1885.] 
Psychography. 147 
another room, — a step by which any physical arrangements 
would necessarily be frustrated. Nor has any spectator 
detected the presence of eledtric or magnetic currents on or 
near the table. 
We may go further: eledtricity, magnetism are not 
intelligences. By their means it is indeed possible to trans- 
mit messages, questions, or answers from one place to 
another, and to reproduce them in speech or in writing ; but 
there must be an intelligence at the other end of the ’line. 
It is utterly inconceivable that eledtricity or any physical 
force should of itself combine letters into words, and words 
into intelligible sentences, conveying often a precise and 
accurate reply to a question put. It is known that an 
eledtric commotion passing over a telegraphic system will 
sometimes set the instruments at work; but the messages 
thus sent are mere random combinations of letters, which 
never — save by rare chance — form even a word, and never 
certainly an intelligible combination of words. Should such 
a thing ever happen every experienced telegraph operator 
would feel sure that some trick had been played, and that 
the message was not and could not be the outcome of an 
eledtric storm. 
The writing, it seems to me, must indubitably be produced 
by some intelligence. But what intelligence ? »Not by a 
man ; for, in addition to the fadt that the crumb of pencil 01- 
chalk is generally too small to be grasped by human fingers, 
we have invariably the testimony that no person has or 
could have in any way interfered with the slates. Surely 
we are thus driven from post to pillar until we have but one 
alternative remaining, — the assumption that there must 
exist around us intelligences invisible and capable of inter- 
fering with the course of events, with what we are accus- 
tomed to call the order of Nature. What these intelligences 
are, what is the extent of their power, and under what con- 
ditions it is exerted, I am utterly ignorant. They may be, 
as the Spiritualists hold, the “ spirits ” of departed human 
beings ; or they may be the “ spooks ” or “ shells ” of the 
Theosophists, the “ elemental spirits ” of the Rosicrucians, 
or the fiends and familiars of mediaeval sorcery. To which 
of these classes the agents in question belong is still an 
unsolved problem. The Spiritualists allege that the minute 
acquaintance which these intelligences show with family 
secrets, with private conversations formerly held between 
the investigator and the deceased friend, prove their identity 
with such friends. But it is replied by other persons, be- 
lievers all the same in the reality of Psychography and of 
