THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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