THE INTERPRETATIONS OF AUTOMATISM. 509 



to be of all things most impossible. I do not, of course, quote 

 these few experiences as proving the existence of telepathy, but 

 merely as illustrating what I mean by "apparently telepathic 

 phenomena." 



The vast majority of apparently supernormal phenomena are 

 susceptible of a telepathic explanation, but in a few cases one is 

 driven to other conceptions. Sometimes knowledge is shown of 

 events not known to any one, and at other times a percipient will 

 seem to " see " things at a distance, or to become aware of events 

 remote in time. 



These phenomena are ascribed to " clairvoyance," " precogni- 

 tion," and " retrocognition." They are much less common than 

 those of the telepathic type, and the evidence for them is by no 

 means as good. 



Occasionally the information thus got professes to come from 

 the spirit of some person deceased, and sometimes the claim seems 

 plausible. Thus I once got from an automatic writer in Boston 

 what purported to be messages from several of my deceased rela- 

 tives, one of them being an aunt who died in my childhood, 

 twenty-one years ago. Among the messages was an allusion to 

 " Carson the Dr." This meant nothing to me at the time, but 

 upon making inquiries I learned that an old doctor named Cor- 

 son had attended my aunt during her last illness for about two 

 weeks while she was at our house, although he was not her regu- 

 lar physician. She was afterward removed to a hospital in New 

 York, and died there. The doctor has long been dead. I do not 

 quote this to prove that the spirit of my aunt was really there, 

 which I think very questionable, but to show how plausible these 

 automatic utterances sometimes are. Probably my parents were 

 the only persons living who knew that Dr. Corson attended my 

 aunt for two weeks in 1875, and they have never seen the 

 automatist. 



Now, psychic phenomena nearly always occur in automatic 

 form. Ungrounded emotions, inner or outer voices, apparitions, 

 automatic writing and speech, irrational impulses all these pro- 

 vide the garb for the appearance of knowledge for which we can 

 not account. Hence it is impossible to study automatism without 

 taking these alleged phenomena into consideration at some stage 

 of the inquiry, even if they are considered only to be rejected. 



There are three practicable methods of viewing the facts of 

 suggestibility, automatism, and secondary states. In the first 

 place, we may adopt the conception which underlies most of our 

 modern thought, and regard mind as essentially a function of 

 matter that is, of the brain. We will then naturally look to 

 physiology only for our explanation of these facts. Or we may 

 hold to the purely psychological point of view, and endeavor to 



