812. And here, before we enter on the study of automatic writing, I shall somewhat break the thread of discussion in order to refer at length to two great historic cases of automatism, which may, perhaps, be most fitly introduced here as a kind of prologue to what is to follow. One case, that of Socrates, is a case of monitory inhibition; the other, that of Jeanne d'Arc, of monitory impulse. Each case, moreover, is instructive as regards the substance of the messages, and also as regards the character and capacity of the percipient. I begin with that great historical instance, - an instance well observed and well attested, although remote in date, which will at once have occurred to every reader.

The Founder of Science himself, - the permanent type of sanity, shrewdness, physical robustness, and moral balance, - was guided in all the affairs of life by a monitory Voice, - by "the Daemon of Socrates." This is a case which can never lose its interest, a case which has been vouched for by the most practical, and discussed by the loftiest intellect of Greece, - both of them intimate friends of the illustrious subject; - a case, therefore, which one who endeavours to throw new light on hallucination and automatism is bound, even at this distance of time, to endeavour to explain. And this is the more needful, since a treatise was actually written, a generation ago, as "a specimen of the application of the science of psychology to the science of history," arguing from the records of the in Xenophon and Plato that Socrates was in fact insane.1

I believe that it is now possible to give a truer explanation; to place these old records in juxtaposition with more instructive parallels; and to show that the messages which Socrates received were only advanced examples of a process which, if supernormal, is not abnormal, and which characterises that form of intelligence which we describe as genius. For genius (as we have seen), is best defined - not as "an unlimited capacity seen at its maximum in insane patients. Some drawings of an insane patient, reproduced in the American Journal of Psychology, June 1888, show a noticeable analogy (in my view a predictable analogy) with some of the "spirit-drawings" above discussed. See also the Martian landscapes of Helene Smith, in Professor Flournoy's Des Indes a la planete Mars, referred to below, sections 834 et sea of taking pains" - but rather as a mental constitution which allows a man to draw readily into supraliminal life the products of subliminal thought.

1 Du Demon de Socrate, etc, by L. F. Lelut, Membre de l'Institut. Nouvelle edition, 1856.

813. I have already urged that beneath the superficially conscious stratum of our being there is not only a stratum of dream and confusion, but a still subjacent stratum of coherent mentation as well. This thesis, I think, is strongly supported by the records which have come down to us as to the Daemon of Socrates. We shall see that the monitions which Socrates thus received were for the most part such as his own wiser self might well have given, and that where the limits of knowledge attainable by his own inmost reflection may possibly have been transcended, they seem to have been transcended in such direction as a clairvoyant development of his own faculties might allow, rather than in such a way as to suggest the intervention of any external power. Let us try to analyse the nature of the "divine interventions" actually recorded by Socrates' contemporaries. The voice, it should be remarked, was always a voice of restraint; its silence implied approval. In the first place Xenophon's testimony completely establishes the fact.

He desires, in defending his friend and master from the charge of impiety, to make as little as may be of the matter; but what he says is quite enough to prove - if such proof were needed - that the (monitory voice) is no metaphor, but is to be taken literally as a notorious and repeated incident in Socrates' life.

"First then," he says,1 "as to his not worshipping the gods whom the city worships, what evidence was there of this? He sacrificed constantly, and obviously used the art of divination; for it was matter of notoriety that Socrates said that - the divine Providence - gave him indications; and this indeed was the principal reason for accusing him of introducing new gods".

The instances where such indication was given may be divided into three heads.

First come the cases where the warning voice - or its equally significant absence - gives proof of a sagacity at least equal to that of the waking Socrates, and decides him to action, or to abstention from action, which he professes always to have recognised as right and wise.

Next come the cases where the monition implies some sort of knowledge not dependent on any external source, yet not attainable by ordinary means; - as a knowledge of potential rapport (to use the term of the elder mesmerists), or special relation between two organisms.

And, lastly, come one or two doubtful cases where, if they be correctly reported, there was something like clairvoyance, or extension of the ordinary purview of sense.

The first of these classes contains the great majority of the recorded cases, whether small or great matters are concerned. And it is noticeable that the monition frequently occurred in reference to mere trifles, and had been a habitual phenomenon for Socrates from childhood upwards, both of which points are eminently in analogy with what we know of other automatisms. Let us take first some trivial cases.

1 Xen. Memorabilia, i. i.

1. In the Euthydemns of Plato, Socrates is about to quit the palaestra; the sign detains him; young men enter, and profitable conversation ensues.

2. In the Phaedrus, Socrates, when leaving his resting-place, is detained by the sign, which thus leads him to a discourse which he had not intended to utter - - "I am, it seems, a prophet," he then remarks, "but only just enough for my private use and benefit".

3. In the First Alcibiades the sign restrains him from speaking to Alcibiades until the latter is old enough to understand him aright.

There are also various cases where Socrates dissuades his friends from expeditions which ultimately turn to their harm. None of these are in our sense evidential; and in some of them (as in the case of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse) ordinary sagacity might have given the same warning. The case of Timarchus (Plato, Theages) is the most dramatic of these warnings.

Timarchus was sitting at supper with Socrates, and rose to go out to a plot of assassination, to which plot only one other man was privy. "'What say you, Socrates?' said Timarchus, 'do you continue drinking? I must go out somewhither; but will return in a little, if so I may.' And the voice came to me; and I said to him, 'By no means rise from table; for the accustomed divine sign has come to me.' And he stayed. And after a time again he got up to go, and said, 'I must be gone, Socrates.' And the sign came to me again; and again I made him stay. And the third time, determining that I should not see, he rose and said naught to me, when my mind was turned elsewhere; and thus he went forth, and was gone, and did that which was to be his doom".

We cannot now tell what the evidential value of this case may have been. There may have been that in the countenance of one of them who sat at meat, which may have shown to Socrates that the hand of an assassin was with him on the table.

But, among these monitions of Socrates, a certain silence of the warning voice on one last occasion was held by Socrates himself, and has since been reputed, as the most noteworthy of all. This was when Socrates, accused on a capital charge of impiety, from which he might have freed himself by far less of retractation than has been consented to by many a martyr, refused altogether to retract, to excuse himself, to explain away; claiming rather, in one of the first and noblest of all assertions of the law of conscience as supreme, that he deserved to be supported at the public cost in the Prytaneum, as a man devoted to the mission of a moral teacher of men. The divine sign, as has been said, came only to warn or to restrain; when it was absent, all was well. And throughout the whole series vol. ii. c of events which led to Socrates' death, the voice intervened once only, - to check him from preparing any speech in his own defence. Thereafter, by an emphatic silence, it approved the various steps by which the philosopher brought on his own head that extreme penalty which, save for his own inflexible utterances, the Dikastery would not have ventured to inflict.

"There has happened to me, O my judges," he said in his last speech after sentence passed, "a wonderful thing. For that accustomed divine intimation in time past came to me very many times, and met me on slight occasion, if I were about to act in some way not aright; but now this fate which ye behold has come upon me, - this which a man might deem, and which is considered, the very worst of ills. Yet neither when I left my home this morning was I checked by that accustomed sign; nor when I came up hither to the judgment-hall, nor at any point in my speech as I spoke. And yet in other speeches of mine the sign has often stopped me in the midst. But now it has not hindered me in any deed or word of mine connected with this present business. What then do I suppose to be the reason thereof? I will tell you. I think it is that what has happened to me has been a good thing; and we must have been mistaken when we supposed that death was an evil. Herein is a strong proof to me of this; for that accustomed sign would assuredly have checked me, had I been about to do aught that was evil".

I dwell upon this incident; for in the history of inward messages no such scene is likely to recur. We shall never again see such a man at such a moment drawing strength from the silence of the monitory utterance which came to him as from without himself, though it were from the depths of his own soul.