Chapter XVI — Theories and Conclusions — Apparitions and Thought-Transference by Frank Podmore

Chapter XVI Theories and Conclusions

Consideration more or less adequate has now been given to the various phenomena in which there is proof apparent of the action of telepathy. The experimental evidence has shown that a simple sensation or idea may be transferred from one mind to another, and that this transference may take place alike in the normal state and in the hypnotic trance. It has been shown also that the transferred idea may be reproduced in the percipient’s organism under various disguises; at one time, for instance, it may cause vague distress or terror, or a blind impulse to action; under other circumstances it may inspire definite and complicated movements, as those involved in writing. Again, it may induce sleep or even more deep-seated organic effects, such as hysteria or local anæsthesia. Once more, it may be embellished with imagery presumably furnished by the percipient’s own mind, and may appear as a dream or hallucination representing the distant agent. And these various results may be obtained either by deliberate experiment; as the result of some crisis affecting another mind; or, lastly, as following on some peculiar state of receptivity established, under conditions not yet clearly ascertained, in the percipient’s mind.

But it would not be reasonable to infer that the few hundreds or thousands of examples collected during the last twelve years by a few groups of investigators exhaust the possibilities or indicate the limits of telepathic action. By those, at least, who accept the demonstration of telepathy as a real agency it will hardly be anticipated that its action should be confined to the comparatively few cases which present a coincidence sufficiently striking to be quoted as ostensive instances. That the distribution, indeed, of telepathic sensitiveness at the present time should be sporadic—as the distribution of a musical ear or the power of visualisation is sporadic—may appear not improbable. But we should be prepared to find instances of its presumptive operation which fall below the level of demonstration, and might with almost equal plausibility be referred to some other cause. And such instances we do certainly find, in simultaneous dreams and in vague presentiments, and in innumerable coincidences of thought and expression in ordinary life. And the suggestion that the same power may serve as an auxiliary to more completely systematised modes of expression, though incapable of proof, may yet be thought worthy of consideration. It is conceivable, for instance, that it may aid the intercourse of a mother with her infant child, that the influence of the orator may be due not only to the spoken word, and that even in our daily conversation thoughts may pass by this means which find no outward expression. The personal influence of the operator in hypnotism may perhaps be regarded as a proof presumptive of telepathy. When all the phenomena of “mesmerism” were attributed, by the few who believed in them, to the passage of a fluid from the mesmerist to his patient, it was easy to credit the successful operator with as large an endowment of available fluid as the facts might seem to require. But from those who assert that the results are not merely explicable, but are in practice to be explained, as due to suggestion alone, no entirely satisfactory explanation has ever been forthcoming of the observed differences between one operator and another. It is difficult to believe that Liébeault, Bernheim, Schrenck-Notzing, Van Eeden, Lloyd Tuckey, Bramwell, etc., have succeeded where so many others have failed, merely through the exercise of greater patience, or the possession of an established reputation, which after all is based on the successes which it is now invoked to explain.150 And the fact that a large proportion of well-known hypnotists have acted as agents in successful telepathic experiments of an unusual kind is a further argument in the same direction. There are, moreover, some more dubious beliefs, for the most part discredited by educated persons, yet persisting with a singular vitality, which receive in telepathy a simple and perhaps sufficient explanation. It has already been shown that some of the marvels of Dr. Dee and the Specularii have been paralleled by recent visions in “the crystal,” revealing events then passing at a distance unknown to the seer; and that the nucleus of fact in some legends of ghosts and haunted houses is probably to be sought in a telepathic hallucination. And many of the alleged wonders of witchcraft and of ancient magic in general, when disentangled from the accretions formed round them by popular myth and superstition, present a marked resemblance to some of the facts recorded in this book. It is obvious, for instance, that the same power which inhibited Mr. Beard’s utterance (p. 83) could have prevented the witch’s victim from repeating the Lord’s Prayer. And Mr. Godfrey (p. 228), in the sixteenth century, might have found that to appear in two places at once would be perilously strong evidence of unlawful powers.151

But there are two special kinds of marvels, whose occurrence has been widely vouched for within quite recent times by men of proved ability and trained in the experimental methods of the modern laboratory, which deserve to be considered in this connection—the influence of metals and magnets on the human organism, and the physical phenomena of Spiritualism. Baron von Reichenbach in the last generation published the results of numerous observations on various sensitives, who alleged that they could see flame-like emanations from crystals, from the poles of a magnet, from the bodies of the sick, and from newly-made graves, and that they experienced various sensations from contact with magnets and metals. On the evidence of Reichenbach’s prolonged and laborious researches the existence of this supposed magnetic sense obtained a certain degree of credence. Accordingly the S.P.R., shortly after its foundation in 1882, conducted a series of control experiments on a number of persons with a powerful electro-magnet, which was alternately magnetised and demagnetised by a commutator in an adjoining room. Of forty-five persons tested three professed to see luminous appearances on the poles of the magnet; and on two or three occasions they were able to indicate with surprising accuracy throughout a whole evening the exact moment at which the current was switched on or off—the light, as they alleged, appearing or disappearing simultaneously. But these isolated successes were not repeated, and the very conditions of the experiment implied that it was known to some of those present whether or not the magnet was charged. Now it is obvious that unless special precautions are taken to guard against the telepathic 152 communication of this knowledge all experiments of the kind must be inconclusive; and other investigators have failed to detect any trace of the so-called magnetic sense.153

Within the last few years this supposed sensitiveness has appeared in another form. M. Babinski of the Salpetrière claims to have shown that certain ailments—such, for example, as hemiplegia and hysterical mutism—can be transferred by the influence of a magnet from one side of the body to another, or from one patient to another. MM. Binet and Féré 154 find that unilateral hallucinations can be shifted by the same influence from one side of the body to the other, and that in general memories and sensations—real or imaginary—can be modified and destroyed by the magnet. And MM. Bourru, Burot, Luys, and others have published whole treatises dealing with the alleged influence of various drugs and metals on certain patients. A few drops of laurel-water enclosed in a flask and brought near to the patient, will, according to these writers, induce ecstasy; ipecacuanha will cause vomiting; alcohol intoxication, and so on; each drug, though securely stoppered and sealed, giving rise to the appropriate physical symptoms in the patient. However, MM. Bernheim,155 Delboeuf,156 and Jules Voisin 157 showed some time since, and Mr. Ernest Hart 158 has lately repeated the demonstration, that the same results can be made to follow if the patient is led to believe that an inert piece of wood is a magnet, or that an empty flask contains a powerful drug. It may be fairly assumed therefore that when special precautions are not shown to have been taken—and there is little evidence that such precautions were as a rule taken—suggestion by word or look would be sufficient to account for the phenomena observed. But it is obvious that negative experiments of this kind are not in themselves conclusive; and it is difficult to believe that all the results recorded by investigators of such experience as Babinski, Féré, and others could have been due simply to carelessness on their part, or hypnotic cunning on the part of the subject. Indeed, in commenting on the counter experiments made by M. Jules Voisin, MM. Bourru and Burot expressly state that if the results obtained by them are to be attributed to suggestion, as he proposes, it is “une suggestion sans parole, sans geste, sans pensée même.”159 But a suggestion without word, gesture, or conscious thought is an accurate description of one form of telepathic suggestion; and if such suggestion has indeed been at work we have an explanation of the otherwise inexplicable reliance placed by these French investigators upon experiments so much controverted, and their faith in an interpretation so little supported by scientific analogy.

That in general the so-called physical phenomena of Spiritualism are due to self-deception and exaggeration on the one hand, and to fraud on the other, is a proposition which to most readers, it is likely, will seem to need little demonstration. And there are of course many cases, such as the recent experiments with Eusapia Palladino 160 at Milan, where, though competent observers—Richet, Schiaparelli, Lombroso, Brofferio—have seen things beyond their power to explain, yet the line between what was possible to fraudulent ingenuity and what was not possible cannot be drawn with sufficient sharpness to warrant the invocation of any new agency. But there are other records which cannot be so summarily dismissed. Thus Mr. Crookes, F.R.S.,161 has described the movements of a balance, specially constructed for the purpose of the experiments, in the presence of himself and other observers, under conditions which seemed to render it impossible for the effects to have been produced by the muscular force of any of those present. Lord Lindsay has testified to having seen Home’s stature elongated to the extent of 11 inches, and heavy tables and other articles of furniture rise in the air without visible support, and to having himself, at Home’s instance, handled, and seen others handle, red-hot coals with impunity. Other witnesses of repute have testified to the appearance of strange luminous bodies, the raining down of liquid scent, the production of inexplicable musical sounds and other phenomena equally marvellous.162

Now it is difficult to believe that Mr. Crookes and those with him could in their normal senses have imagined movements of a self-registering balance which never really took place, or have failed to detect actual movements on Home’s part; or that Home could have seemed to Lord Lindsay and others to add some fraction of a cubit to his stature or to float unsupported in the air, when he was really only stretching cramped muscles, or supporting himself on a captive balloon, or by unseen wires; or that when he was seen to carry hot coals about the room, and to place them, still glowing, upon the bare head of Mr. S. C. Hall, he relied upon the observers overlooking such inconspicuous objects as a pair of tongs and an asbestos skull-cap—alternatives which must have been at least as obvious at the time to the observers who, by recording these things, have imperilled their reputation for scientific acumen, and even for common sense, as now to their irresponsible critics. But it is certainly not less difficult to believe, on such grounds as these, in the discovery of a new physical force—or rather new forces; for the energy which could move a balance cannot properly be assumed to be identical with the energy which could increase Home’s stature, or restrain the action of fire; or, as elsewhere recorded, bring delicate flowers uninjured through closed doors. But fortunately we are not compelled to choose between the alternatives of such almost incredible stupidity and a multiplicity of new modes of energy. It has been plausibly suggested that the observers in such cases are the subjects of a collective hallucination. It is true that we have no precise analogy to support such a hypothesis. The hallucinations of hypnotism can be imposed upon several subjects simultaneously by dint of repeated verbal suggestions. But here there were none of the recognised preliminaries to the hypnotic trance: in many of the recorded cases the observers did not know what to expect, and it is clear that verbal suggestion was not essential to the results; while there is no trace of that break in the continuity of consciousness which elsewhere marks the passage from the hypnotic to the normal state. Moreover, in some of the best-attested cases it was the presumed operator, and not the witnesses, who was entranced. Assuredly if the phenomena described were due to hypnotic hallucination, it was hallucination without any of the characteristic features of hypnotism. But if we assume—as in the absence of any evidence to the contrary we are entitled, if not bound, to assume—that the observers were in their normal state, we can find no nearer parallel to this supposed hallucination than the collective telepathic hallucinations of which examples have been given in Chapter XII.163

It is true that the parallel is by no means exact. The hypothesis requires us to suppose not merely that investigators of spiritualistic phenomena are liable to see, by hallucination, things which are not there, but also that they are occasionally withheld, by hallucination, from seeing actual movements and objects. For Mr. Crookes’ automatic balance recorded a real movement; flowers and other objects have actually been brought into locked rooms; furniture has been demonstrably displaced, or has even moved before the eyes of the investigators, and been found at the conclusion of the experiment in its new position; an actual blister was raised on Lord Lindsay’s skin by the touch of a live coal which Home held in a hand apparently bare. Now if these results were due to the action of known forces, muscular and other, it seems clear that some of the medium’s movements and appliances escaped observation. We have, however, no record, so far as I know, of collective negative hallucination telepathically caused. But it may be pointed out that whilst it is only in unusual circumstances that a hallucination of the kind could attract sufficient attention to be recorded, negative hallucinations can be imposed without difficulty on a hypnotic subject. So that their telepathic origination in the circumstances suggested presents no greater à priori difficulty than that of positive hallucinations. There are, however, other differences between the collective hallucinations recorded in Chapter XII. and those which the hypothesis requires. For the former were for the most part vague and transitory, and were rarely shared by more than two persons; whilst the hypothetical hallucinations of the spiritualistic séance are persistent, and may affect several persons simultaneously and to an equal extent. It may be suggested, however, that the different conditions in the latter case—the common expectancy, the attunement of the minds of all present to a common mood, the absence of external solicitation to the senses—may be sufficient to account for the differing characteristics of the phenomena observed.

It may be objected that the problem does not require the intervention of such a Deus ex machina as collective hallucination; that fraud and malobservation are adequate to account for all the facts reported. I confess that I am unable so lightly to set aside the deliberate testimony of men of proved scientific distinction, whose word is still regarded as authoritative in observations not less delicate, and for results to the layman hardly less dubious. But I do not suggest that the phenomena, however interpreted, are likely to add anything to the proof of telepathy. I would merely urge that, as until the possibility of thought-transference in its various forms has been patiently and rigorously excluded, odylic flames and magnetic influences must remain unproven, so, in dealing with that residuum of evidence for the physical phenomena called spiritualistic which appears inexplicable by fraud and malobservation, the possibility of collective hallucination telepathically caused should be kept in view.164

It should be observed that the treatment of telepathy by those responsible for the word involves as little of theory as Newton’s conception of gravitation. What Newton did was to find the simplest general expression for the observed facts by saying that the heavenly bodies acted upon each other with a certain measurable force. He did not attempt to explain the mode of this action. And whilst succeeding astronomers have for the most part been content to follow Newton’s example, the science has, nevertheless, advanced in a steady and continuous progression. So the conception of telepathy simply colligates the observed facts of spontaneous and experimental thought-transference, as instances of the action of one mind upon another. The nature of the action the theory does not discuss; it merely defines it negatively, as being outside the normal sensory channels. In accordance with this view, Mr. Gurney, and the English investigators generally, have consistently employed psychical terms in their discussion of the subject: they have spoken of the transmission of ideas, not neuroses, and of the affection of mind by mind, rather than of brain by brain.165 This treatment involves no prejudgment of the question. Whatever may be the nature of the cause, we know the effects at present only in their psychical aspect, and in default of a physical theory, as psychical it seemed convenient to discuss them. This mode of speech is of course as legitimate as the popular usage which permits us, when the sun’s rays strike upon our retina, to ignore the intervening physical processes, and to express only the psychical result, “I see the sun.” But Mr. Gurney and his colleagues were further influenced in adopting and maintaining this usage by a conviction that the advancement of the subject has not hitherto been dependent upon the discovery of physical correlates for the observed psychical action, and that the energy which would be diverted to the search for explanations, could be more fruitfully employed on the still imperfect demonstration that there is something to be explained.

But it is obvious that this attitude of reserve cannot be maintained indefinitely. Since Mr. Gurney wrote the sum-total of observations and experiments has steadily increased, and there is hardly any longer room for doubt that we have something here which no physical processes at present known can adequately account for. It is not possible to observe facts without speculating on the underlying law: it is the law indicated by the facts, more than the facts themselves, which is of permanent interest to the human mind. Nor indeed can any fruitful observation be long maintained, which is not accompanied, guided, and stimulated by theoretical speculation. Professor Lodge has called upon us, in this matter, to “press the doctrine of ultimate intelligibility;”166 and in so saying he has at once given articulate expression to an impulse from whose blind urgency no student of nature can escape, and has formulated what is after all the differentia of the scientific mind. The average man accepts things as they are; the man of science presses the doctrine of ultimate intelligibility.

But however legitimate at the present stage of the inquiry theoretical speculation might seem, such speculation has for the most part been conspicuously wanting in the treatment of the subject by those best qualified to deal with it. At any rate the attitude of most continental investigators, like that of their English colleagues, has been a purely positive one. They have contented themselves with describing in psychical terms the psychical phenomena which they have observed. There are, indeed, some competent inquirers at the present time who incline to attribute thought-transference to the direct action of mind upon mind, or to some process yet more transcendent, just as in the last generation there were some who thought they were able to discern, in such instances as came under their notice, proof of the agency of disembodied spirits. And Von Hartmann, boldly accepting the facts wholesale, ascribes them to a communication between finite minds effected through the inter-mediation of the Absolute.167 But until we have exhausted the resources of the world which we know, we should perhaps conclude, with Mistress Quickly, that there is no need to trouble ourselves with any such thoughts yet.

Any attempt at a physical explanation is, of course, beset with many difficulties. To begin with, there is no sense-organ for our presumed new mode of sensation; nor at the present stage of physiological knowledge is there likelihood that we can annex any as yet unappropriated organ to register telepathic stimuli, as the semicircular canals are supposed to register the movements of the body in space. In lacking an elaborate machinery specially adapted for receiving its messages and concentrating them on the peripheral end of the nerves, telepathy would thus seem to be on a par with radiant energy affecting the general surface of the body. But the sensations of heat and cold are without quality or difference, other than difference of degree; whereas telepathic messages, as we have seen, purport often to be as detailed and precise as those conveyed by the same radiant energy falling on the organs of vision.

As regards the mode of transmission, we find first the theory of a fluid, which owes its origin to Mesmer, and was in vogue at a time when fluids were still fashionable in scientific circles. Dr. Baréty 168 has recently revived this theory in a new form. He alleges that there is a nerve-energy (force neurique rayonnante) which radiates from the eyes, the fingers, and the breath of the operator, and is capable of producing various effects upon hypnotised subjects. He finds that a knitting-needle acts as a conductor for this force, and water as a non-conductor; that the nerve-rays can be focussed by a magnifying-glass, refracted by a prism, and reflected from a mirror or other plane surface at an angle equal to the angle of incidence. Dr. Baréty has omitted to state whether in the latter case the rays are polarised, nor has he shown whether the force varies inversely to the square of the distance. But the consideration of these remarkable results need hardly detain us long, since they can all readily be explained by suggestion, verbal or telepathic.

If we leave fluids and radiant nerve-energy on one side, we find practically only one mode suggested for the telepathic transference—viz., that the physical changes which are the accompaniments of thought or sensation in the agent are transmitted from the brain as undulations in the intervening medium, and thus excite corresponding changes in some other brain, without any other portion of the organism being necessarily implicated in the transmission. This hypothesis has found its most philosophical champion in Dr. Ochorowicz, who has devoted several chapters of his book, De la Suggestion mentale, to the discussion of the various theories on the subject. He begins by recalling the reciprocal convertibility of all physical forces with which we are acquainted, and especially draws attention to what he calls the law of reversibility, a law which he illustrates by a description of the photophone. The photophone is an instrument in which a mirror is made to vibrate to the human voice. The mirror reflects a ray of light, which, vibrating in its turn, falls upon a plate of selenium, modifying its electric conductivity. The intermittent current so produced is transmitted through a telephone, and the original articulate sound is reproduced. Now in hypnotised subjects—and M. Ochorowicz does not in this connection treat of thought-transference between persons in the normal state—the equilibrium of the nervous system, he sees reason to believe, is profoundly affected. The nerve-energy liberated in this state, he points out, “cannot pass beyond” the subject’s brain “without being transformed. Nevertheless, like any other force, it cannot remain isolated; like any other force it escapes, but in disguise. Orthodox science allows it only one way out, the motor nerves. These are the holes in the dark lantern through which the rays of light escape.... Thought remains in the brain, just as the chemical energy of the galvanic battery remains in the cells, but each is represented outside by its correlative energy, which in the case of the battery is called the electric current, but for which in the other we have as yet no name. In any case there is some correlative energy—for the currents of the motor nerves do not and cannot constitute the only dynamic equivalent of cerebral energy—to represent all the complex movements of the cerebral mechanism.”169

Considered purely in its physiological aspect, such a theory appears to present no special difficulty; or rather, to put the matter more exactly, our ignorance of the ultimate nature of nerve-processes is so nearly complete as to permit us to theorise in vacuo, with little risk of encountering any insuperable obstacle. It is true that Professor G. Stanley Hall,170 in commenting on such physical theories of telepathy, maintains that they contravene well-established physical laws:—“The law of ‘isolated conductivity,’ formulated fully by Johannes Müller, which Helmholtz compares in importance to the law of gravity, first brought order into the field of neurology by insisting that impressions never jump from one fibre to another.... Is it likely that a neural state should jump from one brain to another, through a great interval, when intense stimuli on one nerve cannot affect another in the closest contact with it?” But it is clear that the “law” in question is merely a generalisation from observed facts, and from facts, moreover, not of the same order as those now under discussion. For the question here is not of the affection of another nerve-fibre in the same organism, but of a nerve-centre in another organism. And whilst it must have seemed à priori probable that between nerves belonging to the same system induction would not take place, because the alternative could hardly fail to be injurious to the organism, and that the susceptibility to such induction, if originally present, would have been eliminated in the course of evolution, it is at least theoretically conceivable that between different organisms induction might have persisted as innocuous, or even have been developed as positively beneficial.

In current theories it is assumed that there are changes in brain-substance correlated with psychical events, and that these changes, in their ultimate analysis, are of the nature of vibrations. That these vibrations should be capable of in some way propagating themselves through the surrounding medium would seem therefore a natural corollary. The real objections to such physical theories appear to be of a more general kind—viz., the improbability that any such capacity of nervous induction should have remained unobserved until now; and the difficulty of supposing vibrations so minute to be capable of producing effects at so great a distance, and to have a selective capacity so finely adjusted that out of all the thousands of persons within the radius, say, of such a brain-wave as that set a-going by Mr. Cleave (p. 234), only one set of brain-molecules should be stirred to sympathetic vibration. The first difficulty in its psychical aspect has already been touched upon at the commencement of this chapter, and need not here be further considered. The second is more serious. It is difficult to find an exact parallel for the transmission across a considerable intervening space of energy at once so minute in quantity and so highly specialised. Mr. W. H. Preece has indeed shown that a current can be induced in a closed circuit at a distance of some three miles or more, and Professor Lodge has reminded us (loc. cit.) that “all magnets are sympathetically connected, so that, if suitably suspended, a vibration from one disturbs others, even though they be distant ninety-two million miles.” But the forces engaged are in the one case on a commercial, in the other on a cosmic scale. Yet the difficulty is not, perhaps, insuperable. The amount of energy which has been proved capable, at the distance of half a mile, of inducing sleep in a French peasant woman may be readily conceived as not more attenuated than those “sweet influences” which are yet potent enough to summon up before us the vision of the Pleiades or the glowing nebula of Orion. Nor need the difficulty of selection trouble us much; for, after all, one of the chief characteristics of organic life in general is the power—a power ever more differentiated in the higher organisms—of reacting only to selected stimuli. In short, it is too soon to say that any physical communication between living beings of the kind suggested is inconceivable. We shall be justified in affirming or denying its possibility on the day when we have guessed the secret of our own existence, and are able to explain how some fraction of a millegramme of albumen can contain not merely the promise of life, but the germ of a particular and individual organism, which shall reveal its own pedigree and contain in itself an epitome of life on our planet.

Until, therefore, we know more of the nature of the cerebral changes which are presumed to be the physical concomitants of thought, we are at most entitled to suggest that some kind of vibrations, propagated somehow through a conjectural medium from an unspecified nerve-centre, may possibly explain the transference of thought. Our main justification at the present time for discussing theories which aim at some solution is that they may indicate the lines on which experiment and observation may be usefully directed. Thus, it is not known how far the results depend on the state of health of the parties to the experiments, on their occupations and state of consciousness at the time; whether blood-relationship or familiar intimacy between agent and percipient is conducive to success; or whether the transmission is in any way affected by the introduction of more than one agent. And though some progress has been made in tracing the development of the transmitted idea after it has reached the percipient’s mind, observations on the relation of the agent’s impression to that of the percipient are at present few and isolated. The difficulties of systematic experiment in this direction are considerable, as will be apparent to any one who carefully studies the reports of the Brighton experiments (pp. 65-80); but it would seem that further investigation might be expected to throw light upon such questions as whether the percipient’s original impression is necessarily of the same kind as the agent’s; whether in the case of visual impressions lateral inversion or complementary colours can be detected, and so on.

Once more, but little has been learnt of the purely mechanical conditions under which the transmission is effected. There are indeed indications that contact facilitates the transference;171 but from the difficulty of discriminating, when contact is permitted, between thought-transference and muscle-reading, even thus much can hardly be affirmed with certainty. On the analogy of the known physical forces it is of course to be anticipated that the difficulty of effecting telepathic communication would increase very rapidly with the distance. Yet even here experimental verification is difficult to obtain. It is obvious, indeed, in our experiments, that an increased interval between agent and percipient, especially if a wall or floor is made to intervene, has affected the results prejudicially. But it is by no means clear, as already said, how far the observed effects are to be attributed, not to the physical obstacle of the intervening space, but to the psychical effect produced thereby on the parties to the experiment.

There is, however, a difference, already referred to, in the characteristics of the ideas transferred at close quarters, and those transferred at a distance, which is so marked and so general as to call for some explanation of this kind. In the experiments conducted in the same room or house, and in most of the spontaneous cases at close quarters, the idea transferred corresponds to a mental image consciously present to the mind of the agent. But the cases, whether experimental or spontaneous, of such detailed transference at a distance of more than a mile or two are very few—too few to justify any valid generalisation. For in most cases of thought-transference at a distance the idea transferred is one not consciously present to the agent’s mind at all—the idea of his own personality.

To some critics indeed (see Mind, 1887, p. 280) this difficulty has seemed so serious as to suggest doubts of the propriety of referring the two sets of results to a common category; and Von Hartmann, whilst claiming, as already said, connection through the Absolute as the explanation of the results obtained at a distance, is content to postulate some kind of nervous induction in the case of experiments at close quarters. But if we examine the facts more closely we find, as has already been shown in some of the trials conducted by MM Gibert and Pierre Janet in inducing sleep at a distance, and in a few other cases (e.g., Nos. 40, 53, 58), that the idea of the personality of the agent may be transferred to the percipient, together with the specific idea present to the agent’s mind. Moreover, in the recorded cases of thought-transference at close quarters, with hardly any exception, the presence of the agent was known to the percipient, and no evidence for the telepathic transmission of the idea of him can therefore be furnished. But since the idea of self is probably always present as part of the permanent substratum of consciousness, and since we have actual evidence that in some cases that idea may be communicated to the percipient, together with the idea consciously willed by the agent, it seems permissible to conclude that it may form an element in every case of transference. And if this be admitted, not merely will the difficulty referred to disappear, but some progress will have been made towards obtaining experimental verification of the physical effects of distance on telepathic transmission. For it would seem to follow that the telepathic energy, which at close quarters is able to effect the transference even of the trivial and momentary contents of the agent’s mind, is competent when acting at a distance to convey only those continuous and more massive vibrations which may be presumed to correspond to his conception of his own personality. That the agent is not consciously “thinking of himself” need not prevent us from accepting this view. Nor would a like unconsciousness on the part of the percipient be a serious objection. For, as we have already seen (Nos. 24, 25, 27, etc.), ideas can be transferred from the subconscious to the subconscious; and indeed there is some ground for thinking that, outside of direct experiment, the intervention of the conscious mind in the telepathic transmission of thought is exceptional. Even in some of the most striking experimental cases it has been shown that either agent or percipient, or both, were asleep or entranced at the time. (See Chapter X., p. 239.)

This close connection of the activity of thought-transference with the subliminal consciousness, the consciousness which appears in hypnosis, and occasionally in dream-life and in spontaneous trance and automatism, may perhaps offer a clue to the origin of the faculty. For the future place of telepathy in the history of the race concerns us even more nearly than the mode of its operation; and we are led therefore to ask whether the faculty as we know it is but the germ of a more splendid capacity, or the last vestige of a power grown stunted through disuse. By those who view the matter simply as a topic of natural history the latter alternative will be preferred. The possible utility of telepathy as a supplement to gesture, etc., at a time when speech and writing were not yet evolved, is too obvious for comment. Whilst, on the other hand, such a faculty can with difficulty be conceived as originating by any physical process of evolution in our modern civilisation. But more direct evidence of the place of telepathy in our development is not wanting. For there are indications that the consciousness which lies below the threshold, with which the activity of telepathy is constantly associated, may be regarded as representing an earlier stage in the consciousness of the individual, and even it may be an earlier stage in the history of the race. The readiest means of summoning into temporary activity this subterranean consciousness is in the hypnotic trance. Now the consciousness displayed by the hypnotised subject includes, as a rule, the whole of the normal consciousness, and also extends beyond it. That is, the hypnotised subject is aware not only of what goes on in the trance but also of his normal life: when awaked the events of the trance have passed from his memory and are not revived until the next period of trance. Our work-a-day consciousness would appear to be, in fact, a selection from a much larger field of potential consciousness. Or, to put it in another way, the pressure on the narrow limits of our working consciousness is so great that ideas and sensations are continually being crowded out and forced down below the threshold. The subliminal consciousness thus becomes the receptacle of lapsed memories and sensations; and up to a certain point in the history of each individual these lapsed ideas can be temporarily revived. Long forgotten memories of childhood, for instance, can be resuscitated in the hypnotic trance, and ideas which have demonstrably never penetrated into consciousness at all can be brought to light by crystal-vision, planchette-writing, or other automatic processes.

Again, one of the most marked characteristics of the subliminal consciousness, whether in dream, hypnosis, spontaneous trance, or in crystal vision and other automatism, is its power of visualisation—a power which, as Mr. Galton has shown, and our daily experience proves, tends to become aborted in later life. And beyond these indications of memories lost and imagery crowded out in the lifetime of the individual, we come across traces of faculties which have long ceased to obey the guidance or minister to the needs of civilised man—the psychological lumber of many generations ago. Such at least, it may be suggested, is a possible interpretation of the control frequently exercised by the hypnotic over the processes of digestion and circulation and the functions of the organic life generally. And the more doubtful observations, which seem to indicate the possession by the subconscious life of a sense of the passage of time and of a muscular sense superior to that of the waking state, may be held to point in the same direction.

From such facts and such analogies as these it may be argued that telepathy is perchance the relic of a once-serviceable faculty, which eked out the primitive alphabet of gesture, and helped to bind our ancestors of the cave or the tree in as yet inarticulate community, Dr. Jules Héricourt,172 indeed, goes further, and suggests that we find here traces of the primeval unspecialised sensitiveness which preceded the development of a nervous system—a heritage shared with the amœba and the sea-anemone.

On the other hand, it may be urged that our present knowledge, either of telepathy itself or of the subconscious activities with which it is sought to link it, cannot by any means be held sufficient to support such an inference as to the probable origin of the faculty; and further, that the absence of mundane analogies, and the difficulties attending any such explanation yet suggested, forbid us to assume that the facts are capable of expression in physical terms.

It is further urged that whilst the dependence of telepathy on any material conditions is not obvious, it is constantly associated not only in popular belief, but in testimony from trustworthy sources, with phenomena which seem to point to supernormal faculties, such as clairvoyance, retrocognition, and prevision, themselves hardly susceptible of a physical explanation. This view has found its ablest exponent in Mr. F. W. H. Myers.173

And though Mr. Myers would himself readily admit that the evidence for these alleged supernormal faculties is not on a par with the evidence for telepathy, yet he maintains that such as it is it cannot be summarily dismissed. No doubt if it should appear with fuller knowledge that there are sufficient grounds for believing in faculties which give to man knowledge, not derivable from living minds, of the distant, the far past, and the future, it would be more reasonable to regard telepathy as a member of the group of such supernormal faculties, operating in ways wholly apart from the familiar sense activities, and not amenable, like these, to terrestrial laws.

Such considerations may at any rate be held to justify a suspension of judgment. We are not yet, it may be said, called upon to decide whether telepathy is a vestigial or a rudimentary faculty; whether its manifestations are governed by forces correlative with heat and electricity, or whether we are justified in discerning in them the operation of some vaster cosmic agencies. But there is another aspect of the question. The first stage of our inquiry is not yet complete. It would be futile for us to debate what manner of new agency we propose to believe in until it is generally admitted by competent persons that the facts are not to be attributed to such recognised, if insufficiently familiar, causes as illusion, misrepresentation, and the subconscious quickening of normal faculties. More and varied experiments are wanted, more and more accurate records of spontaneous phenomena; and at the present stage there should be no lack of either one or other. Most scientific inquiries demand of the investigator long years of special study and preparation, and an elaborate mechanical equipment. But experiments in thought-transference can be conducted by any one with sufficient leisure and patience to observe the requisite precautions; whilst telepathic visions need for their recording no other qualifications than accuracy and good faith. In fact Science, whose boast it was once

“Aerias tentasse domos animoque rotundum
Percurrisse polum,”

has now come down from those airy realms and turned its attention to the things of earth, and especially to the study of our human environment and the growth of human intelligence. And in this its latest phase Science has, of necessity, followed the tendency of the age and become democratic. Every parent can become a fellow-worker with Darwin in the laboratory of the infant mind; in investigating the faculties and idiosyncrasies of man, even the lines imprinted on his finger-tips and his shifts to remember the multiplication-table, there is not less need of the accumulated small contributions of the many than of the life-long labours of the expert. And in this newest field of scientific research there can be no doubt that results of permanent value await the worker who is content to walk upon the solid earth, and to turn his eyes from the mirage which has dazzled many of his predecessors.

Footnotes

1 The book actually bore on the title-page the names of Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and the present writer. But the division of authorship, as explained in the Preface, was as follows:—“As regards the writing and the views expressed, Mr. Myers is solely responsible for the Introduction, and for the ‘Note on a Suggested Mode of Psychical Interaction;’ and Mr. Gurney is solely responsible for the remainder of the book.... But the collection, examination, and appraisal of evidence has been a joint labour.”

2 Some account of the earlier experiments by MM. Janet and Gibert was included in the supplementary chapter at the end of the second volume of Phantasms.

3 See Chapters V. and X. of the present book.

4 Primary and Present State of the Solar System, by P. McFarlane. Edinburgh, Thomas Grant, circa 1845.

5 At the meeting of the British Association in 1844; quoted by Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, pp. 358, 359.

6 A Brief and Complete Refutation of the Antiscriptural Theory of the Geologists, by a Clergyman of the Church of England. London, 1853; quoted by Hugh Miller, loc. cit.

7 L’Hypnotisme et la suggestion mentale. Germer Baillière et Cie. Paris, pp. 261-316.

8 Revue Philosophique, Nov. 1887, quoted in Proceedings of the Soc. Psych. Research, vol. iv. p. 532.

9 Revue Philosophique, March 1887.

10 Mrs. Verrall states that after long practice she “lost all consciousness of the means which enabled her to guess, and saw pictures of the cards.”

11 Proceedings of the American Soc. Psych. Research, pp. 302 et seq.

12 No doubt the great preponderance of geometrical figures is in some measure due to the use of the word “diagram,” which in English would probably suggest to most persons a geometrical diagram. But possibly the word has a different shade of meaning in American. It is certain too that a considerable proportion of the persons who filled in the cards were acquainted with the object of the inquiry.

13 Proc. American Soc. Psych. Research, pp. 35-43.

14 It is not possible to eliminate the operation of such preferences in the percipient. But if care be taken that the series of things to be guessed is chosen arbitrarily, the only effect of even a decided preference for particular cards, numbers, etc., on the part of the percipient will be to lessen the number of coincidences due to thought-transference.

15 See, for instance, Puységur, Memoires pour servir à l’établissement du magnétisme, pp. 22, 29 et seq., and Pététin, Electricité Animale, p. 127, etc. (quoted by Dr. Ochorowicz, De la Suggestion mentale).

16 Some trials were made by Mr. Guthrie with imagined tunes. But they were in no instance successful without contact; and as obviously the chances of unconscious indications being given, in any case considerable where tunes are in question, are much increased by contact, we should not be justified in regarding successful results, under such conditions, as even prima facie due to Thought-transference. (See Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii. pp. 426, 447, 448.)

17 See below, Chapter III.—Mrs. Sidgwick’s experiments.

18 The calculation is by Professor F. Y. Edgeworth. (See Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii. p. 190.) Of course the statement in the text must not be taken as indicating the belief of Mr. Edgeworth or the writer or any one else that the above figures demonstrate Thought-transference as the cause of the results attained. The results may conceivably have been due to some error of observation or of reporting. But the figures are sufficient to prove, what is here claimed for them, that some cause must be sought for the results other than chance.

19 Proc. American S.P.R., pp. 17 et seq.

20 See Dr. Thaw’s paper, Proc. Soc. Psych. Research, vol. viii. pp. 422 et seq.

21 Records of these experiments will be found in the Proc. of the Soc. Psych. Research, vol. i. pp. 263-283; vol. ii. pp. 1-5, 24-42, 189-200; vol. iii. pp. 424-452.

22 Proc. Soc. Psych. Research, vol. ii. pp. 194-196.

23 Proc. Soc. Psych. Research, vol. iv. pp. 324 et seq.; vol. v. pp. 169 et seq.

24 Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. pp. 3-22.

25 Trasmissione del Pensiero, etc., Naples, 1891.

26 See the discussion on this question in Chapter XVI.

27 Vol. i. pp. 226, 241; vol. ii. pp. 17-19.

28 It is a frequent experience that hypnotised subjects are incapable of responding to any voice other than that of the person who has hypnotised them. The difficulty can, indeed, generally be removed by asking the hypnotiser to place some other person in rapport with the subject—i.e., to give the subject the suggestion that he should also be able to hear the person indicated. At this early stage of our experiments it would appear, however, that this device had for some reason not been adopted.

29 Cf. No. 19 in the series of similar trials conducted with Miss Relph, p. 24.

30 Quoted in Le Sommeil Provoqué, etc., by Dr. Liébeault, Paris, 1889, pp. 295, 296.

31 For such impressions seen with closed eyes Kandinsky has proposed the name pseudo-hallucinations.

32 He had been, on previous occasions, asked to trace hallucinations.

33 Two of these were given completely right first and then changed.

34 The first digit of the number drawn was guessed first.

35 See Chapter iv., pp. 96-100.

36 This was given completely right first and then changed.

37 As all numbers above 90 were excluded, and as 0 cannot come first, the first digit should, by pure chance, have been correctly named more often than the second; but the disproportion, it will be seen, is far greater than could be thus accounted for.

38 Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 554-577.

39 This was an idea extremely familiar to P., who had been a chorister and was still connected with the choir of his church.

40 Proceedings Soc. Psych. Research, vol. viii. pp. 565, 566.

41 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. ii. pp. 334, 335.

42 See Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. pp. 677, 678.

43 Cases are recorded in the Zoist and other publications of the period. See the instances, quoted in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 89-91, of the Rev. J. Lawson Sisson, Mr. Barth, Mr. N. Dunscombe, and Mr. H. S. Thompson. Traditions of the marvels wrought by the last-named gentleman still linger in Yorkshire society, and will no doubt demand the serious attention of future students of folk-lore.

44 Bulletin de la Soc. de Psychologie Physiologique, 1885.

45 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. iii. pp. 130-133.

46 See the account of his experiments on “Peculiarities of certain Post-hypnotic States,” Proc. S. P. R., vol. iv. pp. 268-323.

47 “L’Automatisme Psychologique.”

48 Proc. Soc. Psych. Research, vol. iii. pp. 6-23.

49 Mr. Newnham explains that “five or six questions were often asked consecutively without her being told of the subject that was being pursued.”

50 Previous questions had been asked on the same subject, and the first syllable had already been correctly written. On a subsequent occasion the same question was repeated and a wholly incorrect answer was given.

51 There were nine sittings in all, but the records of one were imperfectly kept, and have not been preserved. In two cases the details given are insufficient; in the notes of the first evening it is stated that the person seated at the table “failed three or four times, succeeded once in giving word of (i.e., selected from) newspaper (which agent) held in his hand.” These trials have been omitted altogether from the results given in the text. On the third evening there is a record, “gave S H but got wrong afterwards.” The word thought of was Sherry. I have counted this trial as two successes and two failures, judging from the other experiments recorded that not more than four consecutive letters at most would have been attempted.

52 In this case it will be observed the table tilted only once for each letter. The method adopted (after trial of the alternative) in my own experiments, though slower and more cumbrous, was apparently productive of more accurate results. It will be readily understood that it might be easier for the transmitted impulse to check a movement, at once uncertain and spasmodic, which had been already initiated, than to overcome, in a short space of time, the resistance of inertia and generate a new movement. The distinction may perhaps be illustrated by the difference between the amount of force required to start a railway truck at rest on the level, and that which would suffice to arrest one actually in gentle motion.

53 Of course substitutions of this kind considerably reduce the value of the results obtained, but it will be found that when full deduction has been made on this score, the coincidences remain overwhelmingly in excess of anything which could have been produced by chance.

54 In some previous experiments a circular alphabet had been used, with a view of preventing any of those seated at the first table from learning by the movements of the operator’s hand what point of the alphabet he had reached. The other precautions described seemed, however, as M. Richet points out, sufficient to exclude all considerations of this kind.

55 Rev. Phil., Dec. 1884; see also S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 247 et seq.

56 It happened on another occasion under these conditions that the right little finger was slightly affected when the left little finger, which had been selected, was so in a more decided manner.

57 An experiment of another kind, the description of which is here omitted, had been made on the morning of this day.

58 An account of these experiments is also contained in an article by M. Richet in the Revue de l’Hypnotisme for February 1888.

59 M. Richet also took part in these two experiments.

60 It is not stated whether the hour of the experiment was chosen by lot, but this precaution was taken in many of the earlier experiments.

61 An account of these experiments was also contributed by M. Richet to the Revue de l’Hypnotisme, Feb. 1888.

62 Revue Philosophique, February and April 1886. A translation of these accounts is given in the Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 222, 223.

63 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. iii. pp. 257-267.

64 Dr. Latour’s brother, house-surgeon at the hospital.

65 See No. 23, chap. iv.

66 Miss X.’s notes have been in some cases slightly abbreviated, in order to save space. Full details of the experiments will be found in Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 377-397.

67 Miss X. kindly submitted her diaries for inspection to Mrs. Sidgwick, who has carefully examined them.

68 Excluding two in which the distance was only a few yards.

69 A familiar name given to Miss G. by Mr. and Mrs. Kirk.

70 Mr. Kirk explains later that this dog had been lost six years before. They had all been much attached to him, and his loss was still an occasional topic of conversation and of dreams by Mr. Kirk.

71 Of the Proceedings of the S.P.R., published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., three or four parts are published yearly. The Journal, which appears monthly, contains a record of recent cases of interest, unaccompanied, for the most part, by any critical commentary, and is privately printed for circulation amongst members and associates of the Society. Any reader, however, desirous of studying the subject may procure any number of the Journal referred to in this book on application at the Rooms of the S.P.R., 19 Buckingham St., Adelphi, W.C. Of the foreign periodicals referred to in the text, perhaps the most important is the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, edited by Dr. Dariex, and published by Germer Baillière et Cie., Paris. Cases of interest are also to be found in Sphinx, a German periodical, to be obtained through Kegan Paul & Co.; in the Revue Spirite (Paris: 24 Rue des Petits-Champs); and elsewhere.

72 Professor C. Lloyd Morgan in Mind, 1887, p. 282.

73 See the case recorded by Miss X. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 507, 508). In this instance Miss X. saw in the crystal a notice of a friend’s death in the form of an extract from the obituary column of the Times, in which journal she had almost certainly seen the news, without perceiving it, the day before. There is a dream recorded in Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. pp. 687, 688, which may probably be explained as the emergence in dream of intelligence unconsciously received a few hours before.

74 I have before me as I write one case of the kind which will serve as a sample. A told us the story, and induced B to write to us about it. B informed us that he heard it from his brother C, a F.R.S., who had received it from D, to whom it was told by E; who had it from the lips of F, “who was a visitor at the house where the occurrence took place.” We wrote to D, who referred us to two sources of information, G and H. G wrote in reply to our letter that he heard the story from a stranger at a dinner-party “about three years ago,” and promised further inquiries. H referred us to J and K. Our letter to K was answered by his cousin L, who wrote that she had heard it from M, “who got it from some one who was present,” and further inquiries were again promised. It is needless to add that in cases of this kind the story, like a will-o’-the-wisp, ever recedes as we advance, until it ends with the nameless stranger at some dinner long since gone “away in the Ewigkeit.”

75 There is, as Mr. Gurney has pointed out, a converse error to be guarded against—viz., the gradual effacement of the lines of an impression, so that an actual waking hallucination has in some instances come to be regarded, after a long interval, as only a dream.

76 A good illustration of this kind of embellishment, in a case recorded at second-hand, will be found in the footnote on a case in Chapter XII.

77 So in a case given in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. ii. pp. 5-10, we have an extract from the log-book of the Jacques-Gabriel, which records that the captain, mate, and another man when at sea heard, on the 17th July 1852, the sound of a woman’s voice crying. In a marginal note on the log-book the captain adds that on reaching port they learnt of the death of the mate’s wife, “on the same day and at the same hour.” But the official register shows that the death took place on the 16th June 1852.

78 That such a pseudo-memory on the part of a person not professing to be the actual percipient is possible after a long interval appears to be shown by the account just cited of the “ghost” seen by the nurse in a foreign hotel. But we have no evidence that a memory hallucination of this kind could be, as demanded by the theory, of instantaneous or very rapid growth; or that any verbal suggestion could intercalate a false picture into a series of still recent and unimpaired memories.

79 Second-hand narratives have, however, a value of their own, as shown later; for by taking note of the features which occur commonly in such cases, but are absent from the best attested first-hand narratives, we obtain a valuable standard of comparison by which to check aberrations of memory.

80 An apparent exception to this statement will be found in Nos. 45 and 46, Chapter VII., and elsewhere, where the account is furnished not by the actual percipient, but by a person to whom the percipient related his experience before he knew of its correspondence with fact. The evidence in such cases, it should be pointed out, is as good as first-hand; indeed, where, as in Nos. 45 and 46, the actual percipient was illiterate and the narrator educated, it may be regarded as better than first-hand.

81 This part of the work has been undertaken in this country by Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. E. Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, myself, and others; in America, chiefly by Professor Royce and Dr. Hodgson.

82 In the Times of the 6th January 1893 there appeared a letter from a well-known writer, narrating how in 1851 he had received a description of the sea-serpent from a lady who had watched its movements for some half-hour in a small bay on the coast of Sutherlandshire. So far the story is on a par with any of our own second-hand ghost stories. But the writer goes on to say that the serpent had rubbed off some of its scales on the rocks; that a few of these scales, of the size and shape of scallop-shells, were for some years in his own possession, but that when he searched amongst his curios, in order to show these scales to Professor Owen, they were not to be found. The humble investigators of the S.P.R. have occasionally found themselves in the same position as the illustrious anatomist.

83 See, for example, the case quoted in Chapter X., No. 63.

84 Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 164-166.

85 Proceedings American S.P.R., pp. 350, 351.

86 Two other examples are referred to in Phantasms, vol. i. p. 189, but in neither case is the evidence obtainable at first-hand.

87 Except, of course, in cases of rudimentary hallucinations, such as after-images and bright spots in the eyes and singing in the ears, which are caused by the physical condition of the external organ.

88 See case No. 51, later; and compare Mr. Galton’s observations in his lecture at the Royal Institution on “The Just Perceptible Difference” (reported in the Times, January 30th, 1893). Mr. Galton found that the ideal auditory impressions called up by reading the printed substance of a lecture enabled him to hear the lecturer’s voice at a greater distance than when he had not the printed text before him; the ideal appears to have supplemented the real impression, as, in the case given in the text, the real reinforced the ideal.

89 Phantasms, vol. i. pp. 303-310. The statement in the text must not be regarded as having more weight than its author himself would have assigned to it. Mr. Gurney certainly regarded his estimate as little more than a guess—a guess indeed made by one who had carefully studied and weighed the facts, so far as they could be known, but because of our inevitable ignorance a guess still, rather than an estimate on the approximate accuracy of which it would be safe to rely. The calculation depends on several assumptions, one or two of which, at least, are highly controvertible; for instance, the accuracy of the 5187 persons who asserted that they had not within a given period of twelve years had an exceptionally vivid and distressing dream relating to the death of a friend; and the accuracy of the twenty-four persons who described themselves as having had within the same period a similar dream actually occurring within twelve hours of the death of the person represented. Probably the estimate given requires modification by large allowances being made in both directions for defects of memory. But even when thus discounted the coincidences will, it is thought, by any one who carefully studies the subject be found to be more numerous than can plausibly be attributed to chance.

90 A man writing on Wednesday would almost certainly say “last night” if he meant to indicate the preceding night, whereas, having just before written of “Friday last,” it was natural to describe the Tuesday in the previous week as simply “Tuesday.”

91 These letters are omitted for want of space. They are given in full in the Journal of the S.P.R. for April 1888, pp. 255, 256.

92 Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 453-455.

93 See Animal Magnetism, by Binet and Féré, in the International Science Series, and the references there given.

94 In many cases the post-hypnotic performance of an enjoined action, or the experience of a post-hypnotic hallucination, is associated with the partial recurrence of the hypnotic trance, or of some condition closely allied to it. Mr. Edmund Gurney has carefully investigated the question (Proc. S.P.R., iv. pp. 268-323. See also Delbœuf’s article there quoted, “De la pretendue Veille Somnambulique,” Rev. Phil., Feb. 1887), and has shown that, with some subjects, during the performance of the enjoined action a further command can be given, or a further hallucination imposed, and that the whole incident will have passed from memory a few seconds later. In the case of some persons hypnotised by Dr. Bramwell, and bidden to see after waking an imaginary scene in a crystal, I have myself observed that they retained no recollection a few minutes later of the scene which they had been describing; and in at least one case the subject at the time of the hallucination was apparently insensible to pain. On the other hand, as Mr. Gurney has pointed out (loc. cit., p. 270), “there are some cases in which no reason whatever appears for regarding the state in which the action is performed as other than normal,” and the same remark apparently holds good of post-hypnotic hallucinations. And there are many persons who can see hallucinatory pictures in a crystal, a glass of water, etc., when in full health and in a perfectly normal condition. See Mr. Myers’ article already referred to (S.P.R., vol. viii.).

95 De la Suggestion, p. 29.

96 La Somnambulisme provoqué, p. 233.

97 Rev. de l’Hypnotisme, November 1886, p. 148.

98 Professor Sully, to quote a recent instance, in his work on Illusions in the International Scientific Series (ed. 1887), devotes less than a page and a half to the discussion of the sensory hallucinations of normal life, and sums up the subject by saying that “when not brought on by exhaustion or artificial means, the hallucinations of the sane have their origin in a preternatural power of imagination” (p. 117).

99 The question, which was worded as follows:—Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing, or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice, which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?—was printed at the top of a schedule containing twenty-five spaces for the names and other particulars of those answering. Collectors were instructed not to select those of whom the question was asked; and to record alike negative and affirmative answers. In the case of an affirmative answer being received, further particulars were sought. For a full discussion of the various sources of error incident to an inquiry of this nature, and the precautions taken to avoid them, and for details of the results obtained, the reader is referred to the Report of the Committee, presented in a condensed form to the Congress of Experimental Psychology which met in London in 1892, and to be published in full in the Proc. S.P.R., vol. x., part 26 (forthcoming).

100 There was ill-health alone in about 5 per cent., anxiety alone in about 11 per cent., and both ill-health and anxiety in about 1.7 per cent. of first-hand cases.

101 Hallucinations occurring in the ambiguous state between waking and sleeping are called by some writers hypnagogic. For the purposes of our investigation, coincident hallucinations occurring at times when it is doubtful whether the percipient is fully awake, e.g., when he is in bed, are termed “borderland.” Their evidential value is, of course, somewhat less than that of hallucinations occurring when the percipient is unquestionably awake. (See cases 57, 59, 65, 66, etc.)

102 Including apparitions of persons not dead more than twelve hours, and not known by the percipient to be dead.

103 As opposed to “dream-illusions,” which depend on various organic sensations, or on the stimulation of the external organs of sense. The distinction is made by Professor Sully, loc. cit., p. 139.

104 These figures do not include second-hand cases. There are besides 29 undated cases, most of which probably belong to the remote period. See column 1 of table on p. 218 (visual cases).

105 The calculation is based upon an analysis of the whole number of visual cases reported during the most recent month, which would indicate an annual rate of about 140. The figures for the most recent quarter indicate an annual rate of about 120.

106 A hallucination which coincides with a death is defined, for the purposes of this inquiry, as a hallucination which occurs within twelve hours of the death.

107 There is another possible explanation—viz., that some of the recent death-coincidences have been withheld from us, on account of the painful associations connected with them. That some cases—and recent would be more affected than remote examples—have been withheld on this account seems certain; but the explanation given in the text must, it is thought, be held primarily responsible for the discrepancy in the figures.

108 Cases, that is, in which the collector is known or suspected to have asked the question of the narrator, because he knew that he was to receive an affirmative answer.

109 The gross total of visual phantasms recorded at first-hand as representing a living human being, or part of a human being (e.g., a hand or a face), is 381. This total includes cases given in columns 1, 4, and 5 of the table on p. 218. From this total we have deducted 31 cases where the percipient has had other experiences but has not enumerated them, and 28 cases which are estimated to have occurred before the age of ten, leaving the total given in the text, 322.
Of the gross total of 381, 80 are alleged to have coincided with the death of the person represented. Deducting in like manner 7 cases where the percipient has had other unspecified experiences, and 8 where the experience is believed to have occurred before the age of ten, we reach the total of 65 given above.
As, however, more care was no doubt taken to procure first-hand evidence in the case of apparitions coinciding with a death than in other cases, it would perhaps lead to more accurate results if in the larger total were included the second-hand non-coincidental cases, 38 in number. The reader can, if he prefer, work out the result for himself on this basis. But it will, of course, be understood that it is not practicable to sum up in a few pages the results of a long investigation; and those readers who are interested in the nature and distribution of casual hallucinations, and their relations to telepathic apparitions, are referred to the forthcoming Report, from which the figures in the text are quoted.

110 These details are taken from notes made by the writer immediately after the interview.

111 Der Magnetismus und die allgemeine Weltsprache. A brief account of the five trials, quoted from the Archiv für den thierischen Magnetismus, vol. vi. pp. 136-139, will be found in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 101, 102. In the other cases the impression was produced in a dream. The distance varied from 1/8 of a mile to 9 miles in the case quoted in the text.

112 In Wesermann’s book, as also in the account given in the Archiv, the account is headed “Fifth experiment at a distance of nine miles.”

113 Wesermann unfortunately does not record his own state at the time of the experiments.

114 See Nos. 37, 38, 39, Chapter V.

115 Mr. Tudor wrote to Dr. Hodgson in answer to a letter received from him.

116 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, July-August 1893, pp. 196, 197.

117 See, for instance, Phantasms of the Living, cases 28, 79, etc.

118 These letters will be found in full in the account of the case published in Proc. S.P.R., vol. x., part xxvi.

119 M. Aksakof explains that the name of the month (October) was omitted, through a mistake on the part of the telegraph clerk.

120 Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 434-445; vol. ii. p. 134, etc.; and Proc. S.P.R., etc.

121 Thus we have a case, regarded by the narrator as hallucinatory, in which three persons saw a figure ascending the staircase of a country rectory. The occurrence took place shortly after the return of the family from church, and the figure was supposed to be that of the rector, until it was ascertained that he was at the time in another part of the house. As, however, it was dark and the head of the figure could not be seen, the identification could hardly have been complete, and as no search was made in the upper part of the house, it seems possible that the figure was that of some person who had gained entrance to the house during the absence of the family at church.

122 See the article on Spirit Photographs by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. pp. 268-289.

123 This account was originally written in answer to a series of questions on a “census” form. A few connecting words have been inserted in order to make it read consecutively.

124 With this may be compared an incident recorded by William Bell Scott (Autobiographical Notes, vol. ii. pp. 117, 118). The account is perhaps worth quoting, though the length of time which has elapsed, and the fact that it rests upon a single memory, leave to the narrative little value other than that derived from its literary associations. It should be added, however, that Mr. Scott’s claim to a rational scepticism in these matters appears to be borne out by other passages in the book.
“I have so repeatedly expressed my unbelief in all the vulgar or popular forms of supernaturalism (says Mr. Scott), that I feel a little hesitation in recording a circumstance resembling that class of things which began the very evening after his [i.e., Rossetti’s] departure. I could now get a little peace to revise my Dürer Journal, and my German friend Mr. Reid, who had given me an hour, stayed to dinner. Rossetti’s habit, when composing or even correcting for the press, was to retire after dinner to the room above, the drawing-room of the old house, to read aloud to himself, when by himself. This he did in a voice so loud that we in the dining-room beneath could almost hear his words. Well, as we were sitting after dinner, when he must have been approaching London in the train, what could it be we heard? The usual voice reading to itself in the usual place over our heads! I looked at A. B.; she was listening intently till she could bear it no longer, and left the room. Our learned priest found me, I fancy, to be rather distrait, so he rose, saying it was about his time, and besides, he continued, ‘I hear Miss Boyd has some friend in the drawing-room, so I won’t go up. Give her my good-bye and respects.’ I joined her at once, but of course we heard nothing in the room itself. Such is the circumstance as it took place. Mr. Reid, who knew nothing of the habit of D. G. R., hearing the voice as well as we did, although it sounded to him like talking rather than reading, was a sure evidence we were not deceiving ourselves. Next night it was the same, and so it went on till I left. When we tried to approach it was not audible, or when the doors of the drawing-room and its small ante-room communicating with the staircase were left open, we could make nothing of it. It gradually tapered off when Miss Boyd was left by herself; by-and-by the whole establishment was bolted and barred for the winter. Next season it had entirely ceased.”

125 Proc. American S.P.R., pp. 405-408. The reader may be interested in comparing the ragged and possibly commonplace account given in the text with the following spirited version of the same incident quoted from the Arena, March 1892. The writer of the account states that “the story, as I tell it, was given me by the wife.” But he does not, it will be observed, quote it as in Mrs. W. O. S.’s words. After describing how the doctor was awakened by a strong light in the room and saw the figure of a woman, whom he at first mistook for his wife, the writer in the Arena proceeds as follows:—
“By this time he was broad awake, and sat upright in bed staring at the figure. He noticed that it was a woman in a white garment; and looking sharply, he recognised it, as he thought, as one of his patients who was very ill. Then he realised that this could not be so, and that if any one was in the room, it must be an intruder who had no right to be there. With the vague thought of a possible burglar thus disguised, he sprang out of bed and grasped his revolver, which he was accustomed to have near at hand. This brought him face to face with the figure, not three feet away. He now saw every detail of dress, complexion, and feature, and for the first time recognised the fact that it was not a being of flesh and blood. Then it was that, in quite an excited manner, he called his wife, hoping that she would get there to see it also. But the moment he called her name, the figure disappeared, leaving, however, the intense yellow light behind, and which they both observed for five minutes by the watch before it faded out.
“The next day it was found that one of his patients, closely resembling the figure he had seen, had died a few minutes before he saw his vision,—had died calling for him.
“It will be seen that this story, like the first one in this article, is perfectly authentic in every particular. There is no question as to the facts.”
That, no doubt, is how the thing ought to have happened. A revolver and a watch are essential to a properly upholstered ghost-story. There ought to have been the dramatic confrontation of the living man with his spectral visitant; there ought to have been the instant recognition and as instant disappearance. Above all, there ought to have been the exquisite adjustment in the times of vision and death.

126 M. Octave Houdaille.

127 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. i. pp. 98, 99.

128 She was, however, unable to find it.

129 It should be explained that this account was written on a “census” form, in the limited space provided for answers to our printed questions.

130 See, for instance, Nos. 47, 75, 87, etc.

131 Those desiring to study further the evidence on this subject are referred to the paper on “Phantasms of the Dead,” Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii., by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, and the papers on “Recognised Apparitions occurring after Death,” and on “Phantasms of the Dead,” by Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and the present writer respectively, in Proc. v. and vi., and the “Record of a Haunted House,” in Proc. viii. Many cases of the kind are also printed in the monthly journal of the Society; and there are one or two striking cases in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques.

132 For instance, Gregory and others record that the clairvoyant subjects of a certain Major Buckley were able to read the mottoes enclosed in nuts (the equivalent of the modern Christmas crackers) purchased at random from a confectioner’s shop, and still unopened. The recent evidence of the kind is quite inconsiderable, and is perhaps hardly sufficient to allow of the existence of a faculty of independent clairvoyance being treated as an open question. Experiments with Mrs. Piper in this direction have yielded negative results, and Professor Richet’s trials with Madame B. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 77 and 149) are neither sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently striking to justify any conclusions being drawn from them. Some curious results have, however, been obtained by M. J. Ch. Roux (Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. iii. pp. 198 et seq.), and somewhat similar results have been obtained in this country by two Associates of the S.P.R. But it is possible that all these instances may be susceptible of another explanation. See, however, Mr. Myers’ article on “Sensory Automatism,” Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 436 et seq.

133 The definition of clairvoyance given in the text differs somewhat from that adopted by Mrs. Sidgwick (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 30)—viz., “A faculty of acquiring supernormally, but not by reading the minds of persons present, a knowledge of facts such as we normally acquire by the use of our senses.” Whether such a faculty exists or not, it is certain that the phenomena which suggest it occur under the same conditions and inextricably mingled with others which can, with some plausibility, be explained as due to thought-transference from the conscious or unconscious memory of persons actually present. And as the two sets of phenomena are found together in fact, it seemed best as a matter of practical convenience that they should not be separated in discussion. Moreover, the suggested application of the word finds ample justification in popular usage.

134 It should be added that during the progress of similar investigations in the United States of America, Dr. Hodgson employed private detectives to shadow Mr. and Mrs. Piper for some weeks, and that nothing was discovered to intimate that any steps were taken by either, whether by personal inquiry or by correspondence, to ascertain facts relating to the history of actual or possible sitters. Mr. Piper did not accompany his wife to this country.

135 Independently of the fact that “Dr. Phinuit” is as obviously untrustworthy as Mrs. Piper in her natural state is apparently the reverse, the inquiries which have been made have entirely failed to corroborate the accounts, in themselves not always concordant, which “Dr. Phinuit” has given of his birth, his education, and other circumstances in his “earth-life.” His knowledge of his native language is confined to a few simple phrases and a slight accent, frequently found useful in disguising a bad shot at a proper name; and the careful investigations conducted by Dr. Hodgson into Mrs. Piper’s antecedents as a “medium” have made it almost certain that “Dr. Phinuit” is an invention, borrowed from the person through whose agency Mrs. Piper first became entranced, and who purported himself to be controlled by a French doctor named Albert Finnett (pronounced Finné). It should be added that “Dr. Phinuit” possesses apparently no knowledge of the medical names of drugs, nor any more intimate acquaintance with their properties than could be gathered from a manual of domestic medicine. (Vol. viii. pp. 47, 50, 51, etc.)

136 At the present time (May 1894) “Dr. Phinuit” has, I understand, almost entirely ceased to “control” Mrs. Piper; his place being taken by the soi-disant spirit of a young American, recently deceased, who has given remarkable proofs of his identity.

137 I am glad to be able to append the following testimonial to Phinuit’s good qualities. An investigator who has had unusual facilities for observing both Dr. Phinuit and Mrs. Piper, after reading the account given in the text, writes to me: “I suppose the account of Phinuit is true as far as it goes, but all the same.... I suppose because he is more sympathetic, I am rather fond of Phinuit.”

138 At the evening sitting a servant unfortunately introduced the sitters by their real names, but the circumstance will hardly, I think, be held materially to affect the evidence.

139 It is impossible by means of a few short extracts to give a fair idea either of the strength of the evidence for telepathy afforded by the phenomena observed with Mrs. Piper, or of the variety and complexity of the problems there presented. Readers who are interested in the subject are referred to the record of the observations made by the S.P.R., occupying nearly 400 closely-printed octavo pages. (Proc., vol. vi. pp. 436-660; vol. viii. pp. 1-167.) Further observations have been made during the year 1893 in the United States by Dr. Hodgson and others, the records of which have not yet been published.

140 Chief Justice Way is the gentleman who acts as Deputy for his Excellency when absent from the colony.—A. W. D.

141 It is hardly necessary to say that such an interpretation in no way reflects upon the good faith of the hypnotics. Hints derived from conversation overheard unconsciously might be quite sufficient.

142 The statement sent to Mrs. Roberts was substantially a copy of the last nine lines only of the preceding account. No reference was made to the visit to the kitchen.

143 Dr. F., who is still living, is disinclined to have his name published, as he does not wish to be troubled with correspondence on the subject.

144 On a previous occasion she had described a skull in a surgery as a head, but “not a live head, and with no brains in it.”

145 Several instances of Mr. Keulemans’ telepathic experiences are given in Phantasms of the Living (cases 21, 38, 56, 184).

146 It should perhaps be said that there is nothing in the experience of the many persons who have so far tried crystal gazing, at the instance of the S.P.R., to indicate risk of injury to health. It is no doubt not advisable for an invalid, or for any one suffering from headache, or undue fatigue, to try the experiment. Indeed, the experience of Mrs. Verrall and others is that success under such conditions is unattainable. But with ordinary care to avoid straining the eyes, no evil effect, it is thought, need be apprehended; and there is probably no form of experiment which at the cost of so little trouble may be expected to yield results of so great interest and value. There is of course no magic in the crystal; a glass paper-weight, a mirror, or a glass of water will serve the purpose equally well. Records of experiments will be welcomed by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, from whose suggestive article many of the illustrations quoted in the text are taken. (See Proc., vol. viii., p. 436, etc.)

147 Of course in this case there is an alternative explanation—viz., that Miss X. received the impression at the time the words were spoken, and that the shell merely developed it for her conscious self.

148 S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 33, 34.

149 A translation of Dr. Gibotteau’s account is given by Mr. Myers, Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 468, 469.

150 The fact that most, if not all, the medical men quoted would themselves reject the explanation hinted at in the text, and would regard their own success as due rather to skill and patience than to any specific endowment, should, of course, have due weight, but cannot be regarded as decisive.

151 See also the account given by Dr. Gibotteau in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques of the power possessed by Berthe (see ante, p. 139) of causing people to stumble or lose their sense of direction. Mr. Andrew Lang has recently drawn attention to the remarkable resemblances between accounts of medieval magic, etc., and modern telepathic phenomena (see, e.g., his article in Cont. Review, Sept. 1893).

152 It is possible that we need not go so far as telepathy for an explanation. Slight indications unconsciously apprehended may have furnished the necessary clue in all cases, as they almost certainly did in some.

153 See Proc. S.P.R., vol. i. p. 230, vol. ii. p. 56; Phil. Mag., April 1883; Proc. Amer. S.P.R., p. 116.

154 Animal Magnetism (International Science Series), pp. 264 et seq. Cf. Ottolenghi and Lombroso, in Rev. Phil., Oct. 1889, on polarisation of hallucinations by magnets.

155 Rev. de l’Hypnotisme, Dec. 1887.

156 Ibid., June 1887.

157 Rev. des Sciences Hypnotiques, 1887-88, p. 111.

158 Brit. Med. Journal, Jan. 1893.

159 Rev. des Sciences Hypnotiques, 1887-88, p. 151. See also Force Psychique et Suggestion Mentale, by Dr. Claude Perronnet, pp. 21-26, who shows clearly how thought-transference may vitiate many hypnotic experiments.

160 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, Jan.-Feb. 1893; Proc. S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 218.

161 Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 98.

162 See, for instance, the Report on Spiritualism of the London Dialectical Society; Experiences of Mr. Stainton Moses in Proc. S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 245; and article, “Spiritualism,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, and in Chambers’ Encyclopædia, by Alfred Russel Wallace, F.R.S.

163 It need hardly be said that the oft-quoted story of the European who came late and unobserved to the performance of an Indian Fakir, and from a distant tree saw him cutting up a pumpkin when the crowd saw him cutting up a child, is merely ben trovato. Nor, indeed, until we have contemporaneous accounts of these performances from carefully trained observers is there need of any such hypothesis to explain the feats of Indian jugglery. See Mr. Hodgson’s article in Proc. S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 354.

164 The explanation suggested in the text for the physical phenomena of Spiritualism is worked out in some detail by Von Hartmann, the philosopher of the unconscious, in a little treatise on Spiritism, which has been translated into English by “C.C.M.,” 1885. But Von Hartmann believes that some of the phenomena are produced by a hypothetical nerve-force under the direction of the somnambulic self of the medium—a prodigality of hypotheses which in the circumstances is surely superfluous.

165 See Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 110-113.

166 Presidential Address to the Section of Mathematics and Physics of the British Association, August 1891.

167 “If all individuals of higher or lower order are rooted in the Absolute, retrogressively in this they have a second connection among themselves, and there is requisite only a restoration of the rapport or telephonic junction (Telephonanschluss) between two individuals in the Absolute, by an intense interest of the will, to bring about the unconscious interchange between them without sense-mediation.” (Spiritism, by Ed. von Hartmann, trans. C.C.M., p. 75.)

168 Des Propriétés physiques d’une force particulière du corps humain, 1882.

169 De la Suggestion mentale, Paris, 1887, pp. 511, 512.

170 American Journal of Psychology, vol. i., No. 1.

171 See, for instance, Professor Lodge’s paper in Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 374.

172 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. i. p. 317.

173 See his articles on the “Subliminal Consciousness,” etc., Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 298; vol. viii. p. 333, pp. 436 et seq.

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