THE UNCONSCIOUS SELF.

THE cheap fun levelled at the Society for Psychical Research will not prevent those who really care, we will not say as yet to understand, but even to trace the exact outline of, some of the most curious of the facts of human nature, from studying the evidence it accumulates, and also the attempts of the abler members of the Society to suggest the direction in which we might most hopefully look for an explanation. The seventh and eighth numbers of the " Proceedings " of the Society, the former issued in December last, and tho

latter in the month just expired, contain especially interesting papers by Mr. F. W. H. Myers on what is known as "automatic writing,"—papera which ought to excite the deepest interest in all those who have satisfied themselves that the phenomena of automatic writing really occur. But they contain, we think, though a very subtle, a very premature attempt to explain these phenomena,—assumed, of course, as genuine,—on the principle of a greatly extended conception of the agency of what we may call "the unconscious self," or what Dr. Carpenter has termed "unconscious cerebration." We greatly doubt whether the phenomena themselves are traced out as yet with sufficient

definiteness to render a rationale of them anything but premature.

The phenomena referred to are such as the following. Professor Henry Sidgwiek, who spent some days, twenty years ago, with a friend who had this power of automatic writing, gives the following account of the only remarkable feature in that writing which he witnessed:—

" At the end of my visit we were both agreed that there was no ground for attributing the phenomenon to any other cause but unconscious cerebration. At the same time we were continually surprised by evidences of the extent to which his unconscious self was able to puzzle his conscious mind. As a rule, he knew what he was writing, though he wrote involuntarily ; but from time to time he used to form words or conjunctions of letters which we were unable to make out at first, though they had a meaning which we ultimately discovered. Thus one evening, just as we were about to break up, the capital letters K HAIR. ETE were written ; their meaning will not be obscure to you, but it so happened that it did not at first &Near to us that K U represented the Greek x, so that we had no idea what tho letters meant, and tried various solutions till the true signification (' Farewell') suddenly flashed upon my mind. On another occasion I asked a question of the supposed communicating intelligence, and requested that the answer might be given in German, a 1auguage which my friend was unable to read or write, though he had learnt to speak one or two words while travelling in the country. His hand proceeded to write what was apparently one long word, which seemed to him absolutely without meaning; but when I came to read it I could see that it was composed of a number of German words, though put together without proper grammatical terminations; and that these words suggested—though they could hardly be said to convey—what would have been a proper and significant answer to my question. The words were all common words, such as he might have heard in conversation; and when I had separated them, and told him their meaning, he seemed faintly to recognise some of them."

Now, the question is how far this explanation of the origin of the Anglicised x:apETE,—the Greek "farewell,"—which neither the writer nor the witness understood till they had puzzled it out,—or of the composite German words bereft of their terminations, and made up of elements of which the writer seemed to have some dim recollection when they were explained to him, though not before, is not premature. Certainly it is one not consistent with the principles on which we generally act ourselves, and on which we interpret the actions of others; and therefore we ought to hesitate to adopt it, until it is absolutely forced upon us. Mr. Myers contends that it is at least as consistent with these prin oiples as it is to ascribe the solution of a mathematical problem to a somnambulist who is absolutely unconscious of having got up from his bed, sat down to his desk, and worked

out the solution, and who retains not the slightest memory of any such proceeding ; and there are, we believe, undoubted cases in which it can be established by witnesses as trustworthy as Mr.

Sidgwick, that such feats have been done by somnambulists, in whose memory there remains not a trace of the achievement. However, there is this difference between the two cases, that as we all have experience of the complete forgetfulness which overtakes us as to very elaborate processes gone through in sleep, we have a certain amount of ground for accepting the somnambulist's statement that whether he worked out the mathematical problem for himself, or whether he did it under the mental influence of some other and abler mathematician, he had forgotten completely his share in an undertaking which was carried through in sleep. But in the case of Mr. Sidgwick's friend, there was no sleep. If, as Mr. Myers seems to suppose, the right side of the operator's brain devised a dramatic Greek farewell to the left side of his own brain and the whole of Mr. Sidgwick's, and not only devised it, but spelled it out in English letters, two of which (" k " and "h ") were intended as the equivalent of one Greek letter (" x "), and if it effected all this without betraying to the left side of the operator's brain what it was about,—if all this happened, we say, then we think the principles of evidence must be reconsidered altogether. For, if this were so, why should not any man in that passive state of mind which is supposed to favour these feats, draw cheques automatically with the right side of his brain on the firm to which the whole man belongs, and not only'draw the cheques, but enclose them, duly crossed, sealed, and stamped, to his banker, to be paid into his private account, and then disavow all knowledge of what he had done with the normal or left side of his brain There is some sort of security against somnambulist proceedings of this kind, because the friends of a known somnambulist will carefully watch his proceedings, and may take securities for his being able to undo in waking hours what he may have done—without the proper right to do it—in sleep. But if this kind of feat may be done unconsciously in full waking hours, we hardly know what the limits of responsibility would be. Should we believe any one who pleaded that though a libel appeared to be of his own writing, and had been apparently composed and sent off by himself, it yet

emanated from the right side of his brain, and had never been warranted or even taken into consideration at all by himself in the

sense in which he ordinarily uses thatterm ? Mr. Myers, of course, would reply that in cases of this kind the alternative lies between two explanations, either of which is equally beyond the limits of normal experience, and that if we are to find fault with an explanation on the ground that a judge and jury would never listen to it we must give up all attempt at explanation at all. And that, of course, is true so far as it goes. But still we think that an explanation which admits a dual self utterly paralysing to the sense of responsibility, because it ascribes deliberately to the man, and to the man in his waking hours, actions of which he has neither

consciousness nor memory, and with which, indeed, he has com

pletely puzzled himself, is, we will not say a worse, but a more dangerous, suggestion towards an explanation of the problem than any other, and certainly not one to be even provisionally considered till we have arrived at a much more definite conception of the facts to be explained, than any we can find in the Society's records.

For Mr. Myers shows us, in another stance of what he 1 i believes to be a well-accredited phenomenon of automatic writing, how very much he has to assume as matter of fact even beyond what is assumed in his hypothesis concerning that friend of Mr. Sidgwick's who puzzled himself and Mr. Sidgwick by writing, in English letters, his Greek farewell. Mr. Myers gives us the case of a vast number of written questions put by a clergyman, the Rev. P. H. Newnham, and answered by his wife (who had no notion even as to what the subject-matter of the questions might be) through the medium of "automatic writing" which took place under the following conditions. AU the writing was effected with what is called a planchette :—

"The little instrument called Planchette is mainly useful in precluding this kind of interruption" [the interruption caused by the operator's own surprise or curiosity concerning the substance of the automatic writing]. "It is, of course, simply a piece of board supported on three legs, one of which legs is a pencil, so that if a hand be placed flat on the board, and if that hand be then moved as though tracing letters, the board will move accordingly, and the pencil will rudely trace out the letters which the hand's movement figures. Of course, it is perfectly easy to write consciously with a Planchette, and to be aware of the letters which the pencil is shaping. But the point is that if there is a tendency already existing to automatic writing, it ia much easier to write automatically or unconsciously with the Planchette than without it."

But according to the evidence, the planchette was not ordinarily used by Mrs. Newnham in any way in which she could have written a sentence proceeding from her own mind. Mr. Newnham says that his wife "always sat in a low chair leaning backwards." "As a rule, she kept her eyes shut ; hut never became in the slightest degree hypnotic or even drowsy ":—

" 1. The question to be asked is written down before the Planchette is set in motion. This question as a rule is never known to the operator. 2. Whenever an evasive or other answer is returned, necessitating one or more new questions to be put, before a clear answer can be obtained, the operator is not to be made aware of any of these questions, or even of the general subject to which they allude, until the final answer has been obtained."

"I may mention," Mr. Newnham adds, "that the planchette began to move instantly with my wife. The answer was often half written before I had completed the question." These being, then, the conditions, that no word of the question was ever read aloud, that Mrs. Newnham could not see Mr. Newnham as he wrote, and that she never knew the subject on which he was going to put questions, further that she often only touched the planchette "with a single finger" (p. 12), and that, even when all her fingers were resting on the board, she never had the slightest idea of what words were being traced out,—the following were the sort of questions written, and the written answers obtained. (We should add that all these experiments were made and carefully noted by Mr. and Mrs. Newnham some years before the formation of the Society for Psychical Research, and with no intention at all at the time, of ever making them public) :— " I had a young man reading with me as a private pupil at this time. On February 12th he returned from his vacation ; and on being told of our experiments, expressed his incredulity very strongly. I offered any proof that he liked to insist upon, only stipulating that I should see the question asked. Accordingly Mrs. Newnham took her accustomed chair in my study, while we went out into the hall, and shut the door behind us. He then wrote down on a piece of paper :-87. What is the Christian name of my eldest sister ? We at once returned to the study, and found the answer already waiting for us :—A. Mina. (This name was the family abbreviation of Wilhelmina : and I should add that it was unknown to my self.) 182. Write out the prayer used at the advancement of a Mark Master Mason. A. Almighty Ruler of the Universe and Architect of all worlds, we beseech thee to accept this, our brother, whom we have this day received into our most honourable Company of Mark Master Masons. Grant him to be a worthy member of our brotherhood ; and may he be in his own person a perfect mirror of all Masonic virtues. Grant that all oar doings may be to thy honour and glory, and to the welfare of all mankind.' This prayer was written off instantaneously and very rapidly. It is a very remarkable production indeed. For the benefit of those who are not members of the craft, I may say that no prayer in the slightest degree resembling it is made use of in the Ritual of any Masonic degree; and yet it contains more than one strictly accurate technicality connected with the degree of Mark Mason. My wife has never seen any Masonic prayers whether in or any other real or spurious Ritual of the Masonic Order. Here then, assuredly, was a formula composed by some intelligence totally distinct from the conscious intelligence of either of the persona engaged in the experiment. I

proceeded to inquire as follows :-183. I do not know this prayer. Where is it to be found ? A. Old American Ritual.-184. Where can I get one ? A. Most likely none in England.-185. Can you not write the prayer that I make use of in my own Lodge ? A. No, I don't know it.—In these last answers we see a new moral element introduced. There is evasion, or subterfuge, of a more or less ingenious kind ; and totally foreign to the whole character and natural disposition of the operator."

Now, assuming Mr. anti Mrs. Newnham's good-faith, which, under the circumstances, there is absolutely no reason to doubt, we submit that Mr. Myers is going a great deal too fast when, in his very subtle and interesting essay, he attributes such results as these to so highly complex and marvellous a cause as the influence of Mr. Newnham's (or, in the case first quoted above, Mr. Newnham's friend's) mind on Mrs. Newnham's "unconscious self" as represented by the right side of her brain, and supposes that all these answers, of which she declares that she had no knowledge, were in some mysterious way dictated to her fingers by the cerebration of a portion of her brain which left no trace of its operations in her consciousness. Surely there was a great deal to find out before matters were ripe for a theory at all. We are assured that Mrs. Newnharo, leaning back in her chair, sitting with her eyes shut, and a single finger on the planchette, could get long and rapid

answers on subjects not in the least present to her thoughts. Now, could not the Psychical Society have made a series of experiments to discover how far such results can be repeated and

verified; how far the physical movements of the planchette said to have taken place, could, or could not, be produced voluntarily by any one sitting leaning back in a chair with only one finger on the planchette and her eyes shut ; and finally, how far anything of the kind would take place supposing the operator personally

to be unable either to read or write? Surely, if Mrs. Newnham was, as we are here told, "perfectly unable to follow the motions

of the planehette," they were not produced by any such use of her fingers as that by which Professor Sidgwick's friend wrote "khairete." He knew at least as much as this, that he was forming, first a "k," then an "h," and so forth, though he did not know what word he was writing, and did not even recognise the Greek word when it was written; but if Mrs. Newnham's evidence is trustworthy, she wrote by an instrumentality which would render it a very slow business to write at all, even with all her wits about her, and yet wrote very rapidly, and without the use of her eyes, or any conscious direction from her fingers, sentences of the purport of which she knew nothing from beginning to end. Now, if such writing is possible at all, surely it is a great fact which should be fully established before we begin to go into such tremendous hypotheses as that of the unconscious self writing down at length elaborate sentences into the drift of which it had not itself the slightest glimpse, and by the aid of a machinery specially adapted for rendering conscious writing difficult. Surely we ought to have it established by a number of instances that there is such a thing as writing, while awake and in full command of your mind, without the smallest consciousness either of the individual letters or of the whole word which your hands are forming. Surely pains should be taken to clear up,—and it could not be very difficult to clear up,—the doubt whether the motions of the planchette correspond to the motion of the finger placed on it or not. If the negative were proved, the same phenomenon might clearly happen with an operator who did not know how either to read or to write. And if that could be established, we should be in presence of a problem both more limited, and on that account more soluble, than the one which Mr. Myers brings all his subtle analysis to meet. Let ne clear up the physical conditions of the case first. Do the fingers of the operators by planchette really direct its motion or not ? If they do, the problem is of one kind; if they do no it is of a very different kind; but surely that is a question admitting of a positive answer. As we understand Mrs. Newnham's assertion, the planchette moved under her fingers, but was not moved by her fingers. If this were so,—and this could be tested and deter mined,—is there any evidence that her intelligence was con cerned in the operation ? If it were so, if the movements of the planchette were dne to the movement of her fingers,—Mr. Myers's speculations may be relevant; but why not make them relevant by determining the simpler fact first? It seems to us that the Society for Psychical Research goes into deeper questions before it has determined the simpler questions. Why not get a skilful mechanician to determine whether the force under which the planchette moves in a considerable number of cases, is exerted by the hand of the operator,—or, as Mrs. Nevrnham appeals to think, not so exerted,—before we go on to discuss the

questions which only arise if the operator's own account of the matter is mistaken?