Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/313

Rh It is scarcely surprising, perhaps, that these possessing spirits should have seemed actual beings, seeing that to common sense they are such, inasmuch as they rigorously pass all the tests by which we cognize personality and know one man from his neighbor, just as rigorously as the unfortunates they dispossess. This seemingly astounding statement is easily shown to be undeniable. Not only to the simple, superficial eye do the manifestations comport themselves like distinct personalities; they do the like when gauged by all the criteria we are wont to apply. For how do we know people about us for distinct individualities? We know them psychically by the fact that each seems conscious of himself and of his own emotions, thoughts, and memories, as being his own, and as not being anybody else's. The same is true of these spirits. Each is evidently conscious of itself, and conscious of the distinction between itself and all other selves, the man, in whose body it is, included. It has its own emotions which are not his; its own thoughts, which are not his; its own memories, which are not his. It not only denies that it is he; it really