But I must pass on to one more case of automatic writing, a case which I select as marking the furthest limit to which, so far as I am at present aware, pure unconscious cerebration in the waking state can go. Mr. A., whom I have already mentioned, is not usually able to get any automatic writing except (as described above) of a word on which his attention has been previously fixed. But at one period of his life, when his brain was much excited by over-study, he found that if he held a pencil and wrote _questions_ the pencil would, in a feeble scrawling hand, quite unlike his own, write _answers_ which he could in nowise foresee. Moreover, as will be seen, he was not only unable to foresee these answers, he was sometimes unable even to comprehend them. Many of them were anagrams—transpositions of letters which he had to puzzle over before he could get at their meaning. This makes, of course, the main importance of the case; this proof of the concurrent action of a secondary self so entirely dissociated from the primary consciousness that the questioner is almost baffled by his own automatic replies. The matter of the replies is on the usual level of automatic messages, which are apt to resemble the conversations of a capricious dream. The interest of this form of self-interrogation certainly does not lie in the wisdom of the oracle received. “The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.” I abridge Mr. A.’s account, and give the _answers_ in italics. “‘What is it,’ said Mr. A., ‘that now moves my pen?’ _Religion._ ‘What is religion?’ _Worship._ Here arose a difficulty. Although I did not expect either of these answers, yet, when the first few letters had been written, I expected the remainder of the word. This might vitiate the result. But now, as if the intelligent wished to prove by the manner of answering, that the answer could be due to _it_ alone, and in no part to mere expediency, my next question received a singular reply. ‘Worship of what?’ _Wbwbwbwb._ ‘What is the meaning of wb?’ _Win, buy._ ‘What?’ _Knowledge._ On the second day the first question was—‘What is man?’ _Flise._ My pen was at first very violently agitated, which had not been the case on the first day. It was quite a minute before it wrote as above. On the analogy of _wb_ I proceeded: ‘What does F stand for?’ _Fesi._ ‘L?’ ‘;_Le._’ ‘I?’ ‘;_Ivy._’ ‘S?’ _Sir._ ‘E?’ _Eye._ ‘Is _Fesi le ivy, sir, eye_, an anagram?’ _Yes._ ‘How many words in the answer?’ _Four._” Mr. A. was unable to shift these letters into an intelligible sentence, and began again on the third day with the same question: “‘What is man?’ _Tefi, Hasl, Esble, Lies._ ‘Is this an anagram?’ _Yes._ ‘How many words in the answer?’ _Five._ ‘Must I interpret it myself?’ _Try._ Presently I got out, _Life is the less able_. Next I tried the previous anagram, and at last obtained _Every life is yes_.”