Wells Samuel Roberts - The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism стр 18.

The first difficulty that stands in the way of this hypothesis is that it supposes a thing which, if true, is quite as mysterious and inexplicable as the mystery which it purports to explain. How is it that an intellectual principle can detach itself from an intellectual being, of whose personality it formed the chief ingredient,

and become an outside, objective, floating, and circumambient entity, with a capability of thinking, willing, acting, and expressing thought, in which the original possessor of the emanated principle often has no conscious participation? And after you have told us this, then tell us how the intellectual principle, not only of one , but of several persons can emanate from them, become floating and ambient, and then, losing separate identity, conjoin and form one active communicating agent with the powers aforesaid? And after you have removed from these mere assumptions the aspect of physical and moral impossibility, you will have another task to perform, and that is to show us how this emanated, combined, floating, circumambient intelligence can sometimes assume an individual and seemingly personal character of its own, totally distinct from, and, in some features, even antagonistic to, all the characters in the circle in which the emanation is supposed to have its origin?

It is not denied now that the answers and communications of Planchette (and of the influence acting through other channels) often do exhibit a controlling influence of the mind of the medium or of other persons in the circle. But no theory should ever be considered as explaining a mystery unless it covers the whole ground of that mystery. Even, therefore, should we consider the theory of the floating intelligence of the circle reproducing itself in expression, as explaining that part of the phenomenon which identifies itself with the minds of the circle (which it does not), what shall be said of those cases in which the phenomena exhibit characteristics which are sui generis , and can not possibly have been derived from the minds of the circle?

That phenomena of the latter class are sometimes exhibited is not only proved by many other facts that might be cited, but is clearly exemplified by this same writer in Putnams Magazine . The intelligence whose performances and communications he relates seems to stand out with a character and individuality as strongly marked and as distinct from any and all in the circle as any one of them was distinct from another. This individuality was first shown by giving its own pet names to the different persons composing the circle Flirt, Clarkey, Hon. Clarke, The Angel, and Sassiness. The young lady designated by the last sobriquet , after it had been several times repeated, petitioned to be indicated thereafter only by the initial S, which the impertinent scribbler accorded only so far as omitting all the letters except the five Ss, so that she was afterward recognized as S.S.S.S.S.

The writer further says:

It is always respectful to Hon. Clarke, and when pressed to state what it thought of him, answered that he was a good skipper, a reputation fairly earned by his capacity for managing a fleet of small boats. But we were not contented with so vague an answer, and our urgent demand for an analysis of his character produced the reply: A native crab apple, but spicy and sweet when ripe. * * * When asked to go on, it wrote: Ask me Hon. Clarkes character again, and I will flee to the realms of imperishable woe; or, as Tabitha is here, say Ill pull your nose; and on being taunted with its incapacity to fulfill the threat, it wrote: Metaphorically speaking, of course. Not satisfied with this rebuff, on another occasion the subject was again pursued, and the answer elicited as follows: Yes, but you cant fool me. I said nay once, and when I says nay I means nay. [A mind of its own , then.] More than once it has lapsed into the same misuse of the verb, as: I not only believes it, but I knows it; and again: You asks and I answers, because I am here. * * *

Again, on being remonstrated with for illiteracy, it defended itself by saying: I always was a bad speler (sic ); an orthographical blunder that no one in the room was capable of making. But on the whole, our Planchette is a scientific and cultivated intelligence, of more than average order, though it may be, at times, slightly inaccurate in orthography, and occasionally quote incorrectly; I must even confess that there are moments when its usual elegance of diction lapses into slang terms and abrupt contradictions. But, after all, though we flatter ourselves that as a family we contain rather more than ordinary intelligence, still it is more than a match for us.

can fail to perceive, from these quotations and admissions, the marked and distinctive individuality of the intelligence that was here manifested, as being of itself totally fatal to the idea of derivation from the circle?