When a medium who writes takes the pen and indicates with great precision the means of finding a lost article, people at once say: "Cryptomnesia," but the medium is altogether a stranger to those who consult her on the lost article, and if the consultant has not lost this article himself, there can be no question of cryptomnesia. This knowledge must exist elsewhere than in the memory, and some intelligence must formulate the phrase which can start the motive mechanism only by an active thought: and an intelligence is necessary, foreign to the medium and the consultant, in order to know what neither of them could know.

I believe, all the more, in the intervention of an occult intelligence, as the motor center is incapable of producing anything but movement. Neither is it easy to explain writing in a mirror, writing backwards, the inversion of letters and syllables, etc. These games are difficult and would necessitate sustained attention. They certainly are not born in the thought of the audience: they are the automatic reflection of something which is thought in the Beyond.

Sometimes the intelligence versifies and exacts an answer in rhyme. These are indications that we are not concerned with ganglionary intelligences.

Cryptomnesia - Cryptomnesia! Now, we believe that a conscious cerebration is necessary for a coherent wording. If these things reflect the mentality of the experimenters, it is because there is somewhere an intelligence which gives the form and expression to their own thought which it reflects.

In vain you will call that subconsciousness. These are thoroughly active states of consciousness, capable as we of influencing an organism, and knowing our language, philosophy, and sciences. They are cognizant of the effects they have produced. I should be interested to meet an opponent capable of maintaining that an unconscious person can act in a state of unconsciousness. They are not rare, however, those naive people who still believe that psychic phenomena receive some elucidation from the theory of the unconscious agent.

It is time to denounce this nonsense. Subconsciousness is the life of the heart and stomach: it is my digestion. Subconsciousness is also the mechanism of what is already very well known, that no longer has need of conscious direction: the cyclist holds his equilibrium subconsciously. It is, then, at the most, memory, insofar as it functions without attracting the attention of the subject. This is active subconsciousness, and I defy anyone to point out another.

Automatic writing is a motive action exercised over the head of the subject in his inferior organs. This action reveals an autonomous intelligence and a knowledge foreign to the medium.

Sometimes the subconscious agent is not content to act intelligently: it might also act physically in suppressing effort and fatigue.

Nor should we forget the speaking medium. The process is always the same, that is to say, a force which passes over the will of the subject coerces his organs: and this force always gives proof of intelligence and special knowledge. For instance, the special knowledge will be in speaking a language unknown to the medium. The foreign influence must be indispensable here.

Sometimes great forces seem to be unloosed. Thus, during the persecutions which followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, an unknown power invaded a whole region. In Dauphine, in Cevennes very little children who had never spoken a word, in sections where they spoke mostly a patois, would deliver in excellent French most remarkable discourses, which revived the courage of the persecuted. The Catholic children, inspired by the same force, spoke with the same import as the Protestants, that is, against their own church. This special case is no more clearly explained by fanaticism than by subconsciousness. Whoever is possessed by this influence has no idea of the words spoken until he has given them utterance. A case which it is not possible to challenge, is that of the daughter of Judge Edmund; the force which mastered her organs made her speak ten or twelve languages, perhaps more.

And these are not the only motive faculties which fall under the domination of a foreign power: there are still the sensitive faculties.

Note well this difference. Just now, we passed over the subject's will to make use of his organs: now we shall efface before him the existing realities in order to penetrate more easily into his sensibility. It is the real world which has entirely disappeared, to give place for a symbolic vision: it is anaesthesia imposed upon exterior organs before the image shows itself, before the vision appears, whose aim would seem incontestable and whose usefulness immediate.

Thus it is that a lady sees the image of her mother lying upon the floor and, without inquiring into her vision, goes to find the doctor before returning home and saves the patient by going direct to the scene of the accident.

At other times it is the auditory sense which is affected. Doctor Smith, alone in his study, hears these words: "Send some bread to the house of James Gandy." The doctor does not know the address and hesitates. "Send some bread to the house of James Gandy," the same voice repeats more strongly, and three times he hears the same injunction. At the bakery, a young boy is found at the door of the shop and is ordered to carry bread to this address which is unknown to the doctor: there the children are crying with hunger, before their mother, who is praying God to send her something.1

Oh, I know the explanation that will be given! - the emotional state of the mother was such that it struck the percipiency of the good doctor. All of that does not explain the auditory phenomenon in the form in which it was perceived. Here took place what I call mirror action, an intelligence which receives the prayer of the mother, and which produces the sensorial hallucination in creating the formula adapted to the circumstances. There are many cases, to my knowledge, where some particularly united persons have perceived these emotional states at a distance. It was then the psychic bond which established a direct communication: but in these cases the sensitive one heard the same words which had been spoken or thought a great distance from him. Here is another consideration: the doctor did not hear, "Oh God, send me some bread:" he did not hear, "I am hungry, Mother," nor any other word of the scene itself: he merely received a reiterated summons. The emotional state which struck him was not that of an imploring person, but that of one who commands. I do not see what telepathic process could thus transpose the effects. I see nothing other than conscious and reflecting intelligence. Nor is telepathy a source that may be invoked when the phenomenon interests only one person.

1 Case 287 - Phantasms of the Living.