832 A. From the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. iv. pp. 216-24.

This is a case typical at least in its main features, and specially suitable for record on account of the care with which the phenomena were noted down as they occurred. The case was sent to us by Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, now Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and I have myself been present at one of the experiments where Mr. F. C. S. Schiller and his brother, Mr. F. N. Schiller, of St. John's College, Cambridge, obtained some of the old French writing. Some experiments in telepathy and clairvoyance were also tried, but with no great success, and the description of these is omitted here.

In the following account it must not be supposed that in speaking of the "spirits" of planchette under their soi-disant names, I intend to endorse the Spiritualist explanation, any more than I consider the reproductions of the "mediums'" latent knowledge to be conclusive in favour of any form of "unconscious-self " theory.

The experiments in question were conducted during a great part of the Long Vacation, with my brother, whom I will call F., and my sister L., as "mediums," writing conjointly at first, but afterwards separately. Of course, there could thus be no doubt as to the good faith of the "mediums," even if the course of the experiments had not afforded convincing proof that the phenomena were independent of their conscious mind. There appeared at different times no less than nine "spirits," of whom four wrote exclusively with F. and one mainly; another freely with either or both but chiefly with L., and three exclusively with L. or with F. and L. conjointly. They all wrote with a more or less distinctive style of their own, and, as far as I could judge, there was not any marked difference of style when the same spirit wrote with different mediums. Nor, on the other hand, was there sufficient evidence to justify the assertion that the style was so unmistakably similar that it must have proceeded from the same intelligence. But although the evidence was not conclusive in establishing the identity of the various "spirit" personages, there could be no doubt of their complete independence of the mediums' conscious will.

Both F. and L. were at first entirely ignorant of what planchette was writing, and F. remained so to the end, nor did the occupations of his conscious self appear in the least to affect the progress of the writing. I have seen planchette write in the same slow and deliberate way both while he was telling an amusing anecdote in an animated way and while he was absorbed in an interesting novel; and frequently whole series of questions would be asked and answered without his knowing what had been written or thinking that anything else than unmeaning scrawls had been produced.

In L.'s case it is true that after some time she came to know what letters were being formed and was able to interpret the movements of her hand. This, of course, made it difficult to avoid, at times, a certain half-conscious influence on the writing, and makes it necessary to allow for the personal equation. But it is clear that this influence must tend to harmonise the answers of planchette with the opinions and will of the medium, and as a matter of fact I observed frequent cases, especially with L., of a conflict between her will and opinions and those of planchette. . . .

The spirit of a "careless rhymer," after writing verses in English, French, and German, professed its ability to do so in the classical languages. And as F. said he had never read the Iliad, we asked the rhymer for a quotation. This he was at first unable to do, but, some hours after, he, unasked, produced the following: "Eratimoi kekaloseiai" and "Kouridion potheoumenos posin." These extraordinary tags were found to be derived from the fifth book of the Iliad (421, 414), and to represent and noaiv. F. then remembered that he had read this very book, and this alone, a long time ago. This was certainly the incident pointing most directly at unconscious cerebration, and may, perhaps, help to explain the occurrence of an entirely unknown language, namely Hindustani. A "spirit" gave his name as "Lokenadrath," and wrote in an extraordinary Oriental style, rather resembling some of Marion Crawford's rhapsodies. On introducing the words "Allah il Allah," he was asked whether he was a Mohammedan. "Hindi apkahai." I have since been informed 1 that ["apkahai" means] "I am yours," "At your service," and that "Lokenadrath" should be "Lokendranath," and means "lord of princes"; and one or two other fragments of Hindustani were similarly inaccurate.2 Now, as F. left India as a baby of eight months, and has never since, to the best of my belief, heard any Hindustani spoken, this is surely a most curious case of unconscious memory, if such it was. . . .

1 On the authority of (i) an Anglo-Indian lady; (2) a Balliol Brahmin of Bombay. [The whole phrase means "A Hindu is at your service." The Oriental rhapsodies were found to be mainly centoes of Mr. Isaacs, worked together so as to make sense].

2 I have now found out (December 1886) that Lokenadrath's description of his nationality is not as totally unintelligible as I had hitherto thought it. He called himself a "Jude poerano," and I have been told that "poerano" is Romany for gipsy.

0£ the nine "spirits," six wrote only in English, and several of them failed ignominiously with all other languages. The Hindustani of "Lokenadrath" I have already mentioned. "Irktomar," the French Positivist, gave us specimens of English, French, and Latin. Lastly, the poet "Closcar" rhymed in English, French and German, Latin and Greek, and even sometimes wrote the last of these with Greek letters. But with this exception, planchette never wrote any German, though both the mediums are perfectly familiar with it, and in their childhood probably knew it far better than English. If, then, these phenomena are a dream-like recrudescence of long-forgotten thoughts, this absence of German seems to require some explanation.1 As regards the mode of writing, we were unable to distinguish any differences of handwriting between the various "spirits," except that one of F.'s wrote from right to left, mirror-writing, whether or no the left hand was used. . . .

(Signed) F. C. S. Schiller.

Balliol College, Oxford, 26th October, 1886.

Appendix.

Since writing the preceding paper the experiments have been continued with F., and I will give a short sketch of the results subsequently obtained. The first thing to be noted is that F.'s power of writing seems to have diminished sensibly, so that whereas he would formerly write on three out of every four occasions he can now only do so about once out of every three. . . . An interesting experiment was tried of writing with two planchettes, F. having one hand on each. I suggested this in order to elucidate the connection between left-hand writing and "mirror-writing," and fully expected that the two hands would write the same communications. To my astonishment, however, the communications, though written simultaneously, were different and proceeded from different "spirits." I regard this as conclusive proof that the phenomena have nothing to do with the medium's consciousness, for, as every one can easily experience for himself, it is quite impossible, at least without long practice, to write two different words at the same time.

Whenever F. wrote with two planchettes, the left hand wrote mirror-writing, which was often very hard to decipher, but we did not observe anything like a fixed rule in this respect on other occasions. For though planchette generally wrote in the ordinary way even when the left hand was used, it sometimes produced mirror-writing with the right hand also. We have also had some instructive experiments in what I may call conjoint writing. I must begin by saying that ordinarily I am quite unable to make planchette move at all. But one night I put my hand also on, after F. had failed, as on several preceding days, to make it write. Planchette soon began to move and to write intelligibly. I repeatedly took my hand off and the writing stopped at once. Similarly, whenever F. took his hand off, the writing also ceased, except that on one occasion, when he did so without my knowledge, it appears to have written two or three letters before stopping. I am inclined, therefore, to regard the phenomenon of conjoint writing, whatever may be its explanation, as genuine, i.e. that the second operator really contributes to the result.

Passing from the method to the matter of the communications, I should note that "Heliod" has shown a knowledge of German and alluded to Goethe's Ewig Weibliche, but that the bulk of the communications were in French and produced by "Irktomar".

1 Since this was written "Heliod" has shown a knowledge of German and Latin.

In addition to some dialectical variations which appear to be Provencal (e.g. Irktomar n'a pas lou terns, Pour vous faire des coumplimens), he produced an extraordinary jargon which he called "Romaunce" and ascribed to the time of "Roland" and of "Charlemagne".

Afterwards it was found to be old Norman French, and mostly quoted from the Chanson de Roland of the twelfth century, as will appear from the following comparison:-

F. does not know old French at all, and cannot remember to have ever read or heard any, but, being strongly inclined towards the unconscious self theory, suggests that the passages produced may have been quoted in some magazine article, and thus met his eye.2 In any case, however, these quotations throw an interesting light on the mode of thinking of the intelligence that dictated them. It will be seen that they are evidently quoted from memory, and by no means accurate. And in No. 1 the first version was nearer the original than the second; but, as quoted, the words "ut plein" made no sense, and hence "lutans," a word which does not, I believe, occur in the Roland, was substituted for them to complete the sense. That is to say, the second version is no mere reproduction of an impression in the memory, but has been subjected to a process of emendation which by us would be held to imply the action of conscious thought. Yet during this time F.'s conscious mind was entirely void of any knowledge of the dialect, and a fortiori could not possibly have corrected what appeared to him quite meaningless. . . .

Lastly, planchette volunteered the information that "Carles fu carles il caux" (Charles was Charles the Bald), which is certainly wrong, and as certainly could not be derived from the Roland or any similar poem, while it is nevertheless linguistically correct. It must, therefore, I think, be admitted that the intelligence which produced it must have possessed a considerable amount of what we should call conscious knowledge of old French, and such as F. certainly does not possess.

1 Two lines have since been found which are almost identical with the planchette writing, viz.:- "Ne reverrunt lor peres ne lor parenz, Ne Charle Magne ki as porz les atent." (C. de R. 1420-21).

2 Neither had Mr. F. C. S. Schiller read any old French.

To sum up then I will only say that the matter of the various communications (i.e. excluding the card and alphabet experiments, etc.) does not seem to me to afford absolute proof that the knowledge displayed could not possibly have been latent in the writer's mind, while at the same time this is extremely improbable in a large number of cases. Moreover, both the matter and the manner of the communications display powers beyond any at present recognised as normal. (Signed) F. C. S. Schiller.

January 22nd, 1887.