848. These few cases may suffice to lead us up to the palmary case of the late Rev. P. H. Newnham, Vicar of Maker, Devonport, who was personally known to Edmund Gurney and myself, and was a man in all ways worthy of high respect. The long series of communications between Mr. Newnham and his wife, which date back to 1871, and whose contemporaneous written record is preserved in the archives of the S.P.R., must, I think, always retain their primacy as early and trustworthy examples of a telepathic transference where the percipient's automatic script answers questions penned by the agent in such a position that the percipient could not in any normal manner discern what those questions were. No part of our evidence seems to me more worthy of study than this. Mr. Newnham had for many years paid careful attention to psychical phenomena, and especially had been conscious of a frequent involuntary transmission of thought from himself to Mrs. Newnham. An instance of "psychical-invasion" in sleep when Mrs. Newnham discerned his presence is quoted in C. This occurred before their marriage.

849. Subsequently, Mr. Newnham made many attempts to transmit thought voluntarily to his wife, but succeeded only in the year 1871, during a period of about eight months.

During that period he made notes from day to day in a private diary, which diary he was good enough to place in my hands in 1884. There are 40 pages of MS. notes, containing 385 automatically-written replies to questions. Mr. Newnham made the experiments purely for his own satisfaction, and without any idea of submitting them to public inspection, and consequently the questions include many references to his domestic affairs at the time, to family jokes, and to other matters which, while illustrating the intimate and spontaneous character of the diary, are not suited for publication. Mr. Newnham, however, kindly made long extracts for me, some of which I print in 849 A. I carefully compared the extracts with the original diary, and consider that they give a quite fair impression of it. Mrs. Newnham independently corroborated her husband's account,1 and I also talked the matter over with both of them.

It must be distinctly understood that Mrs. Newnham did not see or hear the questions which Mr. Newnham wrote down. The fact, therefore, that her answers bore any relation to the questions shows that the sense of the questions was telepathically conveyed to her. This is the leading and important fact. The substance of the replies written is also interesting, and Mr. Newnham has some good comments thereon. But even had the replies contained no facts which Mrs. Newnham could not have known, this would not detract from the main value of the evidence, which consists in the fact that Mrs. Newnham's hand wrote replies clearly and repeatedly answering questions which she neither heard nor saw.

850. I give in 850 A a series of experiments on a smaller scale, but analogous to those of Mr. and Mrs. Newnham.

851. In the Newnham case we have the advantage of seeing before us the entire series of questions and answers, and thus of satisfying ourselves that the misses (which in that case are very few) are marked as well as the hits, and consequently that the coincidences between question and answer are at any rate not the result of chance. In several other cases which I have known, where the good faith of the informants has been equally above question, the possibility of an explanation by chance alone has been a more important element in the problem. All our evidence has tended to show that the telepathic power itself is a variable thing; that it shows itself in flashes, for the most part spontaneously, and seldom persists through a series of deliberate experiments. And if an automatist possessing power of this uncertain kind has exercised it at irregular moments and with no scientific aim; - and has kept, moreover, no steady record of success and failure; - then it becomes difficult to say that even some brilliant coincidences afford cogent proof of telepathic action.

The case which is next cited (in 851 A) presents these drawbacks; but it presents also positive points of interest and corroborations of memory quite sufficient, I think, to justify me in laying it before my readers as an example of telepathy acting - not just in the way in which we should like it to act, but in the way in which it apparently does act; - and with that strange intercurrence, moreover, which we so often find of something like clairvoyance and premonition mingling with the reflection of thoughts which pass through minds in rapport with the automatist's. But I quote the case as one where telepathy from the living seems to play at least a considerable part in supplying the contents of the messages.

1 Mr. Newnham procured for me two autograph letters from eye-witnesses of some of the experiments, who do not, however, wish their names to be published, on account of prejudices still existing in certain quarters against the experiments as involving questionable agency. One writer says: "You wrote the question on a slip of paper and put it under one of the ornaments of the chimney-piece - no one seeing what you had written. Mrs. Newnham sat apart at a small table. I recollect you kept a book of the questions asked and answers given, as you thought some new power might be discovered, and you read me from it some of the results. I remember particularly questions and answers relating to the selection of a curate for B. My wife and her sister saw experiments conducted in this manner. Mrs. Newnham and you were sitting at different tables." Another eye-witness writes: "I and my sister were staying at--, and were present at many of the Planchette experiments of Mr. and Mrs. Newnham. Mr. and Mrs. Newnham sat at different tables some distance apart, and in such a position that it was quite impossible Mrs. Newnham could see what question was written down. The subject of the questions was never mentioned even in a whisper.

Mr. Newnham wrote them down in pencil and sometimes passed them to me and my sister to see, but not often. Mrs. Newnham immediately answered the questions. Though not always correct, they (the answers) always referred to the questions. Mr. Newnham copied out the pencil questions and answers verbatim each day into a diary".