was coming through from London. I do not know if the
earth name is a merely ephemeral thing, quite
disconnected from the personality, and perhaps the very
first thing to be thrown aside. That is, of course,
possible. Or it may be that some law regulates our
intercourse from the other side by which it shall not
be too direct, and shall leave something to our own
intelligence.

This idea, that there is some law which makes an
indirect speech more easy than a direct one, is
greatly borne out by the cross-correspondences, where
circumlocution continually takes the place of
assertion. Thus, in the St. Paul correspondence, which
is treated in the July pamphlet of the S.P.R., the idea
of St. Paul was to be conveyed from one automatic
writer to two others, both of whom were at a distance,
one of them in India. Dr. Hodgson was the spirit who
professed to preside over this experiment. You would
think that the simple words "St. Paul" occurring in the
other scripts would be all-sufficient. But no; he
proceeds to make all sorts of indirect allusions, to
talk all round St. Paul in each of the scripts, and to
make five quotations from St. Paul's writings. This is
beyond coincidence, and quite convincing, but none the
less it illustrates the curious way in which they go
round instead of going straight. If one could imagine
some wise angel on the other side saying, "Now, don't
make it too easy for these people. Make them use their
own brains a little. They will become mere automatons