to turn that doubtful balance of forces undoubtedly against them, is to relax the pressure of their own opposing wills. A movement which they regard as misguided is said to be irresistible. It may be so in fact, or it may not be so. But beyond question it will become so if they cease to resist it.

The second reason for refusing a hearing to the fatalist argument as applied to the greater political questions now impending is this: that, whether the assumption be true or false, it is (in all but the few cases above excepted) irrelevant. It may be-and in all but these rare instances in which real compromise is possible it is— the duty of the politician to disregard it. We have gone so far in these days in our laudation of the virtue of compromise as exemplified by Englishmen, that we seem to believe that it is impossible to push it, like other virtues, to the vice of excess. We have become so accustomed to deride and denounce the vice of political obstinacy and impracticability among foreigners, that we seem to forget that it is only the exaggeration of a virtue. We have apparently got to think that it never can be wise or right to fight out a losing political battle to the end, knowing it to be a losing battle. We assume that those who do so must in every case diminish their future influence with the people by sticking to what the people think a mistaken view; and we take no account of any increase of influence which they may attract to themselves in right of their display of the moral qualities of honesty and resolution. And yet we know who wields the most influence in private life-the man who weakly surrenders his own convictions to the majority of the company in which he finds himself, or he who, though we may sometimes think him mistaken, stands sturdily to his guns. I know not how Demos is likely to be influenced in this or in other matters, and I vehemently doubt whether many of our politicians are much better informed on the point. But of this at least we may be sure that if the way to lose influence over Demos is to withstand him firmly and honestly where we think him mistaken, and the way to gain influence over him is to bow weakly and dishonestly to what we think his errors, as to an irresistible decree, then indeed are we drawing near the end of an auld sang. For in that case our many-headed ruler must be already possessed by a spirit which has never shown itself in democratic States except as the forerunner of decline.

H. D. TRAILL.

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION IN INDIA.

M. RICHET, in his Démoniaques d'aujourd'hui,' and Dr. Carpenter, in his Mental Physiology,' have given some startling instances of mental derangement, the result of hysteria. In the East such cases would be believed to be examples of demoniacal possession. It is chiefly amongst women that these cases of derangement occur, not invariably of course, but, as it chiefly concerns women, it would be well to draw the attention of those concerned in the education of women in the East to this subject. Hysteria itself is a malady so diversified in its manifestations that it has justly been called a Protean disorder. It takes as many shapes, undergoes as many changes, exhibits itself in as many forms as 'old Proteus' and his three daughters.

Preternatural abstinence from food, the seeing of miraculous visions, the appearance of the stigmata, and the utterance of cabalistic and prophetic words, are all manifestations of hysteria common in the middle ages; and all of them, except the appearance of the stigmata, are to be witnessed in India at the present day by those who interest themselves in the social condition of the people. Those who are susceptible of these manifestations are liable to have them intensified by mingling with others similarly afflicted. The sympathy of numbers develops the malady. Convulsive fits are common with them, bearing a striking resemblance to epilepsy. They constitute the great majority of the cataleptic, or sleep-walkers, and no doubt many selfdeceived mediums are of the same category. Some, of course, are impostors, who make a trade of imposing upon the credulity of the ignorant, but many are themselves deceived.

In hysteria there is always a preternatural excitability of the nervous system, and its manifestations appear to be the effects of repressed or exaggerated emotion. In complicated forms of society, emotions alone are no sufficient guides of conduct, but the ruder the condition, and the more uncultivated the people, the greater the force of these emotions; and the more unrestricted their manifestations. The will acquires, by training, control over the emotions, and is enabled, by practice and habit, to direct them into fresh channels,. where they may be used up, as it were, or exhausted harmlessly. If this power has not been acquired, still the will may cause the emotion

to be restrained, concealed, pent up. If the nervous energy excited is not directed into new channels, it is apt to be discharged irregularly, like an electric shock, so as to weaken or dissolve the tie by which the centres of activity of the nervous system are united into a harmonious whole.

Thus it often happens that there is morbid exaltation of some one sense, of sight or hearing, for instance, at the expense of absolute unconsciousness of all other sensation. The function of respiration may be suspended, combined motive power may be paralysed, so as to prevent walking or running. All is irregular and abnormal. The mere influence of expectant attention, the anticipation of a hysterical attack is often sufficient to bring it on. Persons obliged to look fixedly at a small object held in the hand will often lose consciousness to all impressions save those of hearing. They believe all that is said to them. They feel and realise everything said with marvellous emphasis and energy. Hence the phenomena of electro-biology. If they are told they are cold, they will begin to shiver. If they are told it is very hot, they will try and divest themselves of superfluous clothing.

Attacks of convulsions, total or partial loss of sensation, hallucinations or delirium are all hysterical manifestations common, according to M. Richet, when several hysterical people are brought together. And so it is in schools. One hysterical patient will produce many. In the severer attacks, there is first ordinary epilepsy, falling, loss of consciousness, lividity of the face, distortion of the features, flexion of the arms, clenching of the fists, and convulsive tremors. This first period usually ends in sleep or stupor, of uncertain duration. It is followed in the second stage by extravagant contortions, shrieking, barking, the execution of strange grimaces. In the third period, there are hallucinations, consciousness is no longer suspended, the hallucinations are sometimes pleasurable, but, more frequently, frightful. The features and figure assume the expression and attitude of the dominant emotion, and this with a fidelity which actors might envy, and artists study.

It is useless to reason with the subjects of these attacks. They are utterly untruthful, take a pleasure in deceiving, are often shameless, burst into causeless laughter, or uncalled-for tears. They are quick in catching the smallest suggestion from without, but, though extravagant and wild, they never travel beyond the region of their own knowledge, belief, or superstition.

These are precisely the exhibitions of irregular emotions on diseased minds, which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were believed in Europe to result from Satanic or demoniacal possession, witchcraft, and such like. And so they are still regarded in India. Nor can we expect to see these foul superstitions eradicated till education has become more general.

In conversation with an intelligent Talukdar, Abd-ul-Kurim by name, when I was a magistrate in Oudh, I learned that this Satanic or demoniacal possession was commonly believed in, not only by the peasantry of Hindustan proper, but also by the higher classes, the nobility and landed proprietors.

'Amongst my own cultivators,' said he, is an Ahir, whose wife was thus afflicted a few years ago. But the devil was driven out of her, and she is now well. She was barren before. She has children now.'

I was naturally anxious to see this case, and took an early opportunity of visiting the village in which the woman and her husband lived. Gunganarain Naigy, the husband, had little to distinguish him from hundreds of other cultivators who lived around. He was evidently pleased to be the object of attention on the part of the Sahib.

'Yes,' said he, 'protector of the poor! it is quite true. My wife was possessed by a devil for a long time. It was about the time that her father and mother died, six years ago, that I first observed it. She was bewitched by an old fiend that lived in that cottage over there, a wicked old hag, who died when the devil was driven out of my wife.'

I saw the wife, a well-formed, active, intelligent woman, with large lustrous black eyes. When her father and mother died she sank into melancholy. She had no children. Then it was that she became possessed. Nor she nor her husband had any doubt of the fact. She became morbid, sullen, taciturn. At length her disease culminated in dumbness. She would not speak, nay, she avers that she could not, and all believed this to be a fact. Gunganarain Naigy was wretched. The village sages held meetings about his case, and gave their advice, but all to no purpose.

"I was near going mad myself,' said he, describing that time to me. 'I was poor. I could not afford another wife, and I had no children. What was I to do? At length I heard of the Doorgah (or shrine of the saint) at Ghouspore. The Talukdar, my master, good Abd-ul-Kurim, knew my wife and pitied us. He let me go, and gave me a fee for the priests. I took my wife with me, sullen, stolid, dumb, taking no interest in anything, devil-possessed. I brought her back sound in health, cured of the disease, in her right mind, talking intelligently.'

I was naturally anxious to know how this had been accomplished. All agreed-for I conversed with several of the villagers on the subject that when Gunganarain Naigy took his wife Meláta to Ghouspore, she was a well-formed, strong, attractive young woman, but sullen and dumb, taking no interest in anything. Possession by an evil spirit was plain to all of them; and the old hag, her enemy, who lived opposite to her, was accused as the cause.

Arrived at Ghouspore and admitted to the court-yard of the Doorgah, Gunganarain told me an ojah, or exorcist, began to operate on Meláta, but on the first day all in vain. Gunganarain Naigy was present, and saw it all. She was exorcised and beaten, questioned, addressed with words of enchantment, beaten again, but all in vain. Next day severer measures were taken. Exorcism, at first, in vain.

'By the ojah's command,' said Gunganarain, I tied her hands behind her. I tied her feet. Cotton wicks steeped in oil were prepared. They were lighted, and stuffed up her nostrils, and into her

ears.'

'What fearful cruelty!' said I.

Yes; but it cured her. It drove out the devil. She shrieked and spoke. She was convulsed, and became insensible. She is well now, said the ojah; the devil has left her-and it was true. In three days she returned with me, and the old hag died and she has been well ever since, and is now the mother of children. The darkness of hell was in our house before; now we have the light of heaven.' And all the villagers confirmed this-none more readily than Meláta herself.

And now to turn to Ghouspore and the Doorgah.

About four hundred years ago an ancestor of one of the priests attendant at the shrine of Ghouspore in the district of Jounpore, Sayud Umur by name, had a great reputation for sanctity. He had been to Mecca, had visited the usual holy places in the grand pilgrimage of Moslemism. In the course of his pilgrimage his own peculiar saint, Ghousul Arim, had appeared to him, ordering him to take a stone from the saint's tomb at Bagdad, and over it to erect a shrine in his own country, which should be endowed with miraculous virtues. It was at Ghous pore that Sayud Umur erected the shrine. A merchant, who owed his fortune, as he believed, to the favour of Ghousul Arim, subsequently enriched it with elaborate work, and erected substantial walls round it. Every year since, on the anniversary of the completion of the shrine, a fair or méla is held, in which evil spirits are plentifully cast out. No one can tell whether Ghousul Arim himself, or his devout adorer, Sayud Umur, was a caster out of devils, but certain it is that from all the country round, during the month of September, all those possessed in this way, whose friends can afford it and feel interest enough in them to do it, are collected at this great méla; and marvellous is the result.

There are, of course, connected with the shrine professional exorcists, called ojahs, who make it their business to attend to those cases in which the relatives or friends are willing to pay liberally for their services. They have their own method of procedure; but violence and the infliction of pain to cast out the devils are the most common. When the cure is not effected almost immediately, the devil is said to be vicious and obstinate. Then severe beating is resorted to;