843 A. Some early experiments in thought-transference through table-tilting were published by Professor Richet in the Revue Philosophique for December 1884. A critical discussion of these by Gurney appeared in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 239-64, and a briefer report in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 72-81. I quote from the latter a description of the method used:-

The place of a planchette was taken by a table, and M. Richet prefaces his account by a succinct statement of the orthodox view as to "table-turning." Rejecting altogether the three theories which attribute the phenomena to wholesale fraud, to spirits, and to an unknown force, he regards the gyrations and oscillations of seance-tables as due wholly to the unconscious muscular contractions of the sitters. It thus occurred to him to employ a table as an indicator of the movements that might be produced by "mental suggestion." The plan of the experiments was as follows. Three persons (C, D, and E), took their seats in a semi-circle, at a little table on which their hands rested. One of these three was always a "medium" - a term used by M. Richet to denote a person liable to exhibit intelligent movements in which consciousness and will apparently take no part. Attached to the table was a simple electrical apparatus, the effect of which was to ring a bell whenever the current was broken by the tilting of the table. Behind the backs of the sitters at the table was another table, on which was a large alphabet, completely screened from the view of C, D, and E, even had they turned round and endeavoured to see it.

In front of this alphabet sat A, whose duty was to follow the letters slowly and steadily with a pen, returning at once to the beginning as soon as he arrived at the end. At A's side sat B, with a note-book; his duty was to write down the letter at which A's pen happened to be pointing whenever the bell rang. This happened whenever one of the sitters at the table made the simple movement necessary to tilt it. Under these conditions, A and B are apparently mere automata. C, D, and E are little more, being unconscious of tilting the table, which appears to them to tilt itself; but even if they tilted it consciously, and with a conscious desire to dictate words, they have no means of ascertaining at what letter A's pen is pointing at any particular moment; and they might tilt for ever without producing more than an endless series of incoherent letters. Things being arranged thus, a sixth operator, F, stationed himself apart both from the tilting table and from the alphabet, and concentrated his thought on some word of his own choosing, which he had not communicated to the others. The three sitters at the first table engaged in conversation, sang, or told stories; but at intervals the table tilted, the bell rang, and B wrote down the letter which A's pen was opposite to at that moment.

Now, to the astonishment of all concerned, these letters, when arranged in a series, turned out to produce a more or less close approximation to the word of which F was thinking.

1 See Dr. Legue's Urbain Grandier et les Possedees de Loudun. Paris: Baschet.

The general result - of which full details are given in the original articles referred to - was that the amount of coincidence between the letters of the words chosen by F and those tilted out by the table was considerably greater than would most probably have been produced by chance. Gurney continues:-

[These experiments] seem to exhibit telepathic production of movements by what is at most an idea, and not a volition, on the agent's part. This, indeed, is a hypothesis which seems justified even by M. Richet's less exceptional results. For we must remember that in a sense A is throughout more immediately the agent than F; it is what A's mind contributes, not what F's mind contributes, that produces the tilts at the right moments.1 But this is of course through no will of A's; he is ignorant of the required word, and has absolutely no opportunity of bringing his volition into play. His "agency" is of a wholly passive sort; and his mind, as it follows the course of his pen, is a mere conduit-pipe, whereby knowledge of a certain kind obtains access to the "unconscious intelligence" which evokes the tilts. If, then, the knowledge manifests itself as impulse, can we avoid the conclusion that in this particular mode of access - in "mental suggestion" or telepathy as such - a certain impulsive quality is involved? . . .

But of course the relation between F and the "medium" plays also a necessary part in the result; the impulse to tilt when a particular letter is reached only takes effect when it falls (so to speak) on ground prepared by "mental suggestion" from F - on a mind in which the word imagined by him has obtained an unconscious lodgment. The unconscious part of the percipient's mind would thus be the scene of confluence of two separate telepathic streams, which proceed to combine there in an intelligent way - one proceeding from F's mind, which produces unconscious knowledge of the word, and the other proceeding from A's mind, which produces an unconscious image of the successive letters. Another possible supposition would be that F's thought affects, not the "medium," but A; or conversely, that A's thought affects, not the "medium," but F; - that A obtains unconscious knowledge of the word, or that F obtains unconscious knowledge of the letter, and so is enabled to communicate an impulse to the "medium" at the right moment.

And we should then have to suppose a secret understanding between two parts of A's or F's mind, the part which takes account of the letters of the alphabet, and the part which takes account of the letters of the word - the former being conscious and the latter unconscious, or vice versa, according as A or F is the party affected.

1 When A, in pointing, began at the beginning of the alphabet, the sense of time might conceivably have led to an unconscious judgment as to the point arrived at. This idea had occurred to M. Richet. It seems, however, an unnecessary multiplication of hypotheses; for we learn from him that in some trials A began at uncertain places, and that under these conditions coherent words were obtained. The fact that so often the approximate letter was given, instead of the exact one, might seem at first sight to favour the hypothesis of unconscious reckoning; but it will be observed that exactly the same approximations took place in our own experiment {Phantasms, vol. i. pp. 77-8), where the alphabet was in the "medium's" sight.