A theory propounded by the Rev. Dr. Patton, of Chicago, in an article published in _The Advance_, some time since, may be noticed under this head. He says:
"How, then, shall we account for the writing which is performed without any direct volition? Our method refers it to an automatic power of mind separate from conscious volition. * * * Very common is the experience of an automatic power in the pen, by which it finishes a word, or two or three words, after the thoughts have consciously gone on to what is to follow. We infer, then, from ordinary facts known to the habitual penman, that _if a fixed idea is in the mind_ at the time when the nervous and volitional powers are exercised with a pen, it will often express itself spontaneously through the pen, when the mental faculties are at work otherwise. We suppose, then, that Planchette is simply an arrangement by which, through the outstretched arms and fingers, the mind comes into such relation with the delicate movements of the pencil, that its automatic power finds play, and the _ideas present in the mind are transferred unconsciously to paper_." (Italics our own.)
That may all be, Doctor, and no marvel about it. That the "fixed idea"--"the ideas _present in the mind_," should be "transferred unconsciously to paper," by means of Planchette, is no more wonderful than that the same thing should be done by the pen, and _without_ the intervention of that little board. But for the benefit of a sorely mystified world, be good enough to tell us how ideas that are _not_ present, and that _never were_ present, in the mind, can be transferred to paper by this automatic power of the mind. Grant that the mind possesses an automatic power to work in _grooves_, as it were, or in a manner in which it has been previously _trained_ to work, as is illustrated by the delicate fingerings of the piano, all correct and skillful to the nicest shade, while the mind of the performer may for the moment be occupied in conversation; but not since the world began has there been an instance in which the mind, acting solely from itself, by "automatic powers" or otherwise, has been able to body forth any idea which was not previously within itself. That Planchette does sometimes write things of which the person or persons under whose hands it moves never had the slightest knowledge or even conception, it would be useless to deny.