attested may, of course, be theoretically explained as the result of
telepathy from a mind no longer incarnate; and, were the evidence as
copious as that for coincidental hallucinations of the living, or dying,
it would be of extreme importance. But it is not so copious, and, granting
even that it is accurate, various explanations not involving anything so
distasteful to science as the action of a discarnate intelligence may be,
and have been, put forward.

We turn, therefore, from a theme in which civilised testimony is more
bulky than that derived from savage life, to a topic in which savage
evidence is much more full than modern civilised records. This topic is
the so-called Demoniacal Possession.

In the philosophy of Animism, and in the belief of many peoples, savage
and civilised, spirits of the dead, or spirits at large, can take up their
homes in the bodies of living men. Such men, or women, are spoken of as
'inspired,' or 'possessed.' They speak in voices not their own, they act
in a manner alien to their natural character, they are said to utter
prophecies, and to display knowledge which they could not have normally
acquired, and, in fact, do not consciously possess, in their normal
condition. All these and similar phenomena the savage explains by the
hypothesis that an alien spirit--perhaps a demon, perhaps a ghost, or a
god--has taken possession of the patient. The possessed, being full of the
spirit, delivers sermons, oracles, prophecies, and what the Americans call
'inspirational addresses,' before he returns to his normal consciousness.
Though many such prophets are conscious impostors, others are sincere. Dr.
Mason mentions a prophet who became converted to Christianity. 'He could
not account for his former exercises, but said that it certainly appeared
to him as though a spirit spoke, and he must tell what it communicated.'
Dr. Mason also gives the following anecdote: