''SPIRIT'' WRITING. 517 



the elected ' spiritual ' vanguard of humanity. Not to understand 

 these facts is not to understand the potent factors giving rise to 

 the phenomenon." 



In some way or other this group of occultists, whose leader I 



shall call Miss J , got the notion that Mr. Le Baron was the 



reincarnated spirit of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Miss X 's 



mother, they thought, had loved that king in a previous incar- 

 nation, and was still watching over his transmigrations. The 

 time was now ripe for him to be forgiven his sins and to be 

 brought to the light, and she was to make of him an instrument 

 for a fuller revelation of God to humanity. They impressed this 

 delusion upon Mr. Le Baron with all the energy of conviction. 

 " Unless it be borne in mind," he says, " that the air was full of a 

 greedy expectancy concerning the appearance of a reincarnated 

 prophet, no solution of this problem is possible." His common 

 sense protested, and he would not, perhaps, have been much 

 affected had not a traitor within the camp presented itself in the 

 form of his own highly suggestible and excitable nervous system, 

 which caught the ideas with which he was surrounded and re- 

 flected them to the confusion of his understanding. This automa- 

 tism first appeared in the form of writing. " My credulity was as 

 profoundly sincere as it was pitifully pathetic. It was aroused 

 by the narration of the purported history of a finger ring sup- 

 posed to have been worn ages ago by a vestal virgin in one of the 



ancient temples of Egypt. Miss J believed she wore the ring 



in those days, and was herself the vestal virgin. On one occasion, 

 in August, 1894, she asked me to place the ring on my finger and 

 attempt automatic writing. I did so. Violent jerks followed, 

 leading to scribbling upon the sheets of paper which were laid 

 before me. This she attributed to spirits, and the placing on of 

 the ring was in some way a sign to call them into activity. 

 The * invisible brotherhood ' were subsequently declared to be 

 en rapport with me, and in the exact ratio of my credulity con- 

 cerning this assertion did this singular, insentient, emotional 

 mechanism co-operate with the sensations of my common con- 

 sciousness, and at times assume intelligible proportions." 



The circumstances under which automatic speech appeared he 

 was not able to fix with precision. He recollected two occasions, 

 but was not able to say which came first. On one, he was at a 



seance at Miss J 's house. He was asked to lie upon a couch 



upon which Mrs. J had lain during her last illness, and to 



look at a brilliantly illuminated portrait of her. In a short time 

 he was seized with a convulsive paroxysm of the head and shoul- 

 ders ; this was followed by a flow of automatic speech purporting 



to emanate from the spirit of Mrs. J , and fully confirming his 



friends' notions. Upon another occasion he was in a pine wood 



