Wells Samuel Roberts - The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism стр 15.

observing that no conscious or intelligent agency in shaping these answers is assigned to the young persons whose hands were upon the board, and who, it appears, did not know anything of the persons concerning whom the inquiries were made, it would, perhaps, as we desire nothing but a true philosophy on this matter, be worth while to look a little critically at the answers and statements that were given, and the further explanations propounded by Mr. H. For convenience, they may be classified as follows:

1. Answers that were substantially in the interrogators own mind when he asked the questions. Such were the answers to the questions: How many brothers did she [Mary C ] have? Where did she formerly live? He tells us that the pencil slowly wrote out in reply: Catkill , leaving out the s ; and adds: of course, this place was in my mind, though neither of the young people knew anything about the lady or her residence.

2. Answers which he does not know were in his mind, but supposes they must have been. Thus, in his own language, while commenting on the answers to questions respecting Mary C and her brothers: Nor can I account for the answer Unhappy , unless unconsciously to myself there passed through my mind that vague fear so common to us all when we inquire about friends of whom we have not heard for years. The death of the two brothers baffled all conjecture unless I remembered that during the war I saw the death of a young man of the same name, and I wondered at the time if it was one of these brothers whether they had joined the army. (The Italics our own.) So also of Planchettes answers to the questions respecting Mr. Green, locating him in Brazil, and saying that he intended to pay him (Mr. H.) ten thousand dollars next year, while Mr. G. had last been reported to Mr. H. as being in New York, and the latter did not know that he had ever been in Brazil. But Mr. H., after thinking over a certain conversation which he had previously had with Mr. Green respecting a business journey he had made to South America , remarks: Brazil doubtless often occurred to me in fact, I was conscious on reflection that I had more frequently located him in that country than in any other. So when the question was put, it would involuntarily flash over me without my being conscious of it , I wonder if he has gone back to South America, and if his venture is in Brazil? Magnetism caught up the flashing thought and put it on paper. (Italics our own.) Such is his hypothesis to explain an hypothesis!

3. Answers which he not only knows he had not in his mind when the questions were asked, but which were directly contrary to his mind or opinion. Such were answers to several of the questions occurring in the conversation about Mary C , as, better be dead; unhappy; fault partly herself; has one brother; which latter statement was so directly contrary to his mind that he even pronounced it false, until he thought to inquire, How many did she have?

4. Answers which were not only not in his mind, but which he directly pronounces false and thus dismisses them. Such, for instance, is the answer Nobody knows, to the question Where is Mary C ? That this, says he, was false, is evident on the very face of it.

With this analysis of the leading phenomena cited by Mr. H. before us, lot us look at the wonderful things which electricity and magnetism are made to accomplish.

I do not dispute that there is such a power of the human mind as that known as clairvoyance. I have had too many proofs of this to doubt it. But I have had equally positive proofs that the development of its phenomena is dependent upon certain necessary conditions, among which are, that the agent of them, in order to be able to reveal the secret thoughts of another, must possess by nature peculiar nervous susceptibilities, enabling his psychic emanations, so to speak, to sympathetically coalesce with those of the person whose thoughts and internal mental states are to be the subject of investigation. But this sympathetic coalescence can not take place where there is the slightest psychic repulsion or antagonism to the clairvoyant on the part of the interrogating party. Moreover, even when all these conditions are present, nothing can be correctly read from the mind of the questioner unless there is on his mind a clear and distinct definition of the matters of which he seeks to be told.

But

even in class No. 1 of the above series we find that electricity, hitherto believed to be only an imponderable and impersonal fluid, has, upon Mr. H.s theory, been able to accomplish the revealment of secret thoughts entirely independent of all these conditions. It is distinctly stated that those young persons whose hands were on the Planchette knew nothing whatever of the matters which formed the several subjects of inquiry; and for aught that is stated to the contrary, they appear to have been perfectly awake and in their normal state. In addition to this, it is to be observed that Mr. Headley here appears in the assumed character of a captious, contentious, and somewhat irritating questioner, which, whether he intended it or not, was entirely the opposite of that harmonious and sympathetic interflow of mental states known in other cases to be necessary to a successful clairvoyant diagnosis of inward thoughts. And yet electricity overleaps all these obstacles, seizes facts that occurred many years previous, some of which were known only to Mr. H. and wife, others only to Mr. H. himself, and instantly flashes forth the appropriate answer! Here is science! If there were no other phenomena connected with Planchette, this alone might well challenge the attention of philosophers!