- The Survival of Man -
A Study in Unrecognised Human Faculty
By Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S.
Tenth Edition
Methuen & Co. Ltd. 36 Essex Street W.C. London
Dedicated to the Founders of the Society for Psychical Research
The Truest and Most Patient Workers in an Unpopular Region of Science That I Have Ever Known
THE author's conviction of man's survival of bodily death - a conviction based on a large range of natural facts - is well known; and in this volume some idea can be gained as to the kind of foundation on which in the future he considers that this belief will in due course be scientifically established.
The author gives an account of some of his own investigations into matters connected with psychical research during the last quarter of a century, with an abridgement of contemporary records, selecting not necessarily the most striking but those with which he has himself been in some way concerned. His inquiry, following the lines of the Society for Psychical Research, began with experimental telepathy; but the largest section of the book treats of automatic writing, trance speech, and other instances of temporary lucidity, for in this department of the subject he considers that the most direct evidence for continued personal existence and posthumous activity will be found.
Very few examples of actual communication were quoted even in the larger edition, and some of these have now been omitted, because if they are to be useful they must be supplemented by others, and would require another volume. The present book is intended to show that telepathic communication may come through from the other side, and that this view is entitled to critical and careful consideration.
Preface to the Cheap Edition
"It is mere dogmatism to assert that we do not survive death and mere prejudice or inertia to assert that it is impossible to discover whether we do or not. We in the West have hardly even begun to inquire into the matter; and scientific method and critical faculty were never devoted to it, so far as I am aware, previous to the foundation, some quarter of a century ago, of the Society for Psychical Research. . . "
"Alleged facts suggesting prima facie the survival of death. . . are now at last being systematically and deliberately explored by men and women of intelligence and good faith bent on ascertaining the truth. . ."
"I am asking you to take seriously a branch of scientific inquiry which may have results more important than any other that is being pursued in our time."
G. Lowes Dickinson
Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality, at Harvard, 1908
"And assuredly the religious implications of all these phenomena are worthy of any man's most serious thought. Those who most feel the importance of the ethical superstructure are at the same time most plainly bound to treat the establishment of the facts at the foundation as no mere personal search for a faith, to be dropped when private conviction has been attained, but as a serious, a continuous, public duty. And the more convinced they are that their faith is sound, the more ready should they be to face distrust and aversion, - to lay their account for a long struggle with the vis inertiae of the human spirit."
F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality, ii. 225
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- Section One -
Aims and Objects of Psychical Research
Chapter 1
The Origin of the Society for Psychical Research
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PUZZLING and weird occurrences have been vouched for among all nations and in every age. It is possible to relegate a good many asserted occurrences to the domain of superstition, but it is not possible thus to eliminate all. Nor is it likely that in the present stage of natural knowledge we are acquainted with all the workings of the human spirit and have reduced them to such simplicity that everything capable of happening in the mental and psychical region is of a nature readily and familiarly to be understood by all. Yet there are many who seem practically to believe in this improbability; for although they are constrained from time to time to accept novel and surprising discoveries in biology, in chemistry, and in physical science generally, they seem tacitly to assume that these are the only parts of the universe in which fundamental discovery is possible, all the rest being too well known.
It is a simple faith, and does credit to the capacity for belief of those who hold it-belief unfounded upon knowledge, and tenable only in the teeth of a great mass of evidence to the contrary.
Aims and Objects
It is not easy to unsettle minds thus fortified against the intrusion of unwelcome facts ; and their strong faith is probably a salutary safeguard against that unbalanced and comparatively dangerous condition called "open-mindedness," which is ready to learn and investigate anything not manifestly self -contradictory and absurd. Without people of the solid, assured, self-satisfied order, the practical work of the world would not so efficiently be done.
But whatever may be thought of the subject by the majority of people at present, this book is intended to indicate the possibility that discoveries of the very first magnitude can still be made-are indeed in process of being made-by strictly scientific methods, in the region of psychology: discoveries quite comparable in importance with those which have been made during the last century in physics and biology, but discoveries whose opportunities for practical application and usefulness may similarly have to remain for some time in the hands of experts, since perhaps they cannot be miscellaneously absorbed or even apprehended by the multitude without danger.
It has been partly the necessity for caution-the dread of encouraging mere stupid superstition-that has instinctively delayed advance in these branches of inquiry, until the progress of education gave a reasonable chance of a sane and balanced and critical reception by a fairly considerable minority.
But, within the last half century, assertions concerning psychological supernormalities have not only excited general attention, but have rather notably roused the interest of careful and responsible students, both in the domain of science and in that of letters.
Thirty-three years ago, in fact, a special society with distinguished membership was enrolled in London, with the object of inquiring into the truth of many of these assertions. It was founded by a few men of letters and of science who for some years had been acquainted with a number of strange apparent facts-facts so strange and unusual, and yet so widely believed in among a special coterie of ordinarily sane and sensible people, that it seemed to these pioneers highly desirable either to incorporate them properly into the province of ordered knowledge, or else to extrude them definitely as based upon nothing but credulity, imposture, and deceit.
The attempt was to be made in a serious and responsible spirit, a spirit of genuine "scepticism, "-that is to say, of critical examination and inquiry, not of dogmatic denial and assertion. No phenomenon was to be unhesitatingly rejected because at first sight incredible. No phenomenon was to be accepted which could not make its position good by crucial and repeated and convincing tests. Every class of asserted fact was to have the benefit of inquiry, none was to be given the benefit of any doubt. So long as doubt was reasonable, the phenomenon was to be kept at arm's length : to be criticised as possible, not to be embraced as true.
It is often cursorily imagined that an adequate supply of the critical and cautious spirit necessary in this investigation is a monopoly of professed men of science. It is not so. Trained students of literature - not to mention experts in philosophy-have shown themselves as careful, as exact, as critical, and as cautious, as any professed student of science. They have even displayed an excess of caution. They have acted as a curb and a restraint upon the more technically scientific workers, who - presumably because their constant business is to deal at first hand with new phenomena of one kind or another - have been willing to accept a fresh variety of phenomenon upon evidence not much stronger than that to which they were already well accustomed. Whereas some of the men and women of letters associated with the society have been invariably extremely cautious, less ready to be led by obtrusive and plausible appearances, more suspicious of possibilities and even impossibilities of fraud, actually more inventive sometimes of other and quasi-normal methods of explaining inexplicable facts. Name no names, but from a student of science this testimony is due: and it is largely to the sceptical and extremely cautious wisdom of some representatives of letters and philosophy, as well as to their energy and enthusiasm for knowledge, that the present moderately respectable position of the subject in the estimation of educated people is due.
The first President was Professor Henry Sidgwick, and in his early Presidential addresses the following sentences occur:-
"It is a scandal that a dispute as to the reality of these phenomena should still be going on, that so many competent witnesses should have declared their belief in them, that so many others should be profoundly interested in having the question determined, and yet that the educated world, as a body, should still be simply in the attitude of incredulity.
Now the primary aim of our Society, the thing which we all unite to promote, whether as believers or nonbelievers, is to make a sustained and systematic attempt to remove this scandal in one way or another.
If any one asks me what I mean by, or how I define, sufficient scientific proof of thought-reading, clairvoyance, or the phenomena called Spiritualistic, I should ask to be allowed to evade the difficulties of determining in the abstract what constitutes adequate evidence. What I mean by sufficient evidence is evidence that will convince the scientific world, and for that we obviously require a good deal more than we have so far obtained. I do not mean that some effect in this direction has not been produced; if that were so we could not hope to do much. I think that something has been done; that the advocates of obstinate incredulity - I mean the incredulity that waives the whole affair aside as undeserving of any attention from rational beings - feel their case to be not prima facie so strong now as it was.
Thirty years ago it was thought that want of scientific culture was an adequate explanation of the vulgar belief in mesmerism and table-turning. Then, as one man of scientific repute after another came forward with the results of individual investigation, there was a quite ludicrous ingenuity exercised in finding reasons for discrediting his scientific culture. He was said to be an amateur, not a professional; or a specialist without adequate generality of view and training ; or a mere discoverer not acquainted with the strict methods of experimental research ; or he was not a Fellow of the Royal Society, or if he was it was by an unfortunate accident. We must not expect any decisive effect in the direction at which we primarily aim, on the common sense of mankind, from any single piece of evidence, however complete it has been made. Scientific incredulity has been so long in growing, and has so many and so strong roots, that we shall only kill it, if we are able to kill it at all as regards any of those questions, by burying it alive under a heap of facts. We must keep 'pegging away', as Lincoln said; we must accumulate fact upon fact, and add experiment upon experiment, and, I should say, not wrangle too much with incredulous outsiders about the conclusiveness of any one, but trust to the mass of evidence for conviction. The highest degree of demonstrative force that we can obtain out of any single record of investigation is, of course, limited by the trustworthiness of the investigator. We have done all that we can when the critic has nothing left to allege except that the investigator is in the trick. But when he has nothing else left to allege he will allege that.
"We shall, I hope, make a point of bringing no evidence before the public until we have got it to this pitch of cogency."
To many enthusiasts outside and to some of those inside the Society - who, through long acquaintance with the phenomena under investigation, were already thoroughly convinced of their genuine character - this attitude on the part of the founders and leaders of the Society for Psychical Research always seemed wrong-headed, and sometimes proved irritating to an almost unbearable degree. The hostility of the outside world and of orthodox science to the investigation, though at times fierce and scornful, and always significant and deserving of attention, has been mild, or at any rate intermittent, compared with the bitter and fairly continuous diatribes which at one time issued from the spiritualistic press against the slow and ponderous and hypercritical attitude of those responsible for the working of the Society.
It has been called a society for the suppression of facts, for the wholesale imputation of imposture, for the discouragement of the sensitive, and for the repudiation of every revelation of the kind which was said to be pressing itself upon humanity from the regions of light and knowledge.
Well, we have had to stand this buffeting, as well as the more ponderous blows inflicted by the other side; and it was hardly necessary to turn the cheek to the smiter, since in an attitude of face-forward progress the buffets were sure to come with fair impartiality ; greater frequency on the one side making up for greater strength on the other.
Reply to Religious Critics
There is a persistent class of objector, however, whose attacks are made more in sorrow than in anger, and whose earnest remonstrance's are thus sympathetically parried by the founders of the Society:-
"One word in reference to another objection, which proceeds from a different quarter. There are not a few religious persons who see no reason to doubt our alleged facts, but who regard any experimental investigation of them as wrong, because they must be the work either of the devil or of familiar spirits, with whom the Bible forbids us to have dealings. . . What we should urge upon our religious friends is that their scruples have really no place in the present stage of our investigation, when the question before us is whether certain phenomena are to be referred to the agency of Spirits at all, even as a 'working hypothesis'. . .
Origin of the Society
Many of us, I think, will be amply content if we can only bring this first stage of our investigation to something like a satisfactory issue; we do not look further ahead; and we will leave it for those who may come after to deal with any moral problems that may possibly arise when this first stage is passed.
"There are persons who believe themselves to have certain knowledge on the most important matters on which we are seeking evidence, who do not doubt that they have received communications from an unseen world of spirits, but who think that such communications should be kept as sacred mysteries and not exposed to be scrutinised in the mood of cold curiosity which they conceive to belong to science. Now we do not wish to appear intrusive; at the same time we are anxious not to lose through mere misunderstanding any good opportunities for investigation: and I therefore wish to assure such persons that we do not approach these matters in any light or trivial spirit, but with an ever-present sense of the vast importance of the issues involved, and with every desire to give reverence wherever reverence is found to be due. But we feel bound to begin by taking these experiences, however important and however obscure, as a part of the great aggregate which we call Nature; and we must ascertain carefully and systematically their import, their laws and causes, before we can rationally take up any definite attitude of mind with regard to them. The unknown or uncommon is not in itself an object of reverence; there is no sacredness in the mere limitations of our knowledge.
"This, then, is what we mean by a scientific spirit that we approach the subject without prepossessions, but with a single-minded desire to bring within the realm of orderly and accepted knowledge what now appears as a chaos of individual beliefs."
To prevent misconception, it must be expressly stated that Membership of the Society does not imply the acceptance of any particular explanation of the phenomena investigated, nor any belief as to the operation, in the physical world, of forces other than those recognised by Physical Science. All seriously interested people are welcome as members, provided they have no selfish or commercial ends to serve by seeking to join. Their interest, and in a minor degree their subscription, tend to promote the object we have in view. Moreover, they themselves have the benefit of a good consulting library in addition to becoming recipients of the Society's contemporary publications. Merely superstitious and emotional people would find themselves out of place at our meetings, but otherwise we do not seek to be exclusive. It is a kind of work to which any fair-minded and honest person can, as opportunity offers, contribute his or her share.
Members and Associates are asked to remember that the name of the Society is not The Psychical Society, nor any of the other popular appellations applied to it, but The Society for Psychical Research; its present home is 20, Hanover Square and its abbreviated designation the S.P.R.
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- Section One -
Aims and Objects of Psychical Research
Chapter 2
Practical Work of the Society
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IN the three earliest years of the present century it fell to my lot to occupy the Presidential Chair of the Society for Psychical Research and to give an address each year. One of those addresses - the one for 1903 - dealt with the lines of profitable work which seemed at that time to be opening before us; and, since the general nature of our investigation is there referred to in a preliminary manner, it is useful to reproduce it here as an introduction to the more detailed records which follow.
Our primary aim is to be a Scientific Society, to conduct our researches and to record our results in an accurate and scientific manner, so as to set an example of careful work in regions where it has been the exception rather than the rule, and to be a trustworthy guide to the generation of workers who shall follow.
To be scientific does not mean to be infallible, but it means being clear and honest and as exact as we know how to be. In difficult investigations pioneers have always made some mistakes, they have no immediate criterion or infallible touchstone to distinguish the more true from the less true, but if they record their results with anxious care and scrupulous honesty and painstaking precision, their mistakes are only less valuable to the next generation than their partially true generalisations; and sometimes it turns out, after a century or so, that mistakes made by early pioneers were no such thorough errors as had been thought, that they had an element of truth in them all the time, as if discoverers were endowed with a kind of prophetic insight whereby they caught a glimpse of theories and truths which it would take several generations of workers to disencumber and bring clearly to light.
Suppose, however, that their errors were real ones, the record of their work is just as important to future navigators as it is to have the rocks and shoals of a channel mapped out and buoyed. It is work which must be done. The great ship passing straight to its destination is enabled to attain this directness and speed by the combined labours of a multitude of workers, some obscure and forgotten, some distinguished and remembered, but few of them able to realise its stately passage. So it is also with every great erection, - much of the work is indirect and hidden;- the Forth Bridge stands upon piers sunk below the water-mark by the painful and long continued labours of Italian workmen in "caissons" full of compressed and heated air.
The study of specifically Natural knowledge was fostered and promoted by the recognition in the reign of Charles II of a body of enthusiasts who, during the disturbed but hopeful era of the Commonwealth, had met together to discuss problems of scientific interest, and today The Royal Society is among the dignified institutions of our land, taking all branches of Natural Philosophy and Natural History - the Physical Sciences and the Biological Sciences - under its wing.
Us it does not recognise; but then neither does it recognise Mental and Moral Philosophy, or Ethics, or Psychology, or History, or any part of a great region of knowledge which has hitherto been regarded as outside the pale of the Natural Sciences.
It is for us to introduce our subjects within that pale, if it turns out that there they properly belong; and if not, it is for us to do pioneer work and take our place by the side of that group of Societies whose object is the recognition and promotion of work in the mental, the psychological, the philosophical direction, until the day for unification shall arrive.
Half knowledge sees divisions and emphasises barriers, delights in classification into genera and species, affixes labels, and studies things in groups. And all this work is of the utmost practical value and is essentially necessary. That the day will come when barriers shall be broken down, when species shall be found to shade off into one another, when continuity and not classification shall be the dominant feature, may be anticipated by all; but we have no power of hastening the day except by taking our place in the workshop and doing our assigned quota; still less do we gain any advantage by pretending that the day of unification has arrived while as yet its dawn is still in the future.
Popular Mistrust of Science and its Remedy
Our primary aim is to be a Scientific Society, doing pioneering and foundation work in a new and not yet incorporated plot on which future generations may build, and making as few mistakes as we can reasonably contrive by the exercise of great care. We are not a literary society though we have had men of letters among out guides and leaders ; and we are not a religious society, though some of the members take an interest in our subject because it seems to them to have a bearing on their religious convictions or hopes. I will say a few words on both these points.
First, our relations to literature.
The name of Francis Bacon is a household word in the history of English scientific ideas. I do not mean in the recent, and as it seems to me comic, aspect, that he wrote everything that was written in the Elizabethan era (a matter to which I wish to make no reference one way or the other, for it is completely off my path). But, before that hare was started, his name was weighty and familiar in the history of English scientific ideas; and it is instructive to ask why. Was he a man of Science? No. Did he make discoveries? No. Do scientific men trace back their ancestry to him? No. To Isaac Newton they trace it back, to Gilbert, to Roger Bacon, speaking for those in England; but of Francis Bacon they know next to nothing. Outside England all the world traces its scientific ancestry to Newton, to Descartes, to Galileo, to Kepler; but of Francis Bacon scientific men outside England have scarcely heard, save as a man of letters. Yet the progress of science owes much to him. All unconsciously scientific men owe to him a great debt. Why?
Because he perceived afar off the oncoming of the scientific wave, and because he was able, in language to which men would listen, to herald and welcome its advent.
Scientifically he was an amateur; but he was an enthusiast who, with splendid eloquence, with the fire of genius, and with great forensic skill, was able to impress his generation, and not his own generation alone, with some idea of the dignity and true place of science, and to make it possible for the early pioneers of the Royal Society to pursue their labours unimpeded by persecution, and to gain some sort of recognition even from general and aristocratic Society.
For remember that the term "science" was not always respectable. To early ears it sounded almost as the term witchcraft or magic sounds, it was a thing from which to warn young people; it led to atheism and to Tally other abominations. It was an unholy prying into the secrets of Nature which were meant to be hidden from our eyes; it was a thing against which the Church resolutely set its face, a thing for which it was ready if need be to torture or to bum those unlucky men of scientific genius who were born before their time. I mean no one Church in particular: I mean the religious world generally. Science was a thing allied to heresy, a thing to hold aloof from, to shudder at, and to attribute to the devil. All which treatment that great and eminent pioneer, Roger Bacon, experienced at the University of Oxford; because the time was not yet ripe.
How came it that a little later, in the days of the Stuarts, the atmosphere was so different from that prevalent in the days of the Plantagenets? Doubtless the age of Elizabeth, the patriotism aroused by the Armada and by the great discoveries in geography, had had their vivifying effect; and the same sort of originality of thought which did not scruple to arraign a king for high treason likewise ventured to set orthodoxy at defiance, and to experiment upon and investigate openly all manner of natural facts. But, in partial contradiction to the expressed opinion of some men of science, I am disposed to agree to a considerable extent with the popular British view that the result was largely due to the influence of the writings of Francis Bacon. He had accustomed scholars and literary men to the possibilities and prerogatives of scientific inquiry, he had emphasised the importance and the dignity of experiment, and it is to his writings that the rapid spread of scientific ideas, discovered as always by a few, became acceptable to and spread among the many.
Do not let us suppose, however, that the recognition of science was immediate and universal. Dislike of it, and mistrust of the consequences of scientific inquiryespecially in geology and anthropology, - persisted well into the Victorian era, and is not wholly extinct at the present day. Quite apart from antipathy to investigation into affairs of the mind - which is unpopular and mistrusted still, so that good people are still found who will attribute anything unusual to the devil, and warn young people from it, - there is some slight trace of lingering prejudice even against the orthodox sciences of Chemistry and Physics and Biology. They have achieved their foothold, they are regarded with respect - people do not disdain to make money by means of them when the opportunity is forthcoming - but they are not really liked. They are admitted to certain schools on sufferance, as an inferior grade of study suited to the backward and the ignorant; they are not regarded with affection and enthusiasm as revelations of Divine working, to be reverently studied, nor as subjects in which the youth of a nation may be wholesomely and solidly trained.
Very well, still more is the time not quite ripe for our subject; pioneers must expect hard knocks, the mind of a people can change only slowly. Until the mind of a people is changed, new truths born before their time must suffer the late of other untimely births; and the prophet who preaches them must expect to be mistaken for a useless fanatic, of whom every age has always had too many, and must be content to be literally or metaphorically put to death, as part of the process for the regeneration of the world.
The dislike and mistrust and disbelief in the validity or legitimacy of psychical inquiry is familiar: the dislike of the Natural Sciences is almost defunct. It survives, undoubtedly - they are not liked, though they are tolerated - and I am bound to say that part of the surviving dislike is due not alone to heredity and imbibed ideas, but to the hasty and intolerant and exuberant attitude of some men of science, who, knowing themselves to be reformers, - feeling that they have a grain of seed-corn to plant and water, - have not always been content to go about their business in a calm and conciliatory spirit, but have sought to hurry things on by a roughshod method of progression, which may indeed attain its ends, but gives some pain in the process, and perhaps achieves results less admirable than those which might have been attained by the exercise of a little patience, a little more perception of the point of view of others, a little more imagination, a little more of that recognition of the insignificance of trifles and of the transitory character of full-blown fashions which is called a sense of humour, a little cultivation of the historic sense. In a word, a little more general education.
But this is a digression. I admit the importance of Francis Bacon in the history of the development of the national recognition of the natural sciences in England; and I wish to suggest that in the history of the psychical sciences we too have had a Bacon, and one not long departed from us. It is possible that in F. W. H. Myers's two posthumous volumes we have a book which posterity will regard as a Novum Organon. History does not repeat itself, and I would not draw the parallel too close. It may be that posterity will regard Myers as much more than that, as a philosophic pioneer who has not only secured recognition for, but has himself formulated some of the philosophic unification of, a mass of obscure and barely recognised human faculty, - thereby throwing a light on - the meaning of "personality" which may survive the test of time. It may be so, but that is for no one living to say. Posterity alone, by aid of the experience and further knowledge which time brings, is able to make a judgment of real value on such a topic as that. I will content myself with drawing attention to his comprehensive scheme of Vital Faculty now somewhat buried in the second volume of Human Personality, as section 926A, pages 505-554.
Meanwhile it is for us to see that time does bring this greater knowledge and experience. For time alone is impotent. Millions of years passed on this planet, during which the amount of knowledge acquired was small or nil. Up to the sixteenth century, even, scientific progress was, at the best, slow. Recently it has been rapid, - none too rapid, but rapid. The rate of advance depends upon the activities and energies of each generation, and upon the organisation and machinery which it has inherited from its immediate forbears.
The pioneers who created the S.P.R. have left it in trust with us to hand it on to future generations, an efficient and powerful machine for the spread of scientific truth, - an engine for the advancement of science in a direction overgrown with thickets of popular superstition, intermixed with sandy and barren tracts of resolute incredulity. We have to steer our narrow way between the Scylla of stony minds with no opening in our direction, and the Charybdis of easy and omnivorous acceptance of every straw and waif, whether of truth or falsehood, that may course with the currents of popular superstition.
Now I know that some few persons are impatient of such an investigation, and decline to see any need for it. They feel that if they have evidence enough to justify their own belief, further inquiry is superfluous. These have not the scientific spirit, they do not understand the meaning of "law." A fact isolated and alone, joined by no link to the general body of knowledge, is almost valueless. If what they believe is really a fact, they may depend upon it that it has its place in the cosmic scheme, a place which can be detected by human intelligence; and its whole bearing and meaning can gradually be made out.
Moreover, their attitude is selfish. Being satisfied themselves, they will help us no more. But real knowledge, like real wealth of any kind, cannot be wrapped up in a napkin; it pines for reproduction, for increase: "how am I straitened till it be accomplished". The missionary spirit, in some form or other, is associated with all true and worthy knowledge. Think of a man who, having made a discovery in Astronomy, - seen a new planet, or worked out a new law, - should keep it to himself and gloat over it in private. It would be inhuman and detestable miserliness; even in a thing like that, of no manifest importance to mankind. There would be some excuse for a man who lived so much in advance of his time that, like Galileo with his newly invented and applied telescope, he ran a danger of rebuffs and persecution for the publication of discoveries. But even so, it is his business to brave this and tell out what he knows; still more is it his business so to act upon the mind of his generation as to convert it gradually to the truth, and lead his fellows to accept what now they reject.
Those who believe themselves the repositories of any form of divine truth should realise their responsibility. They are bound in honour to take such steps as may wisely cause its perception and recognition by the mass of mankind. They are not bound to harangue the crowd from the nearest platform : that might be the very way to retard progress and throw back the acceptance of their doctrine. The course to pursue may be much more indirect than that. The way may be hard and long, but to the possessor of worldly means it is far easier than to another. If the proper administration of his means can conduce to the progress of science, and to the acceptance by the mass of mankind of important and vivifying knowledge of which it is now ignorant, then surely the path lies plain.
Argumentum As Dignitatem
Still however there are persons who urge that a study of occult phenomena is beneath the dignity of science, and that nothing will be gained of any use to mankind by inquisitiveness regarding the unusual and the lawless, or by gravely attending to the freaks of the unconscious or semi-conscious mind.
But - as Myers and Gurney said long ago in Phantasms of the Living - it is needful to point out yet once more, how plausible the reasons for discouraging some novel research have often seemed to be, while yet the advance of knowledge has rapidly shown the futility and folly of such discouragement.
"It was the Father of Science himself who was the first to circumscribe her activity. Socrates expressly excluded from the range of exact inquiry all such matters as the movements and nature of the sun and I moon. He wished - and as he expressed his wish it seemed to have all the cogency of absolute wisdom - that men's minds should be turned to the ethical and political problems which truly concerned them, - not wasted in speculation on things unknowable - things useless even could they be known.
"In a kindred spirit, though separated from Socrates by the whole result of that physical science which Socrates had deprecated, we find a great modern systematiser of human thought again endeavouring to direct the scientific impulse towards things serviceable to man; to divert it from things remote, un knowable, and useless if known (such as the fixed stars). What then, in Comte's view, are in fact the limits of man's actual home mid business? The bounds within which he may set himself to learn all lie can, assured that all will serve to inform his conscience and guide his life? It is the solar system which has become for the French philosopher what the street and marketplace of Athens were for the Greek."
I need not say that Comte's prohibition has been altogether neglected. No frontier of scientific demarcation has been established between Neptune and Sirius, between Uranus and Aldebaran. Our knowledge of the fixed stars increases yearly; and it would be rash to maintain that human conduct is not already influenced by the conception thus gained of the unity and immensity of the heavens side " The criticisms which have met us from the orthodoxy sometimes of scientific, sometimes of religious orthodox have embodied, in modernised phraseology, nearly every well-worn form of timid protest, or obscurantist demurrer, with which the historians of science have been accustomed to give piquancy to their long tale of discovery and achievement."
"Sometimes we are told that we are inviting the old theological spirit to encroach once more on the domain of Science; sometimes that we are endeavouring to lay the impious hands of Science upon the mysteries of Religion. Sometimes we are informed that competent savants have already fully explored the field which we propose for our investigation. Sometimes that no respectable man of science would condescend to meddle with such a reeking mass of fraud and hysteria. Sometimes we are pitied as laborious triflers who prove some infinitely small matter with mighty trouble and pains; sometimes we are derided as attempting the solution of gigantic problems by slight and superficial means."
Use of Continued Investigation
But the question is reiterated, my investigate that of which we are sure? Why conduct experiments in, hypnotism or in telepathy? Why seek to confirm that of which we already have conviction? Why value well evidenced narratives of apparitions at times of death or catastrophe, when so many have already been collected in Phantasms of the Living, and when careful scrutiny has proved that they cannot be the result of chance coincidence? (See the, Report of Professor Sidgwick's Committee Proceedings S.P.R., vol. x., P. 394.) There is a quite definite answer to this question - an answer at which I have already hinted which I wish to commend to the consideration of those who feel this difficulty or ask this sort of question.
The business of Science is not belief but investigation. Belief is both the prelude to and the outcome of knowledge. If a fact or a theory has had a prima facie case made out for it, subsequent investigation is necessary to examine and extend it.
Effective knowledge concerning anything can only be the result of long-continued investigation; belief in the possibility of a fact is only the very first step. Until there is some sort of tentative belief in the reasonable possibility of a fact there is no investigation -the scientific Priest and Levite have other business, and pass by on the other side. And small blame to them: they cannot stop to investigate everything that may be lying by the roadside. If they had been sure that it was fellow creature in legitimate distress they would have acted differently. Belief of a tentative kind will ensure investigation, not by all but by some of the scientific travellers along the road; but investigation is the prelude to action, and action is a long process. Some one must attend to the whole case and see it through. Others, more pressed for time, may find it easier to subscribe their "two pence" to an endowment fund, and so give indirect but valuable assistance.
The object of investigation is the ascertainment of law, and to this process there is no end. What, for instance, is the object of observing and recording earthquakes, and arranging delicate instruments to detect the slightest indication of earth tremor? Every one knows that earthquakes exist, there is no scepticism to overcome in their case; even people who have never experienced them are quite ready to believe in their occurrence. Investigation into earthquakes and the whole of the motile occurrences in the earth's crust, is not in the least for the purpose of confirming faith, but solely for the better understanding of the conditions and nature of the phenomena; in other words, for the ascertainment of law.
So it is in every branch of science. At first among new phenomena careful observation of fact is necessary, as when Tycho Brahe made measurements of the motion of the planets and accumulated a store of careful observations. Then came the era of hypothesis, and Kepler waded through guess after guess, testing them pertinaciously to see if any one of them would fit all the facts: the result of his strenuous life-work being the three laws which for all time bear his name. And then came the majestic deductive epoch of Newton, welding the whole into one comprehensive system; subsequently to be enriched and extended by the labours of Lagrange and Laplace; after which the current of scientific inquiry was diverted for a time into other less adequately explored channels.
For not at all times is everything equally ripe for inquiry. There is a phase, or it maybe a fashion, even in Science. I spoke of geographical exploration as the feature of Elizabeth's time. Astronomical inquiry succeeded it. Optics and Chemistry were the dominating sciences of the early part of the nineteenth century, Heat and Geology of the middle, Electricity and Biology of the later portion. Not yet has our branch of psychology had its phase of popularity; nor am I anxious that it should be universally fashionable. It is a subject of special interest, and therefore perhaps of special danger. In that respect it is like other studies of the operations of mind, like a scientific enumeration of the phenomena of religion for instance, like the study of anything which in its early stages looks mysterious and incomprehensible. Training and some admixture of other studies are necessary for its healthy investigation. The day will come when the science will put off its foggy aspect, bewildering to the novice, and become easier for the less well-balanced and more ordinarily equipped explorer. At present it is like a mountain shrouded in mist, whose sides offer but little secure foothold, - where climbing, though possible, is difficult and dangerous.
The assuring of ourselves as to facts is one of our duties, and it is better to hesitate too long over a truth than to welcome an error, for a false gleam may lead us far astray unless it is soon detected.
Another of our duties is the making and testing of hypotheses, so as gradually to make a map of the district and be able to explain it to future travellers. We have to combine the labours of Tycho with those of Kepler, and thus prepare the way for a future Newton; who has not yet appeared above the psychical horizon.
His advent must depend upon how far we of this and the next few generations are faithful to our trust, how far we work ourselves, and by our pecuniary meant, enable others to work; and I call upon those who are simultaneously blessed with this world's goods and like wise inspired with confidence in the truth and value of mental and spiritual knowledge, to bethink themselves whether, either in their lifetime or by their wills, they cannot contribute to the world's progress in a beneficent way, so as to enable humanity to rise to a greater height of aspiration and even of religion; - as they will if they are enabled to start with a substantial foundation of solid scientific fact on which to erect their edifice of faith.
Hint to Investigators
To return to the more immediate and special aspect of our work: one of the things I want to impress upon all readers, especially upon those who are gifted with a faculty for receiving impressions which are worth record - is that too much care cannot be expended in getting the record exact. Exact in every particular, especially as regards the matter of time. In recording a vision or an audition or some other impression corresponding to some event elsewhere, there is a dangerous tendency to try to coax the facts to fit some half -fledged preconceived theory and to make the coincidence in point of time exact.
Such distortions of truth are misleading and useless. What we want to know is exactly how the things occurred, not how the impressionist would have liked them to occur, or how he thinks they ought to have occurred. If people attach importance to their own predilections concerning events in the Universe, they can be set forth in a footnote for the guidance of any one who hereafter may think of starting a Universe on his own account: but such speculations are of no interest to us who wish to study and understand the Universe as it is. If the event preceded the impression, by all means let us know it, - and perhaps some one may, be able to detect a meaning in the time-interval, when a great number of similar instances are compared, hereafter. If the impression preceded the event, by all means let us know that too, and never let the observation be suppressed from a ridiculous idea that such anticipation is impossible. Nor let us exclude well-attested physical phenomena from historical record, on any similar prejudice of impossibility. We want to learn what is possible, not to have minds made up beforehand and distort or blink the facts to suit our preconceptions.
With respect to the important subject of possible prediction, on which our ideas as to the ultimate nature of time will so largely depend, every precaution should be taken to put far from us the temptation or the possibility of improving the original record after the fact to which it refers has occurred, if it ever does occur; and to remember that though we have done nothing of the sort, and are in all respects honest, and known to be honest and truthful, yet the contrary may be surmised by posterity or by strangers or foreigners who did not know us; and even our friends may fancy that we did more than we were aware of, in some hypothetical access of somnambulic or automatic trance. Automatic writers, for instance, must be assumed open to this suspicion, unless they take proper precautions and deposit copies of their writings in some inaccessible and responsible custody; because the essence of their phenomenon is that the hand writes what they themselves are not aware of, and so it is an easy step for captions critics to maintain that it may also have supplemented or amended, in some way of which they were likewise not aware.
The establishment of cases of real prediction, not mere inference, is so vital and crucial a test of something not yet recognised by science that it is worth every effort to make its evidence secure.
Another thing on which I should value experiments is the detection of slight traces of telepathic power in quite normal persons,-in the average man for instance, or, rather more likely perhaps, in the average child. The power of receiving telepathic impressions may he a rare faculty existing only in a few individuals, and in them fully developed ; but it is equally possible, and, if one may say so, more likely, that what we see in them is but an intensification of a power which exists in every one as a germ or nucleus. If such should be the fact, it behoves us to know it; and its recognition would 60 more to spread a general belief in the fact of telepathy - a belief by no means as yet universally or even widely spread-than almost anything else.
Bearing on Allied Subjects
There are many topics on which I might speak: one is the recent advance in our knowledge of the nature of the atom, and the discovery of facts concerning the Ether and Matter which I think must have some bearing, - some to me at present quite unknown bearing, - on the theory of what are called "physical phenomena"; but it is hardly necessary to call the attention of educated persons to the intense interest of this most recent purely scientific subject.
On another topic I might say a few words, viz., on the ambiguity clinging round the phrase "action at a distance," in connection with telepathy. Physicists deny action at a distance, at least most of them do, - I do for one - at the same time I admit telepathy. Therefore it is supposed I necessarily assume that telepathy must be conducted by an etherial process analogous to the transmission of waves. That is, however, a non-sequitur. The phrase "action at a distance" is a technical one. Its denial signifies that no physical force is exerted save through a medium. There must either be a projectile from A to B, or a continuous medium of some kind extending from A to B, if A exerts force upon B, or otherwise influences it by a physical process.
But what about a psychical process? There is no such word in physics; the term is in that connection meaningless. A physicist can make no assertion on it one way or the other. If A mesmerises B, or if A makes an apparition of himself appear to B, or if A conveys a telepathic impression to B; is a medium necessary then? As a physicist I do not know: these are not processes I understand. They may not be physical processes at all.
Take it further:- A thinks of B, or A prays to B, or A worships B. - Is a medium necessary for these things ? Absolute ignorance! The question is probably meaning - less and absurd. Spiritual and psychical events do not enter into the scheme of Physics; and when a physicist denies "action at a distance" he is speaking of things he is competent to deal with,- of light and sound and electricity and magnetism and cohesion and gravitation, - he is not, or should not be, denying anything psychical or spiritual at all. All the physical things, he asserts, necessitate a medium; but beyond that he is silent. If telepathy is an etherial process, as soon as it is proved to be an etherial process, it will come into the realm of physics; till then it stays outside.
There is one important topic on which I have not yet spoken, - I mean the bearing of our inquiry on religion. It is a large subject and one too nearly trenching on the region of emotion to be altogether suitable for consideration by a scientific Society. Yet every science has its practical applications, - though they are not part of the science, they are its legitimate outcome, - and the value of the science to humanity must be measured in the last resort by the use which humanity can make of it. To the enthusiast, knowledge for its own sake, without ulterior ends, may be enough, - and if there were none of this spirit in the world we should be poorer than we are;- but for the bulk of mankind this is too high, too arid a creed, and people in general must see just enough practical outcome to have faith that there may be yet more.
That our researches will ultimately have some bearing, some meaning, for the science of theology, I do not doubt. What that bearing may be I can only partly tell. I have indicated in Man and the Universe, Chapter II. called "The Reconciliation," part of what I feel on the subject, and I have gone as far in that article as I feel entitled to go. We seek to unravel the nature and hidden powers of man; and a fuller understanding of the attributes of humanity cannot but have some influence on our theory of Divinity itself.
If any scientific Society is worthy of encouragement and support it should surely be this. If there is any object worthy of patient and continued attention, it is surely these great and pressing problems of whence, what, and whither, that have occupied the attention of Prophet and Philosopher since human history began. The discovery of a new star, of a marking on Mars, of a new element, or of a new extinct animal or plant, is interesting: surely the discovery of a new human faculty is interesting too. Already the discovery of "telepathy" constitutes the first-fruits of this Society's work, and it has laid the way open to the discovery of much more. Our aim is nothing less than the investigation and better comprehension of human faculty, human personality, and human destiny.
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- Section Two -
Experimental Telepathy of Thought-Transference
Chapter 3
Some Early Experiments in Thought-Transference
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I AM not attempting a history of the subject; and for the observations of Sir W. Barrett and others in the experimental transference of ideas or images from one person to another I must refer students to the first volume of the Proceedings of the Society, where a number of facsimile reproductions of transferred diagrams and pictures, which are of special interest, will also be found. Prof. Barrett had experimented in conjunction with Mr. William de Morgan so long ago as 1870-73, and he endeavoured to make a communication on the subject to the British Association in 1876; but the subject was unwelcome or the attempt premature, and he naturally encountered rebuff. There was some correspondence on the subject in Nature in 1881, and an article in The Nineteenth Century for June 1882. All I shall do here is to describe some later observations and experiments of my own.
Suffice it to say that the leading members of the Society for Psychical Research - actuated in the first instance largely by Prof. Barrett's report - investigated the matter, and gradually by pertinacious experiment became convinced of the reality of thought-transference, - taking due precaution, as their experience enlarged, against the extraordinary ingenuity and subtle possibility of code signalling, and discriminating carefully between the genuine phenomenon and the thought-reading or rather muscle-reading exhibitions, with actual or partial contact, which at one time were much in vogue.
"Before coming to our conclusion as to thought-transference," says Prof. Sidgwick, ' we considered carefully the arguments brought forward for regarding cases of so-called 'thought-reading' as due to involuntary indications apprehended through the ordinary senses; and we came to the conclusion that the ordinary experiments, where contact was allowed, could be explained by the hypothesis of unconscious sensibility to involuntary muscular pressure. Hence we have always attached special importance to experiments in which contact was excluded; with regard to which this particular hypothesis is clearly out of court."
My own first actual experience of thought-transference, or experimental telepathy, was obtained in the years 1883 and 1884 at Liverpool, when I was invited by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie of that city to join in an investigation which lie was conducting with the aid of one or two persons who had turned out to be sensitive, from among the employees of the large drapery firm of George Henry Lee & Co.
A large number of these experiments had been conducted before I was asked to join, throughout the Spring Autumn of 1883, but it is better for me to adhere strictly to my own experience and to relate only those experiments over which I had control. Accordingly I reproduce here a considerable part of my short paper on the subject, originally published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. ii.
Most of these experiments were confirmations of the kind of thing that had been observed by other experimenters. But one experiment which I tried was definitely novel, and, as it seems to me, important; since it clearly showed that when two agents are acting, each contributes to the effect, and that the result is due, not to one alone, but to both combined. The experiment is thus described by me in the columns of Nature, vol. xxx., page 145:
An Experiment in Thought-Transference
Those of your readers who are interested in the subject of thought-transference, now being investigated, may be glad to hear of a little experiment which I recently tried here. The series of experiments was originated and carried on in this city by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, and he has prevailed on me, on Dr. Herdman, and on one or two other more or less scientific witnesses, to be present on several occasions, critically to examine the conditions, and to impose any fresh ones that we thought desirable. I need not enter into particulars, but I will just say that the conditions under which apparent transference of thought occurs from one or more persons, steadfastly thinking, to another in the same room blindfold and wholly disconnected from the others, seem to me absolutely satisfactory, and such as to preclude the possibility of conscious collusion on the one hand or unconscious muscular indication on the other.
One evening last week - after two thinkers, or agents, had been several times successful in instilling the idea of some object or drawing, at which they were looking, into the mind of the blindfold person, or percipient - I brought into the room a double opaque sheet of thick paper with a square drawn on one side and a St. Andrew's cross or X on the other, and silently arranged it between the two agents so that each looked on one side without any notion of what was on the other. The percipient was not informed in any way that a novel modification was being made; and, as usual, there was no contact of any sort or kind, - a clear space of several feet existing between each of the three people. I thought that by this variation I should decide whether one of the two agents was more active than the other; or, supposing them about equal whether two ideas in two separate minds could be fused into one by the percipient.
In a very short time the percipient made the following remarks, every one else being silent: 'The thing won't keep still.' I seem to see things moving about.'
First I see a thing up there, and then one down there.'
I can't see either distinctly.' The object was then hidden, and the percipient was told to take off the bandage and to draw the impression in her mind on a sheet of paper. She drew a square, and then said, 'There was the other thing as well,' and drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner, saying afterwards, ' I don't know what made me put it inside.'
The experiment is no more conclusive as evidence than fifty others that I have seen at Mr. Guthrie's, but it seems to me somewhat interesting that two minds should produce a disconnected sort of impression on the mind of the percipient, quite different from the single impression which we had usually obtained when two agents were both looking at the same thing. Once, for instance (to take a nearly corresponding case under those conditions), when the object was a rude drawing of the main lines in a Union jack, the figure was reproduced by the percipient as a whole without misgiving; except, indeed, that she expressed a doubt as to whether its middle horizontal line were present or not, and ultimately omitted it.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LIVERPOOL,
5 June 1884
It is preferable thus to quote the original record and contemporary mode of publication of an experiment, so as to avoid the risk either of minimising or overemphasising the cogency of the circumstances. But I wish to say strongly that the experiment was quite satisfactory, and that no reasonable doubt of its validity has been felt by me from that time to this.
Report on the Main Series
I now proceed to give my report on the whole series of experiments:
In reporting on the experiments conducted by me, at the invitation and with the appliances of Mr. Guthrie, I wish to say that I had every opportunity of examining and varying the minute conditions of the phenomena, so as to satisfy myself of their genuine and objective character, in the same way as one is accustomed to satisfy oneself as to the truth and genuineness of any ordinary physical fact. If I had merely witnessed facts as a passive spectator I should not publicly report upon them. So long as one is bound to accept imposed conditions and merely witness what goes on, I have no confidence in my own penetration, and am perfectly sure that a conjurer could impose on me, possibly even to the extent of making me think that he was not imposing on me; but when one has the control of the circumstances, can change them at will and arrange one's own experiments, one gradually acquires a belief in the phenomena observed quite comparable to that induced by the repetition of ordinary physical experiments.
I have no striking or new phenomenon to report, but only a few more experiments in the simplest and most elementary form of what is called Thought-transference; though certainly what I have to describe falls under the head of "Thought-transference" proper, and is not explicable by the merely mechanical transfer of impressions, which is more properly described as muscle reading.
In using the term "Thought-transference," - I would ask to be understood as doing so for convenience, because the observed facts can conveniently be grouped under such a title; but I would not be understood as implying any theory on the subject. It is a most dangerous thing to attempt to convey a theory by a phrase; and to set forth a theory would require many words. As it is, the phrase describes correctly enough what appears to take place, viz., that one person may, under favourable conditions, receive a faint impression of a thing which is strongly present in the mind, or thought, or sight, or sensorium of another person not in contact, and may be able to describe or draw it, more or less correctly. But how the transfer takes place, or whether there is any transfer at all, or what is the physical reality underlying the terms "mind," "consciousness," "impression," and the like; and whether this thing we call mind is located in the person, or in the space round him, or in both, or neither; whether indeed the term location, as applied to mind, is utter nonsense and simply meaningless, - concerning all these things I obtrude no hypothesis whatsoever. I may, however, be permitted to suggest a rough and crude analogy. That the brain is the organ of consciousness is patent, but that consciousness is located in the brain is what no psychologist ought to assert; for just as the energy of an electric charge, though apparently in the conductor, is not in the conductor, but in the space all round it; so it may be that the sensory consciousness of a person, though apparently located in his brain, may be conceived of as also existing like a faint echo in space, or in other brains, although these are ordinarily too busy and preoccupied to notice it.
The experiments which I have witnessed proceed in the following way. One person is told to keep in a perfectly passive condition, with a mind as vacant as possible; and to assist this condition the organs of sense are unexcited, the eyes being bandaged and silence maintained. It might be as well to shut out even the ordinary street hum by plugging the ears, but as a matter of fact this was not done.
A person thus kept passive is " the percipient." In the experiments I witnessed the percipient was a girl, one or other of two who had been accidentally found to possess the necessary power. Whether it is a common power or not I do not know. So far as I am aware comparatively few persons have tried. I myself tried, but failed abjectly. It was easy enough to picture things to oneself, but they did not appear to be impressed on me from without, nor did any of them bear the least resemblance to the object in the agent's mind. (For instance, I said a pair of scissors instead of the five of diamonds, - and things like that.) Nevertheless, the person acting as percipient is in a perfectly ordinary condition, and can in no sense be said to be in a hynotic state, unless this term be extended to include the emptiness of mind produced by blindfolding and silence. To all appearance a person in a brown study is far more hypnotised than the percipients I saw, who usually unbandaged their own eyes and chatted between successive experiments.
Another person sitting near the percipient, sometimes at first holding her hands but usually and ordinarily without any contact at all but with a distinct intervening distance, was told to think hard of a particular object, either a name, or a scene, or a thing, or of an object or drawing set up in a good light and in a convenient position for staring at. This person is "the agent" and has, on the whole, the hardest time of it. It is a most tiring and tiresome thing to stare at a letter, or a triangle, or a donkey, or a teaspoon, and to think of nothing else for the space of two or three minutes. Whether the term "thinking" can properly be applied to such barbarous concentration of mind as this I am not sure; its difficulty is of the nature of tediousness.
Very frequently more than one agent is employed, and when two or three people are in the room they are all told to think of the object more or less strenuously; the idea being that wandering thoughts in the neighbourhood certainly cannot help, and may possibly hinder, the clear transfer of impression. As regards the question whether when several agents are thinking, only one is doing the work, or whether all really produce some effect, a special experiment has led me to conclude that more than one agent can be active at the same time. We have some light therefore to conclude that several agents are probably more powerful than one, but that a confusedness of impression may sometimes be produced by different agents attending to different parts or aspects of the object.
Most people seem able to act as agents, though some appear to do better than others. I can hardly say whether I am much good at it or not. I have not often tried alone, and in the majority of cases when I have tried I have failed; on the other hand, I have once or twice succeeded. We have many times succeeded with agents quite disconnected from the percipient in ordinary life, and sometimes complete strangers to them. Mr. Birchall, the headmaster of the Birkdale Industrial School, frequently acted; and the house physician at the Eye and Ear Hospital, Dr. Shears, had a successful experiment, acting alone, on his first and only visit. All suspicion of a prearranged code is thus rendered impossible even to outsiders who are unable to witness the obvious fairness of all the experiments.
The object looked at by the agent is placed usually on a small black opaque wooden screen between the percipient and agents, but sometimes it is put on a larger screen behind the percipient. The objects were kept in an adjoining room and were selected and brought in by me with all due precaution, after the percipient was blindfolded. I should say, however, that no reliance was placed on, or care taken in, the bandaging. It was merely done because the percipient preferred it to merely shutting the eyes. After remarkable experiments on blindfolding by members of the Society (see journal, S.P.R., vol. i., p. 84), I certainly would rely on any ordinary bandaging; the opacity of the not wooden screen on which the object was placed was the thing really depended on, and it was noticed that no mirrors or indistinct reflectors were present. The only surface at all suspicious was the polished top of the small table on which the opaque screen usually stood. But as the screen sloped backwards at a slight angle, it was impossible for the object on it to be thus mirrored. Moreover, sometimes I covered the table with paper, and often it was not used at all, but the object was placed on a screen or a settee behind the percipient; and one striking success was obtained with the object placed on a large drawing board, loosely swathed in a black silk college gown, with the percipient immediately behind the said drawing board and almost hidden by it.
As regards collusion and trickery, no one who has witnessed the absolutely genuine and artless manner in which the impressions are described, but has been perfectly convinced of the transparent honesty of purpose of all concerned. This, however, is not evidence to persons who have not been present, and to them I can only say that to the best of my scientific belief no collusion or trickery was possible under the varied circumstances of the experiments.
A very interesting question presents itself as to what is really transmitted, whether it is the idea or name of the object or whether it is the visual impression. To examine this I frequently drew things without any name - perfect irregular drawings. I am bound to say that these irregular and unnameable productions have always been rather difficult, though they have at times been imitated fairly well; but it is not at all strange that a faint impression of an unknown object should be harder to grasp and reproduce than a faint impression of a familiar one, such as a letter, a common name, a teapot, or a pair of scissors. Moreover, in some very interesting cases the idea or name of the object was certainly the things transferred, and not the visual impression at all; this specially happened with one of the two percipients; and, therefore, probably in every case the fact of the object having a name would assist any faint impression of its appearance which might be received.
As to aspect, i.e. inversion or perversion, - so far as my experience goes it seems perfectly accidental whether the object will be drawn by the percipient in its actual position or in the inverted or perverted position. This is very curious if true, and would certainly not have been expected by me. Horizontal objects are never described as vertical, nor vice versa; and slanting objects are usually drawn with the right amount of slant.
The two percipients are Miss R. and Miss E. Miss R. is the more prosaic, staid, and self-contained personage, and she it is who gets the best quasi-visual impression, but she is a bad drawer, and does not reproduce it very well. , Miss E. is, I should judge, of a more sensitive temperament, seldom being able to preserve a strict silence for instance, and she it is who more frequently jumps to the idea or name of the object without being able so frequently to "see" it.
I was anxious to try both percipients at once, so as to compare their impressions, but I have not met with much success under these conditions, and usually therefore have had to try one at a time - the other being frequently absent or in another room, though also frequently present and acting as part or sole agent.
I once tried a double agent - that is, not two agents thinking of the same thing, but two agents each thinking of a different thing. A mixed and curiously double impression was thus produced and described by the percipient, and both the objects were correctly drawn. This experiment has been separately described, as it is important. See pages 28 and 37.
(N.B.-The actual drawings made in all the experiments, failures and successes alike are preserved intact by Mr. Guthrie.)
Description of Some of the Experiments
In order to describe the experiments briefly I will put in parentheses everything said by me or by the agent, and in inverted commas all the remarks of the percipient. The first seven experiments are all that were made on one evening with the particular percipient, and they were rapidly performed.
A - Experiments with Miss R. as Percipient
First Agent, Mr. Birchall, holding hands. No one else present except myself.
Object - a blue square of silk. - (Now, it's going to be a colour; ready.) "Is it green?" (No.) "It's something between green and blue. . . . Peacock." (What shape?) She drew a rhombus.
(N.B. - It is not intended to imply that this was a success by any means, and it is to be understood that it was only to make a start on the first experiment that so much help was given as is involved in saying "it's a colour." When they are simply told "it's an object," or, what is much the same, when nothing is said at all, the field for guessing is practically infinite. When no remark at starting is recorded none was made, except such an one as " Now we are ready," - by myself.]
Next object - a key on a black ground. - (It's an object.) In a few seconds she said, - "It's bright. . . . It looks like a key." Told to draw, she drew it just inverted.
Next object - three gold studs in morocco case. - "Is it yellow ? . . . Something gold. . . . Something round. . . . A locket or a watch, perhaps." (Do you see more than one round ?) - Yes, there seem to be more than one. . . . Are there three rounds ? . . . Three rings." (What do they seem to be set in?) "Something bright like beads." (Evidently not understanding or attending to the question.) Told to unblindfold herself and draw, she drew the three rounds in a row quite correctly, and then sketched round them absently the outline of the case; which seemed, therefore, to have been apparent to her though she had not consciously attended to it. It was an interesting and striking experiment.
Next object - a pair of scissors standing partly open with their points down - "Is it a bright object? . . . Something long ways (indicating verticality). . . . A pair of scissors standing up. . . . A little bit open. - Time, about a minute altogether. She then drew her impression, and it was correct in every particular. The object in this experiment was on a settee behind her, but its position had to be pointed out to her when, after the experiment, she wanted to see it.
Next object - a drawing of a right angle triangle on its side (It's a drawing.) She drew an isosceles triangle on its side.
Next - a circle with a chord across it - She drew two detached ovals, one with a cutting line across it.
Next - a drawing of a Union jack pattern. (See reproductions below) - As usual in drawing experiments, Miss R. remained silent for perhaps a minute; then she said, " Now, I am ready."I hid the object; she took off the handkerchief, and proceeded to draw on paper placed ready in front of her. She this time drew all the lines of the figure except the horizontal middle one. She was obviously much tempted to draw this, and, indeed, began it two or three times faintly, but ultimately said, " No, I'm not sure," and stopped.
(End of Sitting)
Experiments with Miss R - continued
I will now describe an experiment indicating that one agent may be better than another.
Object - the Three of Hearts. - Miss E. and Mr. Birchall both present as agents, but Mr. Birchall holding percipient's hands at first. "Is it a black cross. . . a white ground with a black cross on it?" Mr. Birchall now let Miss E. hold hands instead of himself, and Miss R. very soon said, - Is it a card ?" (Right.)
Are there three spots on it? . . . Don't know what they are I don't think I can get the colour. . . . They are one above the other, but they seem three round spots. I think they're red, but am not clear."
Next object - a playing card with a blue anchor painted on it slantwise, instead of pips. No contact at all this time, but another lady, Miss R--d, who had entered the room, assisted Mr. B. and Miss E. as agents. " Is it an anchor ? . . . a little on the slant." (Do you see any colour ?) "Colour is black . . . It's a nicely drawn anchor." When asked to draw she sketched part of it, but had evidently half forgotten it, and not knowing the use of the cross arm, she could only indicate that there was something more there, but she couldn't remember what. Her drawing had the right slant.
Another object - two pair of coarse lines crossing; drawn in red chalk, and set up at some distance from agents. No contact. "I only see lines crossing." She saw no colour. She afterwards drew them quite correctly, but very small. (It was noticeable that the unusual distance at which the drawing was placed from the agent on this occasion seemed to be interpreted by the percipient as smallness of size.)
Double object - It was now that I arranged the double object between Miss R--d and Miss E., who happened to be sitting nearly facing one another. (See Nature, June 12th, 1884, for the published report of this particular incident which has been reproduced above, page 28.) The drawing was a square on one side of the paper, a cross on the other. Miss R-d looked at the side with the square on it. Miss E. looked at the side with the cross. Neither knew what the other was looking at nor did the percipient know that anything unusual was being tried. Mr. Birchall was silently asked to take off his attention, and he got up and looked out of window before the drawings were brought in, and during the experiment. There was no contact. Very soon Miss R. said, "I see things moving about. I seem to see two things. . . I see first one up there and then one down there. . . I don't know which to draw. . . . I can't see either distinctly." (Well, anyhow, draw what you have seen.) She took off the bandage and drew first a square, and then said, " Then there was the other thing as well . . . afterwards they seemed to go into one," and she drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner I adding afterwards, - I don't know what made me put it inside."
 
The next is a case of a perfect stranger acting as agent by himself at the first trial. Dr. Shears, house physician at the Eye and Ear Infirmary, came down to see the phenomena, and Miss R. having arrived before the others, Mr. Guthrie proposed his trying as agent alone. Dr. Shears, therefore, held Miss R.'s hand while I set up in front of him a card : nothing whatever being said as to the nature of the object.
Object - the five of clubs, at first on a white ground. "Is it something bright?" (No answer, but I changed the object to a black ground where it was more conspicuous.) "A lot of black with a white square on it.- (Go on.) "Is it a card?" (Yes.) (The affirmative answer did not necessarily signify that it was a playing card ; because cards looking like playing cards had been used several times previously, on which objects had been depicted instead of pips.) " Are there five spots on it ? " (Yes.) " Black ones." (Right.) "I can't see the suit, but I think it's spades."
Another object at same sitting, but with several agents, no contact, was a drawing of this form-
"I can see something, but I am sure I can't draw it. . . . It's something with points all round it. . . . It's a star. . . . or like a triangle within a triangle." Asked to draw it, she expressed reluctance, said it was too difficult, and drew part of a star figure, evidently a crude reproduction of the original, but incomplete. She then began afresh by drawing a triangle, but was unable to proceed.
I then showed her the object for a few seconds. She exclaimed,
Oh yes, that's what I saw. . . . I understand it now. - I said. "Well, now draw it." She made a more complete attempt, but it was no more really like the original than the first had been. Here it is:
Sketch made after seeing original
Experiments at a Sitting in the room of Dr. Herdman, Professor of Zoology at University College
Object - a drawing of the outline of a flag.- Miss R. as percipient in contact with Miss E. as agent. Very quickly Miss R. said, "It's a little flag," and when asked to draw, she drew it fairly well but "perverted" as depicted in the figure. I showed her the flag (as usual after a success), and then took it away to the drawing place to fetch something else. I made another drawing, but instead of bringing it I brought the flag back again, and set it up in the same place as before, but upside down. There was no contact this time. Miss R--d and Miss E. were acting as agents.
 
Object - same flag inverted. - After some time, Miss R. said, No, I can't see anything this time. I still see that flag. . . . The flag keeps bothering me. . . . I shan't do it this time." Presently I said, "Well, draw what you saw anyway," She said, "I only saw the same flag, but perhaps it had a cross on it." So she drew a flag in the same position as before, but added a cross to it. Questioned as to aspect she said, " Yes, it was just the same as before."
Object - an oval gold locket hanging by a bit of string with a little price label attached. - Placed like the former object on a large drawing board, swathed in a college gown. The percipient, Miss R., close behind the said board and almost hidden by it. Agents, Miss R-d and Miss E. sitting in front; no contact; nothing said. "I see something gold. . . . something hanging I. . . like a gold locket." (What shape ?) "It's oval," indicating with her fingers correctly." Very good so far, tell us something more) - [meaning ticket at top]. But no more was said. When shown the object she said, "Oh, yes, it was just like that," but she had seen nothing of the little paper ticket.
Next object - a watch and chain pinned zip to the board as on a waistcoat. - This experiment was a failure, and is only interesting because the watch ticking sounded abnormally loud, sufficient to give any amount of hint to a person on the look out for such sense indications. But it is very evident to those witnessing the experiments that the percipient is in a quite different attitude of mind to that of a clever guesser, and ordinary sense indications seem wholly neglected. I scarcely expected, however, that the watch-ticking could pass unnoticed, though indeed we shuffled our feet to drown it somewhat, but so it was, and all we got was "something bright . . . either steel or silver. . . . Is it anything like a pair of scissors?" (Not a bit.)
I have now done with the selection of experiments in which Miss R. acted as percipient; and I will describe some of those made with Miss E. At the time these seemed perhaps less satisfactory and complete, but there are several points of considerable interest noticeable in connection with them.
B - Experiments with Miss E. as Percipient
Object - an oblong piece of red (cerise) silk. Agent, Mr. B., in contact. -" Red." (What sort of red ?) "A dark red." (What shape?) " One patch." (Well, what shade is it?) Not a pale red."
Next object - a yellow oblong. Agent as before.- "A dusky gold colour. . . . A square of some yellow shade."
Object - the printed letter r. Told it was a letter; agent as before. - "I can see R." (What sort of R?) - An ordinary capital R."
This illustrates feebly what often, though not always, happens with Miss E. - that the idea of the object is grasped rather than its actual shape.
Another object - a small printed e. - "Is it E?" (Yes.) But, again, she couldn't tell what sort of E it was.
Object - a teapot cut out of silver paper. - Present - Dr. Herdman, Miss R--d, and Miss R., Miss R. holding percipient's hands, but all thinking of the object. Told nothing. She said, " Something light. . . . No colour. . . . Looks like a duck. . . . Like a silver duck. . . . Something oval. . . . Head at one end and tall at the other.- [This is not uncommon in ducks.] The object, being rather large, was then moved farther back, so that it might be more easily grasped by the agents as a whole, but percipient persisted that it was like a duck. On being told to unbandage and draw, she drew a rude and "perverted" copy of the teapot, but didn't know what it was unless it was a duck. Dr. Herdman then explained that he had been thinking all the time how like a duck the original teapot was, and, in fact, had been thinking more of ducks than teapots.
 
Next object - a hand mirror brought in and set up in front of Miss R--d - No contact at first. Told nothing. She said, "Is it a colour?" (No.) "No, I don't see anything." The glass was then shifted for Miss R. to look at herself in it, holding the percipent's hand. "No, I don't get this."Gave it up. I then hid mirror in my coat, and took it out of the room. Dr. Herdman reports that while I was away Miss E. begged to know what the object had been, but the agents refused, saying that I had evidently wished to keep it secret. Half annoyed, Miss E. said, "Oh, well, it doesn't matter. I believe it was a looking-glass."
Next object - a drawing of a right-angled triangle. No contact. - "Is it like that?" drawing a triangle with her finger (no answer). "It's almost like a triangle." She then drew an isosceles triangle.
Next object - a drawing of two parallel but curved lines. No contact. - "I only see two lines," indicating two parallel lines.
"Now they seem to close up."
Next object - a tetrahedron outline rudely drawn in projection-
"Is it another triangle?" (No answer was made, but I silently passed round to the agents a scribbled message, "Think of a pyramid.") Miss E. then said, "I only see a triangle." . . . then hastily, "Pyramids of Egypt. No, I shan't do this." Asked to draw, she only drew a triangle.
Object - a rude outline of a donkey or other quaaruped.- Still no contact at first. "Can't get it, I am sure." I then asked the agents to leave the room, and to come in and try one by one. First Miss R--d, without contact, and then with. Next Miss R., in contact, when Miss E. said hopelessly, "An old woman in a poke bonnet." Finally I tried as agent alone, and Miss E. said, "It's like a donkey, but I can't see it, nor can I draw it."
General Statements about the Experiments
In addition to the experiments with single percipients, I tried a few with both percipients sitting together hoping to learn something by comparing their different perceptions of the same object. But unfortunately these experiments were not very successful; sometimes they each appeared to get different aspects or the parts of object, but never very distinct or perfect impressions. The necessity of imposing silence on the percipients, as well as on the agents, was also rather irksome, and renders the results less describable without the actual drawings. I still think that this variation might convey something interesting if pursued under favourable circumstances. Whether greater agent-power is necessary to affect two percipients as strongly as one; or whether the blankness of mind of one percipient reacts on the other, I cannot say.
With regard to the feelings of the percipients when receiving an impression, they seem to have some sort of consciousness of the action of other minds on them; and once or twice, when not so conscious, have complained that there seemed to be "no power" or anything acting, and that they not only received no impression, but did not feel as if they were going to.
I asked Miss E. what she felt when impressions were coming freely, and she said she felt a sort of influence or thrill. They both say that several images appear to them sometimes, but that one among them persistently recurs, and they have a feeling when they fix upon one that it is the right one.
Sometimes they seem quite certain that they are right. Sometimes they are very uncertain, but still right. Occasionally Miss E. has been pretty confident and yet wrong.
One serious failure rather depresses them, and after a success others often follow. It is because of these rather delicate psychological conditions that one cannot press the variations of an experiment as far as one would do if dealing with inert and more dependable matter. Usually the presence of a stranger spoils the phenomenon, though in some cases a stranger has proved a good agent straight off.
The percipients complain of no fatigue as induced by the experiments, and I have no reason to suppose that any harm is done them. The agent, on the other hand, if very energetic, is liable to contract a headache; and Mr. Guthrie himself, who was a powerful and determined agent for a long time, now feels it wiser to refrain from acting, and conducts the experiments with great moderation.
If experiments are only conducted for an hour or so a week, no harm can, I should judge, result, and it would be very interesting to know what percentage of people have the perceptive faculty well developed
The experiments are easy to try, but they should be tried soberly and quietly, like any other experiment. A public platform is a most unsuitable place; and nothing tried before a mixed or jovial audience can be of the slightest scientific value. Such demonstrations may be efficient in putting money into the pockets of showmen, or in amusing one's friends; but all real evidence must be obtained in the quiet of the laboratory or the study.
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- Section Two -
Experimental Telepathy of Thought-Transference
Chapter 4
Further Experiments in Telepathy
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THE next experience of any importance which I had in this kind of experimental telepathy took place during a visit to Carinthia, the Austrian province beyond Tyrol - with some English friends during the summer of 1892, and is thus described in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. vii., page 374.
While staying for a fortnight in the house of Herr von Lyro, at Portschach am See, Carinthia, I found that his two adult daughters were adepts in the so-called "willing-game", and were accustomed to entertain their friends by the speed and certainty with which they could perform actions decided on by the company; the operator being led either by one or by two others, and preferring to be led by someone to whom she was accustomed. Another lady staying in the house was said to be able to do things equally well, but not without nervous prostration.
On the evening when I witnessed the occurrences nothing done could be regarded as conclusive against muscle-reading, though the speed and accuracy with which the willed action was performed exceeded any muscle-reading that I had previously seen, and left me little doubt but that there was some genuine thought-transference power.
Accordingly I obtained permission to experiment in a more satisfactory manner, and on several occasions tested the power of the two sisters, using one as agent and the other as percipient alternately. Once or twice a stranger was asked to act as agent, but without success.
The operations were conducted in an ordinary simple manner. One of the sisters was placed behind a drawing board erected by me on a temporary sort of easel, while the other sat in front of the same board; and the objects or drawings to be guessed were placed on a ledge in front of the board, in full view of the one and completely hidden from the other.
Naturally I attended to the absence of mirrors and all such obvious physical complications. The percipient preferred to be blindfolded, but no precaution was taken with reference to this blindfolding, since we know that it is unsafe to put any trust in bandaging of eyes (journal, i. 84). Agent and percipient were within reach of one another and usually held each other's hands across a small table. The kind and amount of contact was under control, and was sometimes broken altogether, as is subsequently related.
The ladies were interested in the subject, and were perfectly willing to try any change of conditions that I suggested, and my hope was gradually to secure the phenomenon without contact of any kind, as I had done in the previous case reported; but unfortunately in the present instance contact seemed essential to the transfer. Very slight contact was sufficient, for instance, through the backs of the knuckles; but directly the hands were separated, even though but a quarter of an inch, the phenomena ceased, - reappearing again directly contact was established. I tried whether I could bridge over the gap effectively with my own, or another lady's hand; but that did not do. I also once tried both sisters blindfolded, and holding each other by one band while two other persons completed the chain and tried to act as agents. After a time the sisters were asked to draw, simultaneously and independently, what they had "seen"; but though the two drawings were close imitations of each other, they in this case bore no likeness to the object on which the agents had been gazing. My impression, therefore, is that there is some kind of close sympathetic connection between the sisters, so that an idea may, as it were, reverberate between their minds when their hands touch, but that they are only faintly, if at all, susceptible to the influence of outside persons.
Whether the importance of contact in this case depends upon the fact that it is the condition to which they have always been accustomed, or whether it is a really effective aid, I am not sure.
So far as my own observation went, it was interesting and new to me to see how clearly the effect seemed to depend on contact, and how abruptly it ceased when contact was broken. While guessing through a pack of cards, for instance, rapidly and continuously, I sometimes allowed contact and sometimes stopped it; and the guesses changed, from frequently correct to quite wild, directly the knuckles or fingertips, or any part of the skin of the two hands, ceased to touch. It was almost like breaking an electric circuit. At the same time, partial contact seemed less effective thorough hand grasp.
It is perfectly obvious how strongly this dependence on contact suggests the idea of a code; and I have to admit at once that this flaw prevents this series of observations from having any value as a test case, or as establishing de novo the existence of the genuine power. My record only appeals to those who, on other grounds, have accepted the general possibility of thought-transference, and who, therefore, need not feel unduly strained when asked to credit my assertion that unfair practices were extremely unlikely; and that, apart from this moral conviction, there was a sufficient amount of internal evidence derived from the facts themselves to satisfy me that no code was used. The internal evidence of which I am thinking was: (1) the occasionally successful reproduction of nameless drawings; (2) the occasional failure to get any clue to an object or drawing with a perfectly simple and easily telegraphed name; (3) the speed with which the guesses were often made.
I wish, however, to say that none of the evidence which I can offer against a prearranged code in this case is scientifically and impersonally conclusive, nor could it be accepted as of sufficient weight by a sceptic on the whole subject. It is only because, with full opportunity of forming a judgment, and in the light of my former experience, I am myself satisfied that what I observed was an instance of genuine sympathetic or syntonic communication, and because such cases seem at the present time to be rather rare, that I make this brief report on the circumstances.
I detected no well-marked difference between the powers of the two sisters, and it will be understood that one of them was acting as agent and the other as percipient in each case. Sometimes the parents of the girls were present, but often only one or two friends of my own, who were good enough to invite the young ladies to their sitting-room for the purpose of experiment; though such experiments are, when carefully performed confessedly rather tedious and dull.
In the early willing-game experiments, such things were done as taking a particular ring from one person's hand and putting it on another's; selecting a definite piece of music from a pile, taking it to the piano, and beginning to play it. The last item (the beginning to play) I did not happen to witness, but I was told of it by several persons as more than could be accounted for by muscle-reading. A sceptic, however, could of course object that imperfect bandaging would enable a title to be read.
One of the things I suggested was aimed at excluding the operation of unconscious muscular guidance as far as possible, and it consisted in desiring that the lady while standing in the middle of the room should kick off her shoes without touching them and begin to sing a specified song. Success, however, was only partial. After one or two attempts to wander about the room as usual, she did shuffle a shoe off, but though she did not actually touch her feet she stooped so that the held hand came very near them. She then stood some little time uncertain what to do next, and at last broke silence by saying "Shall I sing?"
The first attempt at the more careful experiments was not at all successful, but novelty of conditions may fairly be held responsible for that. On the second and subsequent evenings success was much more frequent: on the whole, I think, more frequent than failure, certainly far beyond chance. I proceed to give a fairly complete account of the whole series.
The first object was a teapot; but there was no result.
The first drawing was the outline of a box with a flag at one corner; but that produced no impression.
Next, for simplicity, I explained that the object this time was a letter (Buchstabe), on which it was correctly guessed E. Another letter, M, was given quite wrong. A childish back-view outline of a cat was given oval like an egg; some other things were unperceived.
On the second evening I began by saying that the object was a colour; on which red was instantly and correctly stated.
A blue object which followed was guessed wrong.
An outline figure of a horse was correctly named. So was the letter B I then drew a square with a diagonal cross, and a round ring or spot just above the intersection, the whole looking something like the back of an envelope. After a certain interval of silence (perhaps two minutes) the lady said she was ready to draw what she had "seen," and drew the thing almost exactly, except that the spot was put right on the centre of the cross instead of above it, and a superfluous faint vertical stroke was added. Its possible resemblance to an envelope was not detected, nor did the reproduction suggest the idea: it was drawn as, and looked like, a nameless geometrical figure.
The reproductions were nearly always much smaller in size than the originals. The agent did not look on while the reproduction was being made. It is best for no one to look on while the percipient draws, to avoid the possibility of unconscious indications. The original drawings were always made by me, sometimes before, sometimes during, the sitting. These conditions were all satisfactory.
On the third evening I began with a pack of cards, running through them quickly; with 2 reporters, one recording the card held up, the other recording the guess made, without knowing whether it was right or wrong. I held up the cards one after the other and gave no indication whether the guesses were right or wrong. The suit was not attempted, so that the chances of error were, I suppose, 12 to 1.
On comparing the two lists afterwards, out of 16 guesses only 6 were wrong. Full contact was allowed during this series. The lists are reproduced below.
The card guessing is obviously not of the slightest use unless bona-fides be certain, but, given that, it affords the readiest method of studying the effect of varied conditions, interposed obstacles, and such like. The whole pack was always used and I simply cut it at random and held up the bottom card. About to or 12 cards could be got through in a minute.
The following is the list of the first card series. Full contact allowed:-
| Card Looked At | | Card Guessed |
| Seven of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | Seven |
| Six of Hearts | . . . . . . . . . . | Six |
| Queen of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | King |
| Nine of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | Nine |
| Three of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | Six |
| Eight of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | Eight |
| Ace of Clubs | . . . . . . . . . . | Ace |
| Knave of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | Queen |
| Five of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | Five |
| Two of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | Ace |
| Ten of Hearts | . . . . . . . . . . | Six |
| King of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | King |
| Ace of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | Ace |
| Nine of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | Six |
| Eight of Hearts | . . . . . . . . . . | Eight |
| Four of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | Four |
Thus, out of the sixteen trials, 10 were correct and 6 were wrong.
Whatever may be the cause of this amount of success, chance is entirely out of the question, since the probability of so many successes as ten in sixteen trials, when the individual probability each time is one-thirteenth, is too small to be taken into account.
The theory of such a calculation is given in Todhunter's Algebra, articles 740 and 741 ; but as exactness in such a case is rather tedious and unnecessary, we may overestimate the total probability by calculating it as follows 16/10x16 (1/13)10 thus leaving out the factor (12/13)6. This factor would be necessary to give the chance of ten successes exactly ; but that is needlessly narrow, since there is no particular point in the exact number of 10. The chance of ten at least is more like what we have to express.
So an over-estimate of probability is that is to 8008/1310 say, there is less than one chance in ten million that such a result would occur at perfect random, i.e. without any special cause.
Some guesses were made, both with cards and objects, on another evening, without contact, but none were successful. With contact there was success again.
I then went back to simple drawings; with the result that a cross was reproduced as a cross; a figure like 4 petals was reproduced in two ways, one of them being a vague 5-petalled figure.
An object consisting of an ivory pocket measure, standing on end like an inverted V, was drawn fairly well as to general aspect.
A sinuous line was reproduced as a number of sinuous lines. A triangle or wedge, point downward, was reproduced imperfectly.
On other evenings other simple diagrams wore tried, such as a face, reproduced as 3 rounds with dots and cross; and a figure like an k with an extra long cross stroke, which could be easily signalled as an A, but which was reproduced correctly as a geometrical diagram with the long stroke prominent.
A circle with 3 radii was reproduced as a circle with roughly inscribed triangle.
The number 3145 was reproduced orally and very quickly m 3146; 715 also quickly as " 714, no 715", The written word hund was reproduced correctly, but with a capital initial letter.
And being told that they had previously thus reproduced a word in an unknown language (not unknown character), viz., Hungarian, I tried the Greek letters ****; this, however, was considered too puzzling and was only reproduced as Uaso.
A French high-heeled shoe, of crockery, set up as object was drawn by the percipient very fairly correct, and said to be something like a boot, and a protuberance was tacked on where the heel was.
A white plaster cast of a child's hand, next tried, failed to give any impression. An unlighted candle in candlestick was unsuccessful, and it was objected that there was too much glare of light. Subsequently the percipient said she had seen the general outline of a candlestick but did not think of its being the thing. A teapot and a cup both failed, and two of the drawings did not succeed in stimulating any colourable imitation.
Lastly, another set of card trials were made, with the object of testing the effect of various kinds of contact: a card series being quick and easy to run through.
| Card Exhibited to Agent | Card Named by Percipient |
Full Contact with both Hands
|
Nine
King
|
Nine
King
|
Contact with tips of Fingers Only
|
Knave
Nine
Nine
Queen
Eight
|
Two
Nine
Ten
Two
Eight
|
Contact with one Finger of One Hand
|
Five
Seven
Three
Ten
Queen
Ace
|
Six
Seven
Four
Six
Two
Ace
|
No Contact
|
Ace
Knave
|
Four
Five
|
No Direct Contact, but Gap Bridged by Other Person's Hand
|
King
Four
Ten
|
Four
Eight
Seven
|
Slight Contact of Knuckles
|
Eight
Six
Two
|
Six
Ace
Two
|
Full Contact Again
|
Knave
Seven
Three
Four
Ace of Diamonds
Nine of Clubs held sideways
|
Ace
Six
Three
Four
Ace-red-Diamond
Nine-Clubs
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The record of this series is more complete than that of another varying contact below, - but it did not strike me as so instructive at the time; and as it came toward the end of an evening there was probably some fatigue.
The last two entries represent attempts to get the suit as well; but as the particulars are given in stages there is no particular advantage in thus naming a card completely, and it takes a longer time.
On another evening the amount of contact was varied, but I omitted to call out to the reporter the position of the hands with reference to each other. One hand of each person lay on a table, and I sometimes made them touch, sometimes separated them, all the time going on with the card series. My impression at the time was (as expressed above) that pronounced failure began directly I broke contact, but that mere knuckle contact was sufficient to permit some amount of success. [When successes are frequent in the following list, fairly complete contact may be assumed. At other times I broke and united the two hands as I chose, for my own edification, and was struck with the singular efficiency of contact.]
I can only give the record as it stands. I believe we began without any contact, but very soon made the hands touch intermittently.
Second Card Series. Varying amount of contact: sometimes none.
| Card Drawn | | Card Guessed |
| 2 of Spades | . . . . . . . . . . | Knave |
| Ace of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | 5 |
| Knave of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | Knave |
| 10 of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | 9 |
| 6 of Hearts | . . . . . . . . . . | 5 |
| 8 of Hearts | . . . . . . . . . . | 9 |
| 9 of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | Ace |
| King of Diamonds | . . . . . . . . . . | King |
| 10 of Hearts | . . . . . . . . . . | 10 |
| 9 of Clubs | . . . . . . . . . . | 9 |
| Ace | . . . . . . . . . . | Ace |
| Queen | . . . . . . . . . . | 2 |
| Queen | . . . . . . . . . . | Queen |
| Knave | . . . . . . . . . . | Ace |
| King | . . . . . . . . . . | King |
| 8 | . . . . . . . . . . | 8 |
| 8 | . . . . . . . . . . | 8 |
| 7 | . . . . . . . . . . | 8 |
| Ace | . . . . . . . . . . | Ace |
| Knave | . . . . . . . . . . | Knave |
| 7 | . . . . . . . . . . | 7 |
| 4 | . . . . . . . . . . | 4 |
| 9 | . . . . . . . . . . | 6 |
| Queen | . . . . . . . . . . | 3 |
| King | . . . . . . . . . . | King |
| Ace | . . . . . . . . . . | 7 |
| Ace | . . . . . . . . . . | 5 |
| 5 | . . . . . . . . . . | 10 |
| 5 | . . . . . . . . . . | 4 |
| 6 | . . . . . . . . . . | 7 |
| 5 | . . . . . . . . . . | 3 |
| 6 | . . . . . . . . . . | 6 |
| 2 | . . . . . . . . . . | 3 |
| 3 | . . . . . . . . . . | 6 |
| 4 | . . . . . . . . . . | 4 |
| 2 | . . . . . . . . . . | 8 |
| 4 | . . . . . . . . . . | 5 |
| 3 | . . . . . . . . . . | 4 |
| 3 | . . . . . . . . . . | Knave |
Where are drawn it is because I called out some change in the contact; but I made other changes whose occurrence is not recorded.
The only use to be made of the record of this series, therefore, is to treat it as a whole and to observe that out of 39 trials 16 were correct and 23 wrong.
On this occasion there was one reporter who wrote down both what he saw and what he heard ; and the operation was so rapid that he had sometimes barely time to do the writing. Towards the end of a series, fatigue on the part of either agent or percipient generally seemed to spoil the conditions.
It is manifest that these experiments should not be conducted too long consecutively, nor repeated without sufficient interval; but if common sense is used there is nothing deleterious in the attempt, and if more persons tried, probably the power would be found more widely distributed than is at present suspected.
I wish to express gratitude to the Fraulein von Lyro and their parents, for the courtesy with which they acquiesced in lily request for opportunities of experiment, and for the willingness with which they submitted to dull and irksome conditions, in order to enable me to give as good evidence as possible.
Experiments at a Distance
For more recent experiments, and for experiments conducted over a considerable intervening distance, I must refer to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xxi., where an account is given of the notable and careful series of observations made by two lady members of the Society, Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden. These ladies, while at their respective homes, or staying in country houses and other places at a distance from each other, endeavoured to transmit an impression of scenes and occupations from one to the other. They kept a careful record both of what they tried to send, and of what was received. And when these records are compared, the correspondence is seen to be beyond and above anything that might be due to chance.
Collusion might rationally be urged as an explanation, by strangers; but that is not an explanation that can be accepted by those who know all the facts.
When Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden began their experiments in 1905. Miss Miles was living in London, and Miss Ramsden in Buckinghamshire, and the arrangement was that Miss Miles should play the part of agent Miss Ramsden that of percipient, the times of the experiment being fixed beforehand. Miss Miles noted, at the time of each experiment, in a book kept for the purpose, the idea or image which she wished to convey; while Miss Ramsden wrote down each day the impressions that had come into her mind, and sent the record to Miss Miles before knowing what she had attempted on her side. Miss Miles then pasted this record into her book opposite her own notes, and in some cases added a further note explanatory of her circumstances at the time; since to these it was found that Miss Ramsden's impressions often corresponded. Whenever it was possible Miss Miles obtained confirmatory evidence from other persons as to the circumstances that had not been noted at the time, and the corroboration of these persons was written in her book. All the original records of these experiments have been submitted to the Editor of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and have passed that very critical ordeal.
In the second series of experiments, in October and November 1906, Miss Miles, the agent, was staying first near Bristol and afterwards near Malmesbury in Wiltshire; while Miss Ramsden, the percipient, was living all the time near Kingussie, Inverness-shire, and therefore at a distance of about 400 miles from the agent. During the last three days of the experiments, "Miss Miles, unknown to Miss Ramsden, was in London.
The general plan of action was that Miss Ramsden should think of Miss Miles regularly at 7 p.m. on every day that an experiment was to be tried, and should write her impressions on a postcard or letter card, which was posted almost always on the next morning to Miss Miles. These postcards or letter cards were kept by Miss Miles and pasted into her notebook, so that the postmarks on them show the time of despatch. And copies of many of these postcards were sent also at the same time to Professor Barrett, who had advised concerning the method of experiment.
Miss Miles on her side had no fixed time for thinking of Miss Ramsden, but thought of her more or less during the whole day, and in the evening noted briefly what ideas had been most prominently before her mind during the day, and which she wished to convey, or thought might have been conveyed, to Miss Ramsden. These notes were made generally on a postcard, which was, as a rule, posted to Miss Ramsden next day. The postcards were afterwards returned to Miss Miles to be placed with her records,-so that here also the postmarks show the date of despatch of the information to Miss Ramsden.
Out of a total of fifteen days' experiments, the idea that Miss Miles was attempting to convey, as recorded on her postcards, appeared on six occasions in a complete or partial form among Miss Ramsden's impressions on the same date. But it also happened that almost every day some of Miss Ramsden's impressions represented, pretty closely, something that Miss Miles had been seeing or talking about on the same day. In other words;- while the agent only succeeded occasionally in transferring the ideas deliberately chosen by her for the purpose, the percipient seemed often to have some sort of supernormal knowledge of her friend's surroundings, irrespective of what that friend had specially wished her to see.
When this happened, Miss Miles at once made careful notes of the event or topic to which Miss Ramsden's statement seemed to refer, and also obtained corroborations from her friends on the spot. Further, when Miss Ramsden gave descriptions of scenes which seemed to Miss Miles like the places where she was staying, she got picture postcards of them, or photographed them, to show how far the descriptions really corresponded.
The actual record is given in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xxi., together with illustrations, but it must suffice here to quote the critical and judicial opinion of the Editor, which is thus given :-
"After studying all the records, it appears to us that while some of the coincidences of thought between the, two experimenters are probably accidental, the total amount of correspondence is more than can be thus accounted for and points distinctly to the action of telepathy between them."
The importance of the record is due to the distance intervening between agent and percipient in this case - distance which seemed to make any physical method of communication unlikely, and to suggest-what otherwise suggested itself as most probable even when the experiments were in the same room - a true interaction or intercommunion between mind and mind.
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- Section Two -
Experimental Telepathy of Thought-Transference
Chapter 5
Spontaneous Cases of Thought-Transference
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A NEW fact of this sort, if really established, must have innumerable consequences: among other things it may be held to account for a large number of phenomena alleged to occur spontaneously, but never yet received with full credence by scientific authority.
Such cases as those which immediately follow, for instance, we now begin to classify under the head "spontaneous telepathy," and it is natural to endeavour to proceed further in the same direction and use extended telepathy as a possible clue to many other legendary occurrences also; as we shall endeavour to show in the next chapter.
Two Cases
As stepping stones from the experimental to the spontaneous cases I quote two from a mass of material at the end of Mr. Myers's first volume, page 674; the first concerning a remote connexion of my own.
On the 27th of April, 1889, we were expecting my sister-in-law and her daughter from South America. My wife, being away from home, was unable to meet them at Southampton, so an intimate friend of the family, a Mr. P., offered to do so. It was between Derby and Leicester about 3.30 p.m. MY wife was travelling in the train., She closed her eyes to rest, and at the same moment a telegram paper appeared before her with words, " Come at once!, your sister is dangerously ill." During the afternoon I received a telegram from Mr. P. to my wife, worded exactly the same and sent from Southampton 3.30 p.m. to Bedford. On my wife's arrival home about 9 p.m. I deferred communicating it until she had some refreshment, being very tired., I afterwards made the remark, "I have some news for you" and she answered, Yes, I thought so, you have received a telegram from Mr. P.!" said, " How do you know ?" She then told me the contents and her strange experiences in the train, and that it impressed her so much that she felt quite anxious all the rest of the journey.
With regard to the above, my wife had no idea of her sister being ill, and was not even at the time thinking about them, but was thinking about her own child she had just left at a boarding school. Also the handwriting my wife saw, she recognised at once to be Mr. P.'s. But then, again. he would have been writing on a white paper form, and the one she saw was the usual brown coloured paper.
FREDK. L. LODGE.
In reply to inquiries, Mr. F. Lodge wrote as follows :-
The letter sent you, with account of vision, I wrote from my wife's dictation. After it occurred in the train she took notice of the hour, and from the time marked on the telegram of its despatch from Southampton, we at once remarked it must have occurred as Mr. P. was filling in a form at Southampton. Mr. P. is now in South America constructing a railway line, and will not return to England for about a year . The occurrence was mentioned to him.
Two years having elapsed, my wife could not say the exact time now, but it was between 3 and 4 p.m., although when it happened, we did notice from the telegram that the time corresponded.
FREDK. L. LODGE.
The second case illustrates the communicating of sensation, -a possibility verified in the Liverpool experiments of Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, already referred to on pages 27-43. In addition to impressions of pictures and objects, a pinch or other pain, or a taste caused by some food or chemical, was there often transferred from agent to percipient, Contact was usually found essential for success in these experimental cases ; but, to guard against normal sensation, the agent and percipient were arranged in separate rooms, with a specially contrived and padded small hole in the wall so that they could hold hands through it. Some early experiments of this kind are narrated in the first volume of Proceedings, S.P.R., page 275; but I myself was present at many others of the same kind.
Here follows an account of the incident which happened to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn ; the narrative having been obtained through the kindness of Mr. Ruskin. Mrs. Severn says:
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON
October 27th 1883
I woke up with a start, feeling I had had a hard blow on my mouth and with a distinct sense that I had been cut, and was bleeding under my upper lip, and seized my pocket-handkerchief, and held it (in a little pushed lump) to the part as I sat up in bed; and after a few seconds, when I removed it, I was astonished not to see any blood, and only then realised it was impossible anything could have struck me there, as I lay fast asleep in bed, and so I thought it was only a dream - but I looked at my watch, and saw it was seven, and finding Arthur (my husband) was not in the room, I concluded (rightly) that he must have gone out on the lake for an early sail, as it was so fine.
I then fell asleep. At breakfast (half-past nine), Arthur came in rather late, and I noticed he rather purposely sat farther away from me than usual, and every now and then put his pocket-handkerchief furtively up to his lip, in the very way I had done. I said, 'Arthur, why are you doing that? and added a little anxiously, ' I know you have hurt yourself I but I'll tell you why afterwards.' He said 'Well, when 1 was sailing, a sudden squall came, throwing the tiller suddenly round, and it struck me a bad blow in the mouth, under the upper lip, and it has been bleeding a good deal and won't stop.' I then said, 'Have you any idea what o'clock it was when it happened? and he answered, 'It must have been about seven.' then told what had happened to me, much to his surprise, and all who were with us at breakfast.
It happened here about three years ago at Brantwood.
JOAN R. SEVERN
The episode is duly authenticated, in accordance with the rule of the S.P.R., by concurrent testimony (Proc. S.P.R., vol. ii., p. 128; also Phantasms, i. 188.
Another Case
A case of clairvoyance or distant telepathy was told me by my colleague, Professor R. A. S. Redmayne (now Sir R. Redmayne, H.M. Chief Inspector of Mines), as having happened in his own experience when he was engaged in prospecting for mines in a remote district of South Africa accompanied only by a working miner from Durham. His account is here abbreviated:
So far as they could keep a record of weeks the solitary two used to play at some game on Sundays, instead of working, but on one particular Sunday the workman declined to play, saying he did not feel up to it, as he had just had an intimation of his mother's death, - that she had spoken of him in her last hours saying that she "would never see Albert again."
My informant tried to chaff his assistant out of his melancholy, since it was a physical impossibility that they could receive recent news by any normal means. But he adhered to his conviction, and in accordance with North Country tradition seemed to regard it as natural that he should thus know.
Weeks afterwards complete confirmation came from England, both as to date and circumstance; the words of the dying woman having been similar to those felt at the time by her distant son.
The occurrence made a marked impression on my informant and broke down his scepticism as to the possibility of these strange occurrences.
Fortunately, I am able to quote confirmatory evidence of this narrative; for very soon after the verification Professor Redmayne wrote an account of it to his father, and from this gentleman I have received a certified copy of the letter:
Letter from Professor Redmayne to his father
MGAGANE, NR. NEWCASTLE, NATAL,
21st Nov., 1891
I have a curious and startling thing to tell you:- About 6 weeks ago, Tonks said to me one morning, "My mother is dead, Sir. I saw her early this morning lying dead in bed and the relatives standing round the bed; she said she would never see me again before she died.- I laughed at him and ridiculed the matter, and he seemed to forget it, and we thought (no) more of it, but Tonks asked me to note the date, which I did not do. Last Wednesday, however, Tonks received a letter from his wife telling him that his mother was dead and had been buried a week, that she died early one Sunday morning about six weeks since and in her sleep; but before she fell asleep she' said she would never see " Albert" again. About a fortnight since I told some people what Tonks had told me, giving it as an instance of the superstitiousness of the Durham pitmen, and they were startled when, the other day, I told them the dream had come true. I will never laugh at anything like this again.
The above is an extract from a letter from my son R. A. S. Redmayne written from Mgagane, Natal, S.A., and dated November 21St [1891].
August 1st, 1902, HAREWOOD, GATESHEAD
JOHN M. REDMAVNE
Professor Redmayne has also been good enough to get a certificate from the workman concerned, in the form of a copy of the main portion of the above letter, with the following note appended:-
The above extract correctly relates what occurred to me whilst living in Natal with Mr. Redmayne.
Signed ALBERT TONKS
Date August 21st, 1901
Witness to above Signature N. B. PADDON, Seaton Delaval
Garibaldi's dream of the death of his mother at Nice, when he was in mid-Pacific, is a historical instance of the same kind (G. M. Trevelyan, Garibaldi and the Thousand, P. 18).
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- Section Two -
Experimental Telepathy of Thought-Transference
Chapter 6
Applied Telepathy - An Example of the Influence of Modern Thought on Ancient Superstitions
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IT is being made clear, I hope, how the fact of thought-transference, especially of the unconscious or subliminal variety-enables us to admit the possibility of the truth of a large number of occurrences which previously we should have been liable to stigmatise as impossible and absurd. For in truth not only apparitions of the dying and phantasms of the living may tentatively and hypothetically be thus explained, but a number of other phenomena seem likely gradually to fall into their place in an orderly and intelligible Universe when submitted to this rationalising treatment. I do not say that its success is universal. I hold that it may be pressed too far; there are some things which even the greatest extension of it will not explain. Nevertheless when we have a clue we are bound to follow it up to the utmost before abandoning it, and we will therefore enter upon a consideration of as many phenomena as at this stage we can see any chance of beginning rationally to understand. So let us contemplate the subject as reasonably and physically as we can.
By thought-transference I mean a possible communication between mind and mind, by means other than any of the known organs of sense: what I may call a sympathetic connexion between mind and mind; using the term mind in a vague and popular sense, without strict definition. And as to the meaning of sympathetic connexion, - let us take some examples:
A pair of iron levers, one on the ground, the other some hundred yards away on a post, are often seen to be sympathetically connected; for when a railway official hauls one of them through a certain angle the distant lever or semaphore-arm revolves through a similar angle. The disturbance has travelled from one to the other through a very obvious medium of communication - viz., an iron wire or rope.
A reader unacquainted with physics may think "transmission" in this case a misnomer, since he may think the connexion is instantaneous - but it is not. The connexion is due to a pulse which travels at a perfectly definite and measured pace-approximately three miles per second.
The pulling of a knob, followed by the ringing of a bell, is a similar process, and the transmission of the impulse in either of these cases is commonly considered simple and mechanical. It is not so simple as we think; for concerning cohesion we are exceedingly ignorant, and why one end of a stick moves when the other end is touched no one at present is able clearly to tell us.
Consider, now, a couple of tuning forks, or precisely similar musical instruments, isolated from each other and from other bodies, - suspended in air, let us say. Sound one of them and the other responds - i.e. begins to emit the same note. This is known in acoustics as sympathetic resonance; and again a disturbance has travelled through the medium from one to the other. The medium in this case is intangible, but quite familiar, viz., atmospheric air.
Next, suspend a couple of magnets, alike in all respects; pivoted, let us say, on points, at some distance from each other. Touch one of the magnets and set it swinging, - the other begins to swing slightly, too. Once more, a disturbance has travelled from one to the other, but the medium in this case is by no means obvious. It is nothing solid, liquid, or gaseous; that much is certain. Whether it is material or not depends partly on what mean by " material - partly requires more knowledge before a satisfactory answer can be given. We do, however, know something of the medium operative in this case, and we call it the Ether - the Ether of Spare.
In these cases the intensity of the response varies rapidly with distance, and at a sufficiently great distance no response would be perceptible.
This may be hastily set down as a natural consequence of a physical medium of communication, and a physical or mechanical disturbance; but it is not quite so.
Consider a couple of telephones connected properly by wires. They are sympathetic, and if one is tapped the other receives a shock. Speaking popularly, what ever is said to one is repeated by the other, and distance is practically unimportant; at any rate, there is no simple law of inverse square, or any such kind of law; there is a definite channel for the disturbance between the two.
The real medium of communication, I may say parenthetically, is still the ether.
Once more, take a mirror, pivoted on an axle, and capable of slight motion. At a distance let there be a suitable receiving instrument, say a drum of photographic paper and a lens. If the sun is shining on the mirror, and everything properly arranged, a line may be drawn by it on the paper miles away, and every tilt given to the mirror shall be reproduced as a kink in the line. And this may go on over great distances; no wire, or anything else commonly called " material - connecting the two stations, nothing but a beam of sunlight, a peculiar state of the ether.
So far we have been dealing with mere physics. Now poach a little on the ground of physiology. Take two brains, as like as possible, say belonging to two similar animals; place them a certain distance apart, with no known or obvious means of communication, and see if there is any sympathetic link between them. Apply a stimulus to one, and observe whether the other in any way responds? To make the experiment conveniently, it is best to avail oneself of the entire animal, and not of its brain alone. It is then easy to stimulate one of the brains through any of the creature's peripheral sense organs, and it may be possible to detect whatever effect is excited in the other brain by some motor impulse, some muscular movement of the corresponding animal.
So far as I know the experiment has hitherto been principally tried on man. This has certain advantages and certain disadvantages. The main advantage is that the motor result of intelligent speech is more definite and instructive than mere pawings and gropings or twitchings. The main disadvantage is that the liability to conscious deception and fraud becomes serious, much more serious than it is with a less cunning animal.
Of course it by no means follows that the experiment will succeed with a lower animal because it succeeds with man; and I am not aware of its having been tried at present except with man.
One mode of trying the experiment would be to pinch or hurt one individual and see if the other can feel any pain. If he does feel anything he will probably twitch and rub, or he may become vocal with displeasure. There are two varieties of the experiment: First, with some manifest link or possible channel, as, for instance, where two individuals hold hands through a stuffed-up hole in a partition-wall; and, second, with no such obvious medium, as when they are at a distance from one another.
Instead of simple pain in any part of the skin, one may stimulate the brain otherwise, by exciting some special sense organ; for instance, those of taste or smell. Apply nauseous or pleasant materials to the palate of one individual and get the receptive person to describe the substance which the other is tasting.
Experiments of this kind are mentioned above, and they have had a fair measure of positive result. But I am not asking for credence concerning specific facts at present. A serious amount of study is necessary before one is in a position to criticise any statement of fact. What I am concerned to show is that such experiments are not, on the face of them, absurd; that they are experiments which ought to be made; and that any result actually obtained, if definite and clear, ought to be gradually and cautiously accepted, whether it be positive or negative.
So far I have supposed the stimulus to be applied to the nerves of touch, or more generally the skin nerves, and to the taste nerves; but we may apply a stimulus equally well to the nerves of hearing, or of smelling, or of seeing. An experiment with a sound or a smell stimulus, however, is manifestly not very crucial unless the intervening distance between A and B is excessive; but a sight stimulus can be readily confined within narrow limits of space. Thus, a picture can be held up in front of the eyes of A, and B can be asked if he sees anything; and if he does, he can be told either to describe it or to draw it.
If the picture or diagram thus shown to A is one that has only just been drawn by the responsible experimenter himself; if it is one that has no simple name that can be signalled; if A is not allowed to touch B, or to move during the course of the experiment, and has never seen the picture before ; if, by precaution of screening, rays from the picture can be positively asserted never to have entered the eyes of B ; and if, nevertheless, B describes himself as " seeing " it, however dimly, and is able to draw it, in dead silence on the part of all concerned ; then, I say, the experiment would be a good one.
But not yet would it be conclusive. We must consider who A and B are.
If they are a pair of persons who go about together, and make money out of the exhibition; if they are in any sense a brace of professionals accustomed to act together, I deny that anything is solidly proved by such an experiment; for cunning is by no means an improbable hypothesis.
Cunning takes such a variety of forms that it is tedious to discuss them; it is best to eliminate it altogether. That can be done by using unassorted individuals in unaccustomed rooms. True, the experiment may thus become much more difficult, if not indeed quite impossible. Two entirely different tuning forks will not respond. Two strangers are not usually sympathetic, in the ordinary sense of that word; perhaps we ought not to expect a response. Nevertheless, the experiment must be made; and if B is found able to respond, not only to A1, but also to A2, A3, and other complete strangers, under the conditions already briefly mentioned, the experiment may be regarded as satisfactory. I am prepared to assert that such satisfactory experiments have been made.
But the power of response in this way to the uninteresting impression of strangers does not appear to be a common faculty. The number of persons who can act efficiently as B is apparently very limited. But I do not make this assertion with any confidence, for so few people have as yet been seriously tried. It is most likely a question of degree. All shades of responsiveness may exist, from nearly 0 to something considerable.
More experiments are wanted. They are not difficult to try, and sufficient variety may be introduced to prevent the observations from being too deplorably dull. They are, I confess, rather dull.
Before considering them satisfactory or publishing them it would be well to call in the assistance of a trained observer, who may be able to suggest further precautions; but at first it is probably well to choose fairly easy conditions.
Relations are probably more likely to succeed than are strangers; persons who feel a sympathy with each other, who are accustomed to imagine they know what the other is thinking of, or to say things simultaneously, and such like vague traditions as are common in most families: such individuals as these would naturally be the most likely ones to begin with, until experiment shows otherwise. The A power seems common enough; the B power, so far as I know, is rather rare at least to a prominent extent.
It is customary to call A the agent and B the percipient, but there may be some objection to these names.
The name agent suggests activity; and it is a distinct question whether any conscious activity is necessary.
Sender and receiver are terms that might be used, but they labour under similar and perhaps worse objections. For the present let us simply use the terms A and B, which involve no hypothesis whatever.
A may be likened to the sending microphone or transmitter; B to the receiving telephone.
A to the sounded fork or quivering magnet, B to the responsive one.
A to the flashing mirror, B to the sensitive sheet.
But observe that in all the cases hitherto mentioned a third person is mentioned too, the experimenter, C. A and B are regarded as mere tools, instruments, apparatus, for C to make his experiments with.
Both are passive till C comes and excites the nerve of A, either by pinching him, or by putting things in his mouth, or by showing him diagrams or objects; and B is then supposed to respond to A. It may be objected that he is really responding to C all the time. Yes, indeed, that may sometimes be so, and it is a distinct possibility to remember. If something that C is unconsciously looking at is described by B, instead of the object which is set in front of A, the experiment will seem a failure. There are many such possibilities to bear in mind in so novel a region of research.
But now I want to go on and point out that C is not essential. He probably is not an assistance at all, very likely he is an obstruction, even if he is a serious and well-intentioned being. But if D, E, F are present too as irresponsible spectators, talking or fidgeting, or even sitting still and thinking, the conditions are bad. One can never be sure what F is doing; he may be simply playing the fool. An experiment conducted in front of a large audience is scientifically useless.
Whenever I use the term thought-transference I never mean anything like public performances, whether by genuine persons or impostors. The human race is so constituted that such performances have their value they incite others to try experiments; but in themselves, and speaking scientifically, public performances are useless, and except when of an exceptionally high order-as they were in the case of the Zancigs - they often tend to obscure a phenomenon by covering it with semi-legitimate contempt.
I fear that some hypnotic exhibitions in the past were objectionable; in so far as they were conducted, not to advance science, but to exhibit some well known fact again and again, not even to students, but to an idle gaping crowd. The obstructive incredulity of the medical profession-also in the past seemed to render such demonstrations unfortunately necessary.
To return, however, to A and B: let us suppose them left alone, not stimulated by any third person; it is quite possible for A to combine the functions of C with his own functions, and to stimulate himself. He may look at a picture or a playing card, or he may taste a substance, or he may, if he can, simply think of a number, or a scene, or an event, and, so to speak, keep it vividly in his mind. It may happen that B will be able to describe the scene of which A is thinking, sometimes almost correctly, sometimes with a large admixture of error, or at least of dimness.
The experiment is virtually the same as those above mentioned, and may be made quite a good one; the only weak part is that, under the circumstances, everything depends on the testimony of A, and A is not always believed.
This is, after all, a disability which he shares with C; and, at any rate, he is able to convince himself by such experiments, provided they are successful.
But now go a step further. Let A and B be not thinking of experimenting at all. Let them be at a distance from one another, and going about their ordinary vocations, including somnolence and the other passive as well as active occupations of the twenty-four hours. Let us, however, not suppose them strangers, but relatives or intimate friends. Now let something vividly excite A; let him fall down a cliff, or be run over by a horse, or fall into a river; or let him be taken violently ill, or be subject to some strong emotion; or let him be at the point of death.
Is it not conceivable that if any such sympathetic connexion between individuals as I have been postulating exists, - if a paltry stimulus supplied by a third person is capable in the slightest degree of conveying itself from one individual to another, - is it not conceivable or even probable that a violent stimulus, such as we have supposed A to receive, may be able to induce in B, even though inattentive and otherwise occupied, some dim echo, reverberation, response, and cause him to be more or less aware that A is suffering or perturbed. If B is busy, self-absorbed, actively engaged, he may notice nothing. If he happen to be quiescent, vacant, moody, or half or whole asleep, he may realise and be conscious of something. He may perhaps only feel a vague sense of depression in general; or he may feel the depression and associate it definitely with A; or he may be more distinctly aware of what is happening, and call out that A has had a fall, or an accident, or is being drowned, or is ill; or he may have a specially vivid dream which will trouble him long after he wakes, and may be told to other persons, and written down; or he may think he hears A's voice ; or, lastly, he may conjure up an image of A so vividly before his " mind's eye " that he may be able to persuade himself and others that he has seen his apparition:- sometimes a mere purpose - less phantom, sometimes in a " setting " of a sort of vision or picture of an event not unlike what is at the time elsewhere really happening.
The Society for Psychical Research have, with splendid perseverance and diligence, undertaken and carried forward the thankless labour of receiving and sifting a great mass of testimony to phenomena such as I have hinted at. They have published some of them in two large volumes, called Phantasms of the Living. Fresh evidence comes in every month. The evidence is so cumulative, and some of it is so well established, as to bear down the dead wall of scepticism in all those who have submitted to the drudgery of a study of the material. The evidence induces belief. It is not yet copious enough to lead to a valid induction.
I cannot testify to these facts as I can to the simple experiments where I have acted the part of C. Evidence for spontaneous or involuntary thought-transference must obviously depend on statements received from A and from B, as well as from other persons, some in the neighbourhood of A, others in the neighbourhood of B, together with contemporary newspaper reports, Times obituaries, and other past documents relating to matters of fact, which are available for scrutiny, and may be regarded as trustworthy.
I am prepared, however, to confess that the weight of testimony is sufficient to satisfy my own mind that such things do undoubtedly occur; that the distance between England and India is no barrier to the sympathetic communication of intelligence in some way of which we are at present ignorant; that, just as a signalling key in London causes a telegraphic instrument to respond instantaneously in Teheran, - which is ail every-day occurrence, - so the danger or death of a distant child, or brother, or husband, may be signalled, without wire or telegraph clerk, to the heart of a human being fitted to be the recipient of such a message.
We call the process telepathy - sympathy at a distance; we do not understand it. What is the medium of communication? Is it through the air, like the tuning forks; or through the ether, like the magnets; or is it something non-physical, and exclusively psychical? No one as yet can tell you. We must know far more about it before we can answer that question, - perhaps before we can be sure whether the question has a meaning or not.
Undoubtedly, the scientific attitude after being forced to admit the fact, is to assume a physical medium, and to discover it and its processes if possible. When the attempt has failed, it will be time enough to enter upon fresh hypotheses.
Meanwhile we must say plainly that telepathy strikes us as a spontaneous occurrence of that intercommunication between mind and mind, which for want of a better term we at present style thought-transference.
The transmission does not appear to me to be a physical process between brain and brain. I think it a psychical one between mind and mind: and that the excitation of the brain of the percipient is indirect.
Spontaneously occur-ring impressions can be artificially and experimentally imitated by conscious attempts to produce them. Individuals are known who can by an effort of will somehow excite the brain or sensorium of another person at a moderate distance, - say in another part of the same town, or even in some distant place, so that this second person imagines that he hears a call or sees a face.
These are called experimental apparitions, and appear well established. These experiments also want repeating. They require care, obviously; but they are very valuable pieces of evidence, and must contribute immensely to experimental psychology.
What now is the meaning of this unexpected sympathetic resonance, this syntonic reverberation between minds? Is it conceivably the germ of a new sense, as it were, - something which the human race is, in the progress of evolution, destined to receive in fuller measure? Or is it the relic of a faculty possessed by our animal ancestry before speech was?
I have no wish to intrude speculations upon you, and I cannot answer these questions except in terms of speculation. I wish to assert nothing but what I believe to be solid and verifiable facts.
Let me, however, point out that the intercommunion of minds, the exciting in the brain of B a thought Possessed by A, is after all a very ordinary and well known process. We have a quantity of well-arranged mechanism to render it possible. The human race has advanced far beyond the animal in the development of this mechanism; and civilised man has advanced beyond savages. Conceivably, by thus developing the mechanism, we may have begun to lose the spontaneous and really simpler form of the power; but the power, with mechanism, conspicuously exists.
I whisper a secret to A, and a short time afterwards I find that B is perfectly aware of it. It sometimes happens so. It has probably happened in what we are accustomed to consider a very commonplace fashion; A has told him. When you come to analyse the process, however, it is not really at all simple. I will not go into tedious details; but when you remember that what conveyed the thought was the impalpable compressions and dilatations of a gas, and that in the process of transmission it existed for a finite space of time in this intermediate and curiously mechanical condition, you may realise something of puzzlement in the process. I am not sure but that we ought to consider some direct sympathy between two minds, without this mechanical process, as really a more simple and direct mode of conveying an idea. Pass on to another illustration.
Tell a secret to A, in New Zealand, and discover that B, in Petrograd, is before long aware of it, neither having travelled. How can that happen? That is not possible to a savage; it would seem to him mysterious. It is mysterious in reality. The idea existed for a time in the form of black scrawls on a bit of paper, which travelled between the two places. A transfer of material occurred, not an aerial vibration; the piece of paper held in front of B's eyes excited in him the idea or knowledge of fact which you had communicated to A.
Not even a material transfer is necessary however; no matter flows along a telegraph wire, and the air is undisturbed by an electric current, but thought-transference through the etherial medium (with, or indeed without, the help of a telegraph or telephone wire) is an accomplished fact, though it would have puzzled our ancestors of last century. And yet it is not really new, it is only the distance and perfection of it that is new. We all possess an etherial receiving instrument, in our organ of vision. The old semaphore system of signalling, as well as the heliograph method, is really a utilisation of the ether for this kind of thought-transference. Much information, sometimes of momentous character, may be conveyed by a wink or nod; or even by a look. These also are messages sent through the ether. The eye is affected by disturbances arriving through the ether, and by those alone.
Now, then, I say, shut the eyes, stop the ears, transmit no material substance, interpose distance sufficient to stop all pushing and pulling. Can thought or ideas still be transmitted? Experiment answers that they can. But what the medium is, and how the process occurs, it remains for further investigation to ascertain.
We reduced our initial three individuals to two; we can reduce the two to one. It is possible for the A and B functions to be apparently combined in one individual. Some practice seems necessary for this, and it is a curious state of things. It seems assisted by staring at an object such as a glass globe or crystal - a slight amount of self-hypnotism probably. Then you see visions and receive impressions, or sometimes your hand works unconsciously, as if one part of your brain was signalling to another part, and your own identity was dormant or complexed for a time. But in these cases of so-called automatic writing, crystal vision, trance-utterance, clairvoyance, and the like, are we quite sure whether it is a case of A and B at all; and, if so, whether the subject before us is really acting as both? I am not sure; I distinctly doubt it in some cases. It is possible that the clairvoyant is responding to some unknown world-mind of which he forms a part: that the real agent is neither himself nor any other living person. This possibility must not be ignored in ordinary cases of apparent thought-transference, too.
Well, now, take a further step. Suppose I discover a piece of paper with scrawls on it. I may guess they are intended for something, but as they are to me illegible hieroglyphics, I carry it to one person after another, and get them to look at it; but it excites in them no response. They perceive little more than a savage would perceive. But not so with all of them. One man to whom I show it has the perceptive faculty, so to speak; he becomes excited; he begins to sing; he rushes for an arrangement of wood and catgut, and fills the air with vibrations. Even the others can now faintly appreciate the meaning. The piece of paper was a lost manuscript of Beethoven!
What sort of thought-transference is that? Where is the A to whom the ideas originally occurred? He has been dead for years; his fossilised thought has lain dormant in matter; but it only wanted a sympathetic and educated mind to perceive it, to revive it, and to make it the property of the world. Idea, do I call it? but it is not only idea: there may be a world of emotion too, thus stored up in matter, ready to be released as by detent. Action of mind on matter, reaction of matter on mind - are these things, after all, commonplaces too?
If so what is not possible?
Here is a room where a tragedy occurred, where the human spirit was strung to intensest anguish. Is there any trace of that agony present still and able to be appreciated by an attuned or receptive mind? I assert nothing, except that it is not inconceivable. If it happens, it may take many forms; vague disquiet, perhaps, or imaginary sounds or vague visions, or perhaps a dream or picture of the event as it occurred. Understand, I do not regard the evidence for these things as so conclusive as for some of the other phenomena I have dealt with, but the belief in such facts may be forced upon us, and you perceive that the garment of superstition is already dropping from them. They will take their place, if true, in an orderly universe, along with other not wholly unallied and already well-known occurrences.
Relics again: is it credible that a relic, a lock of hair, an old garment, retains any trace of a deceased friend represents any portion of his personality? Does not an old letter? Does not a painting? An "old master" we call it. Aye, there may be much of the personality of the old master thus preserved. Is not the emotion felt on looking at it a kind of thought-transference from the departed? A painting differs from a piece of music in that it is constantly incarnate, so to speak. It is there for all to see, for some to understand. The music requires incarnation, it can be "performed" as we say, and then it can be appreciated. But in no case without the attuned and thoughtful mind; and so these things are, in a sense, thought-transference, but deferred thought-transference. They may be likened to telepathy not only reaching over tracts of space but deferred through epochs of time.(1)
Think over these great things and be not unduly sceptical about little things. An attitude of keen and critical inquiry must continually be maintained, and in that sense any amount of scepticism is not only legitimate but necessary. The kind of scepticism I deprecate is not that which sternly questions and rigorously probes, it is rather that which confidently asserts and dogmatically denies; but this kind is not true scepticism, in the proper sense of the word, for it deters inquiry and forbids inspection. It is too positive concerning the boundaries of knowledge and the line where superstition begins.
Phantasms and dreams and ghosts, crystal-gazing, premonitions, and clairvoyance: the region of superstition? Yes, hitherto, but possibly also the region of fact. As taxes on credulity they are trifles compared to things with which we are already familiar; only too familiar, for our familiarity has made us stupidly and inanely inappreciative of them.
The whole of our knowledge and existence is shrouded in mystery: the commonplace is itself full of marvel, and the business of science is to overcome the forces of superstition by enlisting them in the service of genuine knowledge. And when this is done I do not doubt that some of these forces will be found auxiliary to the sacred cause of religion itself.
(1) They are not technical telepathy, as defined, of course because they occur through accustomed ways and processes' technical telepathy is the attainment of the same result through' unaccustomed ways and processes.
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- Section Three -
Spontaneous Telepathy and Clairvoyance
Chapter 7
Apparitions Considered in the Light of Telepathy
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THE fact of telepathy having been experimentally established by a large number of experiments conducted by different people, it remains to consider more fully its bearing and significance.
Telepathy means the apparently direct action of one mind on another by means unknown to science. That a thought or image or impression or emotion in the mind of one person can arouse a similar impression in the mind of another person sufficiently sympathetic and sufficiently at leisure to attend and record the impression, is now proved. But the mechanism whereby it is done, or even if there is anything that can be likened to physical mechanism at all, is still unknown. The appearance is as if it were a direct action of mind on mind, or possibly, but not probably, of brain on brain irrespective of the usual nerves and muscles and organs of sense.
This fact alone-once admitted, after having run the traditional gauntlet of scepticism-serves to explain, a least in a plausible and tentative manner, a number of puzzling phenomena; notably it furnishes a plausible key to the phenomena of apparitions and hallucination of every kind, whether of sight or of hearing or of touch It is of especial value in reducing the rudimentary difficulty about the clothes and accessories of so-called ghosts to absurdity; since of course a mental impression would represent a person under something like customary, though it may be unexpected, surroundings, - just as happens in an ordinary dream.
The word "hallucination" applied to phantasmal appearances in general has been objected to in connexion with some of these apparitions; as if it were intended to imply-as it is often mistakenly assumed to imply that there is no objective reality underlying the apparition whatever. It is, however, fully admitted that some hallucinations may be and indeed are veridical (i.e. truth-telling); inasmuch as they correspond with some real event, some strong emotion, - due perhaps to an accident or to the illness or decease of the distant and visualised person. They therefore do correspond with some objective reality, just as the image in a looking-glass corresponds with and is veridical evidence of some objective reality. But as to any substantiality about a phantasm-that must be regarded as demanding further investigation. Hypothetically it may differ in different cases; and in no case can it be safe to assume, without special evidence, that it has anything more than a psychological basis.
The question of photography applied to visible phantasms, and to an invisible variety said to be perceived by clairvoyants, is still an open one-at any rate no photographic evidence has yet appeared conclusive to me. If successful, photography could prove that the impression was not only a mental one, but that the ether of space had been definitely affected in a certain way also, so that the impression had probably become received by the optical apparatus of the eye, and had been transmitted in the usual way to the brain. It would not prove substantiality; since of course it is perfectly easy to photograph the virtual image formed by a looking-glass. Still, genuine photography would indicate a step in advance of telepathy: it would establish one variety of what are called "physical phenomena". There is, in truth, a vast amount of evidence for physical phenomena of this technically supernormal kind; but they have not yet made good their claim to clear and positive acceptance in the way that telepathy has done.
But we are at present not attending to physical phenomena. We need not assume that an apparition has any objective or physical reality. It may be only an impression on the mind of a percipient, analogous to the image or impression caused in one person while another is endeavouring to transfer the image of an object. That which experimentally is found to occur of conscious purpose we think may sometimes occur unconsciously too. We are not sure indeed that the consciousness or will-power of the agent has anything to do with it; the transfer is effected we know not how, and it may be wholly an affair of the subconsciousness. If so, a strong emotion even in a distant person may produce an echo or reverberation in the mind of a relative or even a sympathetic stranger, without the agent being in the least conscious of what is happening, and without the percipient in the least understanding the process. He may think that the impression in the mind is real, and may only be undeceived by trying to touch it, or he may perceive that it is no more real than the image in a looking-glass, - or not so real as that, and yet may feel certain that it corresponds to some sort of psychical reality somewhere.
In that case the impression is called veridical or truth-telling, because it does convey real information, though it does so in a phantasmal or unreal manner. Hallucinations need not necessarily be unreal or phantasmal in every case: that is a matter for further investigation, but it does assuredly clear the ground to treat them as such in the first instance.
Phantasms
Examples of apparitions seen by relatives at or very near to the epoch of death are so common that it is hardly worthwhile to quote any here. The publications of the Society for Psychical Research and the book called Phantasms of the Living are full of them; and in most assemblages it will be found that a few of those present are aware of cases of this kind in their own family history.
Part of the scepticism which has surrounded the subject has been undoubtedly due to the difficult notions which are rendered necessary if those apparitions are to be supposed objective realities. Even supposing a human being could thus appear, the apparition of his clothes and simplest accessories are puzzling if the appearance were objectively real. Sometimes such figures are seen accompanied by animals, sometimes with their surroundings lightly sketched in as it were, - as for instance part of a ship in the case of a sailor.
All these difficulties sink into non-existence directly it is apprehended that the vision is a mental impression produced by a psychical agency, veridical in the sense of corresponding to reality more or less closely, but subjective in the sense of there being no actual bodily presence. This is the kind of rationalising theory on which the Society for Psychical Research started its existence: it must have been the hope of similarly detecting an element of common sense running through a great variety of popular legend that conferred on it pioneers the motive power necessary. Anyhow that was their adopted theory, and accordingly all such apparitions were in the first instance supposed to be due to telepathy from the dying person and were called Phantasms of the Living.
The following is an extract from a Report of one of Committees:-
"There is a strong testimony that clairvoyants have witnessed and described trivial incidents in which they had no special interest, and even scenes in which the actors, though actual persons were complete strangers to them; and such cases 'seem properly assimilated to those where they describe mere Places and objects, the idea of which can hardly be Supposed to be impressed on them by any personality at all. Once more, apparitions at death, though the fact of death sufficiently implies excitement or disturbance in one mind, have often been witnessed, not only by relatives or friends, in a normal state but interested in the event - a case above considered-but by other observers who had no personal interest in the matter.
"To secure testimony on these topics we have had to depend on the co-operation of the public, and we have sought far and wide for trustworthy testimony, which we have tested in a stringent manner, never resting satisfied until by inquiry and pertinacious cross-examination, with an examination of contemporary records of various kinds, we have made as sure as is humanly possible that our witnesses were neither lying nor drawing unduly on their imagination, but that the event happened much as they have narrated or at the time recorded them."
"Phantasms of the Dying" might be a better name for these very numerous cases of apparition or veridical hallucination. Whatever the cause, the fact of their existence has been thoroughly established there is a concordance far beyond chance between apparitions which convey the impression of the unexpected death or illness of a distant person, and the actual fact;- the intelligence being, in this form, impressed on a percipient at a distance, by some apparently unconscious mental activity and by means at present unknown.
Abbreviated Examples
As an instance of a vision with appropriate accessories I might take a case reported more fully in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iii., page 97 - the case of a favour, and devoted Scottish workman who appeared to his employ in what is described as an extraordinarily vivid dream in the workman appeared with a face of "indescribable bluish pale colour and on his forehead spots like blots of sweat," earnestly said several times that he had not done the thing which he was accused of doing. When asked what this he replied impressively "Ye'll sune ken." Almost immediately afterwards the news of this man's suicide arrived. But the employer felt assured on the strength of his vision that, though dead, the man had not committed suicide; and said so. Before long it turned out that his assurance was correct, for the workman had drunk from a bottle containing nitric acid by accident. The employer moreover subsequently ascertained that the symptoms exhibited by the phantasmal appearance were such as are appropriate to poisoning by this liquid.
Another case of vision with more detailed accessories is in vol. vii., page 33, communicated by Dr. Hodgson, and may be abbreviated thus :
Mrs. Paquet on the morning of October 24th, 1889, after her husband had gone to work and the children to school, feeling gloomy, was making some tea for herself, when she saw a vision of her brother, Edmund Dunn, standing only a few feet away; and her report continues:
"The apparition stood with back toward me, or rather, partially so, and was in the act of falling forward-away from me - seemingly impelled by two ropes or a loop of rope drawing against his legs. The vision lasted but a moment disappearing over a low railing or bulwark, but was very distinct. I dropped the tea, clasped my hands to my face, and exclaimed, 'My God! Ed is drowned.'
"At about half-past ten a.m. my husband received a telegram from Chicago announcing the drowning of my brother. When he arrived home, he said to me, 'Ed. is sick in hospital at Chicago; I have just received a telegram,' to which I replied 'Ed. is drowned; I saw him go overboard.' I then gave him a minute description of what I had seen. I stated that my brother, as I saw him, was bareheaded, had on a heavy, blue sailor's shirt, no coat, and that he went over the rail or bulwark. I noticed that his pants' logs wore rolled up enough to show the white lining inside. I also described the appearance of the boat at the point where my brother went overboard.
I am not nervous, and neither before nor since have I had any experience in the least degree similar to that above related.
My brother was not subject to fainting or vertigo."
"AGNES PAQUET"
Mr. Paquet's Statement
"At about 10 30 o'clock a.m., October 24th, 1889, I received a telegram from Chicago announcing the drowning of my brother-in-law, Edmund Dunn, at 3 O'clock that morning. I went directly home and wishing to break the force of the sad news I had to convey to my wife, I said to her: 'Ed. is sick in hospital at Chicago; I have just received a telegram.' To which she replied. 'Ed. is drowned; I saw him go overboard.' She then described to me the appearance and dress of her brother as described in her statement, also the appearance of the boat, etc.
"I started at once for Chicago, and when I arrived there I found the appearance of that part of the vessel described by my wife to be exactly as she had described it, though she had never seen the vessel; and the crew verified my wife's description of her brother's dress, etc., except that they thought he had his hat on at the time of the accident. They said that Mr. Dunn had purchased a pair of pants a few days before the accident occurred, and as they were a trifle long, wrinkling at the knees, he had worn them rolled up, showing the white lining as seen by my wife."
Statement of Accident
"On October 24th, 1889, Edmund Dunn, brother of Mrs. Agnes Paquet, was serving as fireman on the tug Wolf, a small steamer engaged in towing vessels in Chicago harbour. At about three o'clock a.m., the tug fastened to a vessel, inside the piers, to tow her up the river. While adjusting the tow-line Mr. Dunn fell, or was thrown overboard by the tow-line, and drowned."
In this case, if 3 a.m. signifies Chicago time, the vision must have followed the accident very closely; but it has gradually become clear that some of these cases do not coincide precisely with the epoch of death, but follow it sometimes at so long an interval that another group has to be classified as "Phantasms of the Dead." (See Mrs. Sidgwick's Memoir on the subject in Proceedings, vol. iii.)
Again occasionally the hallucinations are collective, so that several people present see the same vision. It is possible to consider these as cases of contagious hallucination; and it is not usually necessary to suppose that the distant person whose image was being seen knew anything about it or was making any conscious effort to communicate.
If indeed he were conscious of the attempt, still more it he knew of its success and reception, it would be a feature of greatly added interest; it would then fall into the class of reciprocal cases - which are rarer.
Experimental Apparitions
The fact that such visions can also be produced through the agency of living people - even in health - was proved by the experiments conducted by Mr. S. H. B., as recorded in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i., pp 104-9, and in Human Personality, vol. i. p. 293. This gentleman willed himself or rather his phantom to appear to two ladies without their knowing of the experiment; and he succeeded in his intention. They both saw him simultaneously, though he did not see them; and his appearance was as of one in evening dress wandering aimlessly about their room, after the traditional manner of "ghosts." This experimental production of a ghost is a particularly instructive case; and many ghostly appearances belong to living people, who are usually unconscious that they are producing any such effect. There appears to be no reason why an apparition should always be of a deceased person. But whether every apparition is of this unsubstantial and purely subjective order, or whether a few proceed to a further degree of reality and belong to what are sometimes spoken of as incipient materialisation, I do not at this stage even discuss. It is sufficient to indicate that a true hypothesis does not close the door to other and more extended theories, if the first working hypothesis is found incompetent to explain all the facts.
For the convenient analogy of conscious and purposed Thought-transference must not be pressed too far. Our phenomena break through any attempt to group them under heads of purposely transferred impression; and the words Telaesthesia and Telepathy were introduced by Mr. Myers to cover all cases of impression received at a distance without the normal operation of the recognised sense organs.
These general terms are found of permanent service but as regards what is for the present included under them, we must limit and arrange our material rather with an eye to convenience, than with any belief that our classification will ultimately prove a fundamental one. No true demarcation, in fact, can as yet be made between one class of those experiences and another; we need the record of as many, and as diverse phenomena as we can get, if we are to be in a position to deal satisfactorily with any one of them.
The popular term "ghost" may cover a wide range of essentially different phenomena, and the hallucinatory but veridical kind of apparition, which has no close connexion with any particular place, is the best-established and most common variety.
Hauntings
The kind of ghost associated with a place - say a room, - and seen by any one who happens to sleep in that room, provided he is fairly wakeful and not too case-hardened against weird influences, constitutes a difficult and at present somewhat unsatisfactory region of in of inquiry; the evidence for the existence of this "fixed local" kind of apparition is strong, but hardly conclusive; and this kind is not included among those called "phantasms of the living" nor among hallucinations due to telepathy from the injured or dying.
The Society has not had the opportunity of investigating so-called haunted houses in any considerable number; and many of such cases - even when reported resolve themselves merely into uncanny noises such as may be accounted for in one of a great many different ways, I would not be understood as expressing arty negative opinion as to the actual occurrence of this class of phantom - our study of it as vet has been insufficient, though it is growing, - but of the occurrence of visions which coincide fairly in time with some severe shock to the person represented, it is impossible for me to entertain a doubt. The evidence must certainly depend human testimony, but immense trouble has been taken to collect such testimony over a wide range of persons, to sift and examine and test it by every means in our power, and then to record it in volumes accessible to the public. Those who have been chiefly occupied for years in this work are able to testify concerning it as follows:-
"We have thus accumulated a great body of testimony which it is impossible to overlook or to discard. These facts form a foundation for the beginning of knowledge concerning them.
"Our evidence is no shifting shadow, which it may be left to individual taste or temperament to interpret, but more resembles a solid mass seen in twilight which men may indeed avoid stumbling over, but only by resolutely walking away from it. And when the savant thus deserts the field, the ordinary man needs to have the nature and true amount of the testimony far more directly brought home to him, than is necessary in realms already mastered by specialists to whose dicta he may defer. Failing this direct contact with the facts, the vaguely fascinated regard of the ordinary public is, for all scientific purposes, as futile as the savant's determined avoidance. Knowledge can never grow until it is realised that the question 'Do you believe in these things?' is puerile unless it has been preceded by the inquiry, "What do you know about them?'
"For, in fact, this subject is at present very much in the position which zoology and botany occupied in the time of Aristotle, or nosology in the time of Hippocrates. Aristotle had no zoological gardens or methodical treatises to refer to; he was obliged to go down to the fish-market, to hear whatever the sailors could tell, and look at whatever they could bring him. This spirit of Omnivorous inquiry no doubt exposed him to hearing much that was exaggerated or untrue; but plainly the science of zoology could not have been upbuilt without it. Diseases afford a still more striking parallel to the Phenomena of which we are in quest. Men of science are wont to make it an objection to this quest that phenomena cannot be reproduced under our own conditions or at our own time. The looseness of thought here exhibited by men ordinarily clear-headed is surely a striking example of the prepotence of prejudice over education. Will the objectors assert that all aberrations of function and degenerations of tissue are reproducible by direct experiment? Can physicians secure a case of cancer or Addison's disease by any previous arrangement of conditions? Our science is by no means the only one concerned with phenomena which are at present to a large extent irreproducible: all the sciences of life are still within that category, and all sciences whatever were in it once."
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- Section Three -
Spontaneous Telepathy and Clairvoyance
Chapter 8
Telepathy From an Immaterial Region
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THE phenomenon upon a consideration of which we shall shortly enter is that exhibited in several forms and known under various names, of which the simplest perhaps is automatic writing - that is, writing executed independently of the full knowledge and consciousness of the operator - the hand acting in obedience either to some unconscious portion of the operator's mind, or else responding to some other psychical influence more or less distinct from both his normal and his hypernormal personality. Sometimes it takes the form not of writing, but of subconscious speech; and occasionally the person whose hand or voice is being used is himself completely entranced and unconscious for one or two hours together. There is evidently a great deal to be learned about this phenomenon, and many surmises are legitimate respecting it, but it is useless and merely ignorant to deny its occurrence. It is often quite clear that parts of the writings or speech so obtained do not represent the normal knowledge of the automatist: but whence the information is derived is uncertain, and probably in different cases the source is different. The simplest assumption, and one that covers perhaps a majority of the facts, is that the writer's unconscious intelligence or subliminal self - his dream or genius stratum - is at work - that he is in a condition of unconscious and subliminal lucidity, or subject to a sort of hyperaesthesia.
It has long been known that in order to achieve remarkable results in any department of intellectual activity, the mind must be to some extent unaware of passing occurrences. To be keenly awake and "on the spot" is a highly valued accomplishment, and for the ordinary purposes of mundane affairs is a far more useful state of mind than the rather hazy and absorbed condition which is associated with the quality of mind called genius; but it is not as effective for brilliant achievement.
When a poet or musician or mathematician feels himself inspired, his senses are-at least his commonplace and non-relevant attention is - dulled or half asleep; and though probably some part of his brain is in a state of great activity, I am not aware of any experiments directed to test which that part is, nor whether, when in that state, any of the more ordinarily used portions are really dormant or no. It would be interesting, but difficult, to ascertain the precise physiological accompaniments of that which on a small scale is called a brown study, and on a larger scale a period of inspiration.
It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the state is somewhat allied to the initial condition of anaesthesia - the somnambulic condition in which, though the automatic processes of the body go on with greater perfection than usual, the conscious or noticing aspect of the mind is latent, so that the things which influence the person are apparently no longer the ordinary events which affect his peripheral organs, but either something internal, or else something not belonging to the ordinarily known physical universe at all.
The mind is always in a receptive state, perhaps, but whereas the business-like wide-awake person receives impressions from every trivial detail of his physical surroundings, the half-asleep person seems to receive impressions from a different stratum altogether; higher in some instances, lower in some instances, but different always from those received by ordinary men, in their every-day state.
In a man of genius the state comes on of itself, and the results are astounding. There are found occasionally feeble persons, usually young, who seek to attain to the appearance of genius by the easy process of assuming or encouraging an attitude of vacancy and uselessness. There may be all grades of result attained while in this state, and the state itself is of less than no value unless it is justified by the results.
By experiment and observation it has now been established that a state not altogether dissimilar to this can be induced by artificial means, e.g., by drugs, by hypnosis, by crystal gazing, by purposed inattention; and also that a receptive or clairvoyant condition occurs occasionally without provocation, during sleep and during trance. All these states seem to some extent allied, and, as is well known, Mr. Myers has elaborated their relationship in his series of articles on the subliminal consciousness.
Well now, the question arises, What is the source of the intelligence manifested during epochs of clairvoyant lucidity, as sometimes experienced in the hypnotic or the somnambulic state, or during trance, or displayed automatically?
The most striking cases of which I am now immediately or mediately cognisant, are the trance state of Mrs. Piper and the automatism of such writers as Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland. Without any apparent lulling of attention at all I am experimentally assured of the possibility of conveying information between one mind and another without the aid of ordinary sense organs; but the cases mentioned are especially striking, and will serve to narrow the field to what, after all, may be considered at present the main points.
Mrs. Piper in the trance state is undoubtedly (I use the word in the strongest sense; I have absolutely no more doubt on the subject than I have of my friends' ordinary knowledge of me and other men), - Mrs. Piper's trance personality is undoubtedly aware of much to which she has no kind of ordinarily recognised clue, and of which in her ordinary state she knows nothing. But how does she get this knowledge? She herself when in the trance state asserts that she gets it by conversing - or, it may be, by telepathic communion - with the deceased friends and relatives of people present. And that this is a genuine opinion of hers, i.e. that the process feels like that to her unconscious or subconscious mind - the part of her which used to call itself Phinuit and now calls itself "Rector" - I am fully prepared to believe. But that does riot carry us very far towards a knowledge of what the process actually is.
Conversation implies speaking with the mouth, - and when receiving or asking information she is momentarily in a deeper slumber, and not occupied in normal speech. At times, indeed, slight mutterings of one-sided questions and replies are heard, or are written, very like the mutterings of a person in sleep under-going a vivid dream.
Dream is certainly the ordinary person's nearest approach to the entranced condition; and the fading of recollection as the conscious memory returns is also paralleled by the waking of Mrs. Piper out of the trance. But, instead of a nearly passive dream, it is more nearly allied to the somnambulic state; though the activity, far from being chiefly locomotory, is mainly mental and only partially muscular.
She may be in a state of somnambulism in which mind is more active than body; and the activity is so different from her ordinary activity, she is so distinctly a different sort of person, that she quite appropriately calls herself by another name.
It is natural to ask, Is she still herself? But it is a question difficult to answer unless "herself" be defined. It is her mouth that is speaking, or her hand which is writing, and I suppose her brain and nerves are working the muscles; but they are not worked in the customary way, nor does the mind manifested thereby at all resemble her mind. Until, however, the meaning of identity can be accurately specified, I find it difficult to discuss the question whether she or another person is really speaking.
On this point the waking experience of Mrs. Newnham - an automatic writer quoted in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i., p. 63 - is of assistance. In her case the hand wrote matter not in the writer's mind and which she did not feel that she was writing. Her hand wrote while she was taking the attention of her own conscious mind away from her hand and letting it be guided by her subconscious or by some other mind.
The instructive feature about this case was that the minds apparently influencing the hand were not so much those of dead as of living people. The advantage of this was that they could be catechised afterwards about their share in the transaction; and it then appeared that they either knew nothing about it or were surprised at it; for though the communication did correspond to something in their minds, it did not represent anything of which they were consciously thinking, and was only a very approximate rendering of what they might be wishing to convey. They did not seem able to exercise control over the messages, any more than untrained people can control their thoughts in dreams. But we must not jump to the conclusion that this will always be the case; that the connexion is never reciprocally conscious, as when two persons are talking; but it shows that at any rate it need not be so. Since the living communicant is not aware of what is being dictated, so the dead person need not be consciously operative; and thus conceivably the hand of the automatist may be influenced by minds other than his own, minds both living and dead (by, one apparently as readily as by the other), but not always by a portion which is consciously active.
That this community of mind or possibility of distant interchange or one-sided reception of thoughts exists is to me perfectly clear and certain. I venture further to say that persons who deny the bare fact, expressed as I here wish to express it without any hypothesis, are simply ignorant. They have not studied the facts of the subject. It may be for lack of opportunity, it may be for lack of inclination; they are by no means bound to investigate it unless they choose; but any dogmatic denials which such persons may now perpetrate will henceforth, or in the very near future, redound to the discredit, not of the phenomena thus ignorantly denied, but of themselves, the over-confident and presumptuous deniers.
We must not too readily assume that the apparent action of one mind on another is really such an action. The impression received may come from the ostensible agent, but it may come through a third person or messenger; or again it may, as some think more likely, come from a central mind - some Anima Mundi - to which all ordinary minds are related and by which they are influenced. If it could be shown that the action is a syntonic or sympathetic connexion between a pair of minds, then it might be surmised that the action is a physical one, properly to be expressed as occurring directly between brain and brain, or body and body. On the other hand, the action may conceivably be purely psychological, and the distant brain may be stimulated not by the intervention of anything physical or material but in some more immediate manner, - from its psychological instead of from its physiological side.
The question is quite a definite one if properly expressed: Does the action take place through a physical medium, or does it not?
Guesses at a priori likelihood are worthless; if the question is to be answered it must be attacked experimentally.
Now the ordinary way in which A communicates with B is through a certain physical mechanism, and the thought of A may be said to exist for a finite time as an etherial or aerial quiver before it reproduces a similar thought in the mind of B. We have got so accustomed to the existence of this intermediate physical process that instead of striking us as roundabout and puzzling it appeals to us as natural and simple; and any more direct action of A on B, without physical mechanism, is scouted as absurd or at least violently improbable. Well, it is merely a question of fact, and perhaps it is within the range of a crucial experiment.
But it may be at once admitted that such an experiment is difficult of execution. If the effect is a physical one it should vary according to some law of distance, or it should depend on the nature of the intervening medium; but, in order to test whether in any given case such variation occurs, it is necessary to have both agent and percipient in an unusually dependable condition, and they should if possible be unaware of the variation which is under test.
This last condition is desirable because of the sensitiveness of the sub-consciousness to suggestion: self-suggestion and other. If the percipient got an idea that distance or interposed screens were detrimental, most likely they would be detrimental; and although a suggestion might be artificially instilled that distance was advantageous, this would hardly leave the test quite fair, for the lessened physical stimulus might perhaps be over-utilised by the more keenly excited organism. Still that is an experiment to be tried among others; and it would be an instructive experience if the agent some day was, say, in India when the percipient thought he was in London, or vice versa.
It is extremely desirable to probe this question of a physical or non-physical mode of communication in cases of telepathy; and if the fact can be established beyond doubt that sympathetic communication occurs between places as distant as India or America and England, or the terrestrial antipodes, - being unfelt between, or in the neighbourhood of the source, - then I should feel that this was so unlike what we are accustomed to in Physics that I should be strongly urged to look to some other and more direct kind of mental relationship as the clue. Some of the recent experiments conducted by Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden (Proc., vol. xxi. pp. 60-93), mentioned in Chapter IV. above, tend to support such a contention.
This then, is the first question on which crucial experiments are desirable though difficult.
(l) Is the mechanism of telepathy physical or not?
The second question of which I am thinking is one less easy to stale and far less easy (as I think) to resolve. It may be stated thus, in two parts, or as two separate questions:
(2) Is the power of operating on the minds of terrestrial persons confined to living terrestrial people?
(3) Is the power of operating on or interfering with the rest of the physical universe confined to living material bodies?
I should conjecture that an affirmative answer to Question l would render likely an affirmative answer to Questions 2 and 3; but that a negative answer to Question l would leave 2 and 3 entirely open; because, so far as we at present know, terrestrial people, and people, with material bodies, may be the only people who exist.
It is this possibility, or, as many would hold, probability or almost certainty, that renders the strict scientific statement of Questions 2 and 3 so difficult. Yet they are questions which must be faced, and they ought to be susceptible, in time, of receiving definite answers.
That there are living terrestrial people we know; we also know that there is an immense variety of other terrestrial life;- though if we were not so familiar with the fact, the luxuriant prevalence and variety of life would be surprising. The existence of a bat, for instance, or a lobster, would be quite incredible. Whether there is life on other planets we do not know, and whether there is conscious existence between the planets we do not know; but I see no a priorireason for making scientific assertions on the subject one way or the other. It is only at present a matter of probability just because we know that the earth is peopled with an immense variety of living beings, I myself should rather expect to find other regions many-peopled, and with a still more extraordinary variety. So also, since mental action is conspicuous on the earth, I should expect to find it existent elsewhere. If life is necessarily associated with a material carcase, then no doubt the surface of one of the many planetary masses must be the scene of its activity; but if any kind of mental action is independent of material environment-being satisfied for instance with an etherial body, if a body is necessary, - then it may conceivably be that the psychical population is not limited to the surface of material aggregates or globes of matter, but may luxuriate either in the interstellar spaces or even perhaps in some undimensional form of existence of which we have no conception.
Were it not for the fact of telepathy the entire question would be an idle one, - a speculation based on nothing and apparently incapable of examination, still less of verification or disproof. But granted the fact of telepathy the question ceases to be an idle one, because it is just possible that these other intelligences, if they in any sense exist, may be able to communicate with us by the same sort of process as that by which we are now learning to be able to communicate with each other by non-physical means, - by means apparently independent of material sense organs. Whether it be true or not, it has been constantly and vehemently asserted as a fact that such communications, mainly from deceased relatives, but often also from strangers, are occasionally received by living persons.
The utterances of Phinuit, the handwriting of Miss A., Mr. Stainton Moses, and others, abound with communications purporting to come from minds not now associated with terrestrial matter.
Very well then; is a crucial or test experiment possible, to settle whether this claim is well founded or not?
Mere sentimental messages, conveying personal traits of the deceased, though frequently convincing to surviving friends, cannot be allowed much scientific weight. Something more definite or generally intelligible must be sought.
Of such facts the handwriting of the deceased person, if reproduced accurately by an automatist who has never seen that handwriting, seems an exceptionally good test if it can be obtained. But the negative proof of ignorance on the part of the writer is difficult.
At first sight facts known to the deceased but not known to the automatist, if reported in a correct and detailed manner so as to surpass mere coincidence, would seem a satisfactory test. But here telepathy, which has stood us in good stead so far, begins to operate the other way; for if the facts are known to nobody on earth they cannot perhaps be verified; and if they are known to somebody still alive - however distant he may be - it is necessary to assume it possible that they were unconsciously "telepathed" from his mind.
But a certain class of facts may be verified without the assistance or knowledge of any living person, - as when a miser having died with the sole clue to a deposit of "valuables" an automatist's hand, over the miser's signature, subsequently describes the place; or when a sealed document, carefully deposited, is posthumously deciphered. The test in either of these cases is a better one. But still, living telepathy of a deferred kind is not excluded (though to my thinking it is rendered extremely improbable), for, as Mr. Podmore has often urged, the person writing the document or burying the treasure may have been ipso facto an unconscious agent on the minds of contemporaries.
Case of Apparently Posthumous Activity
One of the most remarkable instances of this kind, and one which fortunately received the attention of the Philosopher Kant is one in which Swedenborg acted as the Medium, and is thus described by Kant in a letter published as an Appendix to his cautious little book on clairvoyance which has been translated into English under the title, Dreams of a Spirit Seer.
Madame Herteville (Marteville), the widow of the Dutch Ambassador in Stockholm, some time after the death of her husband, was called upon by Croon, a goldsmith, to pay for a silver service which her husband had purchased from him. The widow was convinced that her late husband had been much too precise and orderly not to have paid this debt, yet she was unable to find this receipt. In her sorrow, and because the amount was considerable, she requested Mr. Swedenborg to call at her house. After apologising to him for troubling him, she said that if, as all people say, he possessed the extraordinary gift of conversing with the souls of the departed, he would perhaps have the kindness to ask her husband how it was about the silver service. Swedenborg did not at all object to comply with her request. Three days afterward the said lady had company at her house for coffee. Swedenborg called, and in his cool way informed her that he had conversed with her husband. The debt had been paid several months before his decease, and the receipt was in a bureau in the room upstairs. The lady replied that the bureau had been quite cleared out, and that the receipt was not found among all the papers. Swedenborg said that her husband had described to him, how after pulling out the left-hand drawer a board would appear, which required to be drawn out, when a secret compartment would be disclosed, containing his private Dutch correspondence, as well as the receipt. Upon hearing this description the whole company arose and accompanied the lady into the room upstairs. The bureau was opened; they did as they were directed; the compartment was found, of which no one had ever known before; and to the great astonishment of all, the papers were discovered there, in accordance with his description.
It is difficult to attribute this apparently posthumous activity to deferred telepathy from the living burgo-master - i.e., deferred from the time when he was engaged in storing the papers - perhaps still more in this case because they were not stored with any view of subsequently- disclosing their hiding place. Postponement of the apparently posthumous action for more than a century, so that all contemporaries are necessarily dead, strains this sort of telepathic explanation still more - in fact to breaking point; but such an event is hardly within the reach of purposed experiment. The storage of objects or messages is; and responsible people ought to write and deposit specific documents, for the purpose of posthumously communicating them to some one if they can; taking all reasonable precautions against fraud and collusion, and also, - which is perhaps a considerable demand, - taking care that they do not forget the contents themselves.
If telepathy ever occurs from a supra-mundane and immaterial region, that is to say, from a discarnate mind not possessed of a brain, it may be difficult or impossible to distinguish it from clairvoyance. And, indeed, probably no discrimination would be necessary: that may be what "second-sight" or clairvoyance really is. But from the scientific point of view there is clearly all the difference in the world between recognised telepathy, such as has been proved to occur between one living person and another, and that other more hypothetical kind which has been suspected as occurring between discarnate intelligences, if there are any, and living people. If the process of ordinary experimental telepathy were ever ascertained to be a direct action of brain on brain, then acceptance of the other more hypothetical kind of telepathy would be almost forbidden - at any rate, would be rendered extremely difficult. If, however, the process of transmission should turn out to be a purely psychical one, - that is a psychological action directly between mind and mind, so that the brains at each end are only the instruments of record and verification, - then the possibility of a transfer of thought between minds unprovided with these appliances - or between one such mind and an embodied mind-is not at all inconceivable. It still has to be established, of course, and the difficulty of proof is still very great; but the effort towards such a proof is a legitimate one. It is that effort which for some years now the Society has been patiently making, and specimens of some of the results so far attained will be dealt with in Section IV.
Meanwhile, I can refer students to a careful Report drawn up by Mrs. Sidgwick in Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. iii., on cases of apparitions of persons so long deceased that the telepathic impression generated - if it is done by telepathy at all - must be attributed to the persistent activity of a discarnate mind. These are what have to be called Phantasms of the Dead.
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