From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



medium can be explained simply by the complex 

 nature of mentality and the extension of crypto- 

 psychism; the contradictions in ideas, character, 

 and will, may represent merely interior tendencies 

 repressed by daily life and escaping violently by the 

 safety-valve of mediumship. The supernormal may 

 belong to the mediumistic subconsciousness. 



' None of the proofs of identity can be com- 

 pletely convincing; the origin of all knowledge, 

 even the most unexpected and secret, even that of 

 a language of which the medium is ignorant, may 

 be in cryptomnesia, thought-transference, or clair- 

 voyance. 



* The new tests invented by English and American 

 investigators (cross-correspondences, communications 

 of the same entity to different mediums who have no 

 relations with one another) are evidently at first sight 

 somewhat disconcerting to our thesis. It is clear 

 that facts as precise and extraordinary as those for 

 instance, observed by Madame de W., 1 seem to 

 indicate an independent and autonomous directing 

 will. But is not that another illusion ? Who can 

 say if the personality may not acquire by mediumistic 

 culture, besides great autonomy, a transitory 

 dynamism, at all events while the experiment lasts, 

 a dynamism borrowed from the medium and giving 

 it the power of acting on other mediums at a distance ? ' 



Of course, anything may be possible. But when 

 arguing on mediumship, all the notions which we have 

 established on the constitution of the individual must 

 be borne in mind. These notions which (accepted in 

 their entirety) have extricated us from the chaos of 



1 Annales des Sciences Psychiques: 'Contribution a l'6tude des corre- 

 spondances croisdes.' (In this case 'Rudolph,' the alleged communicator, 

 in order to prove his separate existence, gave parts of a message to one 

 automatist in Paris, and other parts to another at Wimereux, near 

 Boulogne, within the same hour ; the parts making no sense till combined. 

 [Translator's note.] 



266 



