From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



at the table, which, on the part of the defunct, rapped 

 out: ' You will find something from me under a saucer 

 in the drawer of the washstand.' She found there a 

 sheet of paper constituting the document in question. 

 She then remembered that when they were just starting 

 on their journey, her husband had made her wait a 

 moment while he returned on some pretext to their 

 bedroom, evidently to write and hide his will there.' 



' Now,' says M. Flournoy, * there is nothing to prove 

 that Mme Darel or one of her people, out for a walk 

 on Easter Monday (which is a holiday) in the environs 

 of Geneva, had not met the pair, or seen them from a 

 distance, and this forgotten impression may have been 

 the source of the message which so impressed the young 

 widow; similarly the second message regarding the 

 hidden will may well have been due to reminiscences 

 and subconscious inferences of Mrs Wood's.' 



Case of the Cure* Burnet. Flournoy 's subject pro- 

 duced one day a message claiming to be from one Burnet, 

 who had died a century previously, the curd of a commune 

 in the department Haute Savoie. The researches of the 

 professor showed the absolute identity of the writing 

 and the signature to the message with that of the deceased 

 clergyman. 



How can this be explained ? The medium, M. 

 Flournoy supposes, had once, in childhood, passed 

 through the commune where the cure had lived. He 

 had (on Flournoy's hypothesis) seen on some document, 

 such, for example, as an old marriage contract, the 

 writing and the signature of the curd. He had not, 

 however, the slightest recollection of this journey. It 

 was therefore a question of some impression received 

 without conscious knowledge forgotten, but yet intact, 

 which, in the hypnotic state, had awaked this strange and 

 perfect reminiscence. 



Along with these remarkable examples which spiritu- 

 alists attribute, not to cryptomnesia but to post-mortem 



92 



