He subsequently refused to submit to the conditions proposed by some English officers, and thus incurred their suspicions, that the whole thing was an imposition; but the experiment has been too often repeated by people very well capable of judging, and under too stringent precautions, to allow of this mode of escaping the difficulty. The man assumes to be _holy_, and is very probably a worthless fellow, but that does not affect the question one way or the other. Indian princes do not permit themselves to be imposed on with impunity; and, as Runjeet Sing would not value the man’s life at a pin’s point, he would neglect no means of debarring him all access to food or air. In the above-quoted cases, except in those of Corfidius and Hermotinus, the absence of the spirit is alone suggested to the spectator by the condition of the body; since the memory of one state does not appear to have been carried into the other—if the spirit wandered into other regions it brings no tidings back; but we have many cases recorded where this deficient evidence seems to be supplied. The magicians and soothsayers of the northern countries, by narcotics, and other means, produce a cataleptic state of the body, resembling death, when their prophetic faculty is to be exercised; and although we know that an alloy of imposition is generally mixed up with these exhibitions, still it is past a doubt, that a state of what we call clear-seeing is thus induced; and that on awaking, they bring tidings from various parts of the world of actions then performing and events occurring, which subsequent investigations have verified.