THE C0N-8CI0USNES8 OF SELF. 395 



design or enaracler, tollowed by what purports to be a translation or 

 rendering into molhei English. I never attempted the seemingly impos- 

 sible feat of copying the characters. They were cut with the precision 

 of a graver's ool, and generally with a single rapid stroke of the pen- 

 cil. Many languages, some obsolete and passed from history, are pro- 

 fessedly given. To see them would satisfy you that no one could copy 

 them except by tracing. 



' ' These, however, are but a small part of the phenomena. The 

 ' automatic ' has given place to the impressio7ial, and when the work is 

 in progress I am in the normal condition, and seemingly two minds, in- 

 telligences, persons, are practically engaged. The writing is in my own 

 hand but the dictation not of my own mind and will, but that of an- 

 other, upon subjects of which I can have no knowledge and hardly a 

 theory ; and I, myself, consciously criticise the thought, fact, mode of 

 expressing it, etc., while the hand is recording the subject-matter and 

 even the words impressed to be written. If / refuse to write the sen- 

 tence, or even the word, the impression instantly ceases, and my wil- 

 lingness must be mentally expressed before the work is resumed, and it 

 is resumed at the point of cessation, even if it should be in the middle 

 of a sentence. Sentences are commenced without knowledge of mine as 

 to their subject or ending. In fact, I have never known in advance the 

 subject of disquisition. 



"There is in progress now, at uncertain times, not subject to my 

 vill, a series of twenty-four chapters upon the scientific features of life, 

 moral, spiritual, eternal. Seven have already been written in the man- 

 ner indicated. These were preceded by twenty-four chapters relating 

 generally to the life beyond material death, its characteristics, etc. 

 Each chapter is signed by the name of some person who has lived on 

 earth, — some with whom I have been personally acquainted, others 

 known in history. ... I know nothing of the alleged authorship 

 of any chapter until it is completed and the name impressed and ap- 

 pended. ... I am interested not only in the reputed authorship, — 

 of which I have nothing corroborative, — but in the philosophy taught, 

 of which I was in ignorance until these chapters appeared. From my 

 standpoint of life — which has been that of biblical orthodoxy — the 

 philosophy is new, seems to be reasonable, and is logically put. I con- 

 fess to an inability to successfully controvert it to my own satisfaction. 



"It is an intelligent ego who writes, or else the influence assumes 

 individuality, which practically makes of the influence a personality. It 

 is not myself ; of that I am conscious at every step of the pi"ocess. I 

 have also traversed the whole field of the claims of ' unconscious cere- 

 bration,' so called, so far as I am competent to critically examine it, and 

 it fails, as a theory, in numberless points, when applied to this strange 

 work through me. It would be far more reasonable and satisfactory for 

 me to accept the silly hypothesis of re-incarnation, — the old doctrine of 

 metempsychosis, — as taught by some spiritualists to-day, and to believe 

 that I lived a former life here, and that once in a while it dominates my 



