Intellectual phenomena are those which imply the expression of a thought. I will class them in the following manner:—
1. Typtology: the table, upon which the experimenters lay their hands, leans to one side and recovers equilibrium by striking the ground.
2. Grammatology or spelt-out sentences. Various methods may be used. The principal are:—
- (a) Repeating the alphabet until a rap indicates the letter to be retained;
- (b) Pointing out the letters of the alphabet by means of a pencil or stiletto, etc., until a rap indicates where to stop;
- (c) Finally, the designation of the required letters by an index-hand on a pivot fixed in the middle of a circle composed of the alphabet, the index-hand moving with or without contact.
3. Automatic writing: immediate, when the subject writes without the intermedium of an instrument; mediate, when he uses an instrument, such as a planchette, a wooden ball with handles fastened to it, a basket, a hat, a stand, etc. In this case, several people can combine their action by laying their hands all together upon the object to which the pencil is attached.
4. Direct writing: i.e. writing which appears on slates, paper, etc., whether in or out of sight of the experimenters. If the letters seem to be formed without the aid of a pencil we have precipitated writing.
5. Incarnation or ‘control’: the subject, when asleep, speaks in the name of some entity or order, which possesses him.
6. Direct voices: when words are heard, appearing to emanate from vocal organs other than those of the persons present; some experimenters are supposed to have conversed in this way with materialised forms.
7. Certain automatisms other than writing are observable: e.g. crystal- and mirror-gazing; audition in conch-formed shells; sundry hallucinations, telepathy and telesthesia: ‘the communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognised channels of sense’; perception at a distance of positive impressions. These phenomena bring in their train clairvoyance or voyance, and lucidity, expressions which are by no means identical. Lucidity designates more particularly the faculty which certain people have, in magnetic sleep or in somnambulism, of getting exact impressions in a supernormal manner; clairvoyants or voyants are those who see forms invisible to other people. Clairaudience denotes phenomena of the same kind in the auditory sphere.
I have paid scarcely any attention to these intellectual phenomena, with the exception of automatic writing, crystal-gazing, typtology, and ‘control.’ If I have taken greater interest in material than in intellectual phenomena, it is because they struck me as being more simple and easier to observe. This sentiment is not that of all experimenters, and my colleagues of the London Society for Psychical Research appear to be more affirmative in their conclusions, concerning survival after death and communication with the dead, than in their opinions on material phenomena. My personal experience has not led me to the same ideas.