disease! They each have their mission to fulfil, their cases to cure. Tolerance, tolerance! Let them each recognize the rights of the other! CHAPTER X THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE OUIJA BOARD[45] Before we proceed to discuss the intelligence lying behind the Ouija Board, I must offer a few remarks upon the subject of automatic writing in general, passing in very brief review the various theories that have been advanced from time to time by way of explanation of the action of this extraordinary little device. One of the sanest and most rational popular accounts of this instrument and its workings that I have so far come across (all things considered) is a little pamphlet entitled _The Planchette Mystery_, very little known, from which I shall quote in writing this review. Epes Sargent's book, _Planchette: the Despair of Science_, contains in reality very little on the planchette board, and the title is somewhat deceptive. Mr. Myers's articles on the subject (particularly in _Proceedings of S.P.R._, vol. ii. pp. 217-37; vol. iii. pp. 1-63; and vol. ix. pp. 26-128) are, of course, classical, but are involved and inaccessible for the general reader, even had he the time to read them carefully; so that perhaps the following resume may not be unnecessary or out of place. It is to be presumed that every reader of this book knows what a Ouija Board is, and, roughly, what it does. _How_ it does it is a more difficult question to answer; in fact, it may be said that no definite answer has even yet been forthcoming. All that has been done, or that we can do, is to examine the facts, and to advance an explanatory theory that is really explanatory and in accord, as nearly as possible, with accepted theories and teaching. First, let us consider the movement of the board. There can be little doubt that the same force which propels the planchette board propels the ouija board also; and this is still further demonstrated by the fact that, in many experiments, the planchette board is used as a ouija, and points to the letters, which are written out on a large piece of paper, and the pencil point indicates the letter in the same manner as does the ouija. It certainly appears far easier for the board to point to letters than to write--and this is most suggestive and interesting when we consider it. It would seem to indicate that the controlling intelligence found it easier to convey its thoughts when the letters were before it, in plain sight--a very suggestive fact, taken in conjunction with certain mediumistic phenomena.[46] Of course there is the alternative explanation of this fact--that a straight push-and-pull action is easier to accomplish than the more detailed and complicated action of forming words and letters. But that would not make plain to us why it is that no _attempt_ at writing should be made, very often, until the letter-pointing system is adopted.