Here are a few examples of the simpler kind taken from the S.P.R. "Proceedings." As anything from fifty to a hundred printed pages are devoted to a single one of the more complicated cases, it is difficult adequately to summarize them in a brief space, and it is impossible to exaggerate how wearisome they are to the reader in their entirety.
On March 11, 1907, at one o'clock, Mrs. Piper said in the waking stage:
"Violets."
On the same day at 11 a.m. Mrs. Verrall wrote automatically:
"With violet buds their heads were crowned."
"Violacea? odores." (Violet-coloured scents.) "Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary." The city of the violet"
On April 8, 1907, the alleged spirit of Myers, through Mrs. Piper, said to Mrs. Sidgwick:
"Do you remember Euripides?Do you remember Spirit and Angel? I gave bothNearly all the words I have written to-day are with reference to messages I am trying to give through Mrs. V."
Mrs. Verrall had, on March 7, in the course of an automatic script, the words "Hercules Furens" and "Euripides." And on March 25 Mrs. Verrall had written:
The Hercules play comes in there and the clue is in the Euripides play, if you could only see it.
This certainly seems beyond coincidence. Again, on April 16, 1907, Mrs. Holland in India produced a script in which came the words "Mors" and "The shadow of death."
On the following day Mrs. Piper uttered the word Tanatos (obviously a mispronunciation of THANATOS-being the Greek word for "death," as Mors is the Latin).
On April 29 Mrs. Verrall wrote a script wholly occupied with the idea of Death, with quotations from Landor, Shakespeare, Virgil, and Horace, all involving the idea of Death.
On April 30 Mrs. Piper, in the waking stage, repeated the word THANATOS three times in close succession.
Here again the theory of coincidence would seem to be far-fetched.
Another cross correspondence concerned with the phrase AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS is a very lengthy one. Mr. Gerald Balfour discussing it * says that the completed idea was a well-known picture in the Vatican.
* S.P.R. PROCEEDINGS, Vol. XXV., p. 54.
Mrs. Verrall's script gave details of the picture unmeaning to herself, but made clear by the phrase five Roma immortalis, which came a few days later in Mrs. Holland's script.
An interesting feature was the apparent understanding by the control of what was being done.
On March 2, when the cross correspondence began, Mrs. Verrall wrote that she would have word sent "through another lady" that would elucidate matters. On March 7, when the cross correspondence ended, Mrs. Holland's contribution was followed by the words: "How could I make it any clearer without giving her the clue?"
Mr. Gerald Balfour considers, with reason, that these two comments show that this cross correspondence was being deliberately brought about.
Sir Oliver Lodge, in commenting on the way the meaning is ingeniously wrapped up in these cross correspondences, says of one of them:
The ingenuity and subtlety and literary allusiveness made the record difficult to read, even when disentangled and presented by the skill of Mr. Piddington.
This criticism, from one who has been convinced of their veridical character, is sufficient indication that cross correspondences are not likely to make anything more than a limited appeal. To the ordinary Spiritualist they seem an exceedingly roundabout method of demonstrating that which can be proved by easier and more convincing methods. If a man were to endeavour to prove the existence of America by picking up driftwood upon the European shores, as Columbus once did, instead of getting into touch with the land or its inhabitants, it would present a rough analogy to such circuitous methods of investigation.
Apart from the cross correspondence scripts, several others have been closely analysed by the S.P.R., the most remarkable and convincing being that which has been named "the Ear of Dionysius." It must be admitted that after the lowly and occasionally sordid atmosphere of physical phenomena these intellectual excursions do lift one into a purer and more rarefied atmosphere.