“(166) Of what language is the first syllable of the Great Triple R.
A. word? _Don’t know._ (167) Yes, you do. What are the three languages
of which the word is composed? _Greek_, _Egypt_, _Syriac_. _First
syllable (correctly given), rest unknown._ (168) Write the syllable
which is Syriac. (_First Syllable correctly written._) (174) Write
down the word itself. (_First three and last two letters were written
correctly, but four incorrect letters, partly borrowed from another
word of the same degree, came in the middle._) (176) Why do you write
a word of which I know nothing? _Wife tried hard to catch the word,
but could not quite catch it._”
So far the answers, though imperfect, honestly admit their
imperfection. There is nothing which a _second self_ of Mrs.
Newnham’s, with a certain amount of access to Mr. Newnham’s mind,
might not furnish. But I must give one instance of another class of
replies—replies which seem to wish to conceal ignorance and to elude
exact inquiry.
“(182) Write out the prayer used at the advancement of a Mark Master
Mason. _Almighty Ruler of the Universe and Architect of all worlds, we
beseech Thee to accept this our brother whom we have this day received
into the most honorable company of Mark Master Masons. Grant him to be
a worthy member of our brotherhood; and may he be in his own person a
perfect mirror of all Masonic virtues. Grant that all our doings may
be to Thy honor and glory, and to the welfare of all mankind._
“This prayer was written off instantaneously and very rapidly. For
the benefit of those who are not members of the craft, I may say
that no prayer in the slightest degree resembling it is made use of
in the Ritual of any Masonic degree; and yet it contains more than
one strictly accurate technicality connected with the degree of
Mark Mason. My wife has never seen any Masonic prayers, whether in
‘Carlile’ or any other real or spurious Ritual of the Masonic Order.”
There was so much of this kind of untruthful evasion, and it was so
unlike anything in Mrs. Newnham’s character, that observers less
sober-minded would assuredly have fancied that some Puck or sprite
was intervening with a “third intelligence” compounded of aimless
cunning and childish jest. But Mr. Newnham inclines to a view fully in
accordance with that which this paper has throughout suggested.
“Is this _third intelligence_,” he says, “analogous to the ‘dual
state,’ the existence of which, in a few extreme and most interesting
cases, is now well established? Is there a latent potentiality of a
‘dual state’ existing in every brain? and are the few very striking
phenomena which have as yet been noticed and published only the
exceptional developments of a state which is inherent in most or in
all brains?”
And alluding to a theory, which has at different times been much
discussed, of the more or less independent action of the two cerebral
hemispheres, he asks:—
“May not the untrained half of the organ of mind, even in the most
pure and truthful characters, be capable of manifesting tendencies
like the hysterical girl’s, and of producing at all events the
_appearance_ of moral deficiencies which are totally foreign to the
well-trained and disciplined portion of the brain which is ordinarily
made use of?”
In this place, however, it will be enough to say that the real cause
for surprise would have been if our secondary self had _not_ exhibited
a character in some way different from that which we recognize as
our own. Whatever other factors may enter into a man’s character,
two of the most important are undoubtedly his store of memories and
his _cænesthesia_, or the sum of the obscure sensations of his whole
physical structure. When either of these is suddenly altered, character
changes too—a change for an example of which we need scarcely look
further than our recollection of the moral obliquities and incoherences
of an ordinary dream. Our personality may be dyed throughout with the
same color, but the apparent tint will vary with the contexture of each
absorptive element within. And not graphic automatism only, but other
forms of muscular and vocal automatism must be examined and compared
before we can form even an empirical conception of that hidden agency,
which is ourselves, though we know it not. In the meantime I shall, I
think, be held to have shown that, in the vast majority of cases where
spiritualists are prone to refer automatic writing to some unseen
intelligence, there is really no valid ground for such an ascription.
I am, indeed, aware that some cases of a different kind are alleged to
exist—cases where automatic writing has communicated facts demonstrably
not known to the writer or to any one present. How far these cases can
satisfy the very rigorous scrutiny to which they ought obviously to be
subjected is a question which I may perhaps find some other opportunity
of discussing.
But for the present our inquiry must pause here. Two distinct arguments
have been attempted in this paper: the first of them in accordance with
recognized physiological science, though with some novelty of its own;
the second lying altogether beyond what the consensus of authorities at
present admits. For, _first_, an attempt has been made to show that the
unconscious mental action which is admittedly going on within us may
manifest itself through graphic automatism with a degree of complexity
hitherto little suspected, so that a man may actually hold a written
colloquy with his own waking and responsive dream; and, _secondly_,
reason has been given for believing that automatic writing may
sometimes reply to questions which the writer does not see, and mention
facts which the writer does not know, the knowledge of those questions
or those facts being apparently derived by telepathic communication
from the conscious or unconscious mind of another person.
Startling as this conclusion is, it will not be novel to those who have
followed the cognate experiments on other forms of thought-transference
detailed in the “Proceedings” of the Society for Psychical
Research.[33] And be it noted that our formula, “Mind can influence
mind independently of the recognized organs of sense,” has been again
and again foreshadowed by illustrious thinkers in the past. It is, for
instance, but a more generalized expression of Cuvier’s _dictum_, “that
a communication can under certain circumstances be established between
the nervous systems of two persons.” Such communication, indeed, like
other mental phenomena, may be presumed to have a _neural_ as well as a
_psychical_ aspect; and if we prefer to use the word _mind_ rather than
_brain_, it is because the mental side is that which primarily presents
itself for investigation, and in such a matter it is well to avoid even
the semblance of _theory_ until we have established _fact_.
Before concluding, let us return for a moment to the popular
apprehensions to which my opening paragraphs referred. Has not some
reason been shown for thinking that these fears were premature? that
they sprang from too ready an assumption that all the discoveries of
psycho-physics would reveal us as smaller and more explicable things,
and that the analysis of man’s personality would end in analysing
man away? It is not, on the other hand, at least possible that this
analysis may reveal also faculties of unlooked-for range, and powers
which our conscious self was not aware of possessing? A generation
ago there were many who resented the supposition that man had sprung
from the ape. But on reflection most of us have discerned that this
repugnance came rather from pride than wisdom; and that with the
race, as with the individual, there is more true hope for him who
has risen by education from the beggar-boy than for him who has
fallen by transgression from the prince. And now once more it seems
possible that a more searching analysis of our mental constitution may
reveal to us not a straitened and materialized, but a developing and
expanding view of the “powers that lie folded up in man.” Our best
hope, perhaps, should be drawn from our potentialities rather than
our perfections; and the doubt whether we are our full selves already
may suggest that our true subjective unity may wait to be realized
elsewhere.—_Contemporary Review._