Dr. Nevius was ready to admit this latter doctrine in cases of idiocy, insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria; but then, said he, these are not what I call possession. The Chinese have names for all these maladies, 'which they ascribe to physical causes,' but for possession they have a different name. He expected Dr. Hammond to account for the abnormal conditions in so-called possession, but 'he has hardly even attempted to do this.' Dr. Nevius next perused the works of Dr. Griesinger, Dr. Baelz, Professor William James, M. Ribot, and, generally, the literature of 'alternating personality.' He found Mr. James professing his conviction that the 'alternating personality' (in popular phrase, the demon, or familiar spirit) of Mrs. Piper knew a great deal about things which Mrs. Piper, in her normal state, did not, and could not know. Thus, after consulting many physicians, Dr. Nevius was none the better, and came back to his faith in Diabolical Possession. He was therefore informed that he had written 'one of the most extraordinarily perverted books of the present day' on the evidence of 'transparent ghost stories'--which do not occur in his book. The attitude of Dr. Nevius cannot be called strictly scientific. Because pathologists and psychologists are unable to explain, or give the _modus_ of a set of phenomena, it does not follow that the devil, or a god, or a ghost, is in it. But this, of course, was precisely the natural inference of savages. Dr. Nevius catalogues the symptoms of possession thus: 1. The automatic, persistent and consistent acting out of a new personality, which calls himself _shieng_ (genius) and calls the patient _hiang to_ (incense burner, 'medium'). 2. Possession of knowledge and intellectual power not owned by the patient (in his normal state), nor explainable on the pathological hypothesis. 3. Complete change of moral character in the patient. Of these notes, the second would, of course, most confirm the savage belief that a new intelligence had entered into the patient. If he displayed knowledge of the future, or of the remote, the inference that a novel and wiser intelligence had taken possession of the patient's body would be, to the savage, irresistible. But the more cautious modern, _even if he accepted the facts_, would be reduced to no such extreme conclusion. He would say that knowledge of the remote in space, or in the past, might be telepathically communicated to the brain of some living person; while, for knowledge of the future, he could fly, with Hartmann, to contact with the Absolute.