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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SCIENTIFIC LITEKATUKE. 



MENTAL AUTOMATISM. 



A kecent work by Prof. Th. Flour- 

 noy, entitled 'Des Indes a la Planete 

 Mars,'* contains an account of a remark- 

 able case of mental automatism, or sub- 

 conscious personality. The subject is a 

 young woman of about thirty years, ap- 

 parently in good health, but always of 

 a nervous and imaginative type. She 

 developed tendencies towards lapses of 

 consciousness, hallucinations and auto- 

 matic actions; and these developed 

 later, under the inspiration of spiritual- 

 istic sfiances, into a series of cycles, or 

 automatic dramas, in which the medium 

 speaks or writes and acts under the 

 influence of several diverse subordinate 

 personalities. In one of these cycles — 

 which, it must be understood, are con- 

 tinued from one sitting to another, al- 

 though in her intermediate normal life 

 she knows nothing of what she has said 

 or done in the trance — she becomes 

 Marie Antoinette, and is said to act the 

 part with unusual dramatic skill. In 

 another and far more elaborate cycle 

 the scene is transferred to the planet 

 Mars, and the houses, scenery, plants 

 and animals, peoples, customs and go- 

 ings-on of the planet are described; 

 sketches are made, and reproduced in 

 the volume, of these extra-mundane ap- 

 pearances. Still more remarkable is the 

 appearance of the Martian language, 

 which in successive stances the sub- 

 ject hears, speaks, sees before her in 

 space, and, in the end, even writes. 

 From the mystery of Mars we are taken 

 to the equally mysterious Hindu cycle; 

 here the medium becomes an Indian 

 princess of the fifteenth century, reveals 

 her history and that of her associates in 

 the Oriental life, tells of herself as 

 Simandini; of Sivrouka, her prince, who 



* The book has just been published by the 

 Harpers in an English version, under the title 

 ' She Lived in Mars.' 



reigned over Kanara and built in 1401 

 the fortress of Tschandraguiri. Won- 

 derful to relate, these names are not 

 fictitious, but are mentioned by one 

 De Maries in a volume published in 

 1828; the author, however, does not 

 enjoy a high reputation as a historian. 

 When occasional utterances of the 

 Hindu princess are taken down, they 

 are found in part to have close resem- 

 blance to Sanskrit words; while in her 

 normal condition the medium is as ig- 

 norant of Sanskrit as she is of any lan- 

 guage except French, and is entirely 

 ignorant of both De Maries and the peo- 

 ple of India five hundred years ago. 

 Surely this is a tale, bristling with 

 mystery and improbability, which, if 

 told carelessly or with a purpose, we 

 should dismiss as a willful invention! 

 M. Flournoy has been unusually suc- 

 cessful in revealing the starting points 

 of the several automatisms and of con- 

 necting them with intelligible develop- 

 ments of the medium's mental life; and 

 the manifestations, though they remain 

 as remarkable examples of unconscious 

 memory and elaboration of ideas, no- 

 where transcend these limitations. The 

 sketches of Martian scenery are clearly 

 Japanesque or vaguely Oriental; the 

 Martian language is pronounced an 'in- 

 fantile' production, and is clearly mod- 

 eled after the French, the characters 

 being the result of an attempt to make 

 them as oddly different from our own as 

 possible; the Sanskrit goes no farther 

 than what one could get from a slight 

 acquaintance with a Sanskrit grammar; 

 and while there is a copy of De Maries in 

 the Geneva Library (where the medium 

 lives), no connection can be established 

 between either De Maries or the gram- 

 mar and the subject of this study. Most 

 of this knowledge of these remarkable 

 sub-conscious states would have been 

 impossible were it not for 'spirit con- 



