tation of the facts, it will be observed, while
describing all his actions, is wholly misleading in interpretation; the
symbolism has been entirely perverted and misconstrued. And inasmuch as
the subject probably never died of cancer, had no bowel trouble,
underwent no operation, and was never connected with machinery, it is
highly probable that the "message" would be put down wholly to the
medium's subliminal, or even to guessing or conscious fraud. Yet, it
will be observed, the message was, in its inception, wholly
"veridical"--the fault lying in the erroneous symbolic interpretation of
the medium.

There is evidence to show that other forms of symbolism are adopted
also--applying to the auditory as well as to the visual presentation of
the messages. _Names_ afford some of the best evidence for this; e.g. in
the sitting of Mrs. Verrall with Mrs. Thompson, November 2, 1899
(_Proceedings_, xvii. pp. 240-41), "Nelly," the control, gave the names
"Merrifield, Merriman, Merrythought, Merrifield," and later went on: "I
am muddled. I will tell you how names come to us. It's like a picture; I
see school-children enjoying themselves; you can't say Merrimans,
because that's not a name, nor merry people...." (Mrs. Verrall's maiden
name was Merrifield.) If I remember correctly, there was similar
symbolism with regard to the name Greenfield at another sitting.

18. Here, then, we see the full play of symbolism and its possible
extension to cover proper names. But there is another and a very simple
reason why names should be hard to recall and give clearly by "spirits."
Names are proverbially hard to remember, even in this life--and we know
that some persons naturally remember names far better than others. (This
may account, to a certain extent, for the differences in the ability of
communicators to give proper names.) But, with all of us, names are hard
to recall. We all resort to "what's-his-names," and "thing-o'-my-jigs,"
on occasion, in our efforts to discover within us the name in question.
And there are good physiological reasons for this. We learn names only
after many other parts of speech--which means that the brain-cells
corresponding thereto are laid down or brought into conscious activity
_last_; they are therefore more ephemeral and less fundamental than
others--hence the first to "go." This accounts for the increasing
difficulty in the aged for remembering names--theirs is a physiological
rather than a psychological