803. But in what way then, it will be asked, do you distinguish the supernormal from the merely abnormal? Why assume that in these aberrant states there is anything besides hysteria, besides epilepsy, besides insanity?

The answer to this question has virtually been given in previous chapters of this book. The reader is already accustomed to the point of view which regards all psychical as well as all physiological activities as necessarily either developmental or degenerative, tending to evolution or to dissolution. And now, whilst altogether waiving any teleological speculation, I will ask him hypothetically to suppose that an evolutionary nisus, something which we may represent as an effort towards self-development, self-adaptation, self-renewal, is discernible especially on the psychical side of at any rate the higher forms of life. Our question, Supernormal or abnormal? - may then be phrased, Evolutive or dissolutive? And in studying each psychical phenomenon in turn we shall have to inquire whether it indicates a mere degeneration of powers already acquired, or, on the other hand, the "promise and potency," if not the actual possession, of powers as yet unrecognised or unknown.

Thus, for instance, Telepathy is surely a step in evolution.1 To learn the thoughts of other minds without the mediation of the special senses, manifestly indicates the possibility of a vast extension of psychical powers. And any knowledge which we can amass as to the conditions under which telepathic action takes place, will form a valuable starting-point for an inquiry as to the evolutive or dissolutive character of unfamiliar psychical states.2

For example, we may learn from our knowledge of telepathy that the superficial aspect of certain stages of psychical evolution, like the superficial aspect of certain stages of physiological evolution, may resemble mere inhibition, or mere perturbation. But the inhibition may involve latent dynamogeny, and the perturbation may mask evolution. The hypnotised subject may pass through a lethargic stage before he wakes into a state in which he has gained community of sensation with the operator; somewhat as the silkworm (to use the oldest and the most suggestive of all illustrations) passes through the apparent torpor of the cocoon-stage before evolving into the moth. Again, the automatist's hand (as we shall presently see) is apt to pass through a stage of inco-ordinated movements, which might almost be taken for choreic, before it acquires the power of ready and intelligent writing. Similarly the development, for instance, of a tooth may be preceded by a stage of indefinite aching, which might be ascribed to the formation of an abscess, did not the new tooth ultimately show itself.

And still more striking cases of a perturbation which masks evolution might be drawn from the history of the human organism as it develops into its own maturity, or prepares for the appearance of the fresh human organism which is to succeed it.

1 To avoid misconception, I may point out that this view in no way negatives the possibility that telepathy (or its correlative telergy) may be in some of its aspects commoner, or more powerful, among savages than among ourselves. Evolutionary processes are not necessarily continuous. The acquirement by our lowly-organised ancestors of the sense of smell (for instance) was a step in evolution. But the sense of smell probably reached its highest energy in races earlier than man; and it has perceptibly declined even in the short space which separates civilised man from existing savages. Yet if, with some change in our environment, the sense of smell again became useful, and we reacquired it, this would be none the less an evolutionary process because the evolution had been interrupted.

2 I do not wish to assert that all unfamiliar psychical states are necessarily evolutive or dissolutive in any assignable manner. I should prefer to suppose that there are states which may better be styled allotropic;- modifications of the arrangements of nervous elements on which our conscious identity depends, but with no more conspicuous superiority of the one state over the other than (for instance) charcoal possesses over graphite or graphite over charcoal. But there may also be states in which the (metaphorical) carbon becomes diamond; - with so much at least of advance on previous states as is involved in the substitution of the crystalline for the amorphous structure.

Analogy, therefore, both physiological and psychical, warns us not to conclude that any given psychosis is merely degenerative until we have examined its results closely enough to satisfy ourselves whether they tend to bring about any enlargement of human powers, to open any new inlet to the reception of objective truth. If such there prove to be, then, with whatever morbid activities the psychosis may have been intertwined, it contains indications of an evolutionary nisus as well.

804. These remarks, I hope, may have sufficiently cleared the ground to admit of our starting afresh on the consideration of such motor automatisms as are at any rate not morbid in their effect on the organism, and which I now have to show to be evolutive in character. I maintain that we have no valid ground for assuming that the movements which are not due to our conscious will must be less important, and less significant, than those that are. We observe, of course, that in the organic region the movements which are not due to conscious will are really the most important of all, though the voluntary movements by which a man seeks food and protects himself against enemies are also of great practical importance - he must first live and multiply if he is to learn and know. But we must guard against confusing importance for immediate practical life with importance for science - on which even practical life ultimately depends. As soon as the task of living and multiplying is no longer all-engrossing, we begin to change our relative estimate of values, and to find that it is not the broad and obvious phenomena, but the residual and elusive phenomena, which are oftenest likely to introduce us to new avenues of knowledge.

I wish to persuade my readers that this is quite as truly the case in psychology as in physics.

I may say at once that some of the automatic movements with which we shall have to deal - certain utterances and writings given in a state of "possession" - must rank, in my view, among the most important phenomena yet observed by man. For their proper study we need far more of introductory matter than in these volumes I can possibly give. I shall at any rate, therefore, make no apology for the ambages et longa exorsa - the long and tortuous approach - through which my reader, I fear, must follow me, if he is at last to discover any connection and congruity between those trance-messages and the structure of his own previous knowledge. I shall at any rate not attempt to conceal my own ignorances and uncertainties; but shall grope about, so to say, before my reader's eyes, indicating again and again where our insight at present ends, and repeating again and again, from different points of view, and with fresh illustrations, those imperfect, yet important, fragments of knowledge which I hold that we have in fact attained.