22. Another difficulty must be referred to in this place; and that is the probable loss of control over the stream of thought by spirits, such as we exercise in this life. Here, the checks and inhibitions are easily accomplished, unless disease in some manner prevents them; but there are strong indications that a "spirit"--at least when communicating--cannot control his stream of thinking to the same extent; and that, if it is constantly interrupted--by questions, etc., as it usually is--it tends to break up and become automatic, echolalic, or useless. That even experienced and careful psychic researchers will interfere with the flow of consciousness in this manner I know to be a fact; I myself, though I had been especially warned against doing so, did the same thing in my Piper sittings! Some of these difficulties I endeavoured to make clear in a letter, which I wrote to the English _Journal S.P.R._, and which appeared in March, 1908. In it I said: "For the sake of argument, let us assume that the intelligences that communicate through the organism of Mrs. Piper--and perhaps of some other mediums--are spirits of the departed, and that they temporarily 'possess' the organism of the medium (at least in part) during the process of communicating. That is the generally-held theory, I believe, and the simplest one to account for the facts. If this be true, it is to be supposed that the normal consciousness of the medium is in some manner removed, superseded, or withdrawn, and that only some "vegetable consciousness" remains, as it were, sufficient to keep the organism going until the return of the normal consciousness and normal control by the medium. Meanwhile, the controlling intelligence is, by supposition, influencing the nervous mechanism of the medium's body--directly or indirectly through some etheric medium--and influencing it to write out letters and words by the usual slow and laborious process. That they _do_ find it slow and laborious is evidenced by the fact that all possible abbreviations are adopted--'U.D.' being used for 'Understand'; 'M' is frequently written 'N,' and so on. Even in our normal life we know that thoughts frequently flow faster than we can put them on to paper, and this would almost certainly be the case with spiritual intelligences who have no material brain to hinder their flow of thought. It is probable that the brain is as much an inhibitory organ as anything else; and when this inhibition is removed, it is natural to suppose that the flow of thought would be far less controllable and far more automatic than it is with us. It would be impossible for spirits to check and go on with their stream of thought at will, as we do on this hypothesis; they would be far more automatic and less under the control of the will. If