Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore
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compulsion; not in the light-hearted fashion which formerly improvised occult forces and fluids to account for the vagaries of hysteria; or which in our own day has discovered the dawn of a new sense, or the relic of some primeval instinct, in the ordinary exhibitions of the “willing-game.” Our inference of an unrecognised mode of affection has nothing in common with such inferences as these; for it has been made only after recognised modes have been carefully excluded.
§ 5. It is not, however, with the ultimate conditions of the phenomena that the study of them can begin: our first business is with the reality, rather than with the rationale, of their occurrence. Telepathy as a system of facts is what we have to examine. Discussion of the nature of the novel faculty in itself, and apart from particular results, will be as far as possible avoided. That, if it exists, it has important relations to various very fundamental problems—metaphysical, psychological, possibly even physical—can scarcely be doubted. So far from the scientific study of man being a region whose boundaries are pretty well mapped out, and which only requires to be filled in with further detail by physiologists and psychologists, we may come to perceive that we are standing only on the threshold of a vast terra incognita, which must be humbly explored before we can even guess at its true extent, or appreciate its relation to the more familiar realms of knowledge. But such distant visions had better not be lingered over. Before the philosophical aspects of the subject can be profitably discussed, its position as a real department of knowledge must be amply vindicated. This can only be done by a wide survey of evidence; the character of the present treatise will therefore be mainly evidential.
In demonstrating the reality of impressions communicated otherwise than through the known sensory channels, we rely on two distinct branches of evidence, each of which demands a special sort of caution. The larger portion of this work will deal with cases of spontaneous occurrence. Here the evidence will consist of records of experiences which we have received from a variety of sources—for the most part from living persons more or less known to us. Narratives of the same kind have from time to time appeared in other collections. These, however, have not been treated with any reference to a theory of telepathy such as is here set forth; nor have their editors fulfilled conditions which, for reasons to be subsequently explained (Chap. IV.), we have felt bound to observe; and we have found them of almost no assistance. In scarcely a single instance has a case been brought up to the standard which really commands attention.1 The prime essentials of testimony in such matters—authorities, names, dates, corroboration, the ipsissima verba of the witnesses—have one or all been lacking; and there seems to have been no appreciation of the strength of the à priori objections which the evidence has to overmaster, nor of the possible sources of error in the evidence itself. It is in analysing and estimating these sources of error, and in fixing the evidential standard which may fairly be applied, that the most difficult part of the present task will be seen to consist.
But though the records here presented will be more numerous, and on the whole better attested, than those of previous collections, the majority of them will be of a tolerably well-known type. The peculiarity of the present treatment will come out rather in the connection of this branch of our evidence with the other branch. For our conviction that the supposed faculty of supersensuous impression is a genuine one is greatly fortified by a body of evidence of an experimental kind—where the conditions could be arranged in such a way as to exclude the chances of error that beset the spontaneous cases. In considering this experimental branch of our subject, I shall of course, after what has been said, be specially bound to make clear the distinction between what we hold to be genuine cases and the spurious “thought-reading” exhibitions which are so much better known. This will be easy enough, and will be done in the next chapter.
1 Briefe an eine Freundin, p. 61.
2 The specific sense which we have given to this word needs apology. But we could find no other convenient term, under which to embrace a group of subjects that lie on or outside the boundaries of recognised science, while seeming to present certain points of connection among themselves. For instance, this book will contain evidences of the relation of telepathy—its main theme—both to mesmerism and to certain phenomena which are often, without adequate evidence, attributed to minds apart from material organisms.
1 It seems impossible to avoid these terms; yet each needs to be guarded from a probable misunderstanding. Supernormal is very liable to be confounded with supernatural; while supersensuous suggests a dogmatic denial of a physical side to the effect.
1 An exception should perhaps be made in favour of a few of the late Mr. R. Dale Owen’s narratives. The Rev. B. Wrey-Savile’s book on Apparitions contains some careful work, but it deals chiefly with remote cases. Dr. Mayo, in his Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, adduces very inadequate evidence; but he has given (p. 67) what is perhaps the first suggestion of a psychical explanation.
CHAPTER II.
THE EXPERIMENTAL BASIS: THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.
§ 1. IT is difficult to get a quite satisfactory name for the experimental branch of our subject. “Thought-reading” was the name that we first adopted; but this had several inconveniences. Oddly enough, the term has got identified with what is not thought-reading at all, but muscle-reading—of which more anon. But a more serious objection to it is that it suggests a power to read anything that may be going on in the mind of another person—to probe characters and discover secrets—which raises a needless prejudice against the whole subject. The idea of such a power has, in fact, been converted into an ad absurdum argument against the existence of the faculty for which we contend. To suppose that people’s minds can be thus open to one another, it was justly enough said, would be to contradict the assumption on which all human intercourse has been carried on. Our answer, of course, is that we have never supposed people’s minds to be thus open to one another; that such a supposition would be as remote as possible from the facts on which we rely; and that the most accomplished “thought-reader’s” power is never likely to be a matter of social inconvenience. The mode of experimentation may reassure those who look on the genuine faculty as dangerous or uncanny; for the results, as a rule, have to be tried for by a distinct, and often a very irksome, process of concentration on the part of the person whose “thought” is to be “read.” And this being so, it is clearly important to avoid such an expression as “thought-reading,” which conveys no hint that his thought is anything else than an open page, or that his mental attitude has anything to do with the phenomenon.
The experiments involve, in fact, the will of two persons; and of the two minds, it is rather the one which reads that is passive and the one which is read that is active. It is for the sake of recognising this that we distinguish the two parties as “agent” and “percipient,” and that we have substituted for thought-reading the term thought-transference. Thought must here be taken as including more than it does in ordinary usage; it must include sensations and volitions as well as mere representations or ideas. This being understood, the name serves its purpose fairly well, as long as we are on experimental ground. It will not be forgotten, however, that our aim is to connect an experimental with a spontaneous class of cases; and according to that view it will often be convenient to describe the former no less than the latter as telepathic. We thus get what we need, a single generic term which embraces the whole range of phenomena and brings out their continuity—the simpler experimental forms being the first step in a graduated series.
§ 2. The history of experimental thought-transference has been a singular one. It was not by direct trial, nor in what we should now account their normal form, that the phenomena