It was plain that these writings could not be judged aright without a wide analysis of similar scripts,--without an experimental inquiry into what the human mind, in states of somnambulism or the like, could furnish of written messages, apart from the main stream of consciousness. By his experiments on writing obtained in different stages of hypnotic trance, Gurney acted as the pioneer of a long series of researches which, independently set on foot by Professor Pierre Janet in France, have become of high psychological, and even medical, importance. What is here of prime interest is the indubitable fact that fresh personalities can be artificially and temporarily created, which will write down matter quite alien from the first personality's character, and even matter which the first personality never knew. That matter may consist merely of reminiscences of previous periods when the second personality has been in control. But, nevertheless, if these writings are shown to the primary personality, he will absolutely repudiate their authorship--alleging not only that he has no recollection of writing them, but also that they contain allusions to facts which he never knew. Some of these messages, indeed, although their source is so perfectly well defined--although we know the very moment when the secondary personality which wrote them was called into existence--do certainly look more alien from the automatist in his normal state than many of the messages which claim to come from spirits of lofty type. It is noticeable, moreover, that these manufactured personalities sometimes cling obstinately to their fictitious names, and refuse to admit that they are in reality only aspects or portions of the automatist himself. This must be remembered when the persistent _claim_ to some spiritual identity--say Napoleon--is urged as an argument for attributing a series of messages to that special person. What has now been said may suffice as regards the varieties of mechanism--the different forms of motor automatism--which the messages employ. I shall pass on to consider the _contents_ of the messages, and shall endeavour to classify them according to their apparent sources. _A._ In the first place, the message may come from the percipient's own mind; its contents being supplied from the resources of his ordinary memory, or of his more extensive subliminal memory; while the _dramatisation_ of the message--its assumption of some other mind as its source--will resemble the dramatisations of dream or of hypnotic trance. Of course the absence of facts unknown to the writer is not in itself a proof that the message does not come from some other mind. We cannot be sure that other minds, if they can communicate, will always be at the pains to fill their messages with evidential facts. But, equally of course, a message devoid of such facts must not, on the strength of its mere assertions, be claimed as the product of any but the writer's own mind.