This hypothesis is admissible, in the light of numerous observations of double consciousness.[19]
It is applicable to a great number of cases, but not in all. It explains automatic writing. But, as it stands, it is necessary to stretch it considerably to make it explain the rappings (for who raps?), and it does not explain at all the levitations of the table, nor the displacement of objects of which I have spoken in the first chapter, and I do not very well see how it can even explain phrases rapped out backwards or by the strange combinations described above. This hypothesis is admitted and developed in a more unqualified way by Dr. Pierre Janet in his work _Psychological Automatism_. This author is one of those who have created a narrow circle of observation and study, and who not only never emerge from it, but imagine that they have got the whole universe in their circle. In going over this kind of reasoning, one thinks involuntarily of that old quarrel of the two round eyes who saw everything round and of the two square eyes who saw everything square, and of the history of the Big-endians and of the Little-endians of _Gulliver's Travels_. An hypothesis is worthy of attention when it explains something. Its value does not increase by the attempt to generalize it and make it explain everything: this is to overpass all reasonable limits.
We may admit that the sub-conscious acts of an abnormal personality, temporarily grafted upon our normal personality, explain the greater part of mediumistic writing communications. We can see in these also the evident effects of auto-suggestion. But these psycho-physiological hypotheses do not explain all observations. There is something else.
We all have a tendency to want to explain everything by the actual state of our knowledge. In the face of certain circumstances, we say to-day: "It is suggestion, it is hypnotism, it is this, it is that." Half a century ago we would not have talked in this way, these theories not having yet been invented. People will no longer talk in the same way half a century, a century, hence, for new words will have been invented. But let us not be put off with words; let us not be in such a hurry.
We must know how to explain in what way our thoughts--conscious, unconscious, sub-conscious--can strike blows in a table, move it, lift it. As this question is rather embarrassing, Dr. Pierre Janet treats it as "secondary personality," and is obliged to have recourse to the movements of the toes, to the snapping of the muscles of the fibular tendon, to ventriloquism and the deceptions of unconscious accomplices.[20] This is not a sufficient explanation.