842. Most instructive of all will it be if we can obtain telepathy from discarnate spirits, and especially if we can get any glimpse of a relation between their mode of being and the cosmic ether. On this point Professor Flournoy writes as follows (p. 394):

"It is obvious that the hypothesis of spirits involves no a priori impossibility or absurdity. It does not even contradict, as is sometimes supposed, that fundamental law of physiological psychology - the psychophysical parallelism - which insists that every mental phenomenon must have a physical correlative. For in spite of our habit of considering the molecular or atomic phenomena of the brain, the catabolism of the neurones, as the true concomitant of the conscious processes, it is quite possible - it is even probable enough - that these molecular movements do not constitute the ultimate physical term immediately adjoining the mental world (cotoyant le monde mental), but that the true physical or spatial correlatives of psychological or non-spatial phenomena ought to be sought in the vibrations of that imponderable matter, the ether, in which ponderable atoms and molecules are plunged somewhat after the fashion of grains of dust in the atmosphere".

I quote these words because, - obvious though their contention must seem to all thinking persons, - it is common enough to see phrases used as though our notions were still bounded by the molecular; - as though we did not know, as certainly as we know anything, that the great mystery of existence is only just beginning, in that inconceivable world of ether, precisely where our utmost analysis fails us, and our mathematics are reduced to a jungle of infinities and of contradictions.

And now as to the question of possible telepathy from the dead in Helene's case. The instance with most in its favour is described by Professor Flournoy as follows (p. 406):-

In a sitting at my house (February 12th, 1899) Mlle Smith has a vision of a village on a height covered with vines; she sees a small old man coming down thence by a stony road. He looks like a "demi-monsieur"; - buckled shoes, large soft hat, shirt-collar unstarched, with points rising to his cheeks, etc. A peasant in a blouse whom he meets bows to him as to a personage of importance; they talk a patois which Helene cannot follow. She has an impression that she knows the village; but she cannot identify it. Soon the landscape disappears, and the old man, now clothed in white and seen in a luminous space [implying that he is in the next world] seems to come nearer. At this moment, as she sits with her right arm resting on the table, Leopold dictates with the forefinger, Lower her arm. I obey; Helene's arm at first resists strongly; then yields at once. She seizes a pencil, and during the usual struggle as to the way to hold it [i.e., whether in her own habitual fashion - between forefinger and middle finger - or in the ordinary way], "You are squeezing my hand too hard!" she cries to the imagined little old man who, according to Leopold, wishes to write through her; - "You hurt me; don't press so hard; what can it matter to you whether it is a pencil or a pen?" Then she drops the pencil and takes a pen, and holding it between thumb and forefinger writes slowly in an unknown handwriting, Chaumontet syndic.

Then returns the vision of the village; - we wish to know its name; and she ends by perceiving a guide-post on which she spells out Chessenaz - a name unknown to us. Finally having, at my desire, asked the old man the date when he was syndic, she hears him answer, 1839. Nothing more can be learnt; the vision disappears and gives place to a possession by Leopold, who in his big Italian voice talks at length about various matters. I question him on the incident of the unknown village and syndic; his answers, interrupted by long digressions, are to this effect: "I am looking - I turn my thoughts along that great mountain with a tunnel in it whose name I do not know [Leopold - the soi-disant Cagliostro - who returns from the eighteenth century, is naturally not well up in modern geographical names; but this is the hill of Fort de l'Ecluse]; I see the name of Chessenaz - a village on a height - a road leading up to it. Look in that village; you will find the name [Chaumontet]: try to verify the signature; you will get a proof that the signature is really that of this man".

I ask him whether he sees all this in Helene's memories - "No"; - or whether she has ever been at Chessenaz:- "Ask her; she will know; I have not followed her in all her excursions".

Helene, when awake, could give no information. But next day I found on the map a little village of Chessenaz in the department of Haute-Savoie, at twenty-six kilometres from Geneva. . . .

[A fortnight later Helen sees the vision of the other day reappear - the village, the little old man; - but accompanied by a cure, who seems intimate with him, and whom he calls "my dear friend Bournier." Leopold promises that this curd will write his name for Helen].

At the next sitting in my house, March 19th, I remind Leopold of this promise. . . . The cure at last takes her hand as the syndic had done and writes very slowly the words Burnicr salut. . . .

I wrote to the Mairie at Chessenaz, and the Mayor, M. Saunier, was good enough to answer me at once. "During the years 1838 and 1839," he said, "the syndic of Chessenaz was Jean Chaumontet, whose signature I find in various documents of that date. We had also for curd M. Andre Burnier, from November 1824 to February 1841, during which period all the actes des naissances, etc, bear his signature. But I have found in our archives a document with both signatures, which I send you".

[Reproductions are given (p. 409) of the actual signatures, and of the signatures given by M1Ie Smith. The handwritings were markedly similar].

Professor Flournoy's first idea naturally was that MIIe Smith had seen at some time or other some acts or documents signed by the syndic or the cure of Chessenaz, and that these visual impressions had reappeared in her somnambulic state, and had served as internal models for the signatures which she traced in trance. She informed him, in fact, that she had relations in the neighbourhood, with whom she had stayed some dozen years earlier, but she had no recollection of having ever seen or heard of Chessenaz, or of the two names given in her trance. Both names are, however, not uncommon in that region, and it seems possible that during her visit her friends may have shown her some family document bearing the signatures, which - we must assume - (for her probity is beyond question) had faded from her supraliminal memory.1