Chapter VIII: Motor Automatism (2)

It was plain that these writings could not be judged aright without a wide analysis of similar scripts,--without an experimental inquiry into what the human mind, in states of somnambulism or the like, could furnish of written messages, apart from the main stream of consciousness. By his experiments on writing obtained in different stages of hypnotic trance, Gurney acted as the pioneer of a long series of researches which, independently set on foot by Professor Pierre Janet in France, have become of high psychological, and even medical, importance. What is here of prime interest is the indubitable fact that fresh personalities can be artificially and temporarily created, which will write down matter quite alien from the first personality's character, and even matter which the first personality never knew. That matter may consist merely of reminiscences of previous periods when the second personality has been in control. But, nevertheless, if these writings are shown to the primary personality, he will absolutely repudiate their authorship--alleging not only that he has no recollection of writing them, but also that they contain allusions to facts which he never knew. Some of these messages, indeed, although their source is so perfectly well defined--although we know the very moment when the secondary personality which wrote them was called into existence--do certainly look more alien from the automatist in his normal state than many of the messages which claim to come from spirits of lofty type. It is noticeable, moreover, that these manufactured personalities sometimes cling obstinately to their fictitious names, and refuse to admit that they are in reality only aspects or portions of the automatist himself. This must be remembered when the persistent _claim_ to some spiritual identity--say Napoleon--is urged as an argument for attributing a series of messages to that special person.

What has now been said may suffice as regards the varieties of mechanism--the different forms of motor automatism--which the messages employ. I shall pass on to consider the _contents_ of the messages, and shall endeavour to classify them according to their apparent sources.

_A._ In the first place, the message may come from the percipient's own mind; its contents being supplied from the resources of his ordinary memory, or of his more extensive subliminal memory; while the _dramatisation_ of the message--its assumption of some other mind as its source--will resemble the dramatisations of dream or of hypnotic trance.

Of course the absence of facts unknown to the writer is not in itself a proof that the message does not come from some other mind. We cannot be sure that other minds, if they can communicate, will always be at the pains to fill their messages with evidential facts. But, equally of course, a message devoid of such facts must not, on the strength of its mere assertions, be claimed as the product of any but the writer's own mind.

_B._ Next above the motor messages whose content the automatist's own mental resources might supply, we may place the messages whose content seems to be derived telepathically from the mind of some other person still living on earth; that person being either conscious or unconscious of transmitting the suggestion.

_C._ Next comes the possibility that the message may emanate from some unembodied intelligence of unknown type--other, at any rate, than the intelligence of the alleged agent. Under this heading come the views which ascribe the messages on the one hand to "elementaries," or even devils, and on the other hand to "guides" or "guardians" of superhuman goodness and wisdom.

_D._ Finally we have the possibility that the message may be derived, in a more or less direct manner, from the mind of the agent--the departed friend--from whom the communication does actually claim to come.

My main effort has naturally been thus far directed to the proof that there are messages which do _not_ fall into the lowest class, _A_--in which class most psychologists would still place them all. And I myself--while reserving a certain small portion of the messages for my other classes--do not only admit but assert that the great majority of such communications represent the subliminal workings of the automatist's mind alone. It does not, however, follow that such messages have for us no interest or novelty. On the contrary, they form an instructive, an indispensable transition from psychological introspection of the old-fashioned kind to the bolder methods on whose validity I am anxious to insist. The mind's subliminal action, as thus revealed, differs from the supraliminal in ways which no one anticipated, and which no one can explain. There seem to be subliminal tendencies setting steadily in certain obscure directions, and bearing as little relation to the individual characteristics of the person to the deeps of whose being we have somehow penetrated as profound ocean-currents bear to waves and winds on the surface of the sea.[180]

Another point also, of fundamental importance, connected with the powers of the subliminal self, will be better deferred until a later chapter. I have said that a message containing only facts normally known to the automatist must not, on the strength of its mere assertions, be regarded as proceeding from any mind but his own. This seems evident; but the converse proposition is not equally indisputable. We must not take for granted that a message which _does_ contain facts not normally known to the automatist must therefore come from some mind other than his own. If the subliminal self can acquire supernormal knowledge at all, it may obtain such knowledge by means other than telepathic impressions from other minds. It may assimilate its supernormal nutriment also by a directer process--it may devour it not only cooked but raw. Parallel with the possibilities of reception of such knowledge from the influence of other embodied or disembodied minds lies the possibility of its own clairvoyant perception, or active absorption of some kind, of facts lying indefinitely beyond its supraliminal purview.

Now, as I have said, the great majority of the nunciative or message-bearing motor automatisms originate in the automatist's own mind, and do not involve the exercise of telepathy or telæsthesia, or any other supernormal faculty; but they illustrate in various ways the coexistence of the subliminal with the supraliminal self, its wider memory, and its independent intelligence.

I need not here multiply instances of the simpler and commoner forms of this type, and I will merely quote in illustration one short case recounted by Mr. H. Arthur Smith (author of _The Principles of Equity_, and a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research) who has had the patience to analyse many communications through "Planchette."

(From _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. ii. p. 233.)[181] Mr. Smith and his nephew placed their hands on the Planchette, and a purely fantastic name was given as that of the communicating agency.

Q. "Where did you live?" A. "Wem." This name was quite unknown to
any of us. I am sure it was to myself, and as sure of the word of
the others as of that of any one I know.

Q. "Is it decided who is to be Archbishop of Canterbury?" A. "Yes."

Q. "Who?" A. "Durham." As none of us remembered his name, we asked.

"What is his name?" A. "Lightfoot." Of course, how far the main
statement is correct, I don't know. The curiosity at the time
rested in the fact that the name was given which none of us could
recall, but was found, to be right.

Now, this is just one of the cases which a less wary observer might have brought forward as evidence of spirit agency. An identity, it would be said, manifested itself, and gave an address which none present had ever heard. But I venture to say that there cannot be any real proof that an educated person has never heard of Wem. A permanent recorded fact, like the name of a town which is to be found (for instance) in Bradshaw's Guide, may at any moment have been presented to Mr. Smith's eye, and have found a lodgment in his subliminal memory.

Similarly in the answers "Durham" and "Lightfoot" we are reminded of cases where in a dream we ask a question with vivid curiosity, and are astonished at the reply; which nevertheless proceeds from _ourselves_ as undoubtedly as does the inquiry. The prediction in this case was wrong.

What we have been shown is an independent activity of the subliminal self holding colloquies with the supraliminal, and nothing more. Yet we shall find, if we go on accumulating instances of the same general type, that traces of telæsthesia and telepathy begin insensibly to show themselves; not at first with a distinctness or a persistence sufficient for actual proof, but just in the same gradual way in which indications of supernormal faculty stole in amid the disintegration of split personalities; or in which indications of some clairvoyant outlook stole in amid the incoherence of dream. Many of these faint indications, valueless, as I have said, for purely evidential purposes, are nevertheless of much theoretical interest, as showing how near is the subliminal self to that region of supernormal knowledge which for the supraliminal is so definitely closed.[182]

Mr. Schiller's case (see _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. iv. pp. 216-224) [832 A] is a good example of these obscure transitions between normal and supernormal, and introduces us to several phenomena which we shall afterwards find recurring again and again in independent quarters. Dramatisation of fictitious personalities, for instance, which forms so marked a feature in Professor Flournoy's celebrated case (to be discussed later), begins in this series of experiments, conducted throughout with a purely scientific aim, and with no sort of belief in the imaginary "Irktomar" and the rest. It seems as though this "objectivation of types" were part of a romance which some inscrutable but childish humorist was bent on making up. The "cryptomnesia" shown in this case through the reproduction of scraps of old French with which the automatist had no conscious acquaintance, reached a point at which (as again in Professor Flournoy's case) one is almost driven to suspect that it was aided by some slight clairvoyance on the part of the subliminal self.

Indeed as the cases become increasingly complex, one wonders to what extent this strange manufacture of inward romances can be carried. There is, I may say, a great deal more of it in the world than is commonly suspected. I have myself received so many cases of these dramatised utterances--as though a number of different spirits were writing in turn through some automatist's hand--that I have come to recognise the operation of some law of dreams, so to call it, as yet but obscurely understood. The alleged personalities are for the most part not only unidentified, but purposely unidentifiable; they give themselves romantic or ludicrous names, and they are produced and disappear as lightly as puppets on a mimic stage. The main curiosity of such cases lies in their very persistence and complexity; it would be a waste of space to quote any of the longer ones in such a way as to do them justice. And, fortunately, there is no need for me to give any of my own cases; since a specially good case has been specially well observed and reported in a book with which many of my readers are probably already acquainted,--Professor Flournoy's _Des Indes à la planète Mars: Etude sur un cas de Somnambulisme avec Glossolalie_ (Paris and Geneva, 1900). I shall here make some comments on that striking record, which all students of these subjects ought to study in detail.

It happens, no doubt, to any group which pursues for many years a somewhat unfamiliar line of inquiry, that those of their points which are first assailed get gradually admitted, so that as they become interested in new points they may scarcely observe what change has taken place in the reception of the old. The reader of early volumes of the _Proceedings_ S.P.R. will often observe this kind of progress of opinion. And now Professor Flournoy's book indicates in a remarkable way how things have moved in the psychology of the last twenty years. The book--a model of fairness throughout--is indeed, for the most part, critically _destructive_ in its treatment of the quasi-supernormal phenomena with which it deals. But what a mass of conceptions a competent psychologist now takes for granted in this realm, which the official science of twenty years ago would scarcely stomach our hinting at!

One important point may be noticed at once as decisively corroborating a contention of my own made long ago, and at a time when it probably seemed fantastic to many readers. Arguing for the potential _continuity_ of subliminal mentation (as against those who urged that there were only occasional flashes of submerged thought, like scattered dreams), I said that it would soon be found needful to press this notion of a continuous subliminal self to the utmost, if we were not prepared to admit a continuous spiritual guidance or possession. Now, in fact, with Professor Flournoy's subject the whole discussion turns on this very point. There is unquestionably a continuous and complex series of thoughts and feelings going on beneath the threshold of consciousness of Mlle. "Hélène Smith." Is this submerged mentation due in any degree or in any manner to the operation of spirits other than Mlle. Smith's own? That is the broad question; but it is complicated here by a subsidiary question: whether, namely, any previous incarnations of Mlle. Smith's--other phases of her own spiritual history, now involving complex relationship with the past--have any part in the crowd of personalities which seem struggling to express themselves through her quite healthy organism.

Mlle. Smith, I should at once say, is not,[183] and never has been, a paid medium. At the date of M. Flournoy's book, she occupied a leading post on the staff of a large _maison de commerce_ at Geneva, and gave séances to her friends simply because she enjoyed the exercise of her mediumistic faculties, and was herself interested in their explanation.

Her organism, I repeat, is regarded, both by herself and by others, as a quite healthy one. Mlle. Smith, says Professor Flournoy, declares distinctly that she is perfectly sound in body and mind--in no way lacking in equilibrium--and indignantly repudiates the idea that there is any hurtful anomaly or the slightest danger in mediumship as she practises it.

"It is far from being demonstrated," he continues, "that mediumship is a pathological phenomenon. It is abnormal, no doubt, in the sense of being _rare_, _exceptional_; but rarity is not morbidity. The few years during which these phenomena have been seriously and scientifically studied have not been enough to allow us to pronounce on their true nature. It is interesting to note that in the countries where these studies have been pushed the furthest, in England and America, the dominant view among the _savants_ who have gone deepest into the matter is not at all unfavourable to mediumship; and that, far from regarding it as a special case of hysteria, they see in it a faculty superior, advantageous, healthy, of which hysteria is a form of degenerescence, a pathological parody, a morbid caricature."

The phenomena which this sensitive presents (Hélène Smith is Professor Flournoy's pseudonym for her) cover a range which looks at first very wide, although a clearer analysis shows that these varieties are more apparent than real, and that self-suggestion will perhaps account for all of them.

There is, to begin with, every kind of automatic irruption of subliminal into supraliminal life. As Professor Flournoy says (p. 45): "Phenomena of hypermnesia, divinations, mysterious findings of lost objects, happy inspirations, exact presentiments, just intuitions, teleological (purposive or helpful) automatisms, in short, of every kind; she possesses in a high degree this small change of genius--which constitutes a more than sufficient compensation for the inconvenience resulting from those distractions and moments of absence of mind which accompany her visions; and which, moreover, generally pass unobserved."

At séances--where the deeper change has no inconveniences--Hélène undergoes a sort of self-hypnotisation which produces various lethargic and somnambulistic states. And when she is alone and safe from interruption she has spontaneous visions, during which there may be some approach to ecstasy. At the séances she experiences positive hallucinations, and also negative hallucinations, or systematised anæsthesiæ, so that, for instance, she will cease to see some person present, especially one who is to be the recipient of messages in the course of the séance. "It seems as though a dream-like incoherence presided over this preliminary work of disaggregation, in which the normal perceptions are arbitrarily split up or absorbed by the subconscious personality--eager for materials with which to compose the hallucinations which it is preparing." Then, when the séance begins, the main actor is Hélène's guide _Léopold_ (a pseudonym for Cagliostro) who speaks and writes through her, and is, in fact, either her leading spirit-control or (much more probably) her most developed form of secondary personality.

"Leopold," says Professor Flournoy (p. 134), "certainly manifests a very honourable and amiable side of Mlle. Smith's character, and in taking him as her 'guide' she has followed inspirations which are doubtless among the highest in her nature."

The high moral quality of these automatic communications, on which Professor Flournoy thus insists, is a phenomenon worth consideration.

I do not mean that it is specially strange in the case of Mlle. Smith. But the almost universally high moral tone of genuinely automatic utterances has not, I think, been sufficiently noticed or adequately explained.

In evidential messages--where there is real reason to believe that an identified spirit is communicating--there is a marked and independent consensus on such matters as these spirits profess themselves able to discuss.

And again in non-evidential messages--in communications which probably proceed from the automatist's subliminal self--I hold that there is a remarkable and undesigned concordance in high moral tone, and also in avoidance of certain prevalent tenets, which many of the automatists do supraliminally hold as true. But I also insist that these subliminal messages, even when not incoherent, are generally dream-like, and often involve tenets which (though never in my experience base or immoral) are unsupported by evidence, and are probably to be referred to mere self-suggestion.

Prominent among such tenets is one which forms a large part of Mlle. Smith's communications; namely, the doctrine of _reincarnation_, or of successive lives spent by each soul upon this planet.

The simple fact that such was probably the opinion both of Plato and of Virgil shows that there is nothing here which is alien to the best reason or to the highest instincts of men. Nor, indeed, is it easy to realise any theory of the _direct creation_ of spirits at such different stages of advancement as those which enter upon the earth in the guise of mortal man. There _must_, one feels, be some kind of continuity--some form of spiritual Past. Yet for reincarnation there is at present no valid evidence; and it must be my duty to show how its assertion in any given instance--Mlle. Smith's included--constitutes in itself a strong argument in favour of self-suggestion rather than extraneous inspiration as the source of the messages in which it appears.

Whenever civilised men have received what they have regarded as a revelation (which has generally been somewhat fragmentary in its first delivery) they have naturally endeavoured to complete and systematise it as well as they could. In so doing they have mostly aimed at three objects: (1) to _understand_ as much as possible of the secrets of the universe; (2) to _justify_ as far as possible Heaven's dealings with men; and (3) to _appropriate_ as far as possible the favour or benefit which the revelation may show as possibly accruing to believers. For all these purposes the doctrine of reincarnation has proved useful in many countries and times. But in no case could it seem more appropriate than in this last revelation (so to term it) through automatic messages and the like. And as a matter of history, a certain vigorous preacher of the new faith, known under the name of Allan Kardec, took up reincarnationist tenets, enforced them (as there is reason to believe) by strong suggestion upon the minds of various automatic writers, and set them forth in dogmatic works which have had much influence, especially among Latin nations, from their clarity, symmetry, and intrinsic reasonableness. Yet the data thus collected were absolutely insufficient, and the _Livre des Esprits_ must simply rank as the premature formulation of a new religion--the premature systematisation of a nascent science.

I follow Professor Flournoy in believing that the teaching of that work must have directly or indirectly influenced the mind of Mlle. Smith, and is therefore responsible for her claim to these incarnations previous to that which she now undergoes or enjoys.

On the general scheme here followed, each incarnation, if the last has been used aright, ought to represent some advance in the scale of being. If one earth-life has been misused, the next earth-life ought to afford opportunity for expiation--or for further practice in the special virtue which has been imperfectly acquired. Thus Mlle. Smith's present life in a humble position may be thought to atone for her overmuch pride in her last incarnation--as Marie Antoinette.

But the mention of Marie Antoinette suggests the risk which this theory fosters--of assuming that one is the issue of a distinguished line of spiritual progenitors; insomuch that, with whatever temporary sets-back, one is sure in the end to find oneself in a leading position.

Pythagoras, indeed, was content with the secondary hero Euphorbus as his bygone self. But in our days Dr. Anna Kingsford and Mr. Edward Maitland must needs have been the Virgin Mary and St. John the Divine. And Victor Hugo, who was naturally well to the front in these self-multiplications, took possession of most of the leading personages of antiquity whom he could manage to string together in chronological sequence. It is obvious that any number of re-born souls can play at this game; but where no one adduces any evidence it seems hardly worth while to go on. Even Pythagoras does not appear to have adduced any evidence beyond his _ipse dixit_ for his assertion that the alleged shield of Euphorbus had in reality been borne by that mythical hero. Meantime the question as to reincarnation has actually been put to a very few spirits who have given some real evidence of their identity. So far as I know, no one of these has claimed to know anything personally of such an incident; although all have united in saying that their knowledge was too limited to allow them to generalise on the matter.

Hélène's controls and previous incarnations--to return to our subject--do perhaps suffer from the general fault of aiming too high. She has to her credit a control from the planet Mars; one pre-incarnation as an Indian Princess; and a second (as I have said) as Marie Antoinette.

In each case there are certain impressive features in the impersonation; but in each case also careful analysis negatives the idea that we can be dealing with a personality really revived from a former epoch, or from a distant planet;--and leaves us inclined to explain everything by "cryptomnesia" (as Professor Flournoy calls submerged memory), and that subliminal inventiveness of which we already know so much.

The _Martian_ control was naturally the most striking at first sight. Its reality was supported by a Martian language, written in a Martian alphabet, spoken with fluency, and sufficiently interpreted into French to show that such part of it, at any rate, as could be committed to writing was actually a grammatical and coherent form of speech.

And here I reach an appropriate point at which to remark that this book of Professor Flournoy's is not the first account which has been published of Mlle. Hélène. Professor Lemaître, of Geneva, printed two papers about her in the _Annales des Sciences Psychiques_: first, a long article in the number for March-April, 1897--then a reply to M. Lefébure in the number for May-June, 1897. In these papers he distinctly claims supernormal powers for Mlle. Hélène, implying a belief in her genuine possession by spirits, and even in her previous incarnations, and in the extra-terrene or ostensibly Martian language. I read these papers at the time, but put them aside as inconclusive, mainly because that very language, on which M. Lemaître seemed most to rely, appeared to me so obviously factitious as to throw doubt on all the evidence presented by an observer who could believe that denizens of another planet talked to each other in a language corresponding in every particular with simple French idioms, and including such words as _quisa_ for _quel_, _quisé_ for _quelle_, _vétèche_ for _voir_, _vèche_ for _vu_;--the fantastic locutions of the nursery. M. Lemaître remarks, as a proof of the consistency and reality of the extra-terrene tongue, "L'un des premiers mots que nous ayons eus, _métiche_, signifiant _monsieur_, se retrouve plus tard avec le sens de _homme_." That is to say, having transmogrified _monsieur_ into _métiche_, Hélène further transmutes _les messieurs_ into _cée métiché_;--in naïve imitation of ordinary French usage. And this tongue is supposed to have sprung up independently of all the influences which have shaped terrene grammar in general or the French idiom in particular! And even after Professor Flournoy's analysis of this absurdity I see newspapers speaking of this Martian language as an impressive phenomenon! They seem willing to believe that the evolution of another planet, if it has culminated in conscious life at all, can have culminated in a conscious life into which we could all of us enter affably, with a suitable Ollendorff's phrase-book under our arms;--"_eni cée métiché oné qudé_,"--"ici les hommes (messieurs) sont bons,"--"here the men are good";--and the rest of it.

To the student of automatisms, of course, all this irresistibly suggests the automatist's own subliminal handiwork. It is a case of "glossolaly," or "speaking with tongues"; and we have no modern case--no case later than the half-mythical Miracles of the Cevennes--where such utterance has proved to be other than gibberish. I have had various automatic hieroglyphics shown to me, with the suggestion that they may be cursive Japanese, or perhaps an old dialect of Northern China; but I confess that I have grown tired of showing these fragments to the irresponsive expert, who suggests that they may also be vague reminiscences of the scrolls in an Oriental tea-tray.

It seems indeed to be a most difficult thing to get telepathically into any brain even fragments of a language which it has not learnt. A few simple Italian, and even Hawaiian, words occur in Mrs. Piper's utterances, coming apparently from departed spirits (_Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 337 and 384 [960 A and § 961]), but these, with some Kaffir and Chinese words given through Miss Browne (_Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. ix. pp. 124-127 [871 A]), form, I think, almost the only instances which I know. And, speaking generally, whatever is elaborate, finished, pretentious, is likely to be of subliminal facture; while only things scrappy, perplexed, and tentative, have floated to us veritably from afar.

I need not here go into the details of the Hindow preincarnation or of the more modern and accessible characterisation of Marie Antoinette, but will pass on to certain minor, but interesting phenomena, which Professor Flournoy calls _teleological automatisms_. These are small acts of helpfulness--_beneficent synergies_, as we might term them, in contrast with the _injurious synergies_, or combined groups of _hurtful_ actions, with which hysteria has made us familiar.[184]

"One day," says Professor Flournoy (p. 35), "Miss Smith, when desiring to lift down a large and heavy object which lay on a high shelf, was prevented from doing so because her raised arm remained for some seconds as though petrified in the air and incapable of movement. She took this as a warning, and gave up the attempt. At a subsequent séance Leopold stated that it was he who had thus fixed Hélène's arm to prevent her from grasping this object, which was much too heavy for her and would have caused her some accident.

"Another time, a shopman, who had been looking in vain for a certain pattern, asked Hélène if by chance she knew what had become of it. Hélène answered mechanically and without reflection--'Yes, it has been sent to Mr. J.' (a client of the house). At the same time she saw before her the number 18 in large black figures a few feet from the ground, and added instinctively, 'It was sent eighteen days ago.' [This was in the highest degree improbable, but was found to be absolutely correct.] Leopold had no recollection of this, and does not seem to have been the author of this cryptomnesic automatism."

A similar phenomenon has also been noted (p. 87) when warning is conveyed by an actual phantasmal figure. Mlle. Smith has seen an _apparition_ of Leopold, barring a particular road, under circumstances which make it probable that Mlle. Smith would on that day have had cause to regret taking that route.

This case of Professor Flournoy's, then--this classical case, as it may already be fairly termed--may serve here as our culminant example of the free scope and dominant activity of the unassisted subliminal self. The telepathic element in this case, if it exists, is relatively small; what we are watching in Mlle. Hélène Smith resembles, as I have said, a kind of exaggeration of the submerged constructive faculty,--a hypertrophy of genius--without the innate originality of mind which made even the dreams of R. L. Stevenson a source of pleasure to thousands of readers.

In reference to the main purpose of this work, such cases as these, however curious, can be only introductory to automatisms of deeper moment. In our attempt to trace an evolutive series of phenomena indicating ever higher human faculty, the smallest telepathic incident,--the most trivial proof, if proof it be, of communication received without sensory intermediation from either an incarnate or a discarnate mind outweighs in importance the most complex ramifications and burgeonings of the automatist's own submerged intelligence.

I pass on, then, to evidence which points, through motor automatisms, to supernormal faculty; and I shall begin by referring the reader to certain experiments (due to Professor Richet) in the simplest of all forms of motor automatism, viz., table-tilting, with results which only telepathy can explain. (See Appendix VIII. A.)

Trivial though they seem, such experiments may with a little care be made absolutely conclusive. Had Professor Richet's friends, for example, been willing to prolong this series, we might have had a standing demonstration of telepathy, reproducible at will.[185]

And now I pass on to some experiments with Planchette, in which an element of telepathy was shown. The following account from Mrs. Alfred Moberly, Tynwald, Hythe, Kent, is corroborated, with some additional examples, by two other ladies present at the time.

(From _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. ii. p. 235.)

_May 9th, 1884._

The operators were placed out of sight of the rest of the company,
who selected--in silence--a photograph, one of an albumful, and
fixed their attention on it. We--the operators--were requested to
keep our minds a blank as far as possible and follow the first
involuntary motion of the Planchette. In three out of five cases it
wrote the name or initial or some word descriptive of the selected
portrait. We also obtained the signatures to letters selected in
the same manner. We both knew perfectly well that _we_ were
writing--not the spirits, as the rest of the company persist to
this day in believing--but had only the slightest idea what the
words might prove to be.

We have tried it since, and generally with some curious result. A
crucial test was offered by two gentlemen in the form of a question
to which we couldn't possibly guess the answer. "Where's Toosey?"
The answer came, "In Vauxhall Road." "Toosey," they explained, was
a pet terrier who had disappeared; suspicion attaching to a plumber
living in the road mentioned, who had been working at the house and
whose departure coincided with Toosey's.

Of course, in the case of the inquiry after the lost dog, we may suppose that the answer given came from the questioner's own mind. Mrs. Moberly and her friends seem to have been quite aware of this; and were little likely to fall into the not uncommon error of asking Planchette, for instance, what horse will win the Derby, and staking, perhaps, some pecuniary consideration on the extremely illusory reply.[186]

And now we come to the palmary case of the late Rev. P. H. Newnham, Vicar of Maker, Devonport, who was personally known to Edmund Gurney and myself, and was a man in all ways worthy of high respect. The long series of communications between Mr. Newnham and his wife, which date back to 1871, and whose contemporaneous written record is preserved in the archives of the S.P.R., must, I think, always retain their primacy as early and trustworthy examples of a telepathic transference where the percipient's automatic script answers questions penned by the agent in such a position that the percipient could not in any normal manner discern what those questions were. No part of our evidence seems to me more worthy of study than this.[187]

It must be distinctly understood that Mrs. Newnham did not see or hear the questions which Mr. Newnham wrote down.[188] The fact, therefore, that her answers bore any relation to the questions shows that the sense of the questions was telepathically conveyed to her. This is the leading and important fact. The _substance_ of the replies written is also interesting, and Mr. Newnham has some good comments thereon. But even had the replies contained no facts which Mrs. Newnham could not have known, this would not detract from the main value of the evidence, which consists in the fact that _Mrs. Newnham's hand wrote replies clearly and repeatedly answering questions which she neither heard nor saw_.

In this case we have the advantage of seeing before us the entire series of questions and answers, and thus of satisfying ourselves that the misses (which in that case are very few) are marked as well as the hits, and consequently that the coincidences between question and answer are at any rate not the result of chance. In several other cases which I have known, where the good faith of the informants has been equally above question, the possibility of an explanation by chance alone has been a more important element in the problem. All our evidence has tended to show that the telepathic power itself is a variable thing; that it shows itself in flashes, for the most part spontaneously, and seldom persists through a series of deliberate experiments. And if an automatist possessing power of this uncertain kind has exercised it at irregular moments and with no scientific aim;--and has kept, moreover, no steady record of success and failure;--then it becomes difficult to say that even some brilliant coincidences afford cogent proof of telepathic action.[189]

I pass on to a small group of cases which form a curious transition from these communications _inter vivos_ to communications which I shall class as coming from the dead. These are cases where the message professes to come from a deceased person, but shows internal evidence of having come, telepathically, from the mind of some one present, or, indeed, from some living person at a distance. (See the case given in Appendix VIII. B.)

But this, although a real risk, is by no means the only risk of deception which such messages involve. The communication may conceivably come from some unembodied spirit indeed, but not from the spirit who is claimed as its author.

The reader who wishes to acquaint himself with this new range of problems cannot do better than study the record of the varied experiences of automatic writing which have been intermingled with Miss A.'s crystal-visions, etc.[190]

There is no case that I have watched longer than Miss A.'s;--none where I have more absolute assurance of the scrupulous probity of the principal sensitive herself and of the group who share the experiments;--but none also which leaves me more often baffled as to the unseen source of the information given. There is a knowledge both of the past and of the future, which seems capriciously limited, and is mingled with mistakes, yet on the other hand is of a nature which it is difficult to refer to any individual human mind, incarnate or discarnate. We meet here some of the first indications of a possibility that discarnate spirits communicating with us have occasional access to certain sources of knowledge which even to themselves are inscrutably remote and obscure.

The written diagnoses and prognoses given by the so-called "Semirus," often without Miss A.'s even seeing the patient or hearing the nature of his malady, have become more and more remarkable. Miss A. and her friends do not wish these private matters to be printed, and I cannot therefore insist upon the phenomena here. Yet in view of the amount of telæsthesia which Miss A.'s various automatisms reveal, it should first be noted that human organisms seem especially pervious to such _vue à distance_. "Semirus," "Gelalius," etc., are obvious pseudonyms; and neither Semirus' prescriptions nor Gelalius' cosmogony contain enough of indication to enable us to grasp their origin.[191]

From the communications of these remote personages I go on to certain messages avowedly coming from persons more recently departed, and into which something more of definite personality seems to enter. One element of this kind is _handwriting_; there are many cases where resemblance of handwriting is one of the evidential points alleged. Now proof of identity from resemblance of handwriting may conceivably be very strong. But in estimating it we must bear two points in mind. The first is that (like the resemblances of so-called "spirit-photographs" to deceased friends) it is often very loosely asserted. One needs, if not an expert's opinion, at least a careful personal scrutiny of the three scripts--the automatist's voluntary and his automatic script, and the deceased person's script--before one can feel sure that the resemblance is in more than some general scrawliness. This refers to the cases where the automatist has provably never seen the deceased person's handwriting. Where he _has_ seen that handwriting, we have to remember (in the second place) that a hypnotised subject can frequently imitate any known handwriting far more closely than in his waking state; and that consequently we are bound to credit the subliminal self with a mimetic faculty which may come out in these messages without any supraliminal guidance whatever on the automatist's part. In _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 549-65 [864 A], is an account of a series of experiments by Professor Rossi-Pagnoni at Pesaro, into which the question of handwriting enters. The account illustrates automatic utterance as well as other forms of motor automatism, and possibly also telekinetic phenomena. The critical discussion of the evidence by Mr. H. Babington Smith, to whom we are indebted for the account, shows with what complex considerations we have to deal in the questions now before us.

I now cite a few cases where the point of central interest is the announcement of a death unknown to the sitters.[192]

In Appendix VIII. C is given a case which we received from Dr. Liébeault, of Nancy, and which was first published in _Phantasms of the Living_ (vol. i. p. 293), where it was regarded as an example of a spontaneous telepathic impulse proceeding directly from a dying person. I now regard it as more probably due to the action of the spirit after bodily death.

I shall next give a _résumé_ of a case of curious complexity received from M. Aksakof;--an automatic message written by a Mdlle. Stramm, informing her of the death of a M. Duvanel. The principal incidents may here be disentangled as follows:--

Duvanel dies by his own hand on January 15th, 1887, in a Swiss
village, where he lives alone, having no relations except a brother
living at a distance, whom Mdlle. Stramm had never seen (as the
principal witness, M. Kaigorodoff, informs us in a letter of May
1890).

Mdlle. Stramm's father does not hear of Duvanel's death till two
days later, and sends her the news in a letter dated January 18th,
1887.

Five hours after Duvanel's death an automatic message announcing it
is written at the house of M. Kaigorodoff, at Wilna in Russia, by
Mdlle. Stramm, who had certainly at that time received no news of
the event.

From what mind are we to suppose that this information came?

(1) We may first attempt to account for Mdlle. Stramm's message on
the theory of _latency_. We may suppose that the telepathic message
came from the dying man, but did not rise into consciousness until
an opportunity was afforded by Mdlle. Stramm's sitting down to
write automatically.

But to this interpretation there is an objection of a very curious
kind. The message written by Mdlle. Stramm was not precisely
accurate. Instead of ascribing Duvanel's death to suicide, it
ascribed it to a stoppage of blood, "un engorgement de sang."

And when M. Stramm, three days after the death, wrote to his
daughter in Russia to tell her of it, he also used the same
expression, "un engorgement de sang," thus disguising the actual
truth in order to spare the feelings of his daughter, who had
formerly refused to marry Duvanel, and who (as her father feared)
might receive a painful shock if she learnt the tragic nature of
his end. There was, therefore, a singular coincidence between the
automatic and the normally-written message as to the death;--a
coincidence which looks as though the same mind had been at work
in each instance. But that mind cannot have been M. Stramm's
ordinary mind, as he was not supraliminally aware of Duvanel's
death at the time when the first message was written. It may,
however, be supposed that his subliminal self had received the
information of the death telepathically, had transmitted it in a
deliberately modified form to his daughter, while it remained
latent in himself, and had afterwards influenced his supraliminal
self to modify the information in the same way when writing to her.

(2) But we must also consider the explanation of the coincidence
given by the intelligence which controlled the automatic writing.
That intelligence asserted itself to be a brother of Mdlle.
Stramm's, who died some years before. And this "Louis" further
asserted that he had himself influenced M. Stramm to make use of
the same euphemistic phrase, with the object of avoiding a shock to
Mdlle. Stramm; for which purpose it was needful that the two
messages should agree in ascribing the death to the same form of
sudden illness.

Now if this be true, and the message did indeed come from the
deceased "Louis," we have an indication of continued existence, and
continued knowledge of earthly affairs, on the part of a person
long dead.

But if we consider that the case, as presented to us, contains no
proof of "Louis'" identity, so that "Louis" may be merely one of
those arbitrary names which the automatist's subliminal
intelligence seems so prone to assume; then we must suppose that
Duvanel was actually operative on two occasions after death, first
inspiring in Mdlle. Stramm the automatic message, and then
modifying in M. Stramm the message which the father might otherwise
have sent.

I next quote a case in Appendix VIII. D which illustrates the continued terrene knowledge on the part of the dead of which other instances were given in the last chapter.

And lastly, I give in Appendix VIII. E a case which in one respect stands alone. It narrates the success of a direct experiment,--a test-message planned before death, and communicated after death, by a man who held that the hope of an assurance of continued existence was worth at least a resolute effort, whatever its result might be. His tests, indeed, were two, and both were successful. One was the revealing of the place where, before death, he hid a piece of brick marked and broken for special recognition, and the other was the communication of the contents of a short letter which he wrote and sealed before death. We may say that the information was certainly not possessed supraliminally by any living person. There are two other cases (_Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 353-355, and _op. cit._ vol viii. pp. 238-242 [876 A and B]) where information given through automatists may hypothetically be explicable by telepathy from the living, although, indeed, in my own view, it probably emanated from the deceased as alleged. In one of these cases the place where a missing will had been hidden was revealed to the automatist, but it is not clear whether the will was actually discovered or not before the automatic writing was obtained (although the automatist was unaware of its discovery), and in any case, apparently, its whereabouts was known to some living person who had hidden it, and may not have been known to the deceased before death.

In the other case the whereabouts of a missing note of hand was revealed to the automatists, and even if this could be regarded as absolutely unknown supraliminally to any living person, it is not by any means certain that the fact was known before death to the deceased person from whom the message purported to come.

These cases, therefore, are not such strong evidence for personal identity as the one to which I have referred above, and which I have given, as recording what purports to be the successful accomplishment of an experiment which every one may make;--which every one _ought_ to make;--for, small as may be the chances of success, a few score of distinct successes would establish a presumption of man's survival which the common sense of mankind would refuse to explain away.

Here, then, let us pause and consider to what point the evidence contained in this chapter has gradually led us. We shall perceive that the motor phenomena have confirmed, and have also greatly extended, the results to which the cognate sensory phenomena had already pointed. We have already noted, in each of the two states of sleep and of waking, the variously expanding capacities of the subliminal self. We have watched a hyperæsthetic intensification of ordinary faculty,--leading up to telæsthesia, and to telepathy, from the living and from the departed. Along with these powers, which, on the hypothesis of the soul's independent existence, are at least within our range of analogical conception, we have noted also a precognitive capacity of a type which no fact as yet known to science will help us to explain.

Proceeding to the study of motor automatisms, we have found a _third_ group of cases which independently confirm in each of these lines in turn the results of our analysis of sensory automatisms both in sleep and in waking. Evidence thus convergent will already need no ordinary boldness of negative assumption if it is to be set aside. But motor automatisms have taught us much more than this. At once more energetic and more persistent than the sensory, they oblige us to face certain problems which the lightness and fugitiveness of sensory impressions allowed us in some measure to evade. Thus when we discussed the mechanism (so to call it) of visual and auditory phantasms, two competing conceptions presented themselves for our choice,--the conception of _telepathic impact_, and the conception of _psychical invasion_. Either (we said) there was an influence exerted by the agent on the percipient's mind, which so stimulated the sensory tracts of his brain that he externalised that impression as a quasi-percept, or else the agent in some way modified an actual portion of space where (say) an apparition was discerned, perhaps by several percipients at once.

Phrased in this manner, the telepathic impact seemed the less startling, the less extreme hypothesis of the two,--mainly, perhaps, because the picture which it called up was left so vague and obscure. But now instead of a fleeting hallucination we have to deal with a strong and lasting impulse--such, for instance, as the girl's impulse to _write_, in Dr. Liébeault's case (Appendix VIII. C):--an impulse which seems to come from the depths of the being, and which (like a post-hypnotic suggestion) may override even strong disinclination, and keep the automatist uncomfortable until it has worked itself out. We may still call this a _telepathic impact_, if we will, but we shall find it hard to distinguish that term from a _psychical invasion_. This strong, yet apparently alien, motor innervation corresponds in fact as closely as possible to our idea of an _invasion_--an invasion no longer of the room only in which the percipient is sitting, but of his own body and his own powers. It is an invasion which, if sufficiently prolonged, would become a _possession_; and it both unites and intensifies those two earlier conjectures;--of telepathic impact on the percipient's mind, and of "phantasmogenetic presence" in the percipient's surroundings. What seemed at first a mere impact is tending to become a persistent control; what seemed an incursion merely into the percipient's environment has become an incursion into his organism itself.

As has been usual in this inquiry, this slight forward step from vagueness to comparative clearness of conception introduces us at once to a whole series of novel problems. Yet, as we have also learnt to expect, some of our earlier phenomena may have to be called in with advantage to illustrate phenomena more advanced.

In cases of split personality, to begin with, we have seen just the same phenomena occurring where certainly no personality was concerned save the percipient's own. We have seen a section of the subliminal self partially or temporarily dominating the organism; perhaps controlling permanently one arm alone;[193] or perhaps controlling intermittently the whole nervous system;--and all this with varying degrees of displacement of the primary personality.

Similarly with post-hypnotic suggestion. We have seen the subliminal self ordered to write (say) "It has left off raining"--and thereupon writing the words without the conscious will of the automatist--and again with varying degrees of displacement of the waking self. The step hence to such a case as Mrs. Newnham's is thus not a very long one. Mrs. Newnham's subliminal self, exercising supernormal faculty, and by some effort of its own, acquires certain facts from Mr. Newnham's mind, and uses her hand to write them down automatically. The great problem here introduced is how the subliminal self acquires the facts, rather than how it succeeds in writing them down when it has once acquired them.

But as we go further we can no longer limit the problem in this way,--to the activities of the automatist's subliminal self. We cannot always assume that some portion of the automatist's personality gets at the supernormal knowledge by some effort of its own. Our evidence, as we know, has pointed decisively to telepathic impacts or influences from without. What, then, is the mechanism here? Are we still to suppose that the automatist's subliminal self executes the movements--obeying somehow the bidding of the impulse from without? or does the external agent, who sends the telepathic message, himself execute the movements also, directly using the automatist's arm? And if telekinetic movements accompany the message (a subject thus far deferred, but of prime importance), are we to suppose that these also are effected by the percipient's subliminal self, under the guidance of some external spirit, incarnate or discarnate? or are they effected directly by that external spirit?

We cannot really say which of these two is the easier hypothesis.

From one point of view it may seem simpler to keep as long as we can to that acknowledged _vera causa_, the automatist's subliminal self; and to collect such observations as may indicate any power on its part of producing physical effects outside the organism. Such scattered observations occur at every stage, and even Mrs. Newnham (I may briefly observe in passing) thought that her pencil, when writing down the messages telepathically derived from her husband, was moved by something other than the ordinary muscular action of the fingers which held it. On the other hand, there seems something very forced in attributing to an external spirit's agency impulses and impressions which seem intimately the automatist's own, and at the same time refusing to ascribe to that external agency phenomena which take place outside the automatist's organism, and which present themselves to him as objective facts, as much outside his own being as the fall of the apple to the ground.

Reflecting on such points--and once admitting this kind of interaction between the automatist's own spirit and an external spirit, incarnate or discarnate--we find the possible combinations presenting themselves in perplexing variety;--a variety both of agencies on the part of the invading spirit, and of effects on the part of the invaded spirit and organism.

What is that which invades? and what is that which is displaced or superseded by this invasion? In what ways may two spirits co-operate in the possession and control of the same organism?