There was so much of this kind of untruthful evasion, and it was so unlike anything in Mrs. Newnham’s character, that observers less sober-minded would assuredly have fancied that some Puck or sprite was intervening with a “third intelligence” compounded of aimless cunning and childish jest. But Mr. Newnham inclines to a view fully in accordance with that which this paper has throughout suggested. “Is this _third intelligence_,” he says, “analogous to the ‘dual state,’ the existence of which, in a few extreme and most interesting cases, is now well established? Is there a latent potentiality of a ‘dual state’ existing in every brain? and are the few very striking phenomena which have as yet been noticed and published only the exceptional developments of a state which is inherent in most or in all brains?” And alluding to a theory, which has at different times been much discussed, of the more or less independent action of the two cerebral hemispheres, he asks:— “May not the untrained half of the organ of mind, even in the most pure and truthful characters, be capable of manifesting tendencies like the hysterical girl’s, and of producing at all events the _appearance_ of moral deficiencies which are totally foreign to the well-trained and disciplined portion of the brain which is ordinarily made use of?” In this place, however, it will be enough to say that the real cause for surprise would have been if our secondary self had _not_ exhibited a character in some way different from that which we recognize as our own. Whatever other factors may enter into a man’s character, two of the most important are undoubtedly his store of memories and his _cænesthesia_, or the sum of the obscure sensations of his whole physical structure. When either of these is suddenly altered, character changes too—a change for an example of which we need scarcely look further than our recollection of the moral obliquities and incoherences of an ordinary dream. Our personality may be dyed throughout with the same color, but the apparent tint will vary with the contexture of each absorptive element within. And not graphic automatism only, but other forms of muscular and vocal automatism must be examined and compared before we can form even an empirical conception of that hidden agency, which is ourselves, though we know it not. In the meantime I shall, I think, be held to have shown that, in the vast majority of cases where spiritualists are prone to refer automatic writing to some unseen intelligence, there is really no valid ground for such an ascription. I am, indeed, aware that some cases of a different kind are alleged to exist—cases where automatic writing has communicated facts demonstrably not known to the writer or to any one present. How far these cases can satisfy the very rigorous scrutiny to which they ought obviously to be subjected is a question which I may perhaps find some other opportunity of discussing.