Privileges of Membership. Articles 19 and 20 provide that Members and Associates are eligible to any of the offices of the Society, and are entitled to the free receipt both of the _Proceedings_ and of the _Journal_, to the use of Library books in the Society's rooms, and to attend all the General Meetings of the Society, to which they are also allowed to invite friends. They are further entitled to purchase the _Proceedings_ of the Society issued previous to their joining it,--and also additional copies of any Part or Volume,--at half their published price. Members have the additional privileges of borrowing books from the Library, and of voting in the election of the Council, and at all meetings of the Society. A contents sheet of the whole series of _Proceedings_ may be had on application to the Secretary, 20 Hanover Square, London, W. FOOTNOTES: [2] Any reports or papers which may be printed in the _Proceedings_ will become the Society's property; but author or authors will be entitled to receive 50 copies of any such report or paper gratis, and additional copies, if required, at a small charge. Mrs Piper and the Society for Psychical Research CHAPTER I Mrs Piper's mediumship--Is mediumship a neurosis? Mrs Piper is what the spiritualists call a _medium_, and what the English psychologists call an automatist, which is to say, a person who appears at times to lend her organism to beings imperceptible to our senses, in order to enable them to manifest themselves to us. I say that it appears to be thus, not that it is so. It is difficult for many reasons to admit the existence of these problematical beings. We shall deny it or remain sceptical till the day comes when the evidence proves too strong for us. Mrs Piper's mediumship is one of the most perfect which has ever been discovered. In any case, it is the one which has been the most perseveringly, lengthily and carefully studied by highly competent men. Members of the Society for Psychical Research have studied the phenomena presented by Mrs Piper during fifteen consecutive years. They have taken all the precautions necessitated by the strangeness of the case, the circumstances, and the surrounding scepticism; they have faced and minutely weighed all hypotheses. In future the most orthodox psychologists will be unable to ignore these phenomena when constructing their systems; they will be compelled to examine them and find an explanation for them, which their preconceived ideas will sometimes render it difficult to do.