nly one
hypothesis can cover every branch of these manifestations, and that is
the system of extraneous life and action which has always, for seventy
years, held the field for any reasonable mind which had impartially
considered the facts.

I have spoken of the need for careful and cool-headed analysis in
judging the evidence where automatic writing is concerned. One is
bound to exclude spirit explanations until all natural ones have been
exhausted, though I do not include among natural ones the extreme
claims of far-fetched telepathy such as that another person can read in
your thoughts things of which you were never yourself aware. Such
explanations are not explanations, but mystifications and absurdities,
though they seem to have a special attraction for a certain sort of
psychical researcher, who is obviously destined to go on researching to
the end of time, without ever reaching any conclusion save that of the
patience of those who try to follow his reasoning. To give a good
example of valid automatic script, chosen out of many which I could
quote, I would draw the reader's attention to the facts as to the
excavations at Glastonbury, as detailed in "The Gate of Remembrance" by
Mr. Bligh Bond. Mr. Bligh Bond, by the way, is not a Spiritualist, but
the same cannot be said of the writer of the automatic script, an
amateur medium, who was able to indicate the secrets of the buried
abbey, which were proved to be correct when the ruins were uncovered.
I can truly say that, though I have read much of the old monastic life,
it has never been brought home to me so closely as by the messages and
descriptions of dear old Brother Johannes, the earth-bound
spirit--earthbound by his great love for the old abbey in which he had
spent his human life. This book, with its practical sequel, may be
quoted as an excellent example of automatic writing at its highest, for
what telepathic explanation can cover the detailed description of
objects which lie unseen by any human eye? It must be admitted,
however, that in automatic writing you are at one end of the telephone,
if one may use such a simile, and you have, no assurance as to who is
at the other end. You may have wildly false messages suddenly
interpolated among truthful ones--messages so detailed in their
mendacity that it is impossible to think that they are not deliberately
false. When once we have accepted the central fact that spirits change
little in essentials when