GENERAL CRITICISM OF THE EVIDENCE FOR SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.

If the reader has been able to accept my estimate of the evidence brought forward in the preceding chapters, the possibility of the transmission of ideas and sensations, otherwise than through the known channels of the senses, must be held to be proved by the experiments there recorded. That proof can be impugned only on the ground that the precautions taken against communication between agent and percipient by normal means were insufficient. For if the precautions are admitted to have been sufficient, there can be no question that the results were not due to chance. It is not necessary here to enter into nice calculations of the probabilities. If, for instance, the odds in favour of some other cause than chance for the results recorded on pp. 66-69 were to be expressed in figures, the total sum would compete with or outstrip the stupendous ciphers employed by the astronomer to denote the distance of Sirius, or the weight of the Sun. But the kind of evidence now to be considered—the coincidence of some spontaneous affection of the percipient with some event in the life-history of the person presumed to be the agent, as when one sees the apparition of a friend at the time of his death—is of inferior cogency in two ways. The coincidences are neither so numerous nor so exact; and the risk of error in the record is far greater. On the one hand, therefore, there is a greater probability that the percipient's affection, even if correctly described, was unconnected with the state of the person supposed to be the agent; on the other hand we have, in most cases, less assurance that the description given of his experience is in its essential features accurate. The part played by coincident hallucination in the question of telepathy may be illustrated from another branch of scientific inquiry. For some years the "Germ Theory" rested mainly on observations of the distribution of certain diseases, their periodic character and their mode of propagation and development; phenomena which, though sufficiently striking, are not in themselves susceptible of exact interpretation. It was not until the minute organisms, whose existence had been so long suspected, had been actually isolated in the laboratory, and had been proved capable of reproducing the disease, that the connection of certain maladies with the presence of certain microbes in the body became, from a plausible hypothesis, an accepted conclusion of Science. So here it is important to bear in mind that dreams, visions, and apparitions, however captivating to the imagination, do not form the main argument for believing in some new mode of communication between human minds. If all the cases of the kind hitherto recorded could be shown one by one to be explicable by more familiar causes,—though the result would indeed be to add a remarkable chapter to the history of human error; though it would be a singular paradox that so many intelligent witnesses should have been so mistaken, and with such undesigned unanimity; and that a whole class of alleged phenomena should have sprung up without any substantial basis,—the grounds for the belief in telepathy would not be seriously affected; we should merely have to modify our conceptions of its nature, and restrict its boundaries. But in fact there is no reason to anticipate so lame a conclusion. The incidents, of which examples will be adduced in the succeeding chapters, though their value will be differently estimated by different minds, are yet in their aggregate not such as can plausibly be attributed to misrepresentation or chance coincidence. And, first, it is important to note that the cases must be considered in the aggregate. Separately, no doubt, each particular case is susceptible of more or less adequate explanation by some well-known cause; and in the last resort it would be unreasonable to stake the credit of any single witness, however eminent, against what Hume would call the uniform experience of mankind. But as a matter of fact the experience of mankind is not uniform in this matter; and when we are forced by the mere accumulation of testimony to go on adding one strained and improbable explanation to another, and to assume at last an epidemic of misrepresentation, perhaps even an organised conspiracy of falsehood, a point is at length reached in which the sum of improbabilities involved in the negation of thought-transference must outweigh the single improbability of a new mode of mental affection. If to any reader that point should seem not yet to have been reached—and the position could scarcely be held an unreasonable one—I would remind him that the cases quoted in this book form but a small part of the evidence so far accumulated; and I would ask that he should reserve his judgment until he has studied the whole of the evidence recorded in Phantasms of the Living, in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, the scattered cases appearing from time to time in the pages of various English and Continental periodicals dealing with this subject, and the ever-growing mass of testimony printed in the Proceedings and Journal of the Society for Psychical Research in this country.[71] He will then perhaps be prepared to endorse the verdict of a shrewd and genial critic on the evidence presented in Phantasms of the Living, viz., that it "can only be rejected as a whole by one who is prepared to repeat at his leisure what David is reported to have said in his haste."[72]

It is of course not possible with our present knowledge to estimate with any precision the probabilities for the coincidence by chance of such a vision as that recorded by Dr. DuprÉ (No. 47), or such a dream as Mr. Hamilton's (No. 58), with the event represented. Neither the nature of the percipient's impression in these and similar cases, nor the event to which the impression corresponds, are sufficiently well defined to admit of any numerical argument being based upon them. We can only recognise that whilst dreams and mind's-eye pictures are not very uncommon experiences, dreams and visions which faithfully reflect external events of an unlikely kind occur, if rarely, with sufficient frequency to give us pause. The common sense which in such cases leads us to infer a connection between the event and the corresponding mental experience is our only guide. But one large class of our spontaneous evidences is susceptible of more exact treatment. Sensory hallucinations are affections at once well marked and unusual. If we can ascertain their relative frequency it is possible to calculate with more or less exactness the probabilities of the coincidence by chance with some definite event. Such a calculation has been attempted in Chapter IX. with regard to hallucinations of a certain well-defined type coinciding with the death of the person represented. The conclusion there reached is that such coincidences are far too numerous to be ascribed to chance. This part of the evidence cannot therefore be summarily dismissed, as suggested by more than one recent critic, on the plea that hallucinations which coincide with a death may be set off against hallucinations which occur without any coincidence, and both alike be regarded as purely subjective and without significance. Our own estimate of the probabilities is, of course, provisional, and may ultimately prove to be wide of the mark. But, meanwhile, it is at least proof against assault by conjectural statistics or the obiter dicta of amateur psychologists.

But in fact the criticism commonly made is not that, happening as described, visions and hallucinations happened by chance; but that they did not happen as described. This objection deserves careful consideration. It must, I think, be admitted that a proportion, perhaps a large proportion, even of the cases obtained at first-hand are so far inaccurate as to have comparatively small value for scientific purposes; and of the residue, in which the central fact of an unusual subjective experience on the part of the percipient and its coincidence with some external event is fairly well established, it is possible that the details are frequently—and where the record is not made until some years after the event, generally—untrustworthy. In order to estimate the nature and probable extent of these defects, it is proposed briefly to pass in review the various kinds of error to which testimony is liable, and to note their bearings on the question at issue.

Errors of Observation.

Errors of observation are here of very little importance. The thing to be observed is, of course, the percipient's own sensations. In subsequent conversation he may exaggerate the exceptional nature of the impression; but he can hardly make a mistake at the time in observing what is purely subjective. If a man calls green what we call red, we may conclude that he is colour-blind; and if he asserts that he sees a human figure where we see none, that he is hallucinated; but in neither case have we warrant for saying that he is making an erroneous statement about his own sensations.

Errors of Inference.

But his interpretation of what he sees is a different matter. Not indeed that the mistake commonly made of taking a hallucination at the time for a figure of flesh and blood, and subsequently for a hypothetical entity of another kind, directly affects the percipient's testimony. So long as the witness accurately describes what he saw, it matters little whether he believes in telepathic hallucinations, or in black magic, ghosts, or the Himalayan Brothers. But there are one or two errors of inference of sufficient importance to deserve notice.

A real figure seen under exceptional circumstances may at the time or in the light of subsequent events be regarded as a hallucination. Such a mistake is, as a rule, possible only out of doors; and the commonest form of it is when a figure is seen by the percipient resembling some friend believed to be at a distance, or in circumstances which make it difficult to suppose that the figure was of flesh and blood. A curious instance came under my notice recently. It was reported to me that a lady had seen in a certain provincial town the ghost of a friend at about the time of her death. The figure, accompanied by another figure, was seen in broad daylight at a distance of a few feet only; it was clearly recognised, and the proof of its non-reality lay in the complete absence of recognition in return. It was subsequently ascertained that the friend in question had actually been present in the flesh, with a companion, at the spot where the figures were seen, but that for sufficient reasons she desired to avoid recognition. Her death within a few days of the encounter was merely an odd coincidence.

Another kind of erroneous inference is worth noting. Cases are not infrequently quoted, as presumably telepathic, of a dream or vision embodying information demonstrably not within the conscious knowledge of the percipient. The inference that he cannot have obtained the information by normal means is clearly unsound, unless it can be shown that it was impossible for the information to have been received unconsciously. For it is well established that intelligence, even of events closely affecting the percipient, may enter through the external organs of sense and lie latent for days before emerging into consciousness. It is obvious that, for instance, many of the cases quoted in which an invalid became aware of news (e.g., of the death of a relative) which had been studiously withheld from him by those around may be thus explained. Whispers heard in sleep, or hints unconsciously received, may have betrayed the secret.[73]

Errors of Narration.

Of much greater importance than errors of observation or inference are those due to defects either in narration or memory. Deliberate deception amongst educated persons is no doubt comparatively rare, though it would perhaps be unwise to hold out any pecuniary inducement for the production of evidence. But there are those, like Colonel Capadose in Mr. Henry James' story The Liar, who tell ghost stories for art's sake, and on a slender basis of fact build up a large superstructure of fiction. And there are many more who, with a natural and almost pardonable desire to appear as the hero, or at least the raconteur, of a good story, or from the mere love of the marvellous, allow themselves to exaggerate the coincidences, adjust the dates, elaborate the details, or otherwise improve the too bare facts of an actual experience. This kind of embellishment, however, is probably more frequent in second-hand accounts, where the narrator speaks with less sense of responsibility, and, it may be added, of reality.

Again, a common form of inaccuracy is to quote as the experience of a friend one of those weird stories which are passed on from mouth to mouth in ordinary society—the inconvertible currency of psychical research. We all know these old friends—at a distance, for no one has ever succeeded in making their nearer acquaintance. There is the ghost at No. 50 B—— Square; the driver of the dream-hearse, recognised a year later in a lift, which fell straightway, with all its passengers, to the bottom of the hotel; the Form which accompanies the priest, or Quaker, or godly merchant to save him from robbery on his lonely nocturnal journeyings; the young lady who took part in some tableaux vivants whilst her body was lying cold in death—and all the rest of the phantom throng. Only a few months ago I heard one of them—it was the ghost of the lift—from the son of a doctor, who assured me that the incident occurred to one of his father's patients, and gave me the name of the foreign hotel which had been the scene of the disaster.[74]

Sometimes a story is improved by the narrator that it may the better serve for instruction and edification. This tendency is especially liable to distort the evidence in cases connected with death. It must be remembered that though we may view a coincident hallucination, for instance, as merely an instance of an idea transferred from a living mind, to the percipient it frequently represents the spirit of the dead. From a certain class of witnesses the account of such an incident is as little to be trusted as the text of an apocryphal gospel. It inevitably becomes a Tendenz-schrift, which reflects not the facts as they occurred, but the narrator's conception of what the facts ought to have been.

It is not necessary to dwell on these sources of error, for they are probably apparent to all; and to give illustrative cases would be superfluous, and perhaps invidious. But it is important to observe that stories so improved, whether from a desire to reinforce some theological tenet, or from the mere love of sensation, are apt to betray their origin in many different ways. Narrators of this kind rarely content themselves with the finer touches; the added ornaments are apt to be gross and palpable; the "spirit" will be made to speak words of warning or comfort; to intimate his testamentary dispositions; or even—in somewhat bolder flight of fancy—to leave a solid memento behind him. Now the authentic phantom is seldom either dramatic or edifying.

Errors of Memory.

More insidious and more difficult to guard against are errors of memory. There is a natural and almost inevitable tendency to dramatic unity and completeness which leads to the unconscious suppression of some details, and the insertion of others. Probably of all errors due to this cause a nice adjustment of the dates is the commonest. In perhaps the majority of second-hand cases, and in some of the more remote first-hand narratives, the coincidence is said to be exact to the minute. "At that very moment my friend passed away" is a common phrase. As a matter of fact, in the best attested recent cases it can rarely be shown that the coincidence is precise, and the impression frequently follows the death by some hours. But there is risk also of the actual transformation of the experience itself. A dream after the lapse of years will be recalled as a hallucination,[75] a vague feeling of discomfort as a vivid emotion, or even a mental vision; a hallucination not recognised at the moment will in the retrospect seem to have been identified with some person who died at about that time; and details, such as clothes worn or words spoken by the phantom, will be borrowed from later knowledge and read back into the image preserved in the memory. There will further be a gradual simplifying and rounding off of the incident, a deepening of the main lines, and a suppression of what is not obviously relevant or coherent. With many persons there can be no doubt that this process is almost, if not wholly, unconscious; and it need hardly be said that in that very fact lies the special danger against which we have to guard.[76]

As an instance of the gradual approximation of dates, I may cite a case recorded in the Proceedings of the American S.P.R. (pp. 401, 527). The narrator wrote to Dr. Hodgson:—"I once dreamed that W. T. H. was dead; and the same night he was thrown down several feet on to an engine, ... when he was taken up it was thought he was dead." From later inquiries it was ascertained that the accident did indeed occur as alleged—but a week or ten days after the dream![77] As an illustration of a different kind of metamorphosis, a case may be given which I recently received from a lady and her daughter—an account of a "ghost" seen twenty-five years ago by the latter and her nurse. The younger lady described to me the figure seen; the mother told me that she had received a similar description from both nurse and daughter at the time of the incident. Both ladies were clear-headed and sensible witnesses, and it was impossible to doubt that they believed what they said. But in her childish diary, which the younger lady kindly unearthed for my inspection, the only entry referring to the matter—an entry written in pencil and obviously as an afterthought—ran: "Ellen saw a ghost." If the diarist had herself shared the experience, it is difficult to believe that even the modesty natural to her age and sex would have withheld her from recording the fact for her private glorification.

It would be easy to multiply cases of this kind. But those who demand most proof of the action of telepathy will probably be least exacting of evidence for the untrustworthiness of ancient memories. As a matter of fact, we have the evidence of statistics to show that the imagination does tend after a certain lapse of time to magnify coincidences in matters of this kind, and even to invent coincidences where none existed. It will be shown in Chapter IX., in the discussion on the results obtained from an inquiry into the distribution of sensory hallucinations, that whereas non-coincidental hallucinations tend to be forgotten after the passing of a few years, the records of coincidental hallucinations—or at least of those which are alleged to have coincided with the death of the person seen—are proportionately more frequent ten years ago than at the present time, the inference being that a certain number of coincidences have been unconsciously improved or invented in the interval.

Pseudo-presentiment.

In a letter published in Mind (April 1888) Professor Royce, of Harvard, U.S.A., hazarded a hypothesis that there may occur "instantaneous and irresistible hallucinations of memory which make it seem to one that something which now excites or astonishes him has been prefigured in a recent dream, or in the form of some other warning." In support of that hypothesis Professor Royce appeals to the analogy of the well-known cases of double memory,—the impression of having at some previous time looked on a scene now present, or heard a conversation now taking place; and to two or three instances of undoubted hallucination of memory amongst the insane, recorded by Krafft-Ebing and Kraepelin. As regards the latter, it is sufficient to remark that the hallucinations occurred to persons whose minds were admittedly diseased; that the hallucinations themselves were apparently slow of growth, whereas the hypothesis requires that they should be more or less instantaneous; and that in other respects they do not present by any means a perfect parallel to the presumably telepathic cases with which he compares them. In default, therefore, of more precise analogies, the hypothesis of pseudo-presentiment must be regarded as, at best, a plausible guess. And even if it were fully substantiated it would only, as pointed out by Mr. Gurney (Mind, July 1888), apply to certain classes of telepathic cases, and those the weakest from the evidential standpoint. At most the theory would account for dreams and indefinite impressions of various kinds not mentioned beforehand. In some cases of this kind, and in a large class of so-called "prophetic" dreams, I am inclined to regard Mr. Royce's explanation as possibly true, in the modified form suggested by Dr. Hodgson (Proc. American S.P.R., pp. 540 et seq.)—i.e., if it is restricted to cases where there is a vague memory of some actual dream or other impression, bearing a more or less remote resemblance to the event; in other words, if we assume an illusion rather than a hallucination of memory. But it need hardly be said that no serious investigator would treat the uncorroborated accounts of dreams and vague feelings of this kind as evidence for anything whatever. To extend the hypothesis, as Professor Royce suggests, to cases where there is evidence that the percipient's experience was mentioned beforehand, is to suppose not one kind of pseudo-memory, but two,—a pseudo-memory on the part of the percipient that he has had a certain subjective experience, and a pseudo-memory on the part of some other person that this experience was mentioned to him before the news of the event to which it related. In recent cases, at any rate, the assumption of a double mistake of this kind seems unwarranted.[78] And to apply this explanation to cases of actual sense-hallucination involves even more violent improbabilities. It would require far more evidence than Professor Royce can offer to make it credible that a man on hearing of the death of a friend should straightway be capable of imagining that at a definite hour and in a particular place he had seen an apparition of that friend, when in fact he had had no experience of the kind. It is remarkable that Mr. Royce does not himself appear to have realised the distinction between the two kinds of impressions.

Precautions against Error.

We have now to consider by what methods the various defects incident to testimony on these matters may be best eliminated. As the evidence upon which reliance is placed will be illustrated by the examples quoted hereafter, it will not be necessary to dwell at length here upon the precautions taken. The testimony at first-hand of the actual witnesses, it need hardly be said, is to be desired in any investigation; but in the case of phenomena which are at once stimulating to the imagination, and, as being novel, have no recognised standard of probability by which narrator or auditor can check deviations from the truth, no other evidence is worthy of consideration.[79] It will be seen that in all the cases here quoted the witness, or one of the witnesses, has furnished an account of his experience written by himself;[80] and it is worth noting that the very act of writing such an account to serve the purpose of a systematic inquiry is calculated to inspire the percipient with a sense of responsibility, and to lead him to weigh his words with precision. I may add that by the courtesy of our informants we have in most cases been enabled to question them orally on the details of their experience.[81]

But, for reasons already given, no case should be suffered to rest upon a single memory. It is of the highest importance, therefore, to obtain the corroborative testimony of persons who were cognisant of the occurrence of the impression before the news of the corresponding event. When this is not to be obtained, evidence of some unusual action on the part of the percipient, such as the taking of a journey, or the putting on of mourning, may be accepted as collateral proof of the reality of his impression. But, as we have already seen, the evidence of the attesting witnesses is liable to the same errors which affect the testimony of the percipient; and the evidence most to be desired is of a kind exempt from these weaknesses—that of a letter or memorandum written before the news. In a large proportion of the narratives dealt with, it is asserted that such a letter was written, or such a memorandum made. Unfortunately, this alleged documentary evidence is rarely forthcoming. It is possible that in some cases this statement is merely a conventional dramatic tag,—an addition made unconsciously and in perfect good faith to round off the story.[82] It cannot, however, I think, be regarded as surprising either that a letter or note was not written at the time, or that, if written, it should not have been preserved. Sensory hallucinations—to take the most striking instance—though unusual are not extremely rare experiences; most educated persons are perfectly familiar with the fact of their occurrence and regard them (in most cases rightly) as purely subjective, the products of some transient cerebral disturbance, as little worthy of record as a headache or a bilious attack. Often, probably, the telepathic hallucination is indistinguishable from the mass of purely subjective experiences of the same kind; and even should it be recognised at the time as exceptional, the want of leisure, the fear of ridicule, even the dislike of seeming to admit to himself the possibility of his experience having a sinister significance, would probably deter the percipient from writing about it.[83] It is much more likely that he would speak of it to an intimate friend, should opportunity occur. And when in the rare conjunction of an exceptional experience, adequate leisure, and a sympathetic correspondent, or the habit of writing a diary, the letter is actually written or the note made, the chances which militate against its preservation are many. Few persons will take a general and impersonal (in other words, a scientific) interest in occurrences of this kind. Their own isolated experience may possess a deep and abiding interest for themselves, and, less certainly, for their friends; an interest, however, which is quite compatible with the treatment of the attesting record as waste paper. But unless it can be used to illustrate or support a theory of a future life, they seldom regard a "ghost story" as having any value other than that derived from the personal environment. It appears, indeed, to possess for most little more significance than the recital of an extraordinary run of luck at cards, or a fortunate escape from a railway accident, between which it is commonly sandwiched. Again, few persons realise the high value of contemporary documentary evidence in matters of the kind; there are many who would probably share the views of a courteous correspondent, who, after sending me condensed copies of some contemporary memoranda, wrote in answer to my inquiries:—"I have not got the originals; I destroyed them immediately I sent them (i.e., the copies) to you, because I knew they would be more permanently preserved and recorded; being authenticated to Professor Barrett and you, there was no further need of them." And even when they escape immediate destruction the letters may, as in cases reported to us, be "washed out" or burnt; or may survive the perils of flood and fire only to be mislaid, so that they cannot be found without a more thorough search than the courtesy of our correspondents can induce them to make. Notwithstanding these various adverse chances, it will be found that many of the narratives which follow are actually attested by contemporary documentary evidence.

When the great mass of narratives has been carefully examined and tested in the light of the considerations above set forth, and when all those which are remote in date, or for some other reason suspect, have been eliminated, there will be found to remain an important body of testimony. And of this sifted residue, though we cannot predicate of any single narrative that it accurately represents the facts, or that the coincidence with which it deals was not purely casual, yet looking at the cases as a whole, we may feel a reasonable assurance that in their essential features the facts are correctly reported, and that the coincidences are not due to chance.

I may conclude this chapter by calling attention to an argument of a different kind, on which Mr. Gurney,[84] in reviewing the material amassed chiefly in this country, laid considerable stress, and in which he has been followed by an independent observer, Professor Royce, dealing with narratives received from correspondents in America.[85] Both these investigators have pointed out, and probably all who make an equally careful and dispassionate study of the evidence will agree with them, that the phenomena vouched for in the best-attested narratives form a true natural group. They are manifestly not the products of folk-lore, nor of popular superstition, nor of the mere love of the marvellous. They are singularly free from the more sensational and bizarre features—dramatic gestures or speech on the part of the phantasms, prophetic warnings, movement of objects, etc.—which are conspicuous in second-hand narratives. If these accounts were purely fictitious, it would be difficult to conceive by what process, coming from persons of widely separated social grades, of various degrees of education, and of different nationalities, they could have been moulded to present such strong internal resemblances; resemblances consisting not merely in the possession of many common features, but in the absence of others which, by their frequent occurrence in admittedly fictitious accounts, are proved to be the natural fruits of the unrestrained imagination. This undesigned unanimity is strong evidence that the restraint operating throughout has been the restraint of fidelity to fact, and that the narratives themselves owe little to the imagination, and much to their reflection of genuine experience.