857. The next case (857 A) is very remote; and I should not use it to aid in establishing communication with the dead. But as indicating a possible source of error, it seems worth quoting in an Appendix, as it is vouched for by two informants who, although here anonymous, are distinguished and intelligent men.

858. My next case - given in 858 A - comes from the late Dr. Ermacora, whose untimely death has been a serious loss to our studies. Professor W. James visited Dr. Ermacora at Padua and told me that his experiments were seriously and carefully conducted. Dr. Ermacora himself, for reasons stated in his narrative, regarded this message as probably coming from a disembodied intelligence. But it seems to me that the statement as to the date of the letter's arrival may have emanated from the mind of the Venetian cousin at the time when she meant to post her letter in the evening. Dr. Ermacora also sent me a case (not for publication) where a message written by the same auto-matist predicted some remarkable points with regard to her own future health. Such a prediction, however - like the frequently recorded predictions of somnambulists with regard to their own epileptic fits, etc. - seems to me to belong to the province of the subliminal self, which I conceive as more intimately acquainted with the state of the organism than the supraliminal self can be.

859. Thus much for the present with regard to communications from the living, and as to the danger that a message purporting to come from a deceased person may in reality emanate from the mind of one of the living persons present, or, indeed, from some living person at a distance. But this, although a real risk, is by no means the only risk of deception which such messages involve. The communication may conceivably come from some unembodied spirit indeed, but not from the spirit who is claimed as its author. Have we any way of guarding against this deception; - any hints which may even help us to conceive the nature of a danger which lies so entirely outside our terrene experience?

The answer to this question cannot be brief, and must for the present be delayed. I can best, perhaps, introduce the reader to this new range of problems by quoting at this point (in 859 A) some extracts from a record of the varied experiences of automatic writing which have been intermingled with Miss A.'s crystal-visions, etc, already narrated in Chapter VI (Sensory Automatism). (625 C). Such account as can here be produced is, from various causes, very incomplete. It contains, however, specimens of several of the problems of which mention has already been made. I may remind the reader that this is a case with which I am intimately acquainted, having carefully watched the progress of the phenomena for some years. The statements refer largely to facts within my own knowledge, and these are given without exaggeration.

I should add that the phenomena have continued, whenever invited, up to the present date (December, 1900), and that they have developed in the direction of recognised identities. I have myself lately had through Miss A. what appear to me convincing messages, given by raps, on private matters from departed friends. That this element exists amid these confused communications, I feel sure; but the recognised spirits are seldom able to explain much beyond their own actual message, nor to throw light on the strange anonymity in which most of the writings are shrouded. There is now no case that I have watched longer than Miss A.'s; - none where I have more absolute assurance of the scrupulous probity of the principal sensitive herself and of the group who share the experiments; - but none also which leaves me more often baffled as to the unseen source of the information given. There is a knowledge both of the past and of the future, which seems capriciously limited, and is mingled with mistakes, yet on the other hand is of a nature which it is difficult to refer to any individual human mind, incarnate or discarnate.

We meet here some of the first indications of a possibility of which more must be said in a later chapter (IX.), that discarnate spirits communicating with us have occasional access to certain sources of knowledge which even to themselves are inscrutably remote and obscure.

The command to bring "C. D." - a command which, as will be seen, I myself obeyed - was especially remarkable in its apparent futility, yet it ultimately resulted in developing the phenomena. C. D., indeed, was a person in whom the soi-disant Chancellor Hardwicke might be expected to take some interest; - but one is at a loss to imagine what kind of perception could pick him out as the one man whose own faculty would best contribute to Miss A.'s, and would be best developed by hers in return.

The written diagnoses and prognoses given by the so-called "Semirus," often without Miss A.'s even seeing the patient or hearing the nature of his malady, have become more and more remarkable.1 Miss A. and her friends do not wish these private matters to be printed, and I cannot therefore insist upon the phenomena here. Yet in view of the amount of telaesthesia which Miss A.'s various automatisms reveal, it should first be noted that human organisms seem especially pervious to such vue a distance. "Semirus," "Gelalius," etc, are obvious pseudonyms; and neither Semirus' prescriptions nor Gelalius' cosmogony contain enough of indication to enable us to grasp their origin.