816. The cases of Socrates and of Joan of Arc, on which I have just dwelt, might (as I have said) with almost equal fitness have been introduced at certain other points of my discussion. At first sight, at any rate, they appear rather like sensory than like motor automatisms, - like hallucinations of hearing rather than like the motor impulses which we are now about to study. Each case, however, approaches motor automatism in a special way.

In the case of Socrates the "sign" seems to have been not so much a definite voice as a sense of inhibition. In the case of Joan of Arc the voices were definite enough, but they were accompanied - as such voices sometimes are, but sometimes are not - with an overmastering impulse to act in obedience to them. These are, I may say, palmary cases of inhibition and of impulse: and inhibition and impulse are at the very root of motor phenomena.

If to this quality we add their historical priority and their intrinsic dignity, ennobling in advance the series of petty incidents of similar type with which we must soon deal, I think that sufficient reason may have been given for the position assigned to them. Furthermore, and partly by reason of that very dignity, they show at once the furthest extent of the claim that can be made for the agency of the subliminal self, apart from any external influence, - apart from telepathy from the living, or possession by the departed.

Each of those other hypotheses will claim its own group of cases; but we must not invoke them until the resources of subliminal wisdom are manifestly overtaxed.

817. These two famous cases, then, have launched us on our subject in the stress of a twofold difficulty in logical arrangement. We cannot always answer these primary questions, Is the subliminal impulse sensory or motor? is it originated in the automatist's own mind, or in some mind external to him?

In the first place, we must reflect that, if the subliminal self really possesses that profound power over the organism with which I have credited it, we may expect that its "messages" will sometimes express themselves in the form of deep organic modifications - of changes in the vaso-motor, the circulatory, the respiratory systems. Such phenomena are likely to be less noted or remembered as coincidental, from their very indefiniteness, as compared, for instance, with a phantasmal appearance; but we have records of various telepathic cases of deep coenesthetic disturbance, of a profound malaise which must, one would think, have involved some unusual condition of the viscera. In Gurney's collection of "emotional and motor effects" {Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. chap. vii.), we find such phrases as "a cloud of calamity which was almost a physical feeling," "deep depression," "a dreadful feeling of illness and faintness, and I felt that I was dying," "dreadful trembling with prostration," "trembling, with no apparent cause whatever," "conviction that I should die that night," and so forth.

And we have, moreover, the definite vaso-motor phenomenon of sudden weeping, which in one case (op. cit., p. 275) is described as "hysterics" by a lady who "never experienced a similar feeling." This attack corresponded exactly with the sudden death of a father at a distance. We must hardly press her phrase as implying more than a sudden, uncontrollable unmotived fit of weeping, though it would, of course, be specially interesting if we could find definite hysterical symptoms originated by a telepathic shock. Another informant (p. 277) speaks of an "extraordinary state of depression and restlessness; . . . a violent fit of weeping, a thing absolutely alien to my character," as coinciding with the sudden illness and delirium of a distant husband.

In other cases, too, where the telepathic impression has ultimately assumed a definite sensory form, as in the narratives included in Chapters VI. and VII., some organic or emotional phenomena have been noted, being perhaps the first effects of the telepathic impact, whether from the living or from the dead. In the case of Dr. N., for instance, which I give in 817 A, we have first an emotion, then a sense of locality, and lastly, an identification with a particular person.

I follow this case with Appendices 817 B and C containing two cases (Mrs. Hadselle's) where the motor effect produced was the important part of the experience, but which show in intimate connection general malaise, motor impulse, and auditory hallucination. And I add, in 817 D, an experience of Lady de Vesci's, who described to me in conversation a similar malaise, defining itself into the urgent need of definite action - namely, the despatch of a telegram to a friend who was in fact then dying at the other side of the world. Such an impulse had one only parallel in her experience, which also was telepathic in a similar way.

Similar sensory disturbances are sometimes reported in connection with an important form of motor automatism, - that of "dowsing" or discovering water by means of the movement of a rod held in the hands of the automatist, - already treated of in vol. i., 541 A and B.