It is certain, moreover, that we communicate with a strange being every time that the medium carries on a conversation in a language of which he knows nothing, for there is no possible way of considering this fact as a pathological case. The cases are numerous in which testimony has been advanced showing that a medium has written or spoken in a foreign tongue.

The most celebrated case, one whose authenticity is irreproachable, appeared in Spiritual Tracts, by Judge Edmunds, New York, 1858. Tract No. 6, Speaking in many Tongues. "The judge," says Aksakof, "enjoyed during his time considerable fame in the United States for the high offices which he filled with distinction, first as President of the Senate, later as a member of the Court of Appeals."

Judge Edmunds who had passed two years among the Indians could converse with his daughter in several little known dialects. But many other witnesses testify that his daughter gave communication in the Indian language and also in Spanish, French, Polish and Greek. She spoke Italian, Portugese, Hungarian, Latin and other languages.

We cite one of the best known episodes, as related by Aksakof.1

"One evening when about ten people were gathered at my house, a certain Mr. Green, an artist of this city, came accompanied by a man whom he presented to us under the name of Mr. Evangelides, of Greece.

1 Animism and Spiritism, ed. 1895, p. 858.

"The latter spoke English imperfectly but expressed himself very accurately in his native tongue. A personality which addressed him in English soon manifested itself and communicated to him a large number of facts, proving conclusively that the communicant was one of his friends who had died in Greece several years before, but a friend of whose existence none of us had ever heard.

"From time to time my daughter uttered a phrase or a few words in Greek, which suggested to Mr. Evangelides to ask the spirit if he himself could speak Greek. The conversation was then continued partly in Greek and partly in English by my daughter, and entirely in Greek by M. Evangelides. My daughter did not always understand what Evangelides said in Greek, but it happened frequently that she understood what the two were saying to each other, though it was in Greek. At times the emotion of Mr. Evangelides was so great that it attracted the attention of those present. We asked him the reason for it but he always evaded a response. At the end of the seance, however, he volunteered to us that he had never before been a witness of any spiritual manifestations, and that in the course of the conversation he had made various experiments in order to study this species of phenomena. These experiments consisted in touching on various subjects which my daughter could not possibly know, and then in changing the theme abruptly by passing from every-day questions to questions political, philosophical or otherwise.

"In answer to my interrogations he assured us that the spirit understood Greek and spoke it correctly."

It is not impossible that the telepathic sense gives a medium an intuition of the idea which passes through the brain of his interlocutor, even though he speaks in a foreign tongue: but this would never explain the automatic action considered in its active and unconscious form which, in space, is a motive suggestion exercised upon the vocal organs.

Writing in a foreign language by a medium is another motive action which proves in an absolute manner the intervention of an outside influence. The natural explanation would be, that he who speaks a language, must have learned it, and those who reject this evidence invoke the exaltation of the intellect, or at least the hypothetical faculties of the somnambulistic consciousness: they do not perceive that they are having recourse to the marvelous and that they are explaining all by a miracle.

We could cite many examples, but it suffices to know that these proofs exist and that the motive action coming from an exterior source is capable of affecting all the organs.

There are, moreover, the cases of visual handwriting which must be classed among the sensory hallucinations as visual images. Many mediums see certain graphic signs which they implicitly copy. These are reminiscent of many of the early experiments upon the transmission of thought, the process of which is slow and painful.

It would seem rational to us to approach these facts through known examples of such transmission among living beings. The possibility of this has been experimentally demonstrated by Messrs. Guthrie, Rawson, Schmoll, Lombroso and others.

A woman about thirty-five years old introduced to Mr. Richet by Fred. Myers, who did not know Greek - in fact, she was quite ignorant even of the alphabet - was able to write several pages in that language, deciphering with difficulty from a text of different printed works of which she seemed to have only a mental vision.1

Mr. Richet declares this fact inexplicable. According to him, any explanation is absurd. "Because these explanations are absurd," said he, "is that a reason for rejecting the facts? It would be a grave error to try, despite everything, to give a rational explanation to all the facts we do not understand."

And without doubt, it seems to me, the nearness of relationship which we deduct from these cases is a tentative move toward a rational explanation. I do not see that there is any absurdity in calling a cat a cat, and a human spirit a human spirit. In attributing similar effects to similar causes we do not make a distinction between an incarnate human being and a disembodied human being. But for Mr. Richet spirit is a convenient invention. In the same manner he declares, as savages explain hail, rain, and flashes of lightning by the actions of genii or devils, we would explain the incomprehensible phenomena of the spirits. We see in this interpretation a slight lack of coherence. For my part I declare without hesitation that if hail, rain and lightning seemed to me to be spiritual manifestations and if I obtained a certain fixed result in praying for hail and rain, then indeed, I would attribute this remarkable effect to an intelligent cause. The agent who gives these communications does, in a certain measure, what he is asked to do. Often he himself dictates the conditions of the attempted experiment, indicates whether we should take a pen and seat ourselves at a table or remain passive in awaiting a visual image, an auditory image, or a motive suggestion. And yet the objectors say: "There is nothing spiritual in all that, it is merely an unknown force." That may be, but this force possesses all the attributes of personality. When the agent who is the first cause of all these phenomena is suddenly forced to an action, it is often found to be the spirit of a living person who was capable of transmitting the image or the movement. This occurs, apparently, without the seeming participation of the human body, so that it is not absurd to say that the latter counts for nothing in the transmission of the thought: that this, in the case of deceased persons, is due to the animistic body, substantial and capable of exteriorization, which has our endowments. This we have shown by numbers of phenomena already cited. We have then the proof of an intervention from the Beyond each time that it becomes impossible to attribute to a living being an act which is beyond the organic possibilities of the medium, or of his acquired knowledge. Moreover, the intelligent agent varies his methods. Thus the automatic relaxation of the motive centers of a medium which could be explained by enthusiasm or impulse, cannot be explained in the same way if the agent produces the writing by movements which his organism has never produced before, as, for instance, is the case with the board. We know that there is a manner of spelling with a stationary board supplied with an arrow, which some unknown influence forces to journey towards different letters of the alphabet. The arms go through a new kind of gymnastics for which they have not been prepared by any previous training. It often happens that two persons may produce a phenomenon which separately they could not attain. It is evident then that if the movement were due to the awakening of certain unconscious activities, the union of the two pairs of hands would only impede the action.

1 A long study upon this interesting case is found in Annals of Psychic Science, June, 1905, Article of Chas. Richet entitled zenoglossy.