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Programming Interviews Exposed:
Secrets to Landing Your Next Job

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix

Chapter 1 Before the Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2 The Job Application Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter 3 Approaches to Programming Problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Chapter 4 Linked Lists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Chapter 5 Trees and Graphs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Chapter 6 Arrays and Strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Chapter 7 Recursion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Chapter 8 Sorting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Chapter 9 Concurrency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Chapter 10 Object-Oriented Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Chapter 11 Design Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Chapter 12 Databases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Chapter 13 Graphics and Bit Manipulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 14 Counting, Measuring, and Ordering Puzzles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Chapter 15 Graphical and Spatial Puzzles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Chapter 16 Knowledge-Based Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Chapter 17 Nontechnical Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Appendix Résumés . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Programming Interviews Exposed
Third Edition
Programming Interviews Exposed
Secrets to Landing Your Next Job
Third Edition

John Mongan
Eric Giguère
Noah Kindler
Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, Third Edition
Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
10475 Crosspoint Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2013 by John Mongan, Eric Giguère, and Noah Kindler
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-26136-1
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ISBN: 978-1-118-28340-0 (ebk)
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 For Thuy, the love of my life, who understands me.

—John Mongan

To my parents, Jean-Claude and Marie-Jolle, who

encouraged and supported my love of programming.

—Eric Giguère

To Mikey, Alex, and Teddy

—Noah Kindler
About the AuthorS

John Mongan is a self-taught programmer with professional experience as a consultant for several
software and pharmaceutical companies. He has three patents on software testing technologies. He
holds a B.S. degree from Stanford and an M.D. and a Ph.D. degree in bioinformatics from UC San
Diego, where he worked on supercomputer simulations of protein dynamics. He currently conducts
research in medical informatics as a resident radiologist at UC San Francisco.

Eric Giguère started programming in BASIC on a Commodore VIC-20 (a long time ago) and was
hooked. He holds BMath and MMath degrees in computer science from the University of Waterloo,
has extensive professional programming experience, and is the author of several programming
books. He currently works as a software engineer at Google.

Noah Kindler is VP Technology at the security technology company Avira. He leads software
design and development teams across several products with a user base of over 100 million.
About the Technical Editors

Michael Gilbert is a long-time systems programmer for various engineering firms. He got his
start developing games for the Atari ST, and was a frequent contributing editor for STart magazine.
Over the years, he’s developed gaming software on the PC and Mac for clients worldwide. He’s also
an expert Flash Actionscript programmer and has produced a popular internet gaming environment
called HigherGames, you can check it out at www.highergames.com. He now enjoys developing games
for the iPhone and iPad, and currently has four games in the AppStore (Woridgo, Jumpin’ Java, Kings
Battlefield, and Set Pro HD). In his spare time, he enjoys trying to defeat his wife Janeen in a friendly
game of Scrabble. You can follow him on Twitter at mija711.

Justin Vogt is an experienced software development professional with a unique blend of skills
(technical, architectural, design, communication, creative, management, and development leadership).
He has over 15 years of diverse experience in software development and has worked on projects that
include embedded software, mobile development, web development, commercial software develop-
ment, device communications, medical application development, and non-profit organization solution
development.
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introduce the telephone, the bicycle, steamships, or the modern
scientific vocabulary into their eighteenth-century conversation. But,
on the other hand, she herself employs terms still more malapropos,
such as, “to derail” (figuratively), “metre” and “centimetre,” etc.
Certain words, such as “tramway” and “photography,” have
occasioned serious conflicts. Marie Antoinette first allows the
treacherous word to pass unnoticed, and it is evident that she
perfectly understood it, but her own reflection, or the smile of the
sitters, awakens in her the feeling of incompatibility; she returns to
the word just used, and pretends a sudden ignorance and
astonishment in regard to it. Spiritism explains these blunders by
accusing the Machiavelian companions of the queen of grossly
abusing the suggestibility attached to the trance state by jumbling
her ideas and throwing her into confusion. Psychology is not
surprised that the subliminal imitation, however remarkable it may
be, presents some little defects, and every one is in accord in regard
to her thoughtless manner of expressing herself, in attributing these
anachronisms to an accidental mingling of the memories of her
ordinary personality and of the present life with those of the royal
personality revived during the somnambulism. In her rôle as queen,
Mlle. Smith gives evidence of a great deal of ingenuity. She is full of
witty repartées, which disconcert her interlocutors, the style of which
is sometimes perfectly after the manner of the epoch.
This ease and readiness of dialogue, excluding all reflective or
calculating preparation, denote a great freedom of mind and a
wonderful facility for improvisation. There are mixed with these, on
the other hand, some witticisms and episodes which are not at all
impromptu, but are the evident result of a preliminary elaboration in
the course of the subconscious reveries and various automatisms
which the royal romance causes to surge up in Hélène’s ordinary life.
There are some scenes whose development or repetition can be
followed in a series of seances and spontaneous visions as it passes
through the other cycles. The following is one example among
many:
 At the end of a seance at which M. de Morsier was present
(October 10, 1897), Mlle. Smith enters into her dream of Marie
Antoinette. During dinner she makes several allusions to her son, the
Dauphin, speaks of her daughter, tells of having demanded of her
sorcerer the sex of her next child, etc.—matters all foreign to the
conversation of Philippe, and which seem to announce some
underlying scene ready to break forth. In fact, in the middle of the
soirée the queen becomes absorbed and distrait, and finally falls on
her knees in a dark corner of the salon; her monologue indicates
that she is before the cradle where the little Dauphin and his sister
are lying asleep. Presently she returns to seek Philippe and to
conduct him to admire the sleeping children, to whom, in a very soft
voice, she sings an unknown nursery rhyme (“Sleep in peace,” etc.)
of a plaintive melody analogous to that of the Hindoo chant; the
tears gush from her eyes; tender kisses upon the imaginary cradle
and a fervent prayer to the Virgin terminate this extremely touching
maternal scene.
Several weeks after (the 1st of December), a new romance makes
its appearance in a spontaneous access of visual, auditive, and
graphic automatism, the recital of which Hélène sent me the
following day. That evening, while alone with her mother, she had
interrogated Leopold upon an affair in which she was greatly
interested, and had obtained from him an answer: “As soon as his
communication was ended, I saw everything disturbed around me;
then at my left, at a distance of about thirty feet, a Louis XVI. salon,
not very large, was outlined, in the middle of which was a square
piano, open. Before this piano was seated a woman, still young, the
color of whose hair I could not distinguish. Whether it was blond or
gray I could not clearly see. She played and sang at the same time.
The sounds of the piano, the voice even, reached me, but I could
not catch the words of the song. A young girl and a boy stood on
either side of the piano. Not far from them was seated a young lady
holding an infant on her lap.[27] This charming vision lasted a very
short time, not longer than ten minutes.”
 After the disappearance of the vision, Hélène had the idea of
taking up her pencil. “With pencil in hand, I was asking myself what
I should write, when all at once I heard again the melody; then, this
time very distinctly, the words, but without any vision. The whole
passed into my head, into my brain, and instinctively I pressed my
hand to my forehead in order to hear and understand better. I felt
myself compelled to hold the pencil in a manner different from my
habitual way of holding it. Here are the words of the song heard and
traced at that instant. As you see, the handwriting is not like mine;
there are also some very glaring errors of orthography.”
“Approchez-vous approchez-vous | enfans chéris
approchez-vous | quand le printemps sur nous ramène |
ses frais parfums ses rayons d’or | venez enfans sous son
haleine | gazouiller bas mes doux trésors | approchez-
vous approchez-vous | enfans chéris approchez-vous |
êtres chéris enfans bénis—approchez-vous de votre mère |
son doux baiser petits amis | calme et guérit toutes
misères | approchez-vous approchez-vous | enfans chéris
approchez-vous.”[28]
Some months later the two preceding scenes were reproduced,
with variations of detail, on the same evening, during which Marie
Antoinette first conducts Philippe towards the fictitious cradle of her
cherubs and sings to them her first song: “Sleep in peace,” etc. Then
she leads him to the piano, and, displaying an imaginary sheet of
music beneath his eyes, obliges him to accompany her while she
sings the “Song of Elizabeth.”
M. de Morsier, who, fortunately, is not easily embarrassed,
improvised an accompaniment to which the queen accommodated
herself after some criticism, and to which she sings in a very sweet,
pure voice some words which were found to be, word for word,
identical with those automatically written by Hélène on the
preceding 1st of December. In this example is seen the mixture of
preparation, of repetition, and of impromptu, which are inferred
from the varied incidents which constitute the royal soirées.
 It is probable that if it were possible to be a witness of, or if Mlle.
Smith could remember all the spontaneous automatisms which aid in
nourishing the royal romance, nocturnal dreams, hypnagogic visions,
subconscious reveries during the waking state, etc., there would be
presented interminable imaginary conversations with the marquis,
Philippe, Cagliostro, and all the fictitious personages who
occasionally make their appearance in the somnambulistic scenes of
Marie Antoinette.
It is by this underlying and unknown work, perhaps never
interrupted, that the personality of the queen of France is slowly
prepared and elaborated, and which shines forth and displays itself
with so much of magnificence in the soirées with Philippe d’Orléans
and the Marquis de Mirabeau.
I have stated that, except these two gentlemen, who always form
part of the royal dream when they are present (and even sometimes
when absent), the others present at the seances are excluded. It is
understood that they do not pass unperceived on this account.
In the same manner as in the negative hallucinations or
systematic anæsthesia of hypnotized subjects, that which seems to
be not felt is nevertheless registered; so, in like manner, it is
altogether probable that nothing of that which passes around her
escapes the fundamental individuality of Mlle. Smith. The royal
personality which occupies the foreground of the scene and finds
itself in an elective rapport, limited to Philippe and the marquis,
merely causes the other personalities to be relegated to the
background without breaking their connection with the environment.
There are many proofs of this. For example, in walking, Marie
Antoinette never runs against any of the others present. The
remarks and criticisms of the latter are not lost upon her, since very
frequently her conversation betrays their influence after some
minutes. At the same time, if any one pinches her hand or tickles
her ear, her lips, her nostrils, she seems anæsthetic; still, at the end
of a few seconds she turns her head away, and if the tickling is
persisted in, she experiences a kind of agitation accommodated to
the circumstances of her dream, changes her position on some
pretext, etc.
It is manifest, in short, that the excitations to which she seems to
be insensible at the moment, far from having no effect, are stored
up and produce, by their sum total, reactions which are retarded for
some minutes and which are intelligently adapted to the
somnambulistic scene, but with an intensity much more exaggerated
than diminished by this period of latency.
Music also affects her, precipitating her out of the dream of Marie
Antoinette into a common hypnotic state, in which she assumes
passionate attitudes, which have in them nothing of the regal, and
which conform to the varied airs which follow each other upon the
piano.
In her phases as Marie Antoinette, Hélène has an accent
characteristic of it; she recognizes me vaguely; she has some
allochiria, a complete insensibility of the hands, and a large appetite;
she does not know who Mlle. Smith is; if she is asked to give the
actual date, she replies correctly as to the month and day, but
indicates a year of the last century, etc. Then all at once her state
changes; the royal accent gives way to her ordinary voice, she
seems wide awake, all mental confusion has disappeared, she is
perfectly clear as to persons, dates, and circumstances, but has no
memory of the state from which she has just emerged, and she
complains of a sharp pain in her finger (where I had pinched it while
in her preceding phase). I took advantage one day of these
alternations to offer her a pencil, and dictated to her the sentence of
Fig. 42. In her normal moments she holds the pencil in her
accustomed manner, between the index and middle fingers, and
writes in her usual hand; during the returns of the royal
somnambulism she holds it between the thumb and index-finger and
assumes her handwriting and orthography known as that of Marie
Antoinette, exactly as her voice is invested with the accent. It is to
be presumed that all her other functions, if one could examine them,
would show parallel analogous variations, the changing of the
personality being naturally accompanied by connected changes not
only of the memory and the sensibility, but of motility of the
emotional disposition—in brief, of all the faculties of the individuality.

Fig. 42. Differences of handwriting of Mlle. Smith at the end of an incarnation of

Marie Antoinette, according to whether she is in her normal state (upper
lines, in her usual handwriting), or in a return of the royal dream (lower
lines; note the word foisoit). Natural size. The tremor of some of the strokes
is not in the original, but occurred in the reproduction in ink.

I must add that in each of her states Hélène has the memory of
preceding periods of the same kind, but not of another state: it was,
for example, necessary to dictate anew, for the second test, the
sentence of Fig. 42, which she did not remember having heard or
written a few minutes previously. This separation into distinct
memories is not, however, absolute, nor very profound: the
personality of Marie Antoinette is, in short, a modification—of an
intensity and extent which vary greatly with the seances—of the
ordinary personality of Mlle. Smith, rather than an alternating and
exclusive personality, of which so many striking cases have been
observed.
 For the mere spectators, the royal somnambulism is perhaps the
most interesting of all of Hélène’s cycles, on account of the brilliancy
and life of the rôle, the length of time during which it may be
sustained, the unexpected happenings which the presence of other
real persons brings into it. It is truly a comedy.
But for the lovers of the supernormal it is the least extraordinary
of the subliminal creations of Mlle. Smith, because the general
environment, being in France, is so imbued with historic or
legendary memories of the illustrious and unfortunate queen that
there is nothing surprising in the hypnoid reconstruction of a
personage so well known.
Finally, the psychologist and moralist who undertakes to reflect on
the inner meaning of things cannot escape the impression of sharp
contrast as compared with reality which this sparkling romance
affords.
In themselves, Mlle. Smith’s royal somnambulisms are almost
always gay and joyous; but, considering their hidden source, in so
far as they are the ephemeral and chimerical revenge of the ideal
upon the real, of impossible dreams upon daily necessities, of
impotent aspirations upon blind and crushing destiny, they assume a
tragic signification. They express the sensation lived through, felt, of
the bitter irony of things, of futile revolt, of fatality dominating the
human being. They seem to say that all happy and brilliant life is
only an illusion soon dissipated. The daily annihilation of the dream
and the desire by implacable and brutal reality cannot find in the
hypnoid imagination a more adequate representation, a more perfect
symbol of an emotional tonality, than her royal majesty whose
existence seemed made for the highest peaks of happiness and of
fame—and ended on the scaffold.
 CHAPTER X
SUPERNORMAL APPEARANCES

The mediumship of Mlle. Smith is full of facts supernormal in

appearance, and the question which offers itself for our solution is
that of determining to what extent they are supernormal in reality.
The title of this chapter, I must assert, is not to be understood in a
partisan sense. The term “appearances” is not used in its
unfavorable acceptation, as meaning that they are deceptive, and
that there is nothing behind them. It is taken in a frank and impartial
sense, to designate simply the exterior and immediate aspect of a
thing, without prejudging its real nature, in order, by the very force
of this neutrality, to provoke investigation destined to separate the
true from the false, the pure gold from the dross. It is precisely this
investigation which constitutes my present task.
A rather difficult task, for it is always risky to touch upon a subject
which is an apple of discord among psychologists, and which has
even been considered the “Dreyfus case of science.” The matter is
complicated, too, in this particular case, by the absolute faith of Mlle.
Smith and her friends in the supernormal character of her
phenomena; a state of mind extremely worthy of respect, but which
is not calculated to facilitate research, all desire of ordinary analysis
and explanation being resented by them as an unjustifiable
suspicion, interpreted as being an indication of invincible skepticism.

I. The Study of the Supernormal

The term “supernormal” has been used for some years by the
investigators of the Society for Psychical Research to take the place
of the old word “supernatural,” which has become impracticable on
account of interloping connections, which finally caused its use to be
limited to theological and philosophical environments. Mr. Meyers, to
whom the credit is due, if I am not mistaken, of coining this as well
as many other new terms used to-day in the psychical vocabulary,
applies it to every phenomenon or faculty which passes beyond
ordinary experience, and reveals either a degree of higher evolution
not yet attained by the mass of humanity, or an order of
transcendental things superior to the world of sense. In these two
cases one finds one’s self, indeed, in the presence of facts which are
above the normal, but which are by no means to be taken as foreign
or contrary to the true laws of human nature (as the word
“supernatural” would imply).
It is to be observed that the definition of Mr. Meyers lays stress
upon the character of superiority of supernormal phenomena. I
shall, however, separate this character from it in the present chapter,
and in spite of the etymology, and for lack of any better term, shall
simply use the word “supernormal” to designate facts which come
within the actual framework of the science of to-day, and the
application of which would necessitate principles not yet admitted—
without occupying myself, however, with endeavoring to ascertain
whether these facts are messengers of a superior economy or
forerunners of a future evolution rather than the survival of a
condition of things which has disappeared, or whether they are
purely accidental, lusus naturae, denuded of signification.
It goes without saying that in treating of the supernormal we must
admit theoretically its possibility, or—which amounts to about the
same thing—fail to believe in the infallibility and perfection of
present-day science. If I consider it, à priori, absolutely impossible
for an individual to know, some time before the arrival of a telegram
containing the news, of an accident by which his brother at the
antipodes has been killed, or that another can voluntarily move an
object at a distance without having a string attached to it, and
contrary to the laws of mechanics and physiology, it is clear that I
will shrug my shoulders at every mention of telepathy, and I shall
not move a step to be present at a seance of Eusapia Paladino. What
an excellent means of enlarging one’s horizon and of discovering
something new, by being satisfied with one’s ready-made science
and preconceived opinion, quite convinced beforehand that the
universe ends at the wall opposite, and that there is nothing to be
obtained beyond that which the daily routine has accustomed us to
look upon as the limit of the Real! This philosophy of the ostrich,
illustrated formerly by those grotesque monuments of erudition—
over whom Galileo did not know whether to laugh or weep—who
refused to put their eyes to the glass for fear of seeing something
that had no official right to existence; and, again, that of many
brains petrified by the unseasonable reading of works of scientific
vulgarization, and the unintelligent frequenting of universities—these
are the two great intellectual dangers of our time.
If, on the other hand, the philosophical doubt degenerates in the
presence of these scientific impossibilities into blind credulity; if it
suffices that a thing be unheard of, upsetting, contrary to common-
sense and to accepted truths, in order to be immediately admitted,
practical existence, without speaking of other considerations,
becomes unbearable. The convinced occultist ought never to allow
the creaking of a piece of furniture to pass without assuring himself
that it is not the desperate call of some great-grandaunt trying to
enter into conversation with him; nor to complain to the police when
he finds his house upset during his absence—for how is he to know
that it is not some “elementals” from the world beyond who have
done the deed? It is by the fortunate failure of consequences alone,
and a continual forgetting of the doctrine, that one can continue to
live in a universe constantly exposed to the capricious incursions of
the “invisibles.”
These opposite turns of the mind—the invincible fatuity of some
and the silly superstition of others—inspire many people with an
equal repugnance. The need of a happy medium between these
opposed excesses has been felt for some time. Here are, for
example, a few lines, which have lost nothing after the lapse of two
centuries:
 “What are we to think of magic and witchcraft [to-day we would
say ‘occultism’ and ‘Spiritism’]? Their theory is obscure, their
principles vague, uncertain, approaching the visionary; but—they are
embarrassing facts, affirmed by grave men, who have seen them, or
who have heard of them from persons like themselves; to admit
them all, or to deny them all, seems equally embarrassing, and I
dare to assert that in this, as in all extraordinary things which
depend upon customary rules, there is a happy medium to be found
between credulous souls and strong minds.”
It is the voice of reason itself that the sagacious author of Les
Caractères permits us to hear. We must, however, add that this
“happy medium to be found” would not consist in a theory, a
doctrine, a ready-made and entire system, from the height of which,
as from a tribunal of arbitration, we would judge the “embarrassing
cases” which reality places in the path of the seeker; for this system
—however perfect it might be—would again be one more infallibility
added to all those which already encumber the road to truth. The
“happy medium” dreamed of by La Bruyère can be but a “method”
always perfectible in its application and prejudging in nothing the
results of investigation which go against the grain of the dogmatic
points of view, equally authoritative and sterile, which characterize
the two extremes of the “credulous souls” and “strong minds.”
To develop here this methodology of psychical research which
might guide the investigator struggling with the apparent or real
supernormal, would take me too far from Mlle. Smith. But I will
briefly indicate its essence and general spirit, of which an excellent
summary may be found in the following passage of Laplace:
“We are so far from knowing all the agents of nature and their
divers modes of action that it would not be philosophical to deny
phenomena solely because they are inexplicable in the actual state
of our knowledge. But we ought to examine them with an attention
all the more scrupulous as it appears more difficult to admit them.”
In writing these words Laplace hardly thought of telepathy, of the
spirits, or the movements of objects without contact, but only of
animal magnetism, which represented the supernormal of his time.
This passage remains none the less the rule of conduct to be
followed concerning all the possible manifestations of this multiform
subject. Two inseparable facts, completing each other, as the faces
of a medal, may be distinguished in it; but it is advisable, in order to
place them the better in the light, to formulate them separately into
two propositions representing the governing principles, the axioms
of all investigations of the supernormal. The one, which I shall call
“Principle of Hamlet,” may be condensed. in these words: All is
possible. The other, to which it is but just to leave the name of
“Principle Of Laplace,” is susceptible of many forms of expression. I
shall express it thus: The weight of the evidence should be
proportioned to the strangeness of the facts.
The forgetfulness of the “Principle of Hamlet” makes the “strong
minds,” for whom the limits of nature would not exceed those of
their system, the simpleton popes of all times and of all kinds, from
the burlesque adversaries of Galileo to the poor Auguste Comte,
declaring that the physical constitution of the stars would never be
known, and to his noble rivals of the learned societies, denying the
aërolites or condemning railroads beforehand. In its turn, the
ignorance of the “Principle of Laplace” makes the “credulous souls,”
who have never reflected that, if all is possible to the eyes of the
modest seeker, all is, however, not certain, or even equally possible,
and that some evidence would yet be necessary in order to suppose
that a stone falling on the floor in an occult reunion arrived there
through the walls by the aid of a dematerialization, rather than to
admit that it came there in the pocket of a joker.
Thanks to these axioms, the investigator will avoid the doubly
signalled danger, and will advance without fear into the labyrinth of
the supernormal in advance of the monsters of the occult. However
fantastic and magical the things may be which will spring up before
his eyes or which will fill his ears, he will never be taken unawares,
but, expecting all in the name of the “Principle of Hamlet,” he will
not be astonished at anything, and simply say: “Be it so! Why not?
We shall see.” On the other hand, he will not allow the wool to be
pulled over his eyes, and he will not easily be satisfied in the matter
of evidence; but, firmly intrenched behind the “Principle of Laplace,”
he will show himself all the more exacting as to the proofs, in
proportion to the degree in which the phenomena or the conclusion,
which they may wish him to accept, may be extraordinary, and he
will oppose a merciless non liquet to every demonstration which still
seems suspicious or lame.
I wish to speak a word here of the inevitable rôle which the
personal coefficient of the turn of mind and character plays in the
concrete application of the “Principle of Laplace.” This latter is of a
vagueness and a deplorable elasticity which opens the door to all
divergences of individual appreciation. If we could express in a
precise manner and translate in ciphers, on the one hand, the
strangeness of a fact, which makes it improbable; on the other
hand, the weight of evidence which tends to make it admissible;
and, finally, the demandable proportion between these two contrary
factors, so that the second may counterbalance the first and secure
assent—that would be perfect, and everybody would soon come to
an agreement. Unhappily, the means to accomplish this result is not
yet perceived.
We must pass now to the weight of the evidence. We may, up to a
certain point, submit it to an objective judgment and to an impartial
estimation by following the rules and methods of logic, in the
broadest sense of the term. But the strangeness of the facts, or, as
Laplace said, the difficulty in admitting them! Who, then, is to be the
judge of them, and by what universal standard can we measure
them?
We must recognize that we are here in presence of an eminently
subjective and emotional factor, changeable from one individual to
another.
It is necessary to take some stand. In the matter of the
supernormal there are too many interior and personal factors
(intellectual idiosyncrasies, æsthetic temperaments, moral and
religious sentiments, metaphysical tendencies, etc.) tending to
determine the quality and intensity of the characteristic of the
strangeness in the facts in litigation, to enable one to flatter himself
upon a disinterested, objective, and quasi-scientific verdict upon
their degree of probability or improbability. It is only when, after the
accumulation of cases and evidences of similar character, a tacit
agreement shall finally have been reached by those who have
studied the subject, that the problem can be said to be solved,
either by the relegation of pretended supernormal phenomena to the
domain of vanished illusions and abandoned superstitions, or by the
recognition of new laws and forces in nature. The phenomena
considered till then as supernatural will cease to be so; they will
form a part of established science, they will have nothing more in
them that is strange, and will be admitted by everybody. As long as
this mile-post is not reached, as long as the supernormal
phenomenon is discussed as such, there are but individual opinions
on this subject, subjective certitudes or probabilities, verdicts in
which reality is only reflected as closely welded to the personality of
their authors.
Two suggestions seem to me to spring from this. First, authors
who take it upon themselves to give their advice upon the
extraordinary facts coming to their knowledge ought always to begin
by making their confession, so that the reader may the better
distinguish the intimate factors which may have influenced them. It
is true that we are not always thoroughly acquainted with ourselves,
but it would be something to say frankly what we believe we have
discovered in ourselves as to the position involuntarily taken by us,
obscure inclinations for or against the hypothesis involved in the
phenomena in question. This is what I shall try to do here, by
confining myself to the problems raised by the mediumship of Mlle.
Smith, and without entering upon the boundless domain of
“psychical research.” I shall, therefore, begin each of the following
paragraphs by giving my personal advice and my subjective
sentiment on the point upon which Hélène’s supernormal
appearances touch.
 It seems to me, in the second place, that the only rational position
to take, concerning the supernormal, is, if not a complete
suspension of judgment, which is not always psychologically
possible, at least that of a wise probability, exempt from all dogmatic
obstinacy. The fixed beliefs, the unshakable opinions as to the reality
and the meaning of life, are certainly subjective conditions,
indispensable to all properly moral conduct, to all human existence
truly worthy of this name—that is to say, all that which pretends to
be above the animal routine of inherited instincts and social slavery.
But these firm convictions would be absolutely misplaced on the
objective ground of science, and consequently also that of
supernormal facts, which, though still situated outside of the
scientific realm, hope shortly to be received within its pale. Practical
necessities make us but too often forget that our knowledge of the
phenomenal world never attains absolute certitude, and as soon as
one passes beyond the brutal facts of the senses, the best-
established truths, as well as the most thoroughly refuted
propositions, do not rise above a probability which, however great or
insignificant we may suppose it to be, never equals infinity or zero.
The intellectual attitude which common-sense prescribes in the
supernormal consists, for very strong reasons, in never absolutely
and irrevocably denying or affirming, but provisionally and by
hypothesis, as it were. Even in cases when, after having examined
everything scrupulously, one imagines he has finally reached
certitude, it must not be forgotten that this word is but a mode of
expressing one’s self; because, in point of fact, one does not rise
above a probable opinion, and the possibility of an unsuspected
error, vitiating the most apparently evident experimental
demonstration, is never mathematically excluded.
This reserve is particularly indicated in cases of phenomena like
those of Mlle. Smith, which often leave much to be desired
concerning accessory information, which would be necessary in
order to express one’s self categorically on their account. My
appreciation of these phenomena, far from pretending to an infallible
and definite character, demands, therefore, from the start, the right
of modification under the influence of new facts which may be
produced subsequently.
For the sake of clearness I shall set off again in four groups the
supernormal appearances with which I shall have to occupy myself
in this chapter—viz., so-called physical phenomena, telepathy,
lucidity, and spirit messages. The boundaries of these three last
categories are but poorly defined and might easily be fused into one.
But my division is but a kind of a measure of order, and not a
classification.

II. Physical Phenomena

This designation again covers several rather diverse categories of
strange facts. I shall only speak of the two kinds of which Mlle.
Smith has furnished samples (and which I have never personally
witnessed)—that is to say, “apports” and “movements of objects
without contact.”
1. Apports.[29]—Besides the unknown causes presiding over their
aërial transportation, the arrival of exterior objects in a closed space,
often coming from a considerable distance, implies, in order that
they may pass through the walls of the room, either the subterfuge
of a fourth dimension of space, or the penetration of the matter—
that is to say, the passage of the molecules or atoms of the object
(its momentary dematerialization) between the molecules or atoms
of the wall. All these impediments to our vulgar conception as to the
stability of matter, or, what is worse, to our geometrical intuition,
seem to me so hard to digest that I am tempted to apply to them
the words of Laplace: “There are things that are so extraordinary
that nothing can counterbalance their improbability.” This is not to
declare as false, à priori, all the stories of this kind, for we know that
the true is not always the probable; but assuredly, even in the case
of the good Mr. Stainton Moses, the weight of the proof does not, in
my opinion, equal the strangeness of the facts.
 So far as concerns the apports obtained at the seances of Mlle.
Smith, they all took place in 1892-93, in the reunions of the N.
group, where the obscurity favored the production of marvellous
things in close relation with the visions and typtological messages.
I will cite from memory certain acoustic phenomena mentioned in
the reports: The piano sounded several times under the touch of the
favorite disincarnate spirits of the group; the same happened to a
violin and to a bell; once we also heard metallic sounds that seemed
to come from a small musical box, although there was none in the
room. As to the apports, always received with delight by the
members of the group, who are ever anxiously wishing for them and
asking their spirit friends for them, they were frequent and varied
enough. In mid-winter roses showered upon the table, handfuls of
violets, pinks, white lilacs, etc., also green branches; among other
things there was an ivy leaf having engraved upon it in letters, as
though by a punching-machine, the name of one of the principal
disincarnate spirits at play. Again, at the tropical and Chinese visions
sea-shells were obtained that were still shining and covered with
sand, Chinese coins, a little vase containing water, in which there
was a superb rose, etc. These last objects were brought in a straight
line from the extreme East by the spirits, in proof of which they had
the honor of a public presentation at a seance of La Société d’Études
Psychiques de Genève, and were placed upon the desk of the
president, where all, myself included, could satisfy themselves at
their leisure as to their reality.
2. Movements of objects without contact.—The displacing, without
contact and in the absence of all known mechanical processes, of
objects situated at a distance (telekinesis), is very strange. However,
it only upsets physiological notions, and does not, as is the case with
the apports, go as far as to overthrow our conceptions in regard to
the constitution of matter or our spatial intuitions. It only supposes
that the living being possesses forces acting at a distance, or the
power of putting forth at intervals a species of invisible
supernumerary prehensile organs, capable of handling objects, as
our hands do (ectenic forces of Thury, ectoplasms of Richet, dynamic
members of Ochorowicz, etc.). Such are the ephemeral but visible
pseudopodes that the amœba puts forth in all directions.
It may be conceived that, as the atom and the molecule are the
centre of a more or less radiating influence of extension, so the
organized individual, isolated cell or colony of cells, is originally in
possession of a sphere of action, where it concentrates at times its
efforts more especially on one point, and again on others ad libitum.
Through repetition, habit, selection, hereditary and other principles
loved by biologists, certain more constant lines of force would be
differentiated in this homogeneous primordial sphere, and little by
little could give birth to motor organs. For example—our four
members of flesh and blood, sweeping the space around us, would
be but a more economic expedient invented by nature, a machine
wrought in the course of better adapted evolution, to obtain at the
least expense the same useful effects as this vague primitive
spherical power. Thus supplanted or transformed, these powers
would thereafter manifest themselves only very exceptionally, in
certain states, or with abnormal individuals, as an atavic reapparition
of a mode of acting long ago fallen into disuse, because it is really
very imperfect and necessitates, without any advantage, an
expenditure of vital energy far greater than the ordinary use of arms
and limbs. Unless it is the cosmic power itself, the amoral and stupid
demiurge, the unconsciousness of M. de Hartman, which comes
directly into play upon contact with a deranged nervous system, and
realizes its disordered dreams without passing through the regular
channels of muscular movements.
But enough of these vapory metaphysical or pseudo-biological
speculations to give an account of a phenomenon for which it will be
time enough to find precise explanation when its authenticity shall
be beyond dispute, if that time shall ever arrive.
Three groups of proofs, of a diverse nature, have gradually
brought me to look upon the reality of these phenomena—in spite of
the instinctive difficulty of admitting them—as an infinitely more
probable hypothesis than its opposite.
 First: I was first unsettled by the reading of the too-much-
neglected memoir of Professor Thury, which seems to me to be a
model of scientific observations, the weight of which I could only
overlook by rejecting, à priori—in the name of their strangeness—the
possibility itself of the facts in question, which would have been
against the Principle of Hamlet. The conversations which it was my
privilege to hold with M. Thury have greatly contributed to arouse in
me a presumption in favor of these phenomena, which the book
would evidently not have done in the same degree if the author had
not been personally known to me.
Secondly: Once created, my idea of the probability of these facts
became rather strengthened than weakened by a number of foreign
works of more recent date; but I doubt whether any, or all of these
combined, would have been sufficient to create it. The displacement
of objects without contact being once hypothetically admitted, it
seems easier to me to explain Crookes’s observations on the
modifications of the weight of bodies in the presence of Home by
authentic phenomena of this kind (in spite of the well-deserved
criticisms that Crookes’s publications brought upon him) than to
suppose that he was simply Home’s dupe. The same is true with the
cases of Esprits tapageurs (Poltergeister), published by the Society
for Psychical Research, the exclusive hypothesis of the “naughty little
girl,” without the addition of any trace of telekinesis, which seems to
me a less adequate and more improbable explanation than that of
real phenomena, which would have tempted fraud. Naturally all
depends on the preconceived opinion one may have as to the
general possibility or impossibility of these facts, and my feeling in
regard to the matter would certainly be different without the
preceding or the following groups of evidence.
Thirdly: The probability of the movement of objects without
contact has reached with me a degree practically equivalent to
certitude, thanks to M. Richet, to whom I am indebted for my
presence at his house last year at several seances of Eusapia
Paladino, under conditions of control which gave no room for doubt
—at least without challenging the combined witness of the senses of
sight, hearing, and touch, as well as the average quantity of critical
sense and perspicacity with which every ordinary intelligence flatters
itself it is endowed; or, again, of suspecting the walls of M. Richet’s
study had been tampered with, and he himself, with his attending
colleagues, of being impostors, in collusion with the amiable
Neapolitan herself—a supposition which the most elementary sense
of propriety would absolutely forbid me to entertain. From that
moment I believed in telekinesis by constraint of the perception,
sensata et oculata certitudine, to borrow the expression of Galileo,
who certainly did not mean by that an unreflecting adhesion to the
evidences of the senses, like that of the casual onlooker at the tricks
of the prestidigitator, but rather the final crowning of an edifice
having for its rational framework the reasoned analysis of the
conditions of observation, and of the concrete circumstances
surrounding the production of the phenomenon.
In saying that I believe in these facts, I will add that there is no
question here of a conviction, in the moral, religious, or philosophical
sense of the term. This belief is for me devoid of all vital importance;
it does not move any essential fibre of my being, and I would not
feel the least inclination to submit to the slightest martyrdom in its
defence. Whether the objects move or do not move without contact
is absolutely indifferent to me. Should any one some day succeed in
unveiling the physical tricks or the fallacious psychological processes
which have led into error the best observers of telekinesis, from M.
Thury down to M. Richet, with a number of other witnesses, myself
included, I would be the first to laugh at the trick that art and nature
had played upon me, to applaud the perspicacity of the one who
discovered it, to congratulate myself, above all, in seeing
supernormal appearances returning to the ordinary course of things.
This is a disproportionally lengthy preamble to facts of which I
shall have to speak here, for they are reduced to a few
displacements of objects without contact (raising of tables,
transporting or projecting of flowers and diverse things placed out of
reach), of which Hélène and her mother were witnesses on several
occasions at their house. I cannot be accused of stubborn
skepticism, since I admit the reality of telekinesis. In the present
case, however, all the stories which have been told me leave much
to be desired from an evidential point of view. Without suspecting in
any way the perfect good faith of both Mme. and Mlle. Smith, it
suffices to recall the possibility of malobservation and errors of
memory in the stories of supernormal events in order not to
attribute a great evidential value to the absolutely sincere evidence
of these ladies.
Incapacitated as I am from pronouncing judgment upon
phenomena of which I was not a witness, I shall, however, put forth
a fact which might militate in favor of their authenticity (their
possibility having been first hypothetically admitted)—namely, that
these phenomena have always been produced under exceptional
conditions, at a time when Hélène was in an abnormal state and a
prey to a deep emotion. On the one side, this circumstance
increases the chances of malobservation, while, on the other, the
day on which it shall be well established that (as divers observations
cause us to think) certain abnormal and emotional states set at
liberty in the organism latent forces capable of acting at a distance,
it will be permitted us to suppose that perhaps something analogous
has taken place in Mlle. Smith’s case. Here is, as an example of
these perplexing cases, a fact which happened to her during a
period of general indisposition. Abridging the story, I reproduce it as
Hélène sent it to me the following day:
“Last night I had a visit from M. H. I do not need to give you an
analysis of my impressions; you will understand them as well as I
do. He came to tell me that he had held a seance with a lady who
was a stranger to me, and that this lady had seen Leopold, who had
given her a remedy for the indisposition from which I was suffering.
I could not refrain from telling him that Leopold had assured me that
he manifested himself only to me, and that it would consequently be
difficult for me to admit his alleged utterances to others.” But that is
not the most interesting part of the story.
 “While M. H. spoke to me I felt a sharp pain in my left temple,
and, perhaps two minutes afterwards, my eyes, constantly directed
towards the piano, on which I had placed two oranges the evening
before, were entirely fascinated with I know not what. Then,
suddenly, at the moment when we least expected it—we were all
three (M. H., my father, and myself) seated at a reasonable distance
from the piano—one of the oranges displaced itself and rolled to my
feet. My father maintained that it had no doubt been placed too near
the edge of the lid, and at a certain moment had fallen in a natural
way. M. H. saw immediately in this incident the intervention of some
spirit. I myself dared not pass my opinion on it. Finally, I picked up
the orange, and we spoke of other things.
“M. H. remained about an hour; he went away exactly at nine. I
went to my mother’s room to give her a few details of M. H.’s visit. I
described to her the fall of the orange, and what was my surprise
when, on returning to the drawing-room and stepping up to the
piano to take the lamp I had placed on it, I found the famous orange
no longer there. There was but one left; the one I had picked up
and replaced by the side of the other had disappeared. I looked for
it everywhere, but without success. I went back to my mother, and
while I spoke to her we heard something fall in the vestibule. I took
the lamp to see what might have fallen. I distinguished at the
farthest end (towards the door of the entrance to the apartment) the
much-sought-for orange!
“Then I asked myself quite frankly whether I was in presence of
some spiritistic manifestation. I tried not to be frightened. I took the
orange to show it to my mother. I returned to the piano to take the
second orange, so as not to be frightened in a similar way. But it, in
its turn, had disappeared! Then I felt a considerable sensation of
trembling. I returned to my mother’s room, and, while we discussed
the matter, we heard again something thrown with violence, and,
rushing out to see what had happened, I saw the second orange
placed in exactly the same spot where the other had been, and
considerably bruised. Imagine how astonished we were! I took both
oranges, and, without losing an instant, went to the kitchen and put
them in a cupboard, where I found them again the following
morning; they had not moved. I did not go to bed without some
fear, but fortunately I quickly went to sleep. My mother is sure that it
is M. H. who brought some evil spirit into the house, and she is quite
uneasy....”
From the oral explanations of Mlle. Smith and her mother, and also
from the location of the places, it follows that the oranges had been
thrown at a distance of ten yards from the piano, through the wide-
open parlor door leading to the vestibule, against the door of the
apartment, as if to follow and strike fictitiously M. H., who a few
moments before had left by this door.
One has undoubtedly always the right of discarding at the outset,
as presenting too little guarantee of genuineness, the extraordinary
stories of a person subject to hallucinations. In the present case, all
that I know of Mlle. Smith and her parents keeps me from doing so,
and persuades me that her story is thoroughly exact, which,
however, does not amount to saying that there is anything of the
supernormal about it. One has, in fact, the choice between two
interpretations.
First: In the hypothesis of veritable telekinesis, the following is the
manner in which the adventure would be summed up: the emotion
due to the unexpected and unpleasant visit of M. H. had brought
about a division of consciousness. The feeling of irritation, anger,
and repulsion against him had condensed themselves into some
secondary personality, which, in the general perturbation of the
entire psychophysiological organism, had momentarily recovered the
use of these primitive forces of action at a distance, entirely
removed from the will, and without the participation of the ordinary
self, and thus automatically accomplished outwardly the instinctive
idea of bombarding this ill-bred visitor. Notice is to be taken of the
painful aura at the temple and the fascination of gaze, which,
according to Hélène’s story, preceded the first signs of the
phenomenon, the orange falling and rolling at her feet.
 Secondly: But the most natural supposition is certainly that Mlle.
Smith, by the ordinary use of her limbs, had taken and thrown these
projectiles in an access of unconscious muscular automatism. It is
true that this would not agree with the presence of her father,
mother, or M. H., who did not see her make the supposed
movements. But an absent-mindedness of even normal witnesses
will seem easier to admit than the authentic production of a
supernormal phenomenon.
These episodes which have happened to Mlle. Smith and her
mother since I have known them are very few, amounting to half a
dozen at the most, and I will not dwell longer upon this subject.
Hélène is not conscious of possessing any faculty of movement at a
distance, and she always attributes these phenomena to spirit
intervention. Leopold, on the other hand, has never acknowledged
that he is the author of them. He claims that Hélène possesses
within herself supernormal powers, and that, in order to succeed,
she would only have to set them to work, but that she did not wish
to do so. All my suggestions and repeated entreaties with Leopold
and Hélène—either awake or in a state of somnambulism—in the
hope of obtaining in my presence some physical phenomenon, have
been in vain up to the present time.

III. Telepathy
One may almost say that if telepathy did not exist one would have
to invent it. I mean by this that a direct action between living
beings, independent of the organs of the senses, is a matter of such
conformity to all that we know of nature that it would be hard not to
suppose it à priori, even if we had no perceptible indication of it.
How is it possible to believe that the foci of chemical phenomena, as
complex as the nervous centres, can be in activity without giving
forth diverse undulations, x, y, or z rays, traversing the cranium as
the sun traverses a pane of glass, and acting at a distance on their
homologues in other craniums? It is a simple matter of intensity.
 The gallop of a horse or the leap of a flea in Australia causes the
terrestrial globe to rebound on its opposite side to an extent
proportional to the weight of these animals compared to that of our
planet. This is little, even without taking into account the fact that
this infinitesimal displacement runs the risk at every moment of
being neutralized by the leaps of horses and fleas on the other
hemisphere, so that, on the whole, the shocks to our terrestrial
globe resulting from all that moves on its surface are too feeble to
prevent our sleeping. Perhaps it is the same with the innumerable
waves which coming from all other living beings, shock at every
moment a given brain: their efforts are counterbalanced, or their
resultant too slight to be perceived. But they exist none the less in
reality, and I confess I do not understand those who reproach
telepathy with being strange, mystical, occult, supernormal, etc.
As to the knowledge whether this theoretical telepathy offers
results open to experimental demonstration—that is to say, whether
this chain of intercerebral vibrations into which we are plunged
exercises any notable influence on the course of our psychic life; and
whether, in certain cases, we happen to feel emotions, impulses,
hallucinations, which the psychological state of one or another of our
own kind exercises directly upon us, across the ether and without
the ordinary intermediary of the channel of our senses—that is a
question of fact arising from observation and experience. We know
how much this question has actually been discussed, and how
difficult it is to solve it in a decisive way, as much on account of all
the sources of errors and illusions, to which one is exposed in this
domain, as on account of a probably always necessary concurrence
of very exceptional circumstances (which we do not as yet know
how to accomplish at will), in order that the particular action of a
determined agent should sweep away all rival influences, and betray
itself in a manner sufficiently marked and distinct in the life of the
percipient. Everything considered, I strongly lean towards the
affirmative. The reality of telepathic phenomena seems to me
difficult to reject in presence of the cluster of very diverse evidences,
entirely independent of each other, that militate in its favor.
Undoubtedly none of these evidences is absolutely convincing when
taken separately; but their striking convergence towards the same
result gives to their entirety a new and considerable weight, which
tips the scale, in my opinion, while awaiting an inverse oscillation,
which may some day destroy this convergence, or explain it by a
common source of error. Besides, I understand very well why those
to whom telepathy remains a mystic, and to our scientific
conceptions heterogeneous, principle, should obstinately resist it.
But, seeing nothing strange in it myself, I do not hesitate to admit it,
not as an intangible dogma, but as a provisional hypothesis,
corresponding better than any other to the condition of my certainly
very incomplete knowledge of this department of psychological
research.
Although predisposed in favor of telepathy, I have failed in finding
striking proofs of it in Mlle. Smith, and the few experiments I have
attempted with her on this subject offered nothing encouraging.
I tried several times to make an impression upon Hélène from a
distance and to appear before her during the evening, when I
thought she had returned to her home, which is a kilometre distant
from mine. I obtained no satisfactory result. My only case of striking
success, lost among a number of nonsuccesses, can be explained by
mere coincidence as well, and, after taking all the accessory
circumstances into consideration, does not deserve a lengthy
discussion.
As to spontaneous telepathy, a few indications would make me
think that Mlle. Smith sometimes involuntarily submits to my
influence. The most curious is a dream (or a vision) that she had
one night at a time when I had suddenly fallen ill during a stay in
the country some twenty leagues distant from Geneva. She heard
the ringing of a bell at her door, then saw me entering, so emaciated
and apparently so tired that she could not refrain from speaking to
her mother on the following morning of her uneasiness concerning
me. Unfortunately these ladies took no note of the exact date of this
incident, and Hélène did not speak of it to M. Lemaître until three
weeks later, when he told her about my illness, the beginning of
which dated back to the approximate time of the dream. The
evidential value of this case is weak. On other occasions Mlle. Smith
announced to me that, to judge from her dreams or vague intuition
in a waking state, I was to have on a certain day an unexpected
vexation, a painful preoccupation, etc. But the cases in which she
was right were counterbalanced by those in which she was wrong. It
does not appear that Hélène’s telepathic relations with other persons
are closer than with me, and among the cases known to me there is
not one that deserves the trouble of being related. An exception
must, however, be made on behalf of a M. Balmès (pseudonym),
who was for some time employed in the same business house as
Mlle. Smith, and concerning whom she had several really curious
phenomena. This M. Balmès was himself “a sensitive medium” of a
very nervous and vibrating nature. He was working in the story
above that of Hélène, and stopped sometimes to talk concerning
spiritism with her. Their relations, which they did not extend beyond
the office, ended there. There never seemed to be any personal
sympathy or special affinity between them, and it is not known how
to account for the telepathic bond that seemed to exist between
them. The following are examples:
1. One morning M. Balmès lent a newspaper to Hélène in which
there was an article on spiritism. He himself had received this paper
from one of his friends, M. X., a Frenchman who had been in Geneva
for some three weeks only and who did not know Hélène even by
name. This M. X. had marked the interesting article in red and had
added on the margin an annotation in black. During her noon meal
at home Hélène read the article rapidly, but for lack of time did not
read the annotation marked in black. Having returned to her office
she began again to work. However, at a quarter-past three her eyes
fell on the annotation of the paper, and as she was taking up her
pen to make some calculation in her note-book, “I do not know,” she
wrote to me, “either how or why I began to draw on this writing-
tablet the head of a man entirely unknown to me. At the same time
I heard the voice of a man, of a high, clear, and harmonious quality,
but unfortunately I could not understand the words. A great desire
came over me to run and show this drawing to M. Balmès. He
examined it, and seemed astonished, for the head drawn in ink was
no other than that of his friend who had lent him the paper marked
in pencil. The voice and the French accent were, as it seems,
entirely correct also. How was it that at the sight of an annotation I
found myself in communication with a stranger? M. Balmès, in
presence of this curious phenomenon, hastened that very evening to
his friend and learned that at the time when I drew his portrait there
was a very serious discussion in progress concerning him (M.
Balmès) between M. X. and other persons.”
Strictly speaking, this case may be normally explained by
supposing: First, that Mlle. Smith, without consciously noticing or
remembering him, had seen M. X. during his short stay in Geneva,
walking in the street with M. Balmès, and that the paper, which she
knew had been lent to M. Balmès by one of his friends, had, by
means of a subconscious induction, awakened the latent memory of
the face and voice of the stranger whom she had seen with him.
Secondly, that there is but a fortuitous coincidence in the fact that
M. X. spoke of M. Balmès at precisely the hour when Hélène traced
the face and heard the voice of the aforesaid M. X. in an access of
automatism, set free at the sight of his annotation on the paper.
In the telepathic hypothesis, on the contrary, the incident would
have been explained somewhat as follows: The conversation of M. X.
concerning M. Balmès (which was, as it appears, of an excited
nature) had telepathically impressed the latter and awakened in him
subliminally the remembrance of M. X. M. Balmès, in his turn,
without consciously suspecting it, had transmitted this remembrance
to Mlle. Smith, who was already predisposed to suggestion on that
day by the loan of the paper, and with whom the said remembrance
broke forth into a graphic, auditive, and impulsive (the desire of
showing her drawing to M. Balmès) automatism. The subconscious
strata of M. Balmès had thus served as a link between M. X. and
Mlle. Smith.
 2. “Some eight days after the preceding case, being a few minutes
after noon in an open street-car, I saw before me this same M.
Balmès talking to a lady in a room apparently close to the street-car.
The picture was not very clear. A kind of mist seemed to extend over
the whole, which was, however, not strong enough to hide from me
the personages. M. Balmès, especially, was quite recognizable, and
his somewhat subdued voice made me overhear these words: ‘It is
very curious, extraordinary.’ Then I felt a sudden, violent commotion,
and the picture vanished at the same time. Soon I found myself
again riding in the street-car, and, according to the progress which it
had made, I understood that the vision had lasted but three minutes
at the most. Notice must be taken of the fact that during these few
minutes I did not lose for a single moment the consciousness of my
situation; I knew and felt that I was riding home, as I was in the
habit of doing each day, and I felt entirely like myself, without the
slightest mental disturbance.
“Two hours later I went up to M. Balmès. Approaching him frankly
—yes, even a little abruptly—I said to him: ‘Were you satisfied with
the short visit you made a few minutes after twelve, and would it be
indiscreet to ask what you found so curious, so extraordinary?’ He
seemed confused, astonished, pretended even to be vexed, and
looked as if he wished to ask me by what right I permitted myself to
control his actions. This movement of indignation passed as quickly
as it came, to give way to a sentiment of the greatest curiosity. He
made me tell him in detail my vision, and confessed to me that he
really had gone at noon to call upon a lady, and that they had
discussed the incident about the newspaper. He had really
pronounced the words that I had heard: ‘It is curious, extraordinary,’
and, strange to say, I also learned that at the end of these words a
violent ringing of the bell had been heard, and that the conversation
between M. Balmès and his friend had suddenly come to an end by
the arrival of a visitor. The commotion felt by me was, therefore,
nothing more than the violent ringing of the bell, which, putting an
end to the conversation, had also put an end to my vision.”
 3. At the beginning of a seance one Sunday afternoon at a quarter
to four, I handed to Hélène a glass ball, of the kind used for
developing clairvoyance by means of gazing into a crystal. Shortly
afterwards she saw in it M. Balmès and his friend, and above their
heads an isolated pistol, but which seemed to have nothing to do
with them. She told me then that M. Balmès had received the day
before at his office a telegram which very much upset him, and
which obliged him to leave Geneva that very evening for S. She
seemed to apprehend some misfortune about to befall M. Balmès,
but soon fell asleep. By his digital dictations Leopold tells us that he
sent her to sleep to save her some painful visions seen in the crystal,
and that she, Hélène, has a mediumistic consciousness in regard to
all that is passing at S., and that the pistol is connected with M.
Balmès. It was impossible to learn more, and the remainder of the
seance was taken up with other matters.
M. Balmès, who returned to Geneva on the following Monday, and
whom I saw the same evening, was very much struck with Hélène’s
vision, for, on Sunday afternoon he really took part in a scene which
came near being tragic, and in the course of which his friend X. had
offered him a pistol which he always carried with him. Mlle. Smith
and M. Balmès did not hesitate to see in this coincidence a highly
characterized supernormal phenomenon. This case offers, however,
some difficulty—viz., that the incident of the pistol at S. did not take
place till more than two hours after Hélène’s visions, and that M.
Balmès, as he affirms, had no premonition of the affair at the time
when Hélène had her vision. It follows from this that there was a
kind of anticipated telepathy, a premonition experienced by another
than the interested principal, and this raises the great question of
the supernormal knowledge of future events. I find it easier to admit
that, although M. Balmès did not consciously foresee the incident of
the pistol, he foresaw subconsciously the event, and that this idea
passed telepathically to Hélène. Perhaps this case might be
explained without having recourse to the supernormal at all. Mlle.
Smith, knowing M. Balmès’ character, and up to a certain point his
personal circumstances, having been present the evening before
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