420 



KNOWLEDGE. 



N(>\EMBER. 1911. 



some supernormal agenc\' was at work. The dis- 

 tance between the e.xperimenters \'aried. as one of 

 them was tra\'elling about : chn-ini; part of the time 

 it was about four hundred miles. Often, the exact 

 idea sent b\' the agent was received hv the per- 

 cipient, who sat alone, at a specified hour, waiting 

 ]iassively for ideas to drift into her mind. .\t other 

 times, the message received was not that which had 

 been consciously sent, but nevertheless represented 

 something which had been occup\ing the agent's 

 mind during the da_v. b'roni this it appears that 

 the agent's subconsciousness, as well as the ordinary 

 conscious level of the mind. ma\- ha\e something to 

 do with the pmcess. 



With this in mind, we go on to consider a 

 different class of [)henomena. I'/c.. what is called 

 hv spiritualists "trance - nicdiumship." and b\- 

 ps\'chical researchers "motor autnmatisni with 

 obscuration of the sujiraliminal consciousness." or 

 other terms to that effect. 



It is a common thing for a sitter with a trance 

 medium to be told the most astonishin;_;l\- correct 

 and intimate details of his famil\- life, the names iif 

 his relatives, and so on, although, so far as he knows, 

 he is an entire stranger to the medium. The 

 intelligence, or control, purports to be a guardian- 

 angel sort of spirit, who h.ibituallv s[)eaks through 

 this medium, and who sa\s that he or she is getting 

 the information from spirits who ai'e the sitter's 

 deceased friends or relatives. Sometimes one of 

 these latter is allowed by the " guartlian-angel 

 sjiirit " to take personal possession of the medium's 

 body, and thus to sjieak directlw In such a case 

 the astonished sitter {i.e. if he is a no\ice) finds 

 himself addressed in characteristic fashion b\- some 

 dead person, reminded of little experiences which 

 the\- had shared in life, and is [>erhaps ultimateh 

 convinced that he is \erital)l\ in direct communion 

 with the tlisembodied mind of his relatixc or friend. 

 When the medium wakes up. she (it is usualh' a 

 '"she") has absolutely no knowledge of what her 

 vocal organs ha\'e been sa\ing. 



Now how are we to set about explaimiig all this ? '--' 



The first thing to make sure of is, of course, that 

 ordinary fraud is excluded. This is usualh' a fairly 

 easy matter. When the sitter can question the 

 " spirit" (as in these cases he always can) it is easy 

 enough to get satisfactory assurance that common 

 trickery is not the correct explanation ; for questions 

 can be asked concerning family matters, or mutual 

 ex[)eriences, of which the medium could not be 

 normall\- aware, even assuming the emplo\ nient of 

 skilful and energetic (letecti\-es. Moreo\-er. in se\eral 

 cases knoAu to me, the sitter gave either a false 

 name, or no name at all. In one of these cases, the 

 sitter was a friend of mine, living two hundred nules 

 from London, where the sittings took place, and the t\ 

 there is no reason to suiipose that he was in the 

 least degree known to the medium. He was not a 



spiritualist, luul no spiritualistic friends, and had 

 never sat with a medium before. Yet the guardian 

 or "guide" ga\'e m\ friend's two Christian names, 

 with a good deal ot true detail aliout his life, and at 

 the second sitting, two da\s later, he was greeted 

 by an intelligence purporting to be his recentlv- 

 deceased mother, who alhuled b\- name to all the 

 near survix'ing relatives, with appiopriate comment 

 and attitude, and ga\'e other evidence ot a 

 characteristic and con\'incing nature. My friend 

 had gone into that room a sceptic, bent on 

 " showing u|) " these trick\' mediums : he came out 

 absoluteh- convinced that he had spoken with his 

 deceased mother. I express no opinion, except that 

 some supernormal explanation seems to be required. 

 (I nia\- also remark that this case, considered in full 

 tletail. is much more evidential than this necessarily 

 short description can indicate. It is described in 

 full in m\' just-published book. " New E\'idences 

 in I'sschical Research." (William Rider cS; Son, 

 Ltd. Js. 6d.) 



I-'rand being excluded, we turn to other possible 

 theories : and, hearing in mind the fact of thought- 

 transference or " telepathy " — already established 

 by experimental methods — we surmise that the 

 medium has somehow read the sitter's thoughts. 

 The fact that the tiance-control's remarks do not 

 coincide with what we were thinking of at the time, 

 is no obstacle, tor. as we saw in the case of Miss 

 Ramsden. it is not alwa\s the agent's conscious 

 thought that is reproduied. The medium's trance- 

 consciousness ma\' be able to rummage among our 

 memories, selecting those which stick together round 

 a gi\en personalitx'. .\s to the \-erisimilitude of the 

 characterisation, this is easih' comprehensible : for it 

 is a well-known and continually-observed fact that 

 m the hx'pnotic state man\' subjects are excellent 

 mimies, and hxqmosis is undoubtedly related to 

 " niediumistic " trance. 



It follows, then, that nothing more than thought- 

 transferenci' need be supposed, so long as the medium 

 tells us nothing excejit what we already kno\\. But 

 what shall we sav if things are told us — things 

 characteristic of the soi-ilisant spirit — which have 

 ne\er been known to us, but which on investigation 

 turn out to be true ? Well, this certainly complicates 

 matters, but, knowing that telepathy can be effected 

 over great distances, as in Miss Miles' and Miss 

 Ramsden's experiments, we are able to suppose that 

 the fact in question has been somehow telepathicalh' 

 gleaned from some distant mind. It is. however, 

 clear that in making this supposition we are treating 

 two cases as analogous, which differ in im|iortant 

 features. Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden are well 

 known to each other, are, in fact, friends: and, 

 though the consciously-attempted message sometimes 

 failed, another (which was not " sent ") taking its 

 jilace, it must nevertheless be borne in mind that 



■xpe 



rimenters were thinking of each otl 



fre(|uentl\, and that there was thus a certain rapport 

 between them. \Miereas. in some of these trance 



