we will here endeavour to discover the origin of
this control.

It will not have been forgotten that Mrs Piper's mediumship blossomed
forth, if I may thus express myself, during the sittings she had with
the blind medium J. R. Cocke. Now this medium was then, and has, I
believe, always since been, controlled by a certain doctor called Albert
G. Finnett, a French doctor of the old school which produced Sangrado.
This old barber-surgeon, as his medium calls him, is very modest. He
says that he is "nobody particular"; I hope he does not mean to say that
he resembles Jules Verne's Captain Nemo. There is a considerable
resemblance between this name Finnett and the English pronunciation of
Phinuit. Therefore we may well inquire whether the medium Cocke, when
developing Mrs Piper's mediumship, may not also have made her a present
of his control. Dr Hodgson has questioned Phinuit on this point several
times. But Phinuit asserts that he does not know what is meant, and that
Mrs Piper's is the first human organism through which he has manifested.
I will not try to settle the question.

If Phinuit has not varied about his own name, he has certainly varied in
its orthography. Till 1887, whenever he consented to si