826. The subject of automatic writing, to which our argument next leads us, is a creation of the last few decades, and is at present in so rapidly developing a condition that it is not easy to know at what stage of proof or explanation it is here best to begin. In calling the subject novel I do not indeed mean to deny that this and similar practices are traceable in many lands and in remote antiquity. But among civilised men, in Europe and America, the phenomenon came first into notice as an element in so-called "modern spiritualism," about the middle of the nineteenth century. It then remained for another generation a kind of plaything or drawing-room amusement; - planchette being called upon for answers to such questions as "What young lady am I thinking of?" "What horse is going to win the Derby?"

It was in the United States that these sporadic messages were first developed and systematised. Through the unlettered mind of Andrew Jackson Davis a kind of system of philosophy was given. Through Judge Edmonds many messages of serious import were given, although, as recorded, they contain little evidence to the agency of an external intelligence. The Healing of the Nations was another work of the same general type. But the automatic writings of W. Stainton Moses - about 1870-80 - were perhaps the first continuous series of messages given in England which lifted the subject into a higher plane.1

These writings marked a new departure of most serious moment. Mr. Moses - a man whose statements could not be lightly set aside - claimed for them that they were the direct utterances of departed persons, some of them lately dead, some dead long ago. Such a claim seemed at first too prodigious for belief; and - as will be seen later - it is in fact still under discussion. But Mr. Moses' writings - however to be explained - strongly impressed Edmund Gurney and myself, and added to our desire to work at the subject in as many ways as we could.

It was plain that these writings - which might be of almost immeasurable importance - could not be judged aright without a wide analysis of similar scripts, - without an experimental inquiry into what the human mind, in states of somnambulism or the like, could furnish of written messages, apart from the main stream of consciousness. By his experiments, mentioned in a former chapter, on writing obtained in different stages of hypnotic trance, Gurney acted as the pioneer of a long series of researches which, independently set on foot by Professor Pierre Janet in France, have become of high psychological, and even medical, importance. What is here of prime interest is the indubitable fact that fresh personalities can be artificially and temporarily created, which will write down matter quite alien from the first personality's character, and even matter which the first personality never knew. That matter may consist merely of reminiscences of previous periods when the second personality has been in control. But, nevertheless, if these writings are shown to the primary personality, he will absolutely repudiate their authorship - alleging not only that he has no recollection of writing them, but also that they contain allusions to facts which he never knew.

Some of these messages, indeed, although their source is so perfectly well defined - although we know the very moment when the secondary personality which wrote them was called into existence - do certainly look more alien from the automatist in his normal state than many of the messages which claim to come from spirits of lofty type. It is noticeable, moreover, that these manufactured personalities sometimes cling obstinately to their fictitious names, and refuse to admit that they are in reality only aspects or portions of the automatist himself. This must be remembered when the persistent claim to some spiritual identity - say Napoleon - is urged as an argument for attributing a series of messages to that special source. There is much else which may be learnt from these self-suggested automatisms; and the discussions in my earlier chapters refer to several points which should be familiar to all who would seriously analyse the more advanced, more difficult, motor phenomena.

1The automatic messages collected by "Allan Kardec" in the Livre des Esprits and the Livre des Mediums, although in themselves interesting, were not evidential. They seem to have been arbitrarily selected from writings which supplied no proof of supernormal origin.