Telepathy and the Subliminal Self Part 12

The looms are complex and of varying patterns, for turning out different sorts of work. They are also used in various combinations, and there are various driving bands and connecting machinery by which they may severally be connected or disconnected, but the motive power which drives the whole is constant for all, and all works automatically to turn out the styles of goods that are needed.

"Now, how did I come to have my looms and driving-gear arranged in this particular way? Not, certainly, through any deliberate choice of my own.

My ancestor, the ascidian, in fact, inherited the business when it consisted of little more than a single spindle; since his day my nearer ancestors have added loom after loom."

Changes have been going on continually; some of the looms are now quite out of date, have long been unused, and are quite out of repair or fallen to pieces. Others are kept in order because the style of goods which they turn out is still useful and necessary. But the cla.s.s of goods called for has greatly changed of late. For instance, the machinery at present in operation is best adapted to turning out goods of a decidedly egoistic style, for self-preservation, persistence in the struggle for life, and for self-gratification; but a style is beginning to be called for of the altruistic pattern. For this kind of goods the machinery is not well adapted. It is old-fas.h.i.+oned, and changes are necessary. If there are any looms in the establishment unknown and unused which can be turned to account, or any way of modifying such as we have to meet the demand, it is for our interest to know it.

But the methods of adjustment, and arrangements for bringing new looms into operation are hidden and difficult of access, so we observe factories where spontaneous readjustments are going on and new looms, not known to have been in the establishment, are being brought automatically into action and are found to work fairly well. Such instances are found in the establishment of Felida X. or Louis V., from which valuable hints are obtained regarding changes and readjustments.

Furthermore, in hypnotism, we find a safe and, at the same time, powerful lever, for readjustment, by means of which in some establishments new looms can be brought into play and shut off again almost at will; and often while the new looms are at work doing good service we are able to get at the old ones, repair and modernize them so as to make them useful, and the immense value of hypnotism in this educational and reformatory work has hardly begun to be known or appreciated. A single instance out of many must suffice for ill.u.s.tration.

In the summer of 1884 there was at the Salpetriere a young woman of a deplorable type, Jeanne S., who was a criminal lunatic, filthy, violent, and with a life history of impurity and crime. M. Auguste Voisin, one of the physicians of the staff, undertook to hypnotize her May 31st. At that time she was so violent that she could only be kept quiet by a strait-jacket and the constant cold douche to her head. She would not look at M. Voisin, but raved and spat at him. He persisted, kept his face near and opposite to hers, and his eyes following hers constantly. In ten minutes she was in a sound sleep, and soon pa.s.sed into the somnambulistic condition. The process was repeated many days, and gradually she became sane while in the hypnotic condition, but still raved when she awoke.

Gradually, then, she began to accept hypnotic suggestion, and would obey trivial orders given her while asleep, such as to sweep her room, etc.; then suggestions regarding her general behavior; then, in her hypnotic condition, she began to express regret for her past life and form resolutions of amendment, which she fully adhered to when she awoke. Two years later she was a nurse in one of the Paris hospitals, and her conduct was irreproachable. M. Voisin has followed up this case by others equally striking.

Such is an imperfect sketch of the discoveries, experiments, and studies which have been made in the domain of human personality. It is merely a sketch, and certainly it is in no spirit of dogmatism that it is presented; but as a collection of facts relating to human nature and the const.i.tution and action of the human mind, it is at least curious.

It need not destroy our convictions regarding the essential unity of personality, but it must necessarily enlarge our conceptions of what _const.i.tutes an individual_, and how under various circ.u.mstances that individual may act.

From many points of view, and in relation to many departments of study and of human development--legal, moral, social, and educational--the subject presents important bearings; and, furthermore, in the solution of other psychological problems it will be found to possess the greatest possible interest and value.

CHAPTER VII.

AUTOMATISM--PLANCHETTE.

Our ordinary actions, both physical and mental, are, for the most part, subject to our own voluntary guidance and choice. Of this, at least, we feel sure. We work, walk, talk, play upon an instrument, read a book, or write a letter, because we choose to do these things; and ordinarily they are done under the full guidance of our will and intelligence. Sometimes, however, actions are performed by us without our choice or guidance, and even without our consciousness, and such actions are called automatic. The thrifty housewife, perhaps also being of a literary turn of mind, may become deeply absorbed in an exciting novel, while at the same time her busy fingers, without thought or effort on her part, skilfully ply the knitting needles, or her well accustomed foot, with gentle motion, rocks the cradle.

During an exciting conversation, or the absorbing consideration of some important subject or problem, the act of walking is performed without will or consciousness; the pianoforte player runs his scales and roulades with marvellous rapidity and precision while reading a book or carrying on an animated conversation. Such actions are performed automatically.

When we come to examine a large number of actions performed in this automatic manner, we observe that they exhibit great diversity in the kind and degree of automatism displayed in their performance. In the cases above mentioned the mind is simply altogether engaged in doing one thing, and at the same time the muscles go on without any conscious direction or supervision, doing altogether another thing, but generally something which they had before been accustomed to do. This is often called absent-mindedness; it is also one of the most common and simple forms of automatism. We set the machine to work, and it goes itself.

Another kind of automatism is that which often appears in connection with peculiar gifts or talents, and is especially a.s.sociated with genius. It is seen, for example, in the poet and the orator, and in those capable of improvisation, especially in music or in verse. The pianist or organist seats himself at the instrument without the remotest idea of what he is to perform--he simply commences. The theme he is to present, the various melodies, harmonies, changes, and modulations which come at his touch are often as much a surprise and delight to himself as to the most interested listener. Something within him furnishes and formulates the ideas, and causes him to express them artistically upon the instrument of his choice without any effort, or even supervision of his own--he is simply conscious of what is produced--but if he should undertake consciously to guide or in any way interfere with the production, the extraordinary beauty and excellence of the performance would at once cease.

Still another kind of automatism is ill.u.s.trated in somnambulism. The somnambulist arises from his bed in his sleep, and proceeds to prepare a meal or work out a mathematical problem or write a thesis or a letter, or sometimes to describe distant scenes and events transpiring far away. Here the actions, both physical and mental, are performed, not only without the exercise of the actor's own choice or control, but he has no knowledge of them whatever. They are altogether outside the domain of his consciousness, and have their origin in some centre of intelligence quite apart from his own ordinary consciousness, and they only appear or find expression through his physical organization. Let us examine a little more closely into these different forms of automatism.

Twenty-five years ago a curious little piece of mechanism--apparently half toy and half an instrument for amateur conjuring--made its appearance in the windows of the toyshops and bookstores of the United States. It was a little heart-shaped piece of mahogany, or other hard wood, about seven inches by five in dimensions, with two casters serving for feet at the base of the heart, while a closely-fitting pencil pa.s.sed through a hole at the point or apex.

Thus a tripod was formed, moving with perfect ease and freedom in any direction, while the pencil, which formed the third foot, left its plain and continuous tracing wherever the instrument was moved.

This little toy was called Planchette, and wonderful tales were told of its strange performances when rightly used. Evenly adjusted upon a plain wood table, if a properly-const.i.tuted person placed his or her finger-tips lightly upon its surface, it soon began to move about, without any muscular effort or any wish or will on the part of the operator; a broad, smooth sheet of paper being placed beneath it upon the table, figures, words, and sentences were plainly traced by the pencil, all in the style of a veritable oracle, and greatly to the delight of the curious, the wonder of the superst.i.tious, and the mystification of people generally.

Not every one, however, could command the services of the modern oracle; only to the touch of a certain few was it responsive; to the many it was still and silent as a sphinx. One in ten, perhaps, could obtain a scrawl; one in twenty, intelligible sentences, and one in a hundred could produce remarkable results. Few persons witnessing its performances under favorable circ.u.mstances failed to be interested, but different people looked at it from quite different standpoints. The habitual doubter saw in it only a well-managed trick, which, however, he failed to detect; the spiritualist saw undoubted evidence of spiritual manifestations, while the great majority of common-sense people saw writing done, evidently without will or effort on the part of the writer, producing messages of every grade, from the most commonplace twaddle, foolishness, and even falsehood, to the exhibition of intelligence of a high order, a sparkling wit, and a perception of events, past, present, and sometimes even of those still in the future, most acute and unusual. What was the cause of these involuntary movements, or whence came the messages written, they did not know, and few even cared to speculate.

That was twenty-five years ago, and the two theories already alluded to were about the only ones adduced to account for the phenomena. Dr.

Carpenter's theory of "unconscious cerebration" and "unconscious muscular action" did not cover the ground; there was altogether too much cerebration not to have a consciousness connected with it in some way. The theory did not cover the facts. Twenty-five years have failed to detect the long-talked-of trick of the skeptic; they have also failed to substantiate the claim of spiritualists, and Planchette-writing is almost as much a mystery as ever.

Fairly studied, then, what does Planchette really do? From a physical standpoint its performances are simply automatic writing or drawing. To deny the automatic character of the movements of Planchette at this day is simply absurd. That writing can be produced with it voluntarily, no one doubts, but that it generally is produced automatically, that is, without the choice or control of the writers, and without their knowledge of what is being written, it would be waste of time here to attempt to prove; the theory of fraud is untenable, and the real question at issue is the psychical one, namely, whence come the messages which it brings?

These messages may be divided into three general cla.s.ses: (1) Those which are trivial or irrelevant. (2) Those which show intelligence and have some unmistakable relation to the subject of which they purport to give information, but all of which is known either to the writers or some person present. (3) Those which bring, or profess to bring, information unknown in any way, either to the writer or any person present.

The first of these divisions need not detain us, though it contains a very large share of all the messages received, as it simply ill.u.s.trates the fact of automatism, which is equally well ill.u.s.trated in the other cla.s.ses of messages, which are of a more interesting character. The second cla.s.s, namely, messages which show intelligence and have an unmistakable relation to the subject concerning which information is asked, and yet contain nothing beyond the knowledge of the writers or of persons present, is also very large.

The following is a sketch of my own first experience with Planchette. I may remark that subsequent trials brought out the fact that for myself alone Planchette will do nothing; it will not even move a hair's-breadth; but when, as is often the case, two persons are needed for success, I am often selected by Planchette to a.s.sist when it is consulted in the matter.

On one occasion, I was calling at a friend's house, in the spring of 1868.

Planchette was then much in vogue, and one stood on a side-table in the room. A young daughter of my friend--a school-girl fifteen or sixteen years of age--remarked that Planchette would move and sometimes even write for her, and she asked me to join her in a trial. I consented, and, to our surprise, the moment our fingers were placed lightly upon the instrument it moved off with great energy. Questions were then asked, and the answers were written with promptness and intelligence, greatly to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the company. Desiring to know who our mysterious correspondent might be, we politely said, "Planchette, will you kindly inform us who it is that writes these answers?" to which it replied, "Peter Stuyvesant."

"Old Governor Stuyvesant?" we asked.

"Yes," was the reply.

Now it so happened that a short time previous to our seance the old pear tree, known as the Stuyvesant pear tree, which had stood for more than two hundred years at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue, having become decayed and tottering, was thrown down by a blow from a pa.s.sing truck and had been ruthlessly chopped to pieces by workmen; and the event had been generally noticed and commented upon. Accordingly we replied,

"We are very glad to hear from you, Governor. How about the old pear tree?"

To this a reply was promptly written, but neither of us had the slightest idea what it might be. The young lady took up the paper and commenced to read, but was shocked and greatly confused to find, clearly written, in a hand quite foreign to us both, "It's a ---- ---- shame!" the blanks here being filled by the most emphatic expletives, and without the slightest abbreviation.

Another excellent Planchette-writer was Miss V., a friend of the family, who was spending a few days at my house in March, 1889. She was a young German lady of unusual intelligence, vivacity, and good sound sense. She knew of spiritualism only by pa.s.sing remarks which she might have heard, and had never either seen or heard of Planchette. She was herself a somnambulist, or, rather, a somniloquist, for she never walked in her sleep, but talked with the greatest ease, carrying on long conversations without the slightest memory afterwards of what had been said. She was also an excellent hypnotic subject, and the suggested effects of medicines were much more prompt and certain than the effect of the medicines themselves, when used in the ordinary way.

For experiment one evening I proposed that we should try Planchette. As soon as our fingers were placed upon the instrument, it moved off across the table with the greatest promptness, and at once it replied to questions with unusual appropriateness and intelligence. The astonishment of Miss V. was altogether too profound and too apparent to admit of any suspicion of collusion on her part, and she had seen that the board would not move for me alone, yet she could not be persuaded that when we wrote together there was not some trick, and that I did not move the board voluntarily to produce the writing.

At length a message came concerning one of her own relatives, of whom she was sure that I could have no knowledge whatever, and she was convinced that at all events that message could not have originated with me.

Accordingly she became a most valuable and interested partner in the experiments, and the chief medium through whom Planchette gave its communications.

Our sittings continued four or five consecutive evenings, and hundreds of communications and answers to questions were given by different intelligences or personalities, with entirely different modes of expression and different kinds of writing; some were religious, some philosophical, some were anxious to give advice, and some were profane; this last-mentioned phase appearing especially if we were persistent in inquiring too closely into the ident.i.ty and former condition of the communicating personality.

On one occasion a message was written which was so strange in its appearance that none of us could at first make it out. At length we discovered some familiar negro phrase, and applying this key, we found we had a message of regular plantation negro talk, bearing a very strong resemblance to Uncle Remus's talk to the little boy, which some of us had just been reading. On asking who the "intelligence" was, it wrote, "Oh, I'se a good ole c.o.o.n."

Neither Miss V. nor myself had ever heard such a dialect spoken, nor knew that any sort of person of the negro race was ever called a "c.o.o.n."

On another occasion, Miss V. was anxious to know and asked Planchette if a relative of hers, whom she named, was staying in town that night. The answer came, "Yes." "Where is he stopping?" Answer: "At the H. House."

"What is he doing now?" Answer: "He has just finished his dinner, settled his bill at the cas.h.i.+er's desk, and is now walking up Broadway with his cousin." She afterward learned that this information was correct in every particular.

On the last evening of our experiments the force displayed in the writing was something surprising. Miss V. always experienced a certain amount of pain in her arms while writing, as if she were holding the electrodes of a battery through which a mild current was pa.s.sing. On this occasion the pain was almost unbearable, so that she frequently cried out, and was obliged to remove her hands from the board for relief.

The writing was so violent that it could be heard in the next room, and at times it seemed as though the board would surely be broken. Seeing so much force exhibited, I allowed my fingers merely to touch the surface of the board, but so lightly that my hands did not move with it at all, but simply retained contact, the board sliding along beneath them. The writing continued with just the same violence. I then called the attention of Miss V. to what I was doing, and requested her to adjust her hands in a similar manner. She did so, and the instrument continued to write several words, with gradually diminis.h.i.+ng force, moving under our hands, while our hands did not follow at all the movements of the instrument, until at length it gradually stopped, like a machine when the power is turned off.

Miss V. does not reside in the city, but while I was writing this chapter she was in town, and spent a few hours at my house. We were both anxious to try Planchette again. When we placed our fingers upon the board, the writing commenced at once, and intelligent answers were given to about twenty questions, some of the answers, especially those relating to distant friends, being quite contrary to our impressions and our hopes, but they were afterward found to be true.

We remembered the experiment just related, which was made more than four years ago. The force on this occasion was not at all to be compared with what it was then, but we said, "Now, Planchette, we want to ask a favor of you; will you repeat the experiment of four years ago, and move under our hands, while our hands remain stationary?" It replied, "Since you are so polite, I will try; perhaps I can move it a little."

We then planted our elbows firmly upon the table, curved our wrists, so as to allow the tips of our fingers to rest in the lightest possible manner upon the surface of the board. Four of us were watching with great interest for the result. After a moment's hesitation, slowly the board moved nearly an inch and stopped, but the movement was so obvious and decided, and without any movement of our hands, that a simultaneous shout went up from us all, and "Well done, Planchette!" The experiment was successfully repeated several times, the tracing of the pencil in each case showing a movement of from one to two inches.

A most valuable series of experiments in Planchette-writing was recently carried on by the late Rev. Mr. Newnham, vicar of Maker, Davenport, England, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, together with his wife. They were fully reported to Mr. F. W. H. Myers, secretary of the society.

The experiments extended over a period of eight months, and more than three hundred questions and answers were recorded. Mrs. Newnham alone was the operator, and the important peculiarity in these experiments was, that although quite in her normal condition, yet in no instance here related did she see the question written to which she wrote the answer, nor did she hear it asked, nor did she have any conscious knowledge, either of question or answer, until the answer was written and read. She sat upon a low chair at a low table some eight or ten feet from her husband, while he sat at a rather high table, with his back to her. In this position he silently wrote out the questions, it being impossible for her to see either the paper, the motion of his hand, or the expression of his face, and their good faith, as well as that of many intelligent witnesses, is pledged to the truth of this statement.