Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore

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СКАЧАТЬ target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_390b3291-5df1-5df1-87de-c62a10e66603">¹ It may be asked what right I have to make any such inference; since à la rigueur, the effects, being sensible and physical, do not require us to suppose that they had any other than physical antecedents. It is true that it is impossible to demonstrate that the physical antecedents, which undoubtedly exist, have any psychical correlative. But the results in question have often no analogy to the automatic actions which we are accustomed to attribute to “unconscious cerebration.” They are not the effects of habit and practice; they are new results, of a sort which has in all our experience been preceded by intention and reflection, and referable to a self. But perhaps the simplest illustration of what is here meant by “unconscious intelligence” is to be found in occasional facts of dreaming. Thus, it has occurred to me at least once, in a dream, to be asked a riddle, to give it up, and then to be told the answer—which, on waking, I found quite sufficiently pertinent to show that the question could not have been framed without distinct reference to it. Yet for the consciousness which I call mine, that reference had remained wholly concealed: so little had I known myself as the composer of the riddle that the answer came to me as a complete surprise. The philosophical problem of partial selves cannot be here enlarged on. For a discussion of the subject from the point of view of cerebral localisation, as well as for further quotations from Mr. Newnham’s record, I may refer the reader to Mr. Myers’ paper on “Automatic Writing,” in Vol. iii. of the Proceedings of the S.P.R.

¹ The following case, though not strictly experimental, is sufficiently in point to be worth quoting. Though unfortunately not recorded in writing at the time, it was described within a few days of its occurrence to Mr. Podmore, who is acquainted with all the persons concerned. The narrator is Miss Robertson, of 229, Marylebone Road, W.

      “About three years ago I was speaking of planchette-writing to some of my friends, when a young lady, a daughter of the house where I was spending the evening, mentioneα that she had played with planchette at school, and that it had always written for her. Thereupon I asked her to spend the evening with me, and try it again, which she agreed to do. On the morning of the day on which she had arranged to come to me, her brother, on leaving the house, said, laughing, ‘Well, Edith, it is all humbug, but if planchette tells you the name and sum of money which are on a cheque which 1 have in my pocket, and which I am going to cash for mother, I will believe there is something in it.’ Edith, on her arrival at my house in the evening, told me of this, and I said, ‘We must not expect that; planchette never does what one wants,’ or words to that effect. A couple of hours after, we tried the planchette, Edith’s hand alone touching it. It almost immediately wrote, quite clearly:—

      ‘I. SPALDING. £6:13:4.’

      I had forgotten about the cheque, and I said, ‘What can that mean?’ Upon which Edith replied, ‘It is ‘H.’s cheque, perhaps.’ I was incredulous, having a long acquaintance with planchette. I said, ‘If it is right, send me word directly you get home; I am sure it will not be.’ But the next day I received a letter from Edith, telling me that she had astonished her brother greatly by telling him the name and the amount on the cheque, which was perfectly correct. I have read this account to the young lady and her brother, who sign it as well as myself.

      “NORA ROBERTSON.

      “E. C.

      “D. C. H. C.”

      In answer to an inquiry, Miss Robertson adds, on Feb. 12, 1885:—

      “Miss E. C. says, in answer to your question, that she is quite certain she could not have known, or surmised, the name and amount of the cheque.

      “I can confirm her on the first point, for I remember questioning everybody all round at the time. She had just returned from school, and knew nothing at all about her mother’s business or money matters.”

      Here, it will be observed, the impression seems not only to have been unconscious, but to have remained latent for several hours before taking effect; for it is at any rate the most natural supposition that the transference actually occurred at the time when the conversation on the subject took place between the brother and sister.

      This latency of an impression which finally takes effect in distinct automatic or semi-automatic movements, may be seen in cases which have no connection with telepathy. It occurs, for instance, in the following “muscle-reading” experiment, described to us by Mr. George B. Trent, of 65, Sandgate Road, Folkestone:—

      “March 24th, 1883.

      “Some two months back, I was asked by a gentleman, who had read of my experiments in the paper, to oblige him with a séance. I called upon him one afternoon, and he told me that he had hidden some object, in the early morning, and he thought he had given me a puzzle. I first experimented with pins; I led him to their hiding-places at once, without the least hesitation. I then asked him to concentrate the whole of his thoughts on what he had done in the morning. I immediately led him to a davenport, unlocked it, and from amongst, I may say, perhaps a hundred papers and other articles, I selected three photographs, and from the three I fixed upon one—that of his wife. He then said he was perfectly astonished, as I had positively gone through an experiment he had set himself to do, but abandoned in favour of another he had done.”

      It seems probable that, at any rate in the earlier stages of this performance, the idea of what was to be done was not consciously present in the “willer’s” mind, which was apparently concentrated on something else. And if so, his muscular indications must have been the result of unconscious cerebration—an effect of nervous activity, continuing to act in accordance with a previous impulse which had lapsed from consciousness.

¹ I have given a fuller description and criticism of M. Richet’s investigations in Vol. ii. of the Proceedings of the S.P.R.

¹ This procedure of counting neighbouring letters seems to require some justification. It might be justified by the difficulty, on the theory of mental suggestion, of obtaining an exact coincidence of time between the tilting and the pointing. But I think that M. Richet does justify it (Rev. Phil., p. 654), by reference to some other experiments—not yet published, but of which he has shown us the record—where intelligible words were produced of which no one in the room was, or had been, thinking. For here also neighbouring letters appeared, but in such a way as left no room for doubt, in the reader’s mind, as to what the letter should have been.

¹ Moreover the E in the 4th place had appeared in two of the preceding trials and the final O D in one of them.

¹ For a curious case of the automatic production of anagrams, see Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. ii., pp. 226-31.

¹ When A, in pointing, began at the beginning of the alphabet, the sense of time might conceivably have led to an unconscious judgment as to the point arrived at. This idea had occurred to M. Richet. It seems, however, an unnecessary multiplication of hypotheses; for we learn from him that in some trials A began at uncertain places, and that under these conditions coherent words were obtained. The fact that so often the approximate letter was given, instead of the exact one, might seem at first sight to favour the hypothesis of unconscious reckoning; but it will be observed that exactly the same approximations took place in our own experiment (pp.77-8), where the alphabet was in the “medium’s” sight.

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