126. Side by side with the automatism of arm and hand we must place the automatism of throat and tongue (Chapter IX (Trance, Possession And Ecstasy).). Automatic utterance parallels automatic script throughout the scale of degrees by this time familiar. It begins, that is to say, with mere incoherence; but it assumes in some cases a veridical character; with knowledge delivered from some subliminal stratum or some external mind. And in some cases the special knowledge displayed in the utterances lends probability to their claim to proceed from a departed spirit.

When this occurs, when the utterance reaches this point of veracity and intensity, it is sometimes accompanied by certain other phenomena which for those who have witnessed them carry a sense of reality which description can hardly reproduce. The ordinary consciousness of the automatist appears to be suspended; he passes into a state of trance, which in its turn seems but the preparation for an occupation by an invading intelligence, - by the surviving spirit, let us boldly say, of some recognisable departed friend. This friend then disposes of voice and hand almost as freely as though he were their legitimate owner. Nay, more than one intelligence may thus operate simultaneously, and the organism may thus appear as indeed no more than the organ of spiritual influences which make and break connection with it at will.

And here we reach a point which has become, - without my anticipation, and - as a matter (so to say) of mere scientific policy - even against my will, - the principal nodus of the present work. This book, designed originally to carry on, as continuously and coherently as possible, the argument and exposition of facts which in Phantasms of the Living I had aided in setting before serious readers, has been forced unexpectedly forward by the sheer force of evidence, until it must now dwell largely on the extreme branch of the subject, far beyond the reserves and cautious approaches of the earlier work.

For in truth during the last ten years the centre of gravity of our evidence has shifted so profoundly that it can no longer be said that the relative masses of evidence for each class of phenomenon correspond roughly to the degree of strangeness - of apparent difficulty - which the phenomena themselves exhibit. Ten years ago there was most evidence for telepathy between the living; next most for phantasms of the dead; least, perhaps, for that actual possession and control of human organisms by departed spirits, which of all our phenomena is likely to be the hardest for the scientific mind to accept, - since it carries us back to the most outrageously savage group among the superstitions of the early world. With the recent development of trance-phenomena, however, this semblance of logical proportion has been quickly altered. We seem suddenly to have arrived, by a kind of short cut, at a direct solution of problems which we had till then been approaching by difficult inference or laborious calculation of chances.

What need of computing coincidental death-wraiths, - of analysing the evidential details of post-mortem apparitions, - if here we have the departed ready to hear and answer questions, and to tell us frankly of the fate of souls? Might not those earlier lines of inquiry be now abandoned altogether? - nay, must not our former results seem useless now, in view of this overwhelming proof?

I reply to this, that it was soon evident, in the first place, that our previous disciplined search had been by no means wasted. There was need of our canons of evidence, our analysis of the sources of subliminal messages, in order to satisfy ourselves that these trance-utterances could in part, but in part only, be explained by telæsthesia and telepathy, - operating among actual scenes and the minds of living men. Nay, further, that old evidence of ours at once explained and was explained by the new. Fresh light was thrown on many previous groups of phenomena, and they in their turn were seen to have preluded to the new phenomena in such fashion that the continuity of the whole series - albeit a series advancing by leaps and bounds - was intelligibly maintained for us.

Following on the first revelation of Mrs. Piper's trance-phenomena came the permission accorded to me by the executors of Mr. Stainton Moses to read and analyse his private records after his death. The strong impression which his phenomena had made upon me during his life was increased, - as the reader will afterwards see, - by this posthumous and intimate study; and his history was seen to be in many respects analogous to Mrs. Piper's. Further parallels have been afforded since by more than one other medium; - and it seems to me now that the evidence for communication with the spirits of identified deceased persons through the trance-utterances and writings of sensitives apparently controlled by those spirits is established beyond serious attack.

In saying this, however, I desire to explain, - in anticipation of obvious and legitimate criticism, - that throughout all this discussion of "spirit-possession" I use purposely the simplest and most popular terms, without by any means denying that terms more accurate and philosophical may be ultimately attainable. What I feel sure of is that such more accurate terms have not yet been attained; - that we are not yet justified in using any nomenclature which assumes that we possess a deeper knowledge of what is going on than the messages themselves have given us. I do not of course mean that we ought to accept the messages unquestioningly as being in all cases literally what they claim to be. We know of various vera causoe, - conscious or unconscious fraud, self-suggestion, telepathy between the living, and the like, which we are bound to regard as possibly operative, and which enable us to resolve many automatic messages into mere illustrations of agencies previously known. But I mean that where we get beyond these simpler causes, - where we are forced to accept the messages as representing in some way the continued identity of a former denizen of earth, - I do not think that either tradition or philosophy affords us any solid stand-point from which to criticise those messages; any such knowledge of the nature or destiny of the human soul as can at present justify us in translating them, so to say, into any would-be interpretative terminology of our own.

Such critical power we may perhaps achieve in the future; but we shall have to achieve it, I think, by careful collation of many more such messages than we as yet possess.