eritable religion. I assisted at the seances. I
experimented and became myself a medium. In one of Allan-Kardec's works,
called Genesis, over the signature of Galilee, may be read a whole
chapter on Cosmogony, which I wrote in a mediumistic condition.

I was at that time connected with the principal circles in Paris where
these experiments were tried, and for two years I even filled the
exacting position of secretary to one of these circles, an office which
morally bound me not to be absent from a single seance.

Communications were received in three different ways: by writing with
our own hands; by placing our hands upon planchette, in which a pencil
was placed which did the writing; by raps beneath the table, or by
movements which indicated certain letters, when the alphabet was
repeated aloud by one of the sitters.

The first method was the only one in use in the Society for Spiritualist
Study presided over by Allan-Kardec; but it is the method leaving the
widest margin for doubt. Indeed, at the end of several years of
experimenting in this fashion, the result was that I became skeptical
even of myself, and for the reasons following.

It cannot be denied that, under mediumistic conditions, one does not
write in his usual fashion. In the normal state, when we wish to write a
sentence, we mentally construct that sentence--if not the whole of it,
at least a part of it--before writing the words. The pen and hand obey
the creative thought. It is not so when one writes mediumistically. One
rests one's hand, motionless but docile, on a sheet of paper, and then
waits. After a little while the hand begins to move, and to form
letters, words, and phrases. One does not create these sentences, as in
the normal state, but waits for them to produce themselves. Yet the mind
is nevertheless associated therewith. The subject treated is in unison
with one's ordinary ideas. The written language is one's own. If one is
deficient in orthography, the composition will betray this fault.
Moreover, the mind is so intimately connected with what is written, that
if it ponders something else, if the thoughts are allowed to wander from
the immediate subject, then the hand will pause, or trace incoherent
signs.

Such is the state of the writing-medium,--at least, so far as I have
observed it in myself. It is a sort of auto-suggestive state. We are
assured there are mediums who write so mechanically that they know not
what they are writing, a