584 The Outline of Science 



graphing people present in the ordinary way, or whether both 

 of these things may occur at different times, is a matter not yet 

 fully settled, even among believers in the facts. It may be as 

 easy to supernormal operators to manipulate the chemicals in a 

 film as to manipulate the plasma into a face; one cannot say 

 which is the easier hypothesis, when both seem equally impossible. 



Direct Writing and Speaking 



Another strange phenomenon, which must be regarded as 

 akin to incipient materialisation, is the comparatively well-evi- 

 denced phenomenon of direct speaking or direct writing. 



What is called automatic writing, when the pen is held by 

 an ordinary person and appears to write without conscious voli- 

 tion, is a purely psychic phenomenon; for there is no question 

 that the muscles of the writer are used, any more than there is 

 a question that the voice of the medium is used in ordinary trance 

 utterance. In these cases it is the substance of the message that 

 alone needs consideration to establish any supernormal faculty. 

 But there are rather exceptional mediums in whose presence 

 pencils are said to write without being touched; and others in 

 whose presence, under suitable conditions, voices are said to be 

 heard which do not emanate from the throat or larynx or even 

 the neighbourhood of the medium, or of any person present in 

 the flesh. This phenomenon is called "direct" because, not only 

 is the subject-matter dictated in a supernormal manner, but the 

 physical act is accomplished in an inexplicable manner too. 



6 

 Dowsing 



On the verge between purely psychical and semi-physical 

 phenomena are such faculties as dowsing and travelling clair- 

 voyance. 



The dowsing or water-divining faculty is a very ancient 

 claim, said to be hereditary in families ; and, however it be done, 



