Another difficulty arises from the fact that mediums and their controls not infrequently receive impressions as pictures, and these pictures are liable to be misinterpreted. Mrs Verrall writes in her report of her sitting with Mrs Thompson:
"Merrifield was said to be the name of a lady in my family. The name was given at first thus: 'Merrifield, Merryman, Merrythought, Merrifield; there is an old lady named one of these who,' etc. Later, 'Nelly' said: 'Mrs Merrythought, that's not quite right; it's like the name of a garden'; and after in vain trying to give her the name exactly, she said: 'I will tell you how names come to us. It's like a picture; I see school children enjoying themselves. You can't say Merryman because that's not a name, or Merrypeople.' 'Nelly' later on spoke of my mother as Mrs Happyfield or Mrs Merryfield with indifference" ("Proceedings," part xliv. p. 208).
It is probably for this reason that so much use is made in spirit communications of symbolism. The passage in which Mr Myers deals with the use of symbolism in automatic messages, in his work on "Human Personality," should be studied in this connection. He points out that there is "no a priori ground for supposing that language will have the power to express all the thoughts and emotions of man." And if this is true of man in his present state, how much more does it apply to man in another and more advanced state? With reference to automatic writings he says: "There is a certain quality which reminds one of _translation_, or of the composition of a person writing in a language in which he is not accustomed to talk."
As a result of her investigations, Mrs Verrall declares:
"That Mrs Thompson is possessed of knowledge not normally obtained I regard as established beyond a doubt; that the hypothesis of fraud, conscious or unconscious, on her part fails to explain the phenomena seems to be equally certain; that to more causes than one is to be attributed the success which I have recorded seems to me likely. There is, I believe, some evidence to indicate that telepathy between the sitter and the trance personality is one of these contributory causes. But that telepathy from the living, even in an extended sense of the term, does not furnish a complete explanation of the occurrences observed by me, is my present belief."