ages. This was very small before
Dr. Hodgson's death, but increased very much after that time. In a
letter to me, dated January 27, 1908, Mrs. Ledyard, an old Piper sitter,
said:

"Dear Mr. Carrington,--... All sorts of false statements don't
necessarily tell against the spiritistic hypothesis. If you get
other evidences of personality, the false statements only confirm
R. H.'s belief that "they" are in a sort of dreamy, half-trance
state and _very suggestible_. My own opinion of the Piper trance is
that, since R. H.'s death, when Mrs. P. has been less carefully
guarded in many ways, and allowed to have so much voice in what she
would and would not do, that there is much more effect of Mrs.
Piper herself on the trance--and more _leaks through_ from Mrs.
Piper--though I have, so far, seen no special evidence that it
leaks the other way, and that what is told her by sitters during
the trance gets into the normal consciousness. But it does affect
her normal life, just as an hypnotic suggestion does, on which the
subject acts quite unconscious of its source...."

But Rector's[12] business seems to be more far-reaching and more
complicated than this. I quote from Dr. Hyslop's second Piper report (p.
197) the following interesting passage:

"I may notice a remark Dr. Hodgson once made to me regarding the
office of Rector in the phenomena of Mrs. Piper. It was not only as
control that he exercised an influence over the results, but also
both as intermediary between the communicator and the sitter, and
as an inhibitor of the influence of the sitter's mind and the
subconsciousness of Mrs. Piper upon this same result.... His view
was that Rector inhibited the thought-transference from the sitter
to Mrs. Piper's subliminal, on the messages, so far as that was
possible...."

From this it will, at all events, be seen that the relationship, and the
whole system of inhibitions and influences at work in the Piper case is
very complicated. It must be remembered that, on any theory, the
"messages" must come _through_ the medium's subliminal, which acts as a
sort of matrix in which the whole mould of the supernormal is cast; and,
this being the case, it is only natural to suppose that the results
would be most complicated and inextricably mixed in their relationships
and influences. If spirit communications influence the