THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

400 The Harmony of Virtueand not attended by absent-mindedness at all? Mr. Maskelynemakes no attempt to explain the writing of facts in their natureunknowable to the medium, or of repeated predictions of thefuture, which are common in automatic communications.On the other side Mr. Stead's arguments are hardly moreconvincing. He bases his belief, first, on the nature of the communicationsfrom his son and others in which he could not bedeceived by his own mind and, secondly, on the fact that notonly statements of the past, but predictions of the future occurfreely. The first argument is of no value unless we know thenature of the communication and the possibility or impossibilityof the facts stated having been previously known to Mr. Stead.The second is also not conclusive in itself. There are some predictionswhich a keen mind can make by inference or guess,but, if we notice the hits and forget the misses, we shall believethem to be prophecies and not ordinary previsions. Thereal value of Mr. Stead's defence of the phenomena lies in theremarkable concrete instance he gives of a prediction from whichthis possibility is entirely excluded. The spirit of Julia, he states,predicted the death within the year of an acquaintance who,within the time stated, suffered from two illnesses, in one ofwhich the doctors despaired of her recovery. On each occasionthe predicting spirit was naturally asked whether the illness wasnot to end in the death predicted, and on each she gave an unexpectednegative answer and finally predicted a death by otherthan natural means. As a matter of fact, the lady in question,before the year was out, leaped out of a window and was killed.This remarkable prophecy was obviously neither a successfulinference nor a fortunate guess, nor even a surprising coincidence.It is a convincing and indisputable prophecy. Its appearancein the automatic writing can only be explained either bythe assumption that Mr. Stead has a subliminal self, calling itselfJulia, gifted with an absolute and exact power of prophecy deniedto the man as we know him, — a violent, bizarre and unprovedassumption, — or by the admission that there was a communicantwith superior powers to ordinary humanity using thehand of the writer. Who that was, Julia or another, ghost, spiritor other being, is a question that lies beyond. This controversy,