Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/200

196 The messages are often elaborate, and surprise the writer quite as much as they do the bystanders by their content. The upper consciousness seems sometimes to cooperate in a faint way, sometimes merely to permit, and sometimes to be entirely ignorant of what the hand is doing. Occasionally the subject grows abstracted, and may go into a sort of reverie or trance if the writing or drawing is prolonged. Sometimes, but apparently in a minority of cases, the hand becomes insensible to pricking and pinching. Of the matters set down and their peculiarities I will say nothing here, these words of mine being merely introductory to a case of automatic drawing which may be interesting to the general reader from its lack of complication and its oddity.

The subject, C. H. P., married, fifty years old, made his living as a bookkeeper until the autumn of 1901, when he fractured his spine in an elevator accident. Since the accident he has been incapable of carrying on his former occupation.

For several years previous to the accident, automatic hand-movements, twitchings, etc., had occurred, but having no familiarity with automatic phenomena Mr. P. thought they were mere 'nervousness,' and discouraged them. He thinks that 'drawing' would have come earlier had he understood the premonitory symptoms and taken a pencil into his hand.

The hand movements grew more marked a few months after the elevator accident, but the subject sees no definite reason for ascribing to the accident any part in their production.

They were converted into definite movements of drawing by an exhibition which he witnessed in February, 1903. The account which follows is in Mr. P. 's own words.

A friend who was interested in hypnotism introduced me to a man who had some power as a hypnotist, and this man gave for our amusement a sample of automatic drawing, a man's face in dotted outline, no shading or detail.

The movement of his hand reminded me of the way my own hand frequently acted, so the next day I sat down to a table with a pencil and paper, and tracings were directly made; but it was some days before I made an object that could be recognized, and I have never made dotted outlines like the man who