material expression, have partly understood what Professor
Newbold wanted to say, without knowing in what language it was
expressed. If they did not understand wholly and completely, it would be
because a thought expressed in a foreign language has in our minds a
certain vagueness. We might go further; we might suppose that Mrs
Piper's subconsciousness perceives the thought directly, independently
of the form in which it is expressed. Mrs Piper has often pronounced
words and short sentences in foreign languages. Phinuit likes to say,
"Bonjour, comment vous portez vous? Au revoir!" and to count in French.
Mme. Elisa, an Italian, the dead sister of Mrs Howard, succeeded in
writing or pronouncing some short sentences in more or less odd Italian.
I find also at a sitting where the communicator was supposed to be a
young Hawaian three or four words of Hawaian very appropriate to the
circumstances. Mrs Piper is ignorant of all this in her normal state. I
have just said that spirits--if there are spirits--perceive thought
directly. They themselves tell us this. On the other hand, they do not
perceive matter, which is non-existent to them. This brings me to a new
feature of the sittings, principally of those with George Pelham. If
this feature does not increase the proofs of identity, it is at least an
evidence of the abnormal powers of the medium.[61] George Pelham is
asked to go and see what a certain person is doing at a given time and
to come back and relate it. He goes, and partially succeeds. This is
what appears to happen: if the act is strongly conceived in the mind of
the person he is watching, he perceives it clearly; if it is nearly
automatic, he perceives it vaguely; if it is wholly automatic, he does
not perceive it at all. He often says that actions have occurred which
have only been planned and not executed, at other times he reports past
actions as present. This is because spirits have not, it appears, a
clear notion of time. I have unfortunately neither time nor space to
give examples of this.

Can we say that the communicator George Pelham has never made a
partially or wholly erroneous assertion? No. But the number of such
assertions is very small, which was not the case when Phinuit reigned
alone. Here is one such assertion, at which there has been much
cavilling; people have insisted on seeing in it the stamp of Mrs Piper
and her social environment, and not at all the stamp of the aristocratic
George Pelham.