more elsewhere even than in Britain. Thousands of poor people perished in
the days of old, guiltless victims, whilst some scoundrelly hypnotists
went free. In modern times some poor people, bothered by hypnotists, have
been sent to lunatic asylums and have fallen victims of the greed,
cruelty, and neglect that so often prevail there. One must give Dr.
Savage his due, that he describes a case in his book on insanity where a
lady hearing voices (cheating hypnotic voices, perhaps), and believing
herself insulted, left one lodging after another perfectly quietly, and
he admits that this case was not suitable for a lunatic asylum.
The "spirits" of spiritists are, of course, not impressive, if their
somewhat startling amount of information be excepted. The language used
by George Pelham is pure twaddle. One member of the society seems to have
been hypnotised, and the rest studied by the Piper gang through him.
If all a man feels, sees, and hears be noted, the information gathered,
coming from a stranger, will be startling to people who belong to his
circle of friends.
This information was imparted to Mrs. Piper, where it had not been
collected by her. All she saw was seen by her accomplices, who advised
her accordingly. They were doubtless too busy to study the eminent
statesman whom she told that he had money transactions with a person
called George.[28]
[Footnote 28: Miss Goodrich Freer's "Essays," p. 119.]
Study and inquiry should eradicate the superstition and the fraud called
spiritism, and people should be protected against a most dangerous and
cowardly form of crime--criminal hypnotism. It enfeebles the mind; and
murder is hardly more serious to a man than a marriage that embitters his
life, or the loss of a career that is the moral stay of his existence.
The knowledge that such a thing exists would, if it induced one per cent,
more care, save many lives. Apparitions of beneficent spirits can be
easily accounted for. They are cases of automatic visualisation. Thus the
children mentioned in the late Mr. Spurgeon's Life, who went down an
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