rable edition of the Greek text with Latin
translation by F. Hultsch (Leipzig, 1885).

AUTOMATIC WRITING, the name given by students of psychical research to
writing performed without the volition of the agent. The writing may also
take place without any consciousness of the words written; but some
automatists are aware of the word which they are actually writing, and
perhaps of two or three words on either side, though there is rarely any
clear perception of the meaning of the whole. Automatic writing may take
place when the agent is in a state of trance, spontaneous or induced, in
hystero-epilepsy or other morbid states; or in a condition not
distinguishable from normal wakefulness. Automatic writing has played an
important part in the history of modern spiritualism. The phenomenon first
appeared on a large scale in the early days (_c._ 1850-1860) of the
movement in America. Numerous writings are reported at that period, many of
considerable length, which purported for the most part to have been
produced under spirit guidance. Some of these were written in "unknown
tongues." Of those which were published the most notable are Andrew J.
Davis's _Great Harmonia_, Charles Linton's _The Healing of the Nations_,
and J. Murray Spear's _Messages from the Spirit Life_.

In England also the early spiritualist newspapers were filled with
"inspirational" writing,--_Pages of Ike Paraclete_, &c. The most notable
series of English automatic writings are the _Spirit Teachings_ of the Rev.
W. Stainton Moses. The phenomenon, of course, lends itself to deception,
but there seems no reason to doubt that in the great majority of the cases
recorded the writing was in reality produced without deliberate volition.
In the earlier years of the spiritualist movement, a "planchette," a little
heart-shaped board running on wheels, was employed to facilitate the
process of writing.

Of late years, whilst the theory of external inspiration as the cause of
the phenomenon has been generally discredited, automatic writing has been
largely employed as a method of experimentally investigating subconscious
mental processes. Knowledge which had lapsed from the primary consciousness
is frequently revealed by this means; _e.g._ forgotten fragments of poetry
or foreign languages are occasionally given. An experimental parallel to
this reproduction of forgotten knowledge was devised by Edmund Gurney. He
showed that information communicated to a subject in th