I have laid much stress upon this fishery hypothesis because it is a fact to be taken into consideration, because it is occasionally an unfortunately conspicuous fact, and because of its deterrent effect on a novice to whom that aspect is first exposed.

But in thus laying stress I feel that I am producing an erroneous and misleading impression of proportion. I have spoken of a few minutes' lucidity to an intolerable deal of padding as an occasional experience, but in the majority of the sittings held in my presence the converse proportion better represents the facts.

I am familiar with muscle-reading and other simulated "thought-transference" methods, and prefer to avoid contact whenever it is possible to get rid of it without too much fuss. Although Mrs. Piper always held somebody's hand while preparing to go into the trance, she did not always continue to hold it when speaking as Phinuit. She did usually hold the hand of the person she was speaking to, but was often satisfied for a time with some other person's, sometimes talking right across a room to and about a stranger, but preferring them to come near. On several occasions she let go of everybody, for half-hours together, especially when fluent and kept well supplied with "relics".

I have now to assert with entire confidence that, pressing the ingenious-guessing and unconscious-indication hypothesis to its utmost limit, it can only be held to account for a very few of Dr. Phinuit's statements.

It cannot in all cases be held to account for medical diagnoses, afterwards confirmed by the regular practitioner.

It cannot account for minute and full details of names, circumstances, and events, given to a cautious and almost silent sitter, sometimes without contact. And, to take the strongest case at once, it cannot account for the narration of facts outside the conscious knowledge of the sitter or of any person present.

Rejecting the fishery hypothesis, then, as insufficient to account for many of the facts, we are driven to the only remaining known cause in order to account for them:- viz., thought-transference, or the action of mind on mind independently of the ordinary channels of communication. Whether "thought-transference" be a correct term to apply to the process I do not pretend to decide. That is a question for psychologists.

It may be within the reader's knowledge that I regard the fact of genuine "thought-transference" between persons in immediate proximity (not necessarily in contact) as having been established by direct and simple experiment; and, except by reason of paucity of instance, I consider it as firmly grounded as any of the less familiar facts of nature such as one deals with in a laboratory. (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ii. p. 189).

I speak of it therefore as a known cause, i.e., one to which there need be no hesitation in appealing in order to explain facts which without it would be inexplicable.

The Phinuit facts are most of them of this nature, and I do not hesitate to assert confidently that thought-transference is the most commonplace explanation to which it is possible to appeal.

1 regard it as having been rigorously proved before, and as therefore requiring no fresh bolstering up; but to the many who have not made experiments on the subject, and are therefore naturally sceptical concerning even thought-transference, the record of the Phinuit sittings will afford, I think, a secure basis for faith in this immaterial mode of communication, - this appa-rently direct action of mind on mind.

But, whereas the kind of thought-transference which had been to my own knowledge experimentally proved was a hazy and difficult recognition by one person of objects kept as vividly as possible in the consciousness of another person, the kind of thought-transference necessary to explain these sittings is of an altogether freer and higher order, - a kind which has not yet been experimentally proved at all. Facts are related which are not in the least present to the consciousness of the sitter, and they are often detailed glibly and vividly without delay; in very different style from the tedious and hesitating dimness of the percipients in the old thought-transference experiments.

But that is natural enough, when we consider that the percipient in those experiments had to preserve a mind as vacant as possible. For no process of inducing mental vacancy can be so perfect as that of going into a trance, whether hypnotic or other.

Moreover, although it was considered desirable to maintain the object contemptated in the consciousness of the agent, a shrewd suspicion was even then entertained that the unconscious part of the agent's brain might be perhaps equally effective.

Hence one is at liberty to apply to these Phinuit records the hypothesis of thought-transference in its most developed state: absolute vacuity on the part of the percipient, acted on by an entirely sub-conscious or unconscious portion of the sitter's brain.

In this form one feels that much can be explained. If Dr. Phinuit tells one how many children, or brothers, or sisters one has, and their names; the names of father and mother and grandmother, of cousins and of aunts; if he brings appropriate and characteristic messages from well-known relatives deceased; all this is explicable on the hypothesis of free and easy thought-transference from the sub-consciousness of the sitter to the sensitive medium of the trance personality.1

So strongly was I impressed with this view, that after some half-dozen sittings I ceased to feel much interest in being told things, however minute, obscure, and inaccessible they might be, so long as they were, or had been, within the knowledge either of myself or of the sitter for the time being.

1 For instance, in the course of my interviews, all my six brothers (adult and scattered) and one sister living were correctly named (two with some help), and the existence of the one deceased was mentioned. My father and his father were likewise named, with several uncles and aunts. My wife's father and stepfather were named in full, both Christian and surname, with full identifying detail. I only quote these as examples; it is quite unnecessary as well as unwise to attach any evidential weight to statements of this sort made during a sojourn in one's house.

At the same time it ought to be constantly borne in mind that this kind of thought-transference without consciously active agency has never been experimentally proved. Certain facts not otherwise apparently explicable, such as those chronicled in Phantasms of the Living, have suggested it, but it is really only a possible hypothesis to which appeal has been made whenever any other explanation seems out of the question. But until it is actually established by experiment in the same way that conscious mind action has been established, it cannot be regarded as either safe or satisfactory; and in pursuing it we may be turning our backs on some truer but as yet perhaps unsuggested clue. I feel as if this caution were necessary for myself as well as for other members of the Society.

On reading the record it will be apparent that while "Phinuit" frequently speaks in his own person, relating things which he himself discovers by what I suppose we must call ostensible clairvoyance, sometimes he represents himself as in communication - not always quite easy and distinct communication, especially at first, but in communication - with one's relatives and friends who have departed this life.

The messages and communications from these persons are usually given through Phinuit as a reporter. And he reports sometimes in the third person, sometimes in the first. Occasionally, but very seldom, Phinuit seems to give up his place altogether to the other personality, friend or relative, who then communicates with something of his old manner and individuality; becoming often impressive and realistic.

This last, I say, is rare, but with one or two personages it occurs, subject to reservations to be mentioned directly; and when it does, Phinuit does not appear to know what has been said. It is quite as if he in his turn evacuated the body, just as Mrs. Piper had done, while a third personality utilises it for a time. The voice and mode of address are once more changed, and more or less recall the voice and manner of the person represented as communicating.

The communications thus obtained, though they show traces of the individuality of the person represented as speaking, are frequently vulgarised; and the speeches are more commonplace, and so to say cheaper, than what one would suppose likely from the person himself. It can, of course, be suggested that the necessity of working through the brain of a person not highly educated may easily be supposed capable of dulling the edge of refinement, and of rendering messages on abstruse subjects impossible.

See also the report by Dr. Walter Leaf in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. vi. PP- 559-68; and the report by Dr. Hodgson in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 46-58.