Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/530

510 a character that we can scarcely ascribe it to the subject's consciousness. In hysterical patients, for example, the upper consciousness, or at least the consciousness which talks, is often anæsthetic to one or more sensory stimuli, yet the automatic writing betrays consciousness of the lost sensations. Prof. James, of Harvard, has noted the same phenomenon in an apparently normal patient. "The planchette began by illegible scrawling. After ten minutes I pricked the back of the right hand several times with a pin; no indications of feeling. Two pricks on the left hand were followed by withdrawal, and the question, 'What did you do that for?' to which I replied, 'To find out whether you are going to sleep.' The first legible words which were written after this were, You hurt me. A pencil in the right hand was then tried instead of the planchette. Here again the first legible words were, No use (?) in trying to spel when you hurt me so. Next, It's no use trying to stop me writing by pricking. These writings were deciphered aloud in the hearing of S, who seemed slow to connect them with the two pin-pricks on his left hand, which alone he had felt. . . . I pricked the right wrist and fingers several times again quite severely, with no sign of reaction on S's part. After an interval, however, the pencil wrote: Don't you prick me any more.. . . S laughed, having been conscious only of the pricks on his left hand, and said, 'It's working those two pin-pricks for all they are worth.'" Yet the hand was not anæsthetic when directly tested.

Sometimes the automatic message is potentially known indeed to the upper consciousness, but not at the time present to it. Take, for example, one of Mr. Gurney's experiences:

"In 1870 I watched and took part in a good deal of planchette writing, but not with results or under conditions that afforded proof of any separate intelligence. However, I was sufficiently struck with what occurred to broach the subject to a hard-headed mathematical friend, who expressed complete incredulity as to the possibility of obtaining rational writing except through the conscious operation of some person in contact with the instrument. After a long argument he at last agreed to make a trial. I had not really the faintest hope of success, and he was committed to the position that success was impossible. We sat for some minutes with a hand of each upon the planchette, and asked that it should write some line of Shakespeare. It began by seesawing and producing a great deal of formless scribble; but then there seemed to be more method in the movements, and a line of hieroglyphics appeared. It took us some time to make it out, the