839. In the facts which I have already given, we have got this problem reduced to its narrowest form; and I shall set forth, as barely possible, a theory which Professor Flournoy has not invoked. I agree with him that the notion of the truth of the Indian romance must be quite dismissed. But I do not therefore think it certain that Mlle Smith must have unconsciously seen de Marles' history and a Sanscrit grammar, since it seems to me just possible that the knowledge of de Marles and of Sanscrit may have been clairvoyantly acquired by her subliminal self.

1 See Ribot, Psychologie des Sentiments, p. 152.

2 See, however, Nouvelles Observations (pp. 212-213), from which it appears that a gentleman in whose house Mlle Smith used to give seances possessed a Sanscrit grammar, and kept it in the room where the seances were held. In the same book (pp. 206-216), Professor Flournoy points out several other sources besides Marles' history (itself to be found in the two principal libraries of Geneva) from which her knowledge of India might have been derived; and he shows (pp. 203-206) that the Hindoo romance presented internal contradictions which made it inconsistent with any hypothesis of reincarnation. - Editors.

Further, it has sometimes been alleged that discarnate spirits may be concerned in the composition of such romances, on the hypothesis that if they do act upon human minds, they probably so act sometimes to amuse themselves, as well as to please or inform us. I know of no evidence, indeed, of their having any power to injure us, but it is thought by some that there is a good deal of evidence of tricky, playful interference, and that a kind of literary impulse to write or act out romances, through the intermediacy of some human being, may be one form of this mystifying intervention. There is, however, no need to postulate the existence of tricky spirits when the phenomena can be adequately accounted for by the known tendencies of the subliminal self, as exemplified in such cases as the "Clelia" and Newnham writings (830 A and 849 A), and Sally Beauchamp (234 A).

840. I pass on from these reincarnational romances to certain minor, but interesting phenomena, which Professor Flournoy calls teleolo-gical automatisms. These are small acts of helpfulness - beneficent synergies, as we might term them, in contrast with the injurious synergies, or combined groups of hurtful actions, with which hysteria has made us familiar. We have already printed several incidents of this type in our Proceedings and Journal. (See, for instance, the trivial but instructive case of Mrs. Verrall and the envelopes, given in 818 A).

"One day," says Professor Flournoy (p. 55), "Miss Smith, when desiring to lift down a large and heavy object which lay on a high shelf, was prevented from doing so because her raised arm remained for some seconds as though petrified in the air and incapable of movement. She took this as a warning, and gave up the attempt. At a subsequent seance Leopold stated that it was he who had thus fixed Helene's arm to prevent her from grasping this object, which was much too heavy for her, and would have caused her some accident.

"Another time, a shopman, who had been looking in vain for a certain pattern, asked Helene if by chance she knew what had become of it. Helene answered mechanically and without reflection - 'Yes, it has been sent to Mr. J.' (a client of the house). At the same time she saw before her the number 18 in large black figures a few feet from the ground, and added instinctively, 'It was sent eighteen days ago.' [This was in the highest degree improbable, but was found to be absolutely correct.] Leopold had no recollection of this, and does not seem to have been the author of this cryptomnesic automatism".

A similar phenomenon has also been noted (p. 87) when warning is conveyed by an actual phantasmal figure.

Mlle Smith has seen an apparition of Leopold, barring a particular road, under circumstances which make it probable that Mlle Smith would on that day have had cause to regret taking that route. (Compare the case of an apparition seen by a lady near an open lift, referred to at the end of 823; and the warning to Socrates to change his route, see 814).

841. The next question is as to whether supernormal faculty of any kind is manifested in Helene's phenomena. There does appear to be some telepathy (see p. 363, &c), and of telepathy Professor Flournoy speaks as follows:-

"One may almost say that, if telepathy did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. I mean by this that a direct action between living beings, independently of the organs of sense, is a thing so in accord with all that we know of nature that it would be difficult not to assume its existence a priori, even were no sign of it perceptible. How could one believe, indeed, that centres of chemical phenomena so complex as the nervous centres could find themselves in activity without transmitting various undulations - X, Y, or Z rays - passing through the skull as the sun passes through glass, and going on to act, at any distance, on their homologues in other skulls? It is a mere question of intensity. . . .

"If telepathy is considered strange, mystic, occult, supernormal, etc, it is because this character has been gratuitously conferred on it by making of this imponderable link between organisms a purely spiritual communication of soul to soul, independent of matter and of space. That such a metaphysical union does exist I am ready to believe, but it is to introduce a gratuitous confusion if one substitutes this problem of high speculation - which abandons the strictly scientific ground and sets aside the principle of psycho-physical parallelism - for the empirical problem of telepathy, which is perfectly concordant with that parallelism and in no way contradicts established science".

Now, of course, it has been obvious from the outset of our researches that it would be very desirable if we could trace some relation between telepathy and ether vibrations. There are doubtless endless vibrations waiting to be intelligibly appropriated; - and telepathy is a phenomenon greatly in need of an explanation. The more complex any object is, moreover, the more strangely it will vibrate; and the more sensitive any object is, the more strangely will it receive and respond to vibrations.

Nevertheless, when we have said this - as Sir W. Crookes has said it with great impressiveness (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xii. pp. 348-352) - we have said nearly all that can be said for the vibration-theory of telepathy. In Chapter VI (Sensory Automatism). (pp. 245-246), I have attempted to show the inadequacy of this theory to cover the facts, and have suggested that telepathic observations may in time teach us something of the relation of life to the organism.