r RANSr ! E. R B N Gi D UKE UNIVERSIT Y LIBRARY Gift of E&t&td oh George E. Hcuvtman ^ <'^Y- / Occult Sciences Library Service 15 North Maryland Ave. Atlantic City, New Jersey Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/thoughttransfere01thom THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE BY THE SAME AUTHOR THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE A Critical and Historical Review of the Evidence for Telepathy with a Record of New Experiments 1902- 1903. Cloth $1.25 net CRYSTAL GAZING Its History and Practice, with a Dis¬ cussion of the Evidence for Tele¬ pathic Scrying. Introduction by An¬ drew Lang, M.A., LL.D. Cloth $1.25 DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 40-42 East 19th Street New York Thought Transference A Critical and Historical Review of the Evidence for Telepathy, with a Record of New Experiments 1902-1903 By NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS, M.A. Author of “Crystal Gazing” NEW YORK Dodge Publishing Company 23 East 20th Street Copyright, 1905, by Dodge Publishing Co. PREFACE Since the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research more than twenty-three years ago, a great mass of more or less well-evidenced material has been published upon subjects such as thought- transference, crystal gazing, ghosts, mediumship, physical phenomena and other so-called “ occult ” manifestations. There have, however, been but few attempts to sum up the evidence and make it available for the ordinary citizen who cannot find time to read the whole of the thirty volumes pub¬ lished by the Society. Even in the Society’s own publications there is, as a rule, no periodical sum¬ ming up of the evidence for the various phenomena and hypotheses. I propose, therefore, to discuss Psychical Re¬ search or Metapsychics, as Professor Richet terms it, in a series of works which will deal critically hut sympathetically with the evidence. Where the historical and anthropological facts are of interest or importance, they will not he neglected, but my main purpose is to show what a reasonable v vi PREFACE man without bias in either direction may regard as proved. The ignorant criticism to which the Society was subjected in its earlier days has given place in many quarters to an equally uncritical accept¬ ance of its results; but neither the credulity nor the scepticism of the public is based on know¬ ledge. Denial and affirmation are both equally easy, when the authors of the sentiment know noth¬ ing of the question at issue. I hope to provide a series of text books which will render both scepticism and credulity less excusable. I am much indebted to the various ladies and gentlemen whose trials are chronicled in the latter half of this volume, for assistance in experiments which are too often neither interesting nor suc¬ cessful. At the time of going to press I have lost sight of some of them, and their initials only are given in the absence of express permission to give the full names. I am also indebted to the Council of the Society for Psychical Research for permission to quote from the Proceedings and Journal, and especially for the right of publishing the unprinted results of the experiments tried in 1901-2, the records of which are now in my possession. .NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS. April, 1905. CHAP. I II III IV V VI VII VIII CONTENTS Incredulty, Scientific and Otherwise— Ac¬ tion at a Distance—The Qualifications of a Psychical Researcher—Dr. W. B. Carpenter—What is Science?—Objec¬ tions to Psychical Research : its As¬ sumptions : its Devotees : its Sphere of Enquiry ....... Telepathy a Designation, not a Theory—Pos¬ sible Errors ...... The Subliminal—Ordinary Sense Perception — Hypnotic Hallucinations — Trance — Clairvoyance ...... How we become aware of Subliminal Ideas — Mental Impressions—Visions and Hallu¬ cinations—Automatic Writing Historical—The Magnetizers—Spiritualism— The Newnham Experiments — Experi¬ ments by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, Profes¬ sor Sidgwick and others .... Experiments at a Distance — Transference of Images—Telepathic Hallucinations . Telepathic Hypnotism—Telepathic Dreams Experiments in 1902 — Pictures — Colours — Diagrams ....... vii page 1 25 33 51 62 82 106 12 7 CONTENTS viii CHAP. PAGE IX Card Experiments — Independent Variables —Trials in same room—Postponed Suc¬ cesses—Cyclic Guessing—Trials in Dif¬ ferent rooms ...... 154 X The Net Result—Future Investigation . . 175 XI The Ethics of Criticism—Problems—The¬ ories—Objections—Mind and Matter— Psychological Parallelism—The Igno¬ rance of Science—Basis of Belief that Language conveys Ideas . . . .182 XII How to Experiment.205 Bibliography.211 Index.213 CHAPTER I Incredulity, scientific and otherwise■—Action at a dis¬ tance—The qualifications of a psychical research¬ er — Dr. W. B. Carpenter—What is science ?— Objections to Psychical Research: its assump¬ tions: its devotees: its sphere of enquiry Some things appear to us impossible because of the range of our knowledge. Few sane persons with a competent knowledge of physics will set out on a quest for perpetual motion. If by any chance such a person does do so, and believes that he has solved the problem, it is possible to demon¬ strate to him that his theoretical solution conflicts with established principles, and is therefore erro¬ neous. 1 In other cases well-attested reports of phenomena are disbelieved, not because the state¬ ments contradict any positive knowledge, but by reason of the extent of our ignorance. Globular lightning was long regarded as impossible, not because it conflicted with any known facts, but 1 A Cambridge wrangler was reported to have solved the problem some twenty years ago. The only defect in his so¬ lution was its omission to take account of the fact that gravity acts downwards. 1 B 2 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE because it was unlike any form of electric discharge that could be experimentally produced. As soon as it was shown that something analogous could be demonstrated in the laboratory, there was a change of view as to the value of the evidence previously accumulated. In 1882 a Society, whose name is now a house¬ hold word, was formed to conduct “ an examina¬ tion into the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, apart from any generally recognized mode of per¬ ception,” and for other objects. The Society for Psychical Research during the first ten years of its existence devoted its energies in the main to the question of thought transference or telepathy, spon¬ taneous and experimental. Since that time the study of these questions has on the whole been over¬ shadowed by investigations into trance mediumship —a line of research more attractive to the outside world, as well as to the spiritualistic section of the Society, but hardly calculated to be fruitful without at least a preliminary disproof of the existence of thought transference or a determination of its limits between living persons. Since the experiments conducted in 1889 and 1890 by the late Prof. Sidgwick, Mrs. Sidgwick and others, no long series of trials has been pub¬ lished by the Society. Virtually no fresh evidence INCREDULITY 3 has therefore been accumulated, and in view of the experience of the possibilities of error gained since the childhood of the Society this failure to accumulate new evidence cannot but throw some doubt on results which at the time seemed almost conclusive. This doubt must in fact gain strength from the conclusive character of the evidence published in Proc. S.P.R. vi, 128; viii. 560, sq. If the Society has, in the twelve years which have elapsed, failed to obtain, in a series of any length, results that were above probability, or so much above probability as to exclude chance variations as a probable explanation, we can either conclude that the perceptual faculty is rarely possessed in the degree to which the Brighton percipients of 1889 and 1890, chosen, it appears, at random, possessed it, or we can perhaps with more reason conclude that there was some serious undetected flaw in the method of experimentation. The purpose of the following pages is, in the first place, to give a brief sketch of the evidence so far available for experimental thought transference, and, in the second place, to indicate the lines on which those who have no special claim to ac¬ quaintance with the sources of error in psychological investigation, and who do not regard themselves as more favoured than their fellows in the direction of divining the thoughts of other people, may profit- 4 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE ably (to science, if not to themselves) experiment, and to show in what respect such experiments, attended with but slight success, though they may be, from the point of view of those who regard thought transference as a fact to be proved by experimenta¬ tion with exceptional individuals, may do more to establish the theory on a sound basis than all the more sensational work of previous investi¬ gators. It has been pointed out above that there are two kinds of incredulity—one, which may be termed scientific, refuses to accept any evidence, how¬ ever good in quality and quantity, which would, if accepted, involve the assumption that two contra¬ dictory statements can both be true. The other, which is pure prejudice and merely an example of scientific superstition, refuses to accept any evidence, however good in quality or quantity, as to facts or alleged facts, for no other reason than that they cannot be brought into line with, and shown to be analogous to, one or more accepted facts. In so saying, I do not, of course, include the sane scepti¬ cism which refuses to accept statements not backed up by sufficient evidence, 1 but only that attitude of mind which is so satisfied with its supposed 1 The question of what is sufficient evidence is a difficult matter and need not be discussed here. ACTION AT A DISTANCE 5 knowledge of the universe, as to be able to inform humanity that no evidence can be sufficient, that experiments in such matters are mere folly, and that no results can be anticipated from them (vide Nature, vol. 24, p. 172.) The irrational character of this attitude is apparent, when we reflect that were it logically adhered to, no evidence would suffice to convince us of the existence of any isolated fact in nature, however many observations were available. We might for example deny the existence of gravi¬ tation because it is the only force which appears to be independent, in its manifestation, of either time or space. The scientific world (or certain members of it), has declared telepathy to be an impossibility; it has done this on the ground that action at a distance is impossible, and that therefore no hypoth¬ esis which involves it is worth consideration. With regard to these assertions, it may be noted that it is very far from proved that action at a distance is impossible. At most, what has been proved is that no action hitherto observed is action at a distance, and even this statement might require to be qualified in the case of gravitation, if not of other forces. However that may be, any one who maintains that action at a distance cannot be a fact because it has not yet been discovered, is no more advanced than the labourer, who, on seeing a steam-engine at work 6 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE for the first time, concluded that there was a horse inside it because that was the only kind of non¬ human force that he knew. The savage and the scientist are not so far from one another as some people imagine. It is, however, very far from proved that telepathy any more than gravitation involves action at a distance. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how the vibration of a physical medium can transmit thought; but this is no more an objection to the view that it does do so, than is the impossibility of bridging the gulf from molecular motion to con¬ sciousness a refutation of the hypothesis that the brain is the organ of mind. We may reasonably go on to ask by what kind of reasoning it has .been proved that consciousness is localized in the brain. A physicist tells us that a charge of electricity appears to be localized on the surface of a con¬ ductor, but is really distributed in space round it. We have absolutely no grounds for supposing that the same may- not be true of consciousness. All arguments to the contrary assume that absence of sensation (I mean thereby, absence of one of the ordinarily recognized five sorts of sensation con¬ veyed by definite nerves and under normal cir¬ cumstances, definitely localized) is equivalent to absence of consciousness and that consciousness, so far as it is feeling, is the sum of the feelings CONSCIOUSNESS NON-SPATIAL 7 conveyed by the nervous system. 1 This, however, is the very point at issue and cannot be assumed unless experiments devised to that end (which may be, as a matter of fact, impossible to conceive, or carry out) have proved that no such “ distribution ” of consciousness occurs. We may again ask in what sense it can be said that consciousness is localized at all. We are, of course, made aware by our senses only of vibrations that impinge on the nerve ends, or in other words, impulses that directly affect the body. But that is no proof that localization can be intelligibly at¬ tributed to consciousness. If we are only conscious of heat or cold when the surface of the body is at a different temperature from its surroundings, that is no proof that our consciousness is at a tempera¬ ture of 98.5°. To put the matter in another form, consciousness is certainly, so far as introspection tells us anything, non-spatial. We cannot therefore object to inquire into the possibility of one con¬ sciousness influencing another, through other than the recognized modes of sensation, on the ground that such influence necessarily involves action at a distance; spatial nearness and distance are mean- 1 On this question the experiments in clairvoyance are of interest, by which I mean experiments such as those tried by Professor Richet ( Proc. S.P.R.), to determine how far it is possible to guess cards drawn at random and unseen by any one. 8 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE ingless as applied to our own consciousness and do not necessarily apply to the relation of our own to other consciousnesses. The argument that tele¬ pathy involves action at a distance in this case falls to the ground. Objections of this class fail, moreover, for the simple reason that no generalization from the facts of experience can exclude the possibility of other facts not inconsistent with the previously ascertained facts. That knowledge ordinarily and habitually comes to us one way no more excludes the possibility of its coming in an entirely different way, than the practically instantaneous discharge of electricity under ordinary circumstances excludes the possi¬ bility of globular lightning and other slow dis¬ charges. Congruent observations by competent observers must be accepted as prima facie evidence until definite sources of error are demonstrated. This brings us to a second point. It is frequently argued that the proper persons to take up thought transference are physiologists, and that those who have no knowledge of the phenomena of brain or of mind are incompetent. It may be pointed out that no physiologist who ever lived could explain by means of physiology how we think at all. If the idea “ cat ” is associated with a certain molecular arrangement in the brain, all the professors in the world cannot tell us why it should be so associated, EXPERIMENTERS 9 nor even tell us with what arrangement of the molecules of the brain the idea “ cat ” is associated. As thought transference deals with ideas, the physio¬ logist is clearly no use, so far as explanations are concerned, though so far as physiologists are more likely to exclude errors and to experiment in the most scientific way possible, their work on the question of telepathy is desirable. But to argue that because a man has investigated the mechanism of the nerves or the minute structure of the brain, he is better qualified to discover the causes of certain states of mind, is an obvious absurdity. It does not follow that a physicist who understands the mathematics of the question will be a better shot than a gamekeeper or a poacher. Nor does it follow that a man whose experience has been with microscopes will he successful in dealing with the medium. The sole point on which his knowledge, as distinguished from his skill as an experimenter, will be useful is on the question of how far hyperses- tliesia in the normal or the hypnotised subject can explain the phenomena and, perhaps, what pre¬ caution should be taken to exclude the possibility of it. Otherwise a physiologist is not necessarily of so much use as a phonographer. For under proper conditions of experimentation the sole question is, “ Did the mental phenomena of the agent show a relation, not to be explained as the result of chance, IO THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE to the mental phenomena of the percipient ? ” Given an accurate record of the psychical states of each, and it does not matter a halfpenny, so far as the proof, as distinguished from the explanation of telepathy goes, what their brain states are. For the benefit of those, however, who put their faith in the physiologist, it may be pointed out that, as a matter of fact, more than one person to whom more than common knowledge in such matters is attri¬ buted has investigated the question of thought trans¬ ference and that their researches have not been un¬ attended with success. As an example I may cite Professor Richet, details of whose experiments in hypnotism at a distance are to be found in Proc. S.P.R., v. 32, sq.; Revue Phil. xxv. 435. A curious commentary on the alleged super¬ excellence of physiologists as investigators in these matters is supplied by a letter of the arch enemy of spiritualism, telepathy, et hoc genus omne, the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter, in Nature, June 30, 1881, p. T88. He had given a testimonial of a sort to the “ thought reader,” W. I. Bishop, and here narrates an experiment, showing that “ we may be guided in our choice among things ‘ indifferent ’ by influences of which we are ourselves unconscious .” The experi¬ ment was fhis: the subject drew a card from a pack, identified it, and returned it; the pack was shuffled and sixteen cards dealt by the agent, face down- DR. CARPENTER 11 wards in four rows; the subject then selected a row. According to Dr. Carpenter the selected row was to be taken away. It could not therefore, if the experiment was to be successful, contain the selected card; but this is a point on which some doubt is permissible. Three rows were selected in this manner and three cards of the remaining row, and the last card, on being turned up, was identical with the card originally selected. This experiment was performed with success before Dr. Carpenter three successive times, he himself being the subject on the last occasion. The selection of rows or cards was, in each case, made by the subject with his right hand, which Mr. Bishop held in his left, and Dr. Carpenter held that the influence was unconsciously conveyed by this means. The explanation suggested by Dr. Carpenter is not very convincing, and an ardent believer in tele¬ pathy might be disposed to regard telepathic in¬ fluence as a more likely hypothesis. We need not, however, go so far afield. The theory of Dr. Car¬ penter implies that Mr. Bishop knew which card had been selected; this of itself involves, if the trial is always successful, both trickery and some amount of conjuring; for in Dr. Carpenter’s report we are not given to understand that any means were openly taken to secure that the selected card should be among those dealt; and even if such means were 12 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE taken there would be nothing to show which was the card in question. But given this amount of deception, it is not apparent why we should hold that the remainder of the trick was performed in the way suggested by Mr. Bishop and accepted by Dr. Carpenter. In the first place, we do not learn that any precautions were taken to secure that the ex¬ periment was tried with an ordinary pack; the simplest way would obviously be to try it with one made up of fifty-two cards all alike, the company being allowed to inspect a second pack of the ordi¬ nary kind. If this was not the case, it remains to be proved that his agent did not sometimes change his formula and declare that the row or card selected was the row or card to be retained. Here again, success must obviously be certain. But even if this were not so, there is always that possibility of ex¬ plaining away ill success, which is the chief resource of civilized mediums as of savage sorcerers; the agent could always declare, when the row containing the card selected had been removed, as it must frequently be, even if Mr. Bishop selected for his card a location likely to influence in his favour the choice of the subject, that the card was in the remainder of the pack, had never been on the table. We have therefore, at least three other possible explanations, none of which involve more than trickery of one sort or another, or a long study of the DR. CARPENTER 13 principles on which the ordinary man makes three successive choices; against this latter hypothesis tell Dr. Carpenter’s three successes, if they are to he regarded as anything but an exceptional series. It is possible that Dr. Carpenter’s theory is the correct one; but, if this is the case, he is clearly deficient in one, or perhaps two, of the most essential qualities of a psychical researcher. Either he took no pre¬ cautions against the two former of his suggested methods; or, if he did, he did not record the pre¬ cautions, which may or may not have been adequate. In any case the experiments, as recorded, are value¬ less. A reviewer in the Lancet , 1 with that air of supe¬ riority which always endears a man to his fellow searchers, is willing to admit that psychical re¬ searchers have devoted their “ abilities, such as they are,” to the questions they have made their own. Such an expression might seem, in the mouth of any ordinary human being, slightly ludicrous, when it is used of a society which has included among its active workers Plenry Sidgwick, Oliver Lodge, F. W. H. Myers. Doubtless, if the anonymous reviewer’s name were at our disposal, we should discover that his attitude is amply justified. However that may be, the analysis of Dr. Carpenter’s letter given above shows that even a physiologist, who has given special 1 May 2, 1904. U THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE and markedly hostile attention to the problems of spiritualism and thought transference and to occult questions generally, may be ludicrously at sea when he comes to deal with an investigation that would present no special features of difficulty even to the average psychical researcher, much less to the expert. The fact is, the problems of psychical research are such, that very special training is necessary to en¬ able even a clever man to deal with them success¬ fully. This special training, added to general culture and an expert’s acquaintance with some branch of science, provides us with the ideal psy¬ chical researcher; but, if for a special investigation there were available an acute experienced man of the world with no scientific training or an acute scientist with no special acquaintance with the problems with which he would have to deal, there can be no question but that the choice should not fall on the man of science. So much for the argu¬ ment against Psychical Research which is based on the supposed inadequate education of its chief exponents. Again, we have the objection that telepathic experiments are not such as can be repeated at will in the laboratory and that its methods and as¬ sumptions are unscientific. The chemist puts his faith in the results of his labours, because, given the WHAT IS SCIENCE? same conditions, the same result will be produced, and he, as other men of science, claims that nothing is really scientific which does not admit of similar exact experimentation. This is, however, to shut one’s eyes to the nature of science and to the dis¬ tinctive characters of its branches. If we leave out of account mathematics, which, with logic, holds a peculiar position, owing to the fact that its subject matter is a pure abstraction, tbe sciences fall into three main groups: I. the experimental sciences such as physics, where, in theory at any rate, all the conditions regarded as capable of influencing the result can be varied at will; 2. the observational sciences, such as astronomy, where none of the con¬ ditions can be varied at will; and 3. the mixed sciences, such as biology, where certain of the factors are amenable to variation at will, but the majority are at present beyond our control. The psychologist has to deal with a mixed science; but the mere fact that a given experiment cannot be reproduced at will is no more a proof that psycho¬ logy is not a science than is the fact that the objects of the experiment may die and nip it in the bud, a proof that biology is not a science. The biologist can only select his subjects and vary the external conditions; his main business is the observation of processes over which he has no control and of the nature of which, in some cases, such as reproduction, 16 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE he can form little or no idea. The bacteriologist can inject his serums and anti-toxins into selected subjects, but it is very problematical if be will always produce the desired result. And, above all, the doctor can dose his patients with medicines by the gallon and pills by the cartload and the outcome of it all is that the patient is worse and not better. Yet biology, bacteriology and medicine are regarded as sciences, pure and applied, and the experts on these subjects would feel themselves insulted if any one told them they were unscientific. The fact is, that what distinguishes science from other branches of knowledge is neither the method nor the subject matter, but the aim with which the studies are pursued. Science is organized know¬ ledge, and an inquiry is scientific if its object is to investigate in such a way as to arrive at general results, or results that, in combination with others, lead to general conclusions. Science must of necessity study the individual, but it does so in order to draw conclusions as to the species. The discovery of general laws is the aim of psychical research, no less than of other investigations into the other phenomena of mind and matter. Con¬ sequently it cannot, on this head, be urged that psychical research is unscientific. Using terms loosely, we are accustomed to speak of an inquiry, a method, or, more often, of an individual inquirer, WHAT IS SCIENCE? 17 as scientific or unscientific. By that is meant not that the phenomena which form the subject matter of the inquiry are outside the range of science ; that is, properly speaking, impossible, if the defini¬ tion of science just given is correct. Scientific in this sense refers to the assumptions with which the inquirer starts, to the exactness of his methods of experimentation, and of his manner of recording the conditions and results, to the ability or incli¬ nation of the student to consider all the data requisite to a just judgment, and to his capacity for de¬ ducing the conclusions from those data in a logical manner. Here, too, we have no ground for denying to psychical research the name of science. Its postulates differ in no essential' particular from those of other sciences. If we are justified in assuming that the chemist, for example, can properly distinguish between the changes in his laboratory, which he regards as casually connected with other changes in the same locality, and all the other manifold changes in the rest of the universe; or that he can, in other words, class certain antecedents as causes, discard others as irrelevant, and again select certain consequents as the effects of these causes, and discard others as due to other, independent, causes, it does not appear that we can condemn psychical research for postulating the same possibility of iso¬ lating causes and effects. c IS THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE The charge against psychical research is, however, not so much that its positive assumptions are mis¬ chievous. Its critics object that it does not assume enough. It does not assume that the postulates of physical science such as, that action at a distance is impossible—itself an unproved and improvable hypothesis—necessarily apply to, or rather have any meaning in, the domain of psychical science. So far as this implies a readiness to consider “ occult ” theories in preference to explanations based on the principles to which physical science gives her ad¬ herence, it is to be censured, as is any other bias in the man of science, whose business is to go where his facts lead him. But it is clear that a bias in this direction is not a necessary part of the equip¬ ment of a psychical researcher. On the other hand, if the contention be admitted that physical science, which cannot now and perhaps never will be able to give an intelligible account of the relation be¬ tween mind and matter, is entitled to lay down the law as to what is possible and what is not possible in the psychical domain, we are asked to adopt an utterly unproved hypothesis, or, in other words, to set out on our investigations with a bias against a certain class of explanation. It is not the absence of bias which is demanded of us; this simple statement is enough to justify the attitude of psy¬ chical research. In the last resort the charge WHAT IS SCIENCE? 19 against psychical research frequently resolves itself into one against the spirit of its devotees. Both its aim and its procedure may he scientific, but the average person who takes an interest in psychical re¬ search is not a psychologist and does not approach it from the psychologist’s point of view. If this is a valid objection, we may with equal justice dismiss astronomy from the ranks of science, be¬ cause the majority of people who look at the stars are not astronomers, or biology, because the cattle- breeder is interested in the question from a severely practical point of view, or medicine, because the interest of the layman in it is stimulated, not by a proper scientific spirit, but rather by a distressingly mundane desire to be rid of his pains. A retro¬ spective census would be even more effective in defeating the claims of any branch of knowledge, judged on these principles, to the name of science. But no one is asked to listen to an incompetent person who chooses to dabble in psychical research, any more than any one is bound to give a hearing to an earth flattener, or a defender of Christian Science, or any other amiable lunatic, because they deal with the same phenomena as their more rational fellow-men who go by the names of professor, F.R. S., or doctor. If the aims and methods of an individ¬ ual inquirer are scientific, no amount of unscientific fellow-workers can ever make them anything else. 20 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE In conclusion, we may take note of one other objection that has been brought against psychical research—that it unwarrantably separates from the domain of psychology facts properly falling within its sphere and takes an interest in a number of phenomena which are not psychical but physical in their nature and dependent on trickery for their production. As regards the first point, the raison d’etre of all science is ultimately its utility to the human race. So far as knowledge is not useful, it comes under the head of mental gymnastics; for this kind of employment it is clearly immaterial what its subject matter is, so long as it provides sufficient scope for ingenuity. Psychology has, up to the present, shown no disposition to make its own the problems of psychical research; yet prob¬ ably no one will be found to deny their importance; if it is unworthy of science to go into these questions, the most important of which is the evidence for what is generally termed immortality, or more properly for the persistence of personality after death, we can only feel surprise that astronomers have been permitted to prepare without rebuke the Nautical Almanac, and that men of science should be found so misguided as to believe that the task of relieving human suffering is not unworthy of a doctor. So long as psychology considers it not only more important but its exclusive business, so far as SPHERE OF RESEARCH 21 experiment is concerned, to determine how many meaningless combinations of letters can be remem¬ bered and reproduced after a single perusal, or what is the smallest increment perceptible to the various senses, and similar soul-absorbing questions, so long, at least, will psychical research justify her existence, if no longer. But, be it noted, the kind of training which makes a man a competent psycho- physicist will not necessarily make him a good psychical researcher, though of course it will he helpful. Psychical researchers have deliberately mapped out for themselves a region into which no self-respecting man of science thought of pene¬ trating in earlier days, or if one was so ill advised as to do so, he quickly learnt, like Sir William Crookes, how little right—in his fellow-scientists’ eyes—he had to the name of scientific inquirer. The region may be ill-mapped and pathless, but that it is so lies at the door of that science which will not investigate for itself and would forbid others to undertake on its behalf the duty of determining how far the almost universal belief in the existence of something more than a purely physical man can be justified by scientific evidence. That psychical researchers have to deal with tricksters is, in many cases, certain and, that being so, it follows that there is nothing psychological in the facts which are, in such cases, the subject of 22 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE inquiry. But, in the first place, the facts are in¬ vestigated in order to determine whether or not trickery is at the bottom of them. Psychical research can no more refuse to investigate a primd facie case, because some sage may, after the event, declare that the facts Avere physiological and not psychological, than geology can refuse to examine a fossil that turns out to have been produced by human agency in the twentieth century, or than geography can refuse a hearing to a de Rougemont because he subsequently turns out to be an impostor. Even were it otherwise, though it is difficult to see how any science can be denied the rights of deter¬ mining what facts properly fall within the sphere, psychical research has an important work to do in delivering mankind from superstition. A detailed analysis of a fortune-teller’s predictions would, if it could be brought to the notice of her possible vic¬ tims, be far more effective in securing them against her wiles, than all the police prosecutions in the world. A description of the methods by which a fashionable medium contrives to delude her sitters into a belief in her super-normal powers, whether she really has any such power or not, would perhaps, as a fairly extensive experience assures me, fail to carry conviction to their habitual clients, though it might debar others from falling into their clutches. A demonstration of the rules by which, only too RESEARCHERS 23 often, trance and materializing mediums play upon the feelings of those who have lost friends near and dear to them, in order to make a profit out of the sorrow of the survivor and from their longing for a sign of continued existence of those who, it may be, are only gone before, would do more to uproot one of the most iniquitous traffics on the face of the earth, than all the scientific ser¬ monizing imaginable about the folly of spiritualism and psychical research. We recognize that dangerous drugs should not be used except under the advice of experts, and that the investigation of their qualities and phy¬ siological effects is a task for experts only. It is a true saying, though there may be exceptions to it, that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client. If the world at large recognized the truth of this as applied to psychical research, and were content to leave the work of investigation to experts, and to submit themselves, when they are the sub¬ jects of investigation, to the conditions laid down by the expert, mankind would be taken in far less frequently and the truth in these matters would be reached far sooner. No one would expect to get the better of an average conjurer, unless he were himself an expert in prestidigitation, and even then many tricks would refuse to yield up their secrets. Experience 24 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE shows that even acute observers completely fail to give an accurate account of a seance with a con¬ jurer. Their failure to do so renders an explana¬ tion of the trick by means of their report impossible or very nearly so. In psychological matters, like¬ wise, everything depends upon accuracy, and ac¬ curacy is attainable only by training. It would be as reasonable to expect a botanist to conduct phy¬ sical experiments with success as to look for light from the amateur in psychical research. The botanist recognizes that he is not familiar with physics but, just as the fact that economics is largely concerned with buying and selling deludes the average man into the belief that his opinion on fiscal matters is worth having, so the fact that er r ery one is familiar with his own mental operations leads him to believe that his judgment on questions of psychology or psychical research is reliable. If the possession of a mind makes a man a psychologist, the possession of a body should make him an anato¬ mist and physiologist. But here the man in the street draws the line. CHAPTER II Telepathy a designation, not a theory —Possible errors Telepathy (and telaesthesia, 1 or, as they might be termed, telepsychy) is frequently spoken of as a hypothesis. Except in one sense, where it is opposed to a spiritistic interpretation of certain facts, which do not concern us here, this is an error; it is not a theory, but a designation. It does not profess to explain how certain phenomena are caused, but only states that they occur and that they do not appear to be due to certain well- recognized causes, with the working of which the man of science and the man in the street are com¬ paratively familiar. It is therefore entirely beside the mark to demand, as Professor Jastrow 2 does, a telepathic theory which does not involve concep¬ tions alien to physical science in the place of the hypothesis, which he conceives to have been put forward by those who have endeavoured to prove 1 Telepathy is used in the active as well as the passive sense. It might be well to disregard its etymology and re¬ strict it to the active sense. 2 Fact and Fable in Psychology, p. iox. 25 26 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE experimentally the existence of thought transfer¬ ence, that postulates forces and a method of working of which physics can form no conception. The Society for Psychical Research was formed to investigate, among other questions, the possibility of, or rather the evidence for, an influence of mind on mind exerted through other than the ordinary channels of the senses. The mode or modes by which such influence is exerted are provisionally termed telepathy, and the agile mind of the pro¬ fessional scientist seems to have scented in the word the deadly heresy of action at a distance. As a matter of fact, the term no more implies it than do the harmless, necessary telescope, tele¬ phone and telegraph. That the term does not imply action at a distance does not of course mean that it excludes it, but the evidence, if any, for telergy must necessarily be subsequent to that for telepathy. If science, for example, were ultimately compelled to accept a theory of action at a distance as an explanation of, let us say, gravitation, the fact of gravitation would, it is clear, have been established long before its explanation. In fact, to any but a professional psychologist it might seem obvious that, under ordinary mundane condi¬ tions, it is difficult to conceive of any other time relation between a fact and its explanation. It is clearly a somewhat illogical proceeding to EVIDENCE 27 provide the explanation and then proceed to inquire if the fact to be explained exists. Psychical research endeavours to establish the fact of telepathy and might well be prepared to leave the explanation of it to future generations. This attitude, of course, by no means excludes the possibility that, side by side with the proof of telepathy may be put forward theories or sug¬ gestions as to the mode of action. These sugges¬ tions may be rankly heretical in scientific eyes, or again they may attempt to explain the supposed facts in terms of matter and motion. In either case, even if it be a scientific crime to attempt the explanation of a new fact, the preliminary investi¬ gation seems harmless enough. The heresy, if any, lies in the suggested explanation and not in the proof of the fact, which is all that psychical re¬ search, as officially defined, attempts to accomplish. In a work which deals with the question solely from the experimental side, it is unnecessary to discuss the thousand and one sources of error to which we are exposed in collecting and dealing with spontaneous cases. There are, it is true, certain fairly obvious precautions necessary to ensure that no elements drawn from the ordinary sense perceptions formed the link between the mental states of the agent and the percipient, but these need not detain us long. 28 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE Only one serious source of error is likely to be present in reasonably cautious experiments— hypersesthesia. We know little as to the ordinary limits of our sensory powers, and still less of their limits in the hypnotic and other abnormal states; indications imperceptible even to the trained ob¬ server, must always be reckoned with when agent and subject are in the same room, as an experience of M. Bergson will prove. He showed {Rev. Phil., 1886, p. 527, that a hypnotised boy was able to recognize and read arabic figures reflected in his eye, when their total heights could not have been more than of an inch. More than one case has been recorded in which, by practice, a person has been able to recognize, apparently by touch, and name a card drawn at random from a pack. In this connexion it is important to notice that the subject is frequently, if not iijvariably, unable to say whence he derives his knowledge, and that the group of experimenters may, therefore, be bona fide quite in the dark as to the disturbing element in thought transference experiments and hit upon it, if at all, by chance. The possibility of hypenesthesia and subcon¬ scious interpretations of subconsciously perceived indications vitiates, or may vitiate, most, if not all, experiments where the subject and agent are within sight of each other, whether directly or indirectly, EVIDENCE 29 by the means of reflecting surfaces. In certain cases the indications may be auditory in their nature, though up to the present the so-called “ unconscious whispering ” 1 has never been proved to exist or to be a probable explanation of the results. In the place of a general discussion of the question, it will be more convenient to indicate in connexion with each experiment, or group of experiments dealt with at length, the possible sources of error under this head. Leaving out of account fraud, which should be detected by any reasonably competent investigator, we have only one other source of error that need be here mentioned. This is what may be termed mental convergence. Ask a hundred persons to draw three diagrams, and the probability is that a majority will draw a circle, a square and a triangle. This source of error, and a cognate one, arising from the natural sequence of ideas in our minds, leading us to select numbers or draw diagrams in a certain order, which may be briefly termed a number-habit, or a diagram-habit, as the case may be, may, of course, according to circumstances, operate in such a way as to decrease the number of coincidences in the mental phenomena of the subject and agent, if their “ habits ” are different, or it may tend to act in the opposite direction. 1 Cf. Lehmann and Hansen: Uebcr unwillkurliclies Fliistern. 30 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE These errors can, however, be easily provided against by ensuring that chance and not deliberate volition selects for us the diagram, card, number, or what not that is to be transferred. There may be, it is true, residual errors, if abnormalities in the cards or numbers lead to our unconsciously selecting precisely those which are favoured by the number or diagram-habit of the percipient. But this chance of error is fairly remote, and even the appara¬ tus of a psycho-physical laboratory might not pass through the ordeal of an equally searching examin¬ ation into possible defects, and whereas errors arising from convergence and divergence would be equally probable in a thought transference series where we have not to determine absolute values, the errors in the other case might be all in one direction. A source of error sufficiently common in the early days of investigation into these matters— a possibility fully recognized by the S.P.R. from the first—was muscle-reading. It may be laid down without danger of serious error that any success in divining the agent’s thoughts, where subject and agent are in contact, much more when they are hand in hand, is largely due to muscle¬ reading, and that the slight unconscious motions thus sensed and interpreted are alone sufficient to account for the bulk of the successes. There may EVIDENCE 3i be another element—the telepathic—but until telepathy is proved to be a fact, this cannot be assumed, and in any case the telepathic element must always remain a factor of uncertain value. Some of the successes may appear too striking to be due to muscle-reading alone, but we must con¬ sider that a considerable number of people have the power of automatic writing and drawing, that although they are as unconscious of what they are doing as if their hands belonged to a third person, they are no more unconscious than a third person, and may become dimly or clearly aware of the purport of the writing by directing their attention to the movements of their hands. If now an individual may, by writing, externalize the ideas in his brain, ideas perhaps only present subconsciously, and become aware of them before he reads the writing, it may be possible for another person, who has himself no share in the production of the writing, to do the same. But clearly the writing is, in both cases, an entirely subsidiary element in the case. The pencil might be pointless or non-existent and the externalization of the thoughts and inter¬ pretation of the signs be no less complete than before, though the collateral evidence in the shape of the writing would no longer be present to back up the interpretation of the muscular movements. Possibly an element of this description may have 32 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE facilitated the more striking successes of the willing game. However this may be, it is certain that no ex¬ periment where contact has been permitted is worth mentioning as evidence of telepathy. I therefore, include none such in the evidence which I consider in the present work. CHAPTER III The subliminal—Ordinary sense perception — Hyp¬ notic hallucinations — Trance—Clairvoyance The details of the experiments and their import will probably be more easily apprehended, if the discussion of them is preceded by some account of the meaning of the technical terms of psychical research, the use of which cannot be avoided in the following pages. Although it does not figure largely in the present work, we may begin with the subliminal—a term familiar to all readers of the posthumous work of F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality. His views on the subject will, I hope, be expounded in another volume of this series by a writer whose works on psychical research have already done much to popularize its ideas. Here it is not necessary to say more than will serve as a groundwork for what follows. We become aware of the external world by means of sense perceptions. These are due to the stimula¬ tion of the retina by light waves, of the ear by air waves, of the various nerve endings in the ordinary 33 D 34 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE skin by heat, cold, or pressure, and so on. As we shall be mainly occupied with visual impressions in the following pages, to the exclusion of sensations of hearing, touch, taste and smell, we may narrow the field to be surveyed by confining ourselves to this kind of perception. When rays of light fall upon the retina, it by no means follows that we become aware that they are so falling, and this may be due to two causes. The rays of light may be in themselves too feeble to be appreciated, however much we may bend our mind to the task; or, on the other hand, our attention may be otherwise occupied, and the stimulation of the optic nerve, though sufficient to cause a change in our con¬ sciousness, does not in fact do so, because we are engaged in watching something else, or because impressions of another order, such as those of hear¬ ing or taste, crowd out the impressions of sight, at any rate to a considerable extent. To use a com¬ mon phrase, we are, in respect of the impressions which fall unheeded, “ absent-minded.” There is a third reason why we may fail to take up into our everyday, waking consciousness, which we call our mind, the impressions which are transmitted by the nerves to the brain, they may be of too short dura¬ tion to be understood; every one knows how difficult it is to read the name of a station when our train rushes through at full speed. In the case THE SUBLIMINAL 35 of air waves, we may be unable to distinguish the particular ones on which we concentrate our atten¬ tion, because they are drowned by the multitude of other air waves falling on the drum of the ear. All these causes may be operative in our waking moments and in full possession of our ordinary wak¬ ing consciousness. We may also fail to perceive the nerve impulses, or perceive them only in a distorted and unre¬ cognizable form because we are not awake. Mes¬ sages from the external world do indeed reach us, and we are often living in a world which, while it lasts, often appears to us fully as real as the external world of our waking moments, but the world of our sleeping moments is the work of our minds, and the messages from the outside world are only incidental and do not necessarily play any part in calling into being our dream scenery and incident. Again, we may be neither asleep nor, in the strict sense of the term, awake, but in a so-called hypnotic sleep. In this condition, we may be as fully conscious of the world around us as we are in everyday life, and no intrusive elements may appear of which bystanders in the normal state are unaware. On the other hand, it may equally hap¬ pen that, in obedience to - a hypnotic suggestion, a portion of the external world may disappear, . 36 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE or seem to disappear, for us, and that other objects which do not belong to the external world of other living beings may, in the same way, come into exist¬ ence for us. These conditions may even, as a result of suggestion, persist after the trance has ceased, reappear de novo at a time fixed by the hypnotizer, or first begin to appear long after the trance con¬ dition has ceased. To take a few concrete in¬ stances, a hypnotizer may, given a sufficiently sug¬ gestible subject, impose upon him the idea that a bystander is not really present, and the hypnotic subject will not only not see him, to all appearances, but not even hear him speak. 1 Just as portions of the external world may be, under these circum¬ stances, abolished, the hypnotic subject may likewise take for portions of the external world figures or other objects of sense whose presence is suggested to him. The important point to notice in the present connexion is that these hallucinations, negative and positive, are not necessarily dependent on the state of consciousness in which the subject is at the moment of the suggestion being realized. I may, for example, suggest to a patient that he will see me six months hence come into his dining room, 1 There is some reason to suppose that the unconsciousness of presence is not absolute. The subject will be discussed in the volume on hypnotism. THE SUBLIMINAL 37 say good morning, and disappear up the chimney, and, if he is susceptible, the scene in question will really be enacted, so far as his consciousness at the moment is concerned, though it may happen that he will forget all about it in a short time, just as we frequently forget our dreams, which at the moment of waking seemed vivid enough. Lorgetfulness is a common phenomenon, too common in fact, and it has, in general, no impor¬ tance for the subject under discussion. The rapid and complete forgetfulness, however, of the in¬ cidents of the hypnotic trance, of the post-hypnotic phenomena, and of the dream world into which we pass or may pass every night, to emerge from it the next morning in the space of a few seconds 1 or less, stands on a different plane. We have here to do with what we may term a split-off portion of consciousness, another example of which is seen in the cases, seldom recorded till towards the last quarter of the nineteenth century, of so-called secondary personality, a milder form of which is seen in the cases not uncommonly reported in the papers, where the memory of the past life has van¬ ished, largely if not completely, but is not replaced by the appearance of another personality to replace the lost one, nor by the assumption of another 1 Some French experiments on this subject go to show that their duration may be measured by tenths instead of whole seconds. 3 8 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE name; the subject is simply lost and remains so until, by hypnotism or other means, the gap between past life and present consciousness is bridged over. Now the interesting point about these split-off portions of our consciousness is that their existence does not seem to be confined to the dream state or the hypnotic trance. Indeed, the mere fact that post-hypnotic phenomena of the kind mentioned above, can be produced when the ordinary con¬ sciousness is entirely ignorant both of the sugges¬ tion and of its fulfilment, is proof positive that this is so in the case of such subjects as are susceptible to this kind of suggestion. Another illustration of this same point is found in the fact that the sense impressions to which allusion was made at the opening of the chapter, which are too faint, or for other reasons do not rise above the threshold of the ordinary conscious¬ ness, may by suitable means be recalled by certain persons, not indeed by the ordinary process of re¬ membering them, but by doing what is irreverently termed “ putting the subliminal on tap.” To take a few examples, if by means of a suitable arrangement a subject is allowed to catch a glimpse of a word or series of words, letters or numbers, which are, however, exposed for too short a time to permit their meaning to be realized or their order to be recalled, it is nevertheless possible to reproduce THE SUBLIMINAL 39 them exactly as if the subject had been allowed full leisure to read and memorize them. Given a subject who can write automatically by means of planchette (or simply by holding a pencil between the fingers and allowing the hand to move ap¬ parently at random) and the words in question may be written down as if they had been seen or heard with perfect distinctness. A friend of mine was once on a tour in America with a large party which included some automatic writers. One day they resolved to try some experiments. One of these was to place an automatic writer at one end of a car in a room by herself, then came the rest of the party, in the central portion of the car, with instructions to shout at the top of their voices, which they carried out in a way that would effectu¬ ally drown any human voice even without assist¬ ance of the noise of the moving train; then, at the other end of the car to the automatic writer, came the experimenter; he had provided himself with a book which he read aloud, and the passage selected contained a sufficient number of uncommon words to make it very unlikely that they would be re¬ produced by a mere coincidence by the automatic writing. At the close of the experiment the passage in question was compared with the automatic script, and sufficient correspondence was discovered to establish beyond question the fact that the 40 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE writing- was not independent of the selected passage, of which, it is needless to say, the writer had been carefully kept in ignorance. In the same way, facts which have come under our eyes without reaching our minds may be re¬ produced. Thus there is the oft-quoted case of the lady who held in front of her face, to shield it from the fire, a copy of the Times. A few hours later she looked into a crystal and was surprised to read there the announcement of a death which was subsequently found to be contained in the obit¬ uary column. The whole of this fascinating subject of the subliminal has been studied in great detail in the Proc. S.P.R., by F. W. H Myers, and in a more condensed form in his work on Human Personality. For further details we must refer inquirers to these works pending the appearance of other volumes in the present series. The importance of the subliminal for our present purpose is twofold. In the first place, it is from the subliminal, the portion of our consciousness “ below the threshold,” or perhaps better “ beyond the threshold,” that thoughts and pictures arise,' as we shall see more in detail in the next chapter. It is on the analysis of the content of these im¬ pressions, mental and sensory, and of the correspond¬ ing motor automatisms, and on the comparison of THE SUBLIMINAL 4i the results with the ideas present in the mind of another person or persons, that the case for tele¬ pathy rests. The person who is endeavouring to transfer thoughts or impressions is termed the agent, the receiver is called the percipient. In the second place, there is reason to suppose that the primd facie telepathic impressions, the impressions communicated by other means than ordinary sensory methods, depend for their com¬ munication in some way on the subliminal con¬ sciousness. How this happens we cannot of course say, and the hyper-sensitiveness of the subliminal, of which a few illustrations have been given above, must, of course, put us on our guard against possible errors of observation. For it must be noted that we are, as a rule, unaware of how such sub-conscious impressions reach us (see Proc. S.P.R. iv. 532; Journ. S.P.R. i. 84; and Mrs. Verrall’s remarks on the same subject in Proc. S.P.R. vii. 193). As an example of the importance of this subliminal communication, if we may so term it without prejudging the case, may be mentioned the cases given on pp. 28 and 81. The interest of the subliminal for us is, however, not entirely exhausted by these two points. Not only shall we have occasion to deal with evidence drawn from dreams, which constitute, as we have seen, a common form of split-off consciousness, 42 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE but we shall have occasion to refer in some detail to trance phenomena. A person who falls into trance spontaneously is, in many respects, in a similar position to a hypnotized subject. There is unconsciousness of the events of the trance on awakening, and there is the existence of an appar¬ ently normally constituted personality or personal¬ ties, who usually claim to be the spirits of deceased relatives, or other dead persons, who take advantage of the absence of the medium’s spirit to take pos¬ session of her body and communicate with this ter¬ restrial sphere again. As to the evidence in support of this claim, nothing need be said in the present volume. All that is necessary here is to make clear what happens in the trance. These trance personalities manifest themselves in much the same way as the ordinary subliminal, and there can be no possible doubt that they are, in most cases, the result of a sort of dramatic instinct on the part of the human subliminal, which leads it to dress itself up in a way that it hopes will be interesting to its auditors. They communicate sometimes by word of mouth, sometimes by auto¬ matic writing, sometimes by both simultaneously, sometimes even by speech, by ordinary right hand writing and by mirror writing produced by the left hand, all at the same time, the subjects of the three communications being absolutely distinct. THE SUBLIMINAL 43 The subject of clairvoyance is not directly con¬ nected with that of telepathy, but inasmuch as it would throw some doubt, if proved to exist, on the evidence for telepathy or rather on the interpreta¬ tion of it, we cannot pass over it here. Clairvoyance is a term used in a variety of meanings, but we are here concerned only with clairvoyance proper, or lucidity, that is to say with the perception of objects directly without the intervention of the ordinary nervous processes. The evidence for any such faculty is very slight and the possi¬ bilities of mal-experimentation so large that it would hardly be worth discussing were it not that one of the chief experimenters has been Professor Richet, whose records are usually so ample as to permit us to form an opinion as to the precautions taken to obviate false results. The first series of experiments was made by M. Richet in the winter of 1887-1888 with a number of diagrams, the nature of which was unknown to any person present, shut up in opaque envelopes, which were only opened after the guess had been made. It is true that in a certain number of cases Professor Richet had been himself the draughtsman; after drawing the diagrams he had put them away and was, so far as he knew, absolutely unaware of their nature. But it is clear that these trials must be eliminated; for it is impossible to say that 44 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE some part of his mind was not cognisant of their nature—the subliminal has a marvellous memory— consequently it cannot be affirmed that the experi¬ ments in which these were used do not, so far as they are successful, point to telepathy rather than clair¬ voyance. Of the forty-one diagrams which he pub¬ lishes as being whole or partial successes, only two are of this nature; the remaining thirty-nine were drawn by a personal friend of M. Richet’s, sent to him, and utilised unopened. Of the experiments tried under these conditions, about 26 per cent, were, according to M. Richet’s estimate, more or less successful. I have noted seven as being particularly close; some of these I reproduce (PI. I.). In order to test the possibilities of chance coincidence, a series of guesses, amounting in all to over 5,000, were made and the proportion of successes calculated; they amounted to between 3 per cent, and 4 per cent. The difference is there¬ fore sufficiently marked. It must not, however, be forgotten that, in the experiments proper, the whole series amounted to only 180, a number which may give results differing very widely from the average of a larger number of trials. On the other hand, even here, it is impossible to say that telepathy was altogether excluded. M. Richet does not indeed consider this possibility, which is at best very remote. It cannot, however, be overlooked that [Plate I. PROF. RICHET’S EXPERIMENTS. To face p. 44. 1 . DIAGRAM^ 2 . REPRODUCTIONS. [Reduced to one-half.] THE SUBLIMINAL 45 a human being was conscious of the contents of the envelopes. That this knowledge should be com¬ municated to M. Richet, in the absence of the person in whose mind the knowledge was, is highly improbable, and the telepathic processes demanded by such an hypothesis are complicated in the extreme. We are, however, not entitled to exclude any hypothesis merely on the ground that it seems to us improbable. Consequently the experiments in question do not seem to be above criticism. More satisfactory were the conditions in another series tried by Professor Richet in the summer and autumn of 1888. The subject on whom the ex¬ periments were tried was one whose name will be quoted in connexion with experiments to be dealt with subsequently—Leonie B. She was hypnotized by the experimenter and kept in the trance state on some occasions from 8 p.m. till 6 a.m., during the whole of which time Professor Richet sat by her. The objects used were cards, drawn from a mixture of ten packets of fifty-two cards each. No card was used a second time. In order to prevent the subject from seeing the card before it was placed in the envelope. Professor Richet drew it at a distance of sixteen feet from her; in addition she had her back turned and the light was low. The card was drawn and placed as rapidly as possible in a so-called opaque envelope, 46 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE gummed down and given to the medium. During the experiment, which sometimes lasted for two or three hours, Professor Richet, as may be im¬ agined, sometimes took his eyes off the subject, but never for long enough to permit of any manipulation of the envelope, much less of the precise procedure necessary to open and reclose it without leaving any trace of the operation. Leonie's procedure was as follows. Taking the envelope in her hands she held it between them and drew on a sheet of paper diagrams of the various suits; then she counted on her fingers to ascertain the number of the pips, the process being repeated ad nauseam, till she finally made up her mind. There is no reason whatever to question the good faith of Leonie, as a general rule, but we cannot assume the good faith of hypnotized or any other subjects, when it is possible to conduct the experi¬ ments otherwise, without by so doing weakening their evidential character. It is therefore unfor¬ tunate that, in these laborious and wearisome experiments, Professor Richet not only allowed Leonie to open the envelope herself on some occa¬ sions, but even omitted to note on what occasions she did so. At the same time we can hardly suppose that she was prepared with a card, to which she made her guess correspond. For in the first place it is very unlikely that she would have delayed her THE SUBLIMINAL 47 answer so long. In the second place there is no reason to suppose that she possessed the conjuring ability necessary to palm off a secreted card and replace the card in the envelope by it, and this at a distance of about a foot from a person who was observing her closely. As a rule, the card was enclosed in one envelope which, although practi¬ cally opaque so far as transmitted light was con¬ cerned, was not entirely so for reflected light. Leonie does not appear, however, to have scrutinized it in a way that suggested that she availed herself of this circumstance; she was, moreover, in a dim light until she made her guess and approached Professor Richet, at the end of the trial, to show him that the envelope was intact, and it was necessary for the light to be strong—full sunshine or a power¬ ful lamp—for anything to be detected in an ordinary way. Moreover, during the last twenty-two trials there was a second envelope, and we may assume that this was sufficient to prevent anything in the way of ordinary vision from giving information as to the card. Yet in four out of the twenty-two trials the card was correctly named. In all, out of sixty-eight trials twelve cards were named by Leonie, the probability being that she would guess one or two, if no cause other than “ chance ” operated. The number of suits guessed was thirty-six against a probable seventeen. 4 8 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE When we look at the experiments in detail, the probability of some unrecognized cause being in operation is seen to be enormous. In the sixty- eight trials a full description of the card was offered only seventeen times; in two cases the description was incomplete; out of the remaining fifteen cards twelve were rightly named, and in the three other cases king of hearts was named for ten of hearts, knave of spades for knave of hearts and queen of diamonds for queen of hearts. A further series of experiments was tried in which the errors above alluded to were avoided. The results were, however, much less striking. At the same time there was evidence of a power to select the court cards, seven out of nine named cards being correct. On the whole it can hardly be said that the ex¬ periments go very far to prove anything of the nature of clairvoyance. Indeed it may be said that in the present state of our knowledge of X-rays, and other waves, we can not be certain that they are imperceptible to the hypersesthetic. The ex¬ periences with N-rays in fact seem to point to considerable variation in this respect in human vision, unless indeed we prefer to take the view that the supposed rays are a product of the imagina¬ tion and have no objective existence. Rays of some sort may have given information as to the card in the envelope. THE SUBLIMINAL 49 It is equally impossible to be certain that hyperaesthesia of touch would not enable the medium to detect the very slight differences of elevation which must be present, especially in court cards. On the whole, therefore, the value of the experiments of Professor Richet, so far as regards clairvoyance, must be regarded as small. The same remark applies to experiments in guessing the numbers and suits of cards, and details of some experiments in this by Mrs. Verrall will be found in Proc. S.P.R., vii. 174, sq. Mrs. Verrall, who is a most careful experimenter, did not, it should be noted, regard them as having any bear¬ ing on the question of clairvoyance, for the simple reason that the subject was, in all cases, able to see the card, if indeed she did not actually draw it. The same is true of a striking series of experiments by Mr. Y., given at the end of Mrs. Verrall's paper. Bearing in mind the already mentioned long memory of the subliminal, together with a possible hyperaesthesia, which is certainly present in some cases, we see that there is no ground for as¬ suming that any but the ordinary operation of the senses, ordinary that is, in respect of species, though extraordinary in respect of practical efficiency, is needed to explain the results. At the same time, probable though this explana¬ tion be, we are bound -to recognize that, both in E 50 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE these cases and in the experiments o£ M. Richet, the possibility of what we have termed clairvoyance has not been excluded, cannot in fact be excluded. It would be of the highest interest if some one who finds him or herself possessed of this power of guessing cards would try a series of experiments specially directed towards elucidating the question of the modus operandi. When we come to deal with certain of the ex¬ periments in detail, it will be seen that there is an extraordinary difference between the results at¬ tained when the agent and percipient are in the same room and those reached when they are in different rooms. It is of course far more probable that some simpler cause is at work—the nature of which will be suggested when the experiments in question are reached. At the same time it is well to bear in mind that our knowledge of the human mind is very limited and that much of the evidence for telepathy at close quarters might in reality point in another direction. CHAPTER IV How zvc become aware of subliminal ideas—Mental impressions—Visions and hallucinations — Auto¬ matic writing We have seen in the last chapter that some im¬ pressions, too faint to enter our consciousness in the ordinary way, are relegated to the subliminal region of our minds and perhaps stick there, if the subliminal is not “ put on tap ” in some way. On the other hand, they may slowly emerge into our ordinary consciousness, and we become aware of them by a roundabout route. It happens probably to most people that in walking along the street they hear words the meaning of which they do not appre¬ ciate. Especially if they have been living abroad and are familiar with a foreign language does it happen that sentences are heard as meaningless collections of syllables which afterwards straighten themselves out and become intelligible, although the hearer may have been in doubt as to what language they were in and have looked for a clue in the wrong direction. It has been indicated that there is some ground for supposing that subliminal ideas are specially 51 5 2 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE important in experiments which go to prove the existence of telepathy. In the present chapter we shall survey some of the methods by which the subject may either become directly aware of these subliminal ideas or may so externalize them as to bring them to the notice at once of bystanders and of themselves. These methods are three in number. The first two result in the subject alone becoming aware of the images or ideas. They are respectively mental impressions and sensory automatisms. It is unnecessary to deal at length with mental impressions. Every one is aware that ideas come into the mind without our being at the moment conscious of their origin. Knowledge arrived at by means of the ordinary senses, as the experi¬ ments of M. Bergson prove {Rev. Phil. 1886, p. 127), may enter our consciousness without our be¬ ing aware of how it got there. Or, to take another example, we endeavour in vain to recall a name or a word and finally give up the attempt. In a few minutes, it frequently happens, the desired name or word comes into our mind without any conscious effort. It is clearly immaterial how the idea which rises to the surface reached the brain of the subject, whether by ordinary perceptive processes or by some other method. If there is such a way of learning facts or getting impressions as that which MENTAL IMAGES 53 is designated telepathy, these facts or impressions may manifest themselves in the consciousness of the percipient in just the same way as any other ideas originally confined to the subliminal region. Our second class is known to psychologists as sensory automatisms. It includes such phenomena as crystal visions, hallucinations, pseudo-hallucina¬ tions and mental images, and, finally, dreams. When we look at an object, especially a bright object, and then close our eyes, we commonly see what is termed an “ after-image.” With these and ordinary sense perceptions we have nothing to do. MENTAL IMAGES Many people are able at will to call up before their mind’s eye the picture of an object or a scene, which they have once beheld, with all the vividness with which they are commonly seen in a dream. Others, among whom I am included, are unable to visualize, as it is technically termed, or are only able to do so imperfectly, possibly only at intervals. So far as I am aware, I have only once been able to visualize at will during my ordinary waking moments, and then the object which I called up before me was no more inspiring than an ordinary cane-bottomed chair. Just as, as far as we can see, the life of the dog must be very largely made up of sensations of smell, and his recollections present themselves 54 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE to him in the form of smells and possibly tastes, so the recollections of the visualizer seem to present themselves in the form of mental pictures. But mental pictures also flow across the visual field without their being consciously called up, and a subliminal idea which is the result of a telepathic message may manifest itself in the form of a mental image. An interesting experiment with this form of perception will be found on p. 148. These mental pictures are clearly recognized as things of the mind. In technical language they are not externalized. In addition to these non- externalized cases, we have several distinct classes of visual perceptions, which appear to be located among the actual surroundings of the percipient and consequently must count as externalized. It must be understood that there is no hard and fast line of demarcation however. Between the mental images and the externalized vision or hallucination come a class of phenomena which are termed illusions hypnagogiques. Before one is wholly asleep or wholly awake, a half dream state seems to super¬ vene in some persons, which is characterized by the appearance of pictures, frequently faces, before their eyes, which may be closed or not. In some people they are very rare; I have, for example, only once seen anything of the sort—a weird procession of eyes, lions’ eyes, crocodiles’ eyes, snakes’ eyes, VISIONS 55 an interminable series, due to no cause, mental or physical, that I could trace. In others again they seem to be a normal sign of approaching sleep. They are more than mere memory images, but yet not fully externalized. VISIONS Coming now to the next class, that of externalized pictures, we have first of all visions, that is to say, pictures which appear to occupy a place among the surroundings of the percipient, but not to he of them. As an example of this class we may quote a case published some ten years ago in the Report of the International Census on Hallu¬ cinations. A lady, Mrs. B., was in Italy and en¬ gaged in no more exciting occupation than giving her children their dinner. She was just standing over a tureen of milk and maccaroni, when she happened to look at the wall in front of her and saw it apparently open. The scene that presented itself to her was a bedroom in a house that was very familiar to her; on the bed lay the corpse of her mother with flowers on her breast. It subsequently turned out that the mother had died six days before and been buried at the time Mrs. B. saw the vision. She had not been informed of her mother’s death, owing to the fact that she had quarrelled with her family and left England without giving an address. Another class of visions is the kind which is seen 5 6 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE in crystals, bright surfaces, water, ink, or, which brings it very near the illusions hypnagogiques, in black boxes or other dark spaces. These visions are sometimes so extraordinarily life-like, that I have seen people who experienced them for the first time thoroughly puzzled and suspicious of some trick by which living pictures were in some way produced in the crystal. HALLUCINATIONS Besides visions, our externalized pictures may also take the form of hallucinations. As a technical term hallucination simply means an object of sense perception or percept which is not due to any ex¬ ternal cause, though it seems to be so due and can only be recognized as lacking the external cause with which we associate it when we come to analyse it. The term hallucination has unpleasant associations for some people and suggests ideas of delirium tre¬ mens, lunacy, and all manner of objectionable things. It must lie remembered that, as a technical term of psychical research, it has no necessary connexion with anything morbid. No one will, for example, be alarmed because he happens to dream; but a dream is, technically, an hallucination and a particularly good example of one, as we shall see in a few mo¬ ments. In our dreams we form part of an hal¬ lucinatory picture, talk to the hallucinatory person- HALLUCINATIONS 57 ages whom we have conjured up, move about in the hallucinatory scenery, and so on. In fact, it is only rarely that we recognize before awakening that it is a dream. The hallucinations of our waking moments are much rarer than those of sleep, and consequently far more likely to make an impression. At the same time, the fact that we are awake makes it far easier to remember and note down the exact details. This form of hallucination is therefore particularly valuable evidentially. In waking hallucinations it usually happens that only a single figure or portion of the scene is hallucinatory, and herein lies its chief difference from the dream. The dream figures, for such they may be called, which we see during our waking moments, move about in our ordinary surroundings and appear to form part of them. In fact, it may be that only on reflection do we discover that they are dream figures. The best example of this class of hallucinations is the common ghost, and by that I mean, not the ghost of Christmas stories, which clanks chains and looks with mournful and despairing eyes at you; real ghosts are far too unconscious of their surroundings 1 to do anything 1 I do not mean to imply that in the case of the real ghost there is anything of the nature of the material or imma¬ terial being occupying the space where the figure is seen. The series will include a volume on ghosts, in which the matter will be fully discussed. 58 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE rational as a rule; the ghost of which you hear when you get a story at first hand is an object that is frequently in many respects like a living person, but is discovered to differ from the ordinary human being by a trick that it has of disappearing in an unaccountable way, or perhaps of fading away before your eyes. ILLUSIONS For the sake of completeness, we may mention illusions. Illusions differ from hallucinations in that they are interpretations of real objects and not wholly the work of the mind. How far any hallu¬ cinations, except dreams, come under this category it is hard to say. Probably many that eventually act in every way independently of the spot at which they were first seen, may have had'a so-called point de repere in the first instance, round which they formed, just as the crystal vision is often initiated by the specks in the crystal globe. Examples of most kinds of hallucinations which cannot be discussed in detail here, will be found in the experiments cited in the discussion of the evidence for telepathy. MOTOR AUTOMATISM Besides these sensory automatisms just dis¬ cussed, we shall have to deal with examples MOTOR AUTOMATISM 59 of motor automatism. By this is meant an im¬ pulse, not proceeding from a conscious volition, which results in the production of writing by means of planchette or otherwise, of table tipping, of the production of movements in the divining rod and of similar phenomena. Just as in sensory auto¬ matisms an impulse comes up from some uncon¬ scious stratum of our personality that results in an impression being made on our minds which exactly resembles normal sense perception, so in motor automatism an impulse sets in motion the muscles which are usually under the control of the will and produces results which simulate closely or in many cases exactly the results which we are accustomed to regard as due to the exercise of in¬ telligence. As an example of the intelligence, not to say malice, of planchette, we may quote a true story in which figured a young lady who cherished an affection for a certain young man, whom she was in the habit of meeting on Sunday mornings without the knowledge of her parents. One day the said young lady was asking questions of planchette, which was moving under the hands of another per¬ son, her parents being also present. Among other inquiries she wished to know whether it would be fine after church the following day. Instead of giving a straightforward reply, planchette responded 6 o THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE to the unspoken thought in her mind, and replied by the single word “ George,” to the confusion of the questioner and the planchette writer, who was in the secret, but far from wishing to betray it. Automatic writing may also be produced in other ways. 'It is sufficient, in the case of many people, for them to take a pencil between forefinger and thumb and put a sheet of paper beneath. If they then take a book or otherwise divert their attention from the motions of their hand, it will probably be found to trace scrawls on the paper. These scrawls develop in a certain number of cases into an intel¬ ligible script, which differs indeed very widely from the ordinary handwriting of the individual, but is perfectly coherent at times, though not always easy to read. Although none of the experiments dealt with below are concerned with table tipping, it may be mentioned here, for the sake of completeness in our brief survey in the various modes of automatic expression with which psychical research has to deal. Similarly, we may mention without discussing the performances of water diviners. Whatever the explanation of water divining, it is certain that it is a perfectly genuine gift, which is not con¬ fined to those who make a living by it, but shared by many respectable and even distinguished mem¬ bers of society. MOTOR AUTOMATISM 61 Another example, possibly, of motor automatism is to be found in the so-called willing game, though here it is always possible that the movement is more voluntary and dependent rather on the evo¬ cation of a picture of the position in which a hidden object has to be sought or other sensory idea, rather than upon motor automatism proper. With techni¬ calities of this sort, however, we are little concerned, the less so as no examples of the willing game are quoted in the present volume, for reasons that will be explained below. We have now surveyed the field with which we have to deal, that is to say, we have briefly glanced at the various methods by which an idea, prima facie telepathic, is found to emerge into conscious¬ ness. We may now proceed to the discussion of the experiments in detail. CHAPTER V Historical—The Magnetizers — Spiritualism—The Newnham experiments—Experiments by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, Professor Sidgwick and others. As the present work does not treat of thought trans¬ ference in general, I will not attempt to give in detail the history of the idea, but only to discuss some of the already published experimental evidence and supplement it by experiments conducted by myself. It may, however, be interesting to recall briefly some facts which, if their significance had been seen, would have led to an earlier development of interest in the subject, the appearance of which, as a branch of investigation, does not in fact date further back than 1876, when it was brought to the notice of the British Association by Professor W. F. Barrett, F.R.S., President of the Society for Psychical Research at the time when these words were written. Hypnotism has now been studied for a good deal more than a hundred years. As far back as 62 HISTORICAL 63 the twenties of the nineteenth century Puysegur and other French magnetizers detected in their subjects what was known to a later generation of English observers as “ community of sensation,” and the facts were investigated by a commission, appointed by the French Academy, which sat for no less than five years before presenting a report in 1831, and affirmed the reality of “ l’action a distance.” With a truly admirable regard for the “ facts ” of science, they resolved not to publish the report, because, if the majority of the statements were correct, one half of physiology would go by the board, and the dissemination of such knowledge would have been dangerous. How far this attitude led to the question being ignored it is difficult to say. Perhaps, had the French Academy taken a broader view of “ science ” and faced the possibility of a reconstruction of hypotheses to make them suit the facts instead of cutting their facts to fit their hypotheses, telepathy might have been a subject of general interest fifty years earlier, and the investigation might have done much to induce men of science to take up “ occult ” questions generally, and to check the growth of spiritualism by suggesting that the spiritistic inter¬ pretation of certain facts was incorrect. The English observations failed to excite attention from a rather different cause. On the one hand, the 64 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE medical side of hypnotism was mainly to the fore, on the other hand, the interest in its psychical side was choked, to a large extent, by the ranker vegetation of spiritualism, which traces its origin to the Rochester rappings of 1848. Morin, Du Magnetisme (Paris, i860), affirms the existence of thought transference, but means no more than the interpretation of a somnambulist of the thoughts of a person by means of a study of his features, unconscious though it may be. To one acute observer, however, if to no more, the idea of telepathy presented itself as an explana¬ tion of spiritualistic marvels. Writing in the Spectator of January 30, 1869, Mr., now Sir James, Knowles, editor of the Nineteenth Century, sug¬ gested brain waves as the explanation of death wraiths, 1 of so-called clairvoyance, and of other facts now more familiar to us than they were in those days. The idea had occurred to him as much as eighteen years earlier in 1851, in connexion with hypnotic experiments, and we thus have a writer linking the English magnetists with the Society for Psychical Research and its immediate predecessors. 1 The idea was, of course, not entirely new. Cf. Wal¬ ton’s Life of Donne, pp. 24, 25. The suggested explanation of the apparition of Mrs. Donne seems to he that it had some¬ thing to do with brain waves. The author regards the case as analogous to that of two lutes, both of which vibrate when one is struck. ' BRAIN WAVES 65 The same theory of spiritualistic manifestations was put forward, apparently independently, by Mr. H. M. Andrew in the first number of the Mel¬ bourne Review, issued in January, 1875, as a result of various experiments tried in 1873 or 1874, with a view of showing that the knowledge of the spiritualistic medium emanated from the brain of the sitter. Six months earlier, in August, 1875, Dr. Mcgraw had expressed the opinion, in the Detroit Review of Medicine, that features in the willing game seemed to hint at the possibility of one man’s nervous system being used by the active will of another to accomplish certain simple movements. The real protagonist of psychical research in the world of science was, as has already been men¬ tioned, Professor Barrett. His paper of 1876 dealt mainly with the phenomena manifested by hypnotized subjects whom he selected from among the children of a village in Westmeath,, but the first published experiments date back to the year 1871 and were carried out by the Rev. P. H. Newnham and his wife. The modus operandi was as follows: Mrs. Newnham sat at a low table in a low chair, leaning backwards; her husband sat about eight feet distant at a rather high table, with his back towards Mrs. Newnham, who, as a rule, kept her eyes shut; he wrote down questions, F 66 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE of the wording and purport of which Mrs. Newn- ham was absolutely unaware, and which she, in many cases, answered successfully by means of planchette, even when the facts given in her answer were not and never had been known to her. The questions were not communicated to Mrs. Newnham when an evasive or other answer was returned which necessitated further questions, nor even the general subject to which they alluded. The answers were occasionally illegible and sometimes irrelevant, but in the latter case it was generally found that they had reference to a previous question which had not been fully dealt with. It was possible to explain most of the few wrong answers by reference to the circumstances of the moment, and in nearly every case the purport of the question seems to have been understood. A statistical analysis of the results being impossible, owing to the nature of many of the answers, it is unnecessary to deal at length with the full series of 309 questions, details of which will be found in a paper on Auto¬ matic Writing by the late F. W. H. Myers. 1 From the point of view of evidence it is important to notice that, assuming the good faith of the ex¬ perimenters, which there is absolutely no reason to doubt, the results having been noted in a diary obviously not intended for publication and only 1 Proc. S.P.R., iii. 6-23. NEWNHAM 67 made known eleven years after the event, the con¬ ditions were remarkably good. It may, of course, be argued that the minds of husband and wife are apt to move in similar grooves, but it must be remembered that with the exception of eight months in 1871 Mrs. Newnham never manifested the power of answering her husband’s unspoken thoughts. The same remark applies, though with less force, to the criticism that Mrs. Newnham may have become aware of the purport of the questions, by subconscious interpretation, by the sounds produced by the pencil in writing the ques¬ tions. But, apart from the improbability of this, the correct answers of the facts of which Mrs. Newnham had no knowledge, absolutely negative this explanation in some cases and any hypothesis must of course cover the whole of the facts. From 1881 onwards many series of experiments were made, details of which will be found in the publications of the S.P.R . 1 I will not do more than quote some of the more important experiments and give statistical abstracts of those in which the conditions seem satisfactory. An important contribution to the subject was made by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie's experiments in 1 Proc. S.P.R. vols i. to xii.; Journal S.P.R. vols i. to x., etc. A convenient resume is given by Mr. Podmore in Ap¬ paritions and Thought Transference, pp. 18-143. 68 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE transference of tastes and pains. In the case of tastes, fifteen experiments 1 were tried on September 5, 1883, the agents being Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Edmund Gurney and Mr. Myers. The percipients were two ladies, Miss Edwards, who on the occasion in question was less sensitive than usual owing to a sore throat, and Miss Relph. In order to prevent errors arising from a possible smell given off by the substances, they were kept outside the room in which the percipients were, and in a dark lobby, so that the agents selected them at random and one investigator was often unaware of what the others took. The results are sufficiently striking to be worth giving in detail.— No. of experi- merit. Agents. Perci- Substance. Answer. pie nt. 1. E.G. & M 2 E Carbonate of Soda — 2. M.G. R Carraway Seeds. “It feels like meal ’ —like a seed loaf —carraway seeds. 3 - E.G. & M. E Cloves Cloves. 4 - E.G. & M. E Citric Acid —. 5 - M.G. R Citric Acid Salt. 6. E.G. & M. E Liquorice Cloves. 7 - M.G. R Cloves Cinnamon. 8. E.G. & M. E Acid Jujube Pear drop. 1 Proc. S.P.R. ii. 3, sq. 2 E.G.—Edmund Gurney; M.—Myers; M.G.—Malcolm Guthrie. The agent is the sender of the presumed telepathic message, the percipient the receiver of the same. GUTHRIE 69 No. of experi¬ ment. Agents. Pcrci- Substance. Answer. 9. M.G. pient. R Acid Jujube. Something hard 10. E.G. & M. E Candied Ginger which is giving way—acid jujube. Something sweet 11. M.G. R Candied Ginger. and hot. Almond toffy. 12. E.G. & M. E Home made Noyau [M.G. did not re¬ alize at once that he had ginger.] Salt. 13. M.G. R Home made Noyau Port Wine. 14. E.G. & M. E Bitter Aloes — 15. M.G. R Bitter Aloes — Excluding the cases where nothing was felt, E. got 1 completely right and 3 nearly right out of 6 trials; R. got 2 completely right and 2 nearly right out of the same number, making 3 completely rights and 5 approximations out of 12 trials. The total number of substances used was about 20; assuming that as a result of previous trials the percipients were aware of this, we find that the probability of their guessing right was 5 in 100; they actually succeeded 5 times as often, without counting the 42 per cent, of approximations, the precise value of which it is difficult to estimate. The absolute failures, which should have formed 95 per cent, of the answers, were actually only 10 per cent, of them. The good faith of those con- 70 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE cerned, an element in the evidence to which I do not propose to allude as a rule, being assumed, the only objection that can be brought against the series, apart from an unfortunate lack of detail in the published reports as to the conditions under which the experiments were carried out, lies in the possibility of the detection of odours by the per¬ cipients. But it may be noted that the home made noyau, which is recorded to have been by far the most strong smelling of the substances tried, was guessed by one percipient as salt. In the summary given by Mr. Guthrie 1 we find that pains were successfully localized without contact in 8 out of io guesses, or 66 per cent, in a series where, excluding cases where no impression was got, out of 97 trials of various sorts only 32 answers were correct, or about 33 per cent. In all the three series with contact the successes were forty- four and the approximations 20 out of a total of 82 real trials, or percentages of 54 and 24 with only 22 per cent, of failures. Bearing in mind that the percentage of complete successes under all condi¬ tions diminished from 61 in the first series to 37 in the second and 38 in the third, it is remarkable that the pain series without contact in the third series should have shown results superior to those of all the series with contact together or any of them 1 Proc. S.P.R. iii. 427, 428. RICHET 7 i separately. This seems to indicate that in this set of experiments, at any rate, contact had little in¬ fluence on the results. In all these cases, however, exact statistical data as to the probabilities are excluded by the very nature of the case, save in such instances as the smells, diagrams, pains, etc., from which the selec¬ tion is made, are known to the percipient. The case is different where the objects to be guessed are cards drawn from a pack or numbers between certain limits. Professor Richet tried a large number of experiments with cards, and he was imitated by members of the S.P.R. and others. 1 I11 a total of 20,580 trials the suit was named correctly 5,549 times as against a probable number of 5,145 successes, a plus of 404 successes or more than 7 per cent., a discrepancy less considerable indeed than that got by Professor Richet, but more re¬ markable as being found in experiments eleven times more numerous. Perhaps the best and most important experiments yet made, both as regards the excellence of the condition and the results attained, are those con¬ ducted at Brighton by Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick from 1889 to 1892. In the first series, covering the 1 Revue Phil. 1884, 622-628. The probability that chance alone did not operate in a portion of the series consisting of 1,833 trials was calculated at .99996 (i.e. practically certainty), by Professor F. Y. Edgeworth. 72 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE period from July to October, 1889, the percipients, four in all, were hypnotised hy Mr. G. A. Smith, who also acted as agent. The objects were counters with the numbers from ten to ninety in raised figures coloured red, the surrounding wood being uncoloured. An elaborate record and analysis of the experiments is given in Proc. S.P.R. vi. 128-170, to which reference must be made by those who wish to go into details. The amount of success varied to a singular extent, a point that on the whole seems to tell in favour of the telepathic explanation, for any cause of error may be assumed to have operated under similar conditions in a degree approximately equal. Taking the percipients separately, we find that with agent and percipient in the same room, 345 trials were made with P, and 263 with T; with agent and percipient in different rooms, 139 trials were made with P, and 79 with T; in all, 617 under the former and 218 under the latter conditions. Of the former, the digits were given 90 times correctly and 14 times more in reversed order, the most probable number of successes being in each case eight. 1 On the successful days 2 there were 245 trials and 60 successes (excluding second guesses and 10 cases 1 The chances of success were 1 in 81. Second guesses are excluded. 2 When three or more correct guesses were made. SIDGWICK 73 of reversed digits) with P, and 129 trials with 23 successes with T. On other days there were 243 trials in all and only 12 successes. This is, however, considerably above the figure which pure chance, usually termed “ expectation,” would give. On the successful days, second guesses and re¬ versed digits being left out of account, there were 133 first digits, and 119 second digits given correctly against an expectation of 46 and 38; on the unsuc¬ cessful the numbers were 38 and 32 with expectation 29 and 29. In all, 171 and 151 with expectation 75 and 62. Of the 139 trials made with P and the agent in different rooms, 1 there was no guess made in 8 cases. In the remaining 131 cases there were 7 com¬ plete successes and one case in which the digits were reversed; in 6 cases the first digit was given correctly and in 11 cases the second digit, the expectation being 1 or 2 complete successes, 7 first digits and 6 second. 2 In 71 of these trials Mr. Smith was in the room below, and apparently entirely out of hearing of the percipients. In this series there were 2 successes, the expectation being 1 or o. A curious theory was put forward by Lehmann 1 For details of the place of experiments, see the original reports. 2 As o cannot come first, there is one figure less to choose from. 74 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE and Hansen, 1 to account for the results here sum¬ marised, and more particularly for those results which were attained when agent and percipient were in the same room. These experimenters set themselves to find out by what means the results could, under the assigned conditions and assuming the good faith of the experimenters, have been attained, and came to the conclusion that uncon¬ scious whispering of the numbers was the clue to the marvel. Accordingly they “ whispered uncon¬ sciously ” in their laboratory for considerable periods at a time and recorded the successes and failures, successes being the cases in which the “unconscious” whisperer, with the aid of a parabolic mirror, trans¬ mitted to his fellow experimenter the number which he had previously selected as the one to be whis¬ pered “ unconsciously.” The whole thing being prearranged, the term, “ unconscious whispering,” seems ill-chosen, and the meaning would have been better expressed by “ surreptitious whispering,” so far as the Lehmann- Hansen experiments were concerned. Their case being, however, that the whispering in the Sidgwick experiments was unconscious and not surreptitious, they transferred the term “ unconscious ” to their own experiments, which had no real relation to 1 Ueber Unwillkiirliches Flustern, Phil, Stud. Bd. II, Heft, 4 , 1895 - WHISPERING 75 the question at issue. Their studies should obviously have been directed to proving that people, who were unaware of the object of the experiment, would frequently, when told to think intently of a number or other word, whisper the word in question, or so far reproduce it by expiratory or inspiratory move¬ ments that another person would be guided in his guess to a sufficient extent to influence the results to the extent indicated. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the in¬ vestigation was that, in addition to being concerned with an entirely different set of phenomena to those alleged to have occurred in the Sidgwick experi¬ ments, the results were entirely inconclusive. An analysis of the Sidgwick experiments was given, with the idea of proving that auditory transmission was the best explanation of certain errors. But a counter-analysis by Professor Sidgwick 1 showed that errors not explicable on this theory were no less numerous, and that consequently the Lehmann- Hansen hypothesis was not only not proved, but not even proved to be probable. This Professor Lehmann, with a candour that is only too rare, admitted to be the case. 2 The other Brighton series, carried on by Mrs. Sidgwick and Miss Johnson, at intervals during 1 Proc. S.P.R. xii. 298, sq. a Journ. S.P.R. 76 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE 1890-1-2, were mainly of three kinds. In the first the agent and percipient were in different rooms and the objects were, as before, numbers. In 252 trials with Miss B. as percipient there were 27 com¬ plete successes, 112 first digits, and 50 second digits right, as against expectation of 3-4, 30 and 25. There were also 8 cases in which the digits, if re¬ versed, would form the correct number, the expecta¬ tion being here, too, of course, 3-4. In a series with agent and percipient in the same room the successes were 26 out of 146 trials, the first digits right 53, and the second, 47, as against expectation of 1-2, 16, and 15. It is important to notice how strongly this tells against any possible transmission by ordinary means. The complete successes were, it is true, more numerous than when the agent was in another room, but so were the right second digits, and the causes which led to the change were not difficult to discover. When the agent and percipient were in different rooms, the guess was not communicated to the agent, who then may have failed to devote special attention to the second digit; this he would however, naturally do, if he were in the same room, and knew that one digit had been correctly guessed or that a guess had been made. In all these trials in different rooms, the distance between agent and percipient was inconsiderable and FAILURES 77 varied from io to 17 feet. It was indeed sufficient In the opinion of the experimenters to make the words of an ordinary conversation inaudible, but it was considered desirable to try a series in which the distance was sufficient to make auditory indication impossible. Unfortunately, the success in 400 trials was practically nil, and for this no sufficient cause could be discovered other than the effect of dis¬ tance on the imagination by the agent or percipient. This may be a vcra causa so far as it interferes with the concentration of attention, but how far a con¬ centration of attention is necessary or desirable in either agent or percipient we do not know; conse¬ quently this explanation is hardly satisfactory. The complete failure in this series cannot but cast some doubt on the results in those experiments where auditory communication was not impossible, for, as will be seen later, in other cases, distance does not seem to have had an exceptionally disturbing influence on the trials. On the other hand, auditory transmission, exceedingly easy in the case of num¬ bers, is exceedingly difficult in the case of dia¬ grams and pictures, whether we suppose the indi¬ cations to be given unconsciously or as a result of collusion between agent and percipient. The force of the argument from failure will be much dimin¬ ished if the same results are found in a series where transference of pictures was aimed at. 78 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE Among the other experiments was a series, useless, of course, for exact numerical estimation of the relation of the results to expectation, in which indications, other than verbal suggestion, were apparently impossible, and where, so far as can be seen from the records, verbal suggestion was ex¬ cluded; it showed an extraordinary disproportion between the results attained when agent and per¬ cipient were in the same and in different rooms. 1 In the first case, the successes were 31 out of 71 trials, of which 13 were blanks and resulted in no impression, in the second, the failures were 44 out of 55 trials, the successes 2, and the blanks, 9. 2 It is therefore fairly clear that unless we assume the causes of success to have been different in the two kinds of experiments, it must either be shown that the agent or some person acquainted with the details of the picture gave, either consciously or uncon¬ sciously, sufficient indications to guide the percipient, and that these indications, which were not detected by the experimenters whose business it was to do so, were either sufficiently definite to prevent the percipient from starting with a wrong idea and developing it along lines which would result in the failure of the experiment, or were of a character to check a mistaken development and bring the ideas 1 As to a possible cause of this, see p. 76. ‘ Proc. S.P.R. viii. 56. VALUE OF RESULTS 79 of the percipient, in the first case erroneous, into line with those of the agent. The slow emergence of the idea in some of the successful trials and the unpromising fragments from which the final picture, built up from various elements previously seen, was constructed, seem to weigh heavily against the idea of either collusion or unconscious indication. Take for example the fourth experiment with Miss B., 1 when the subject was a Christy Minstrel with a banjo. The first thing described by her was, “ something long, some¬ thing round in that one—a little cage of some sort— something that looks like a cage; yet there’s some¬ thing like a handle. A can! Oh, it's a can! It's quite clear now.” Subsequently she described a hand, a black hand, and then, although the subject had not meanwhile been mentioned, in the course of the next experiment, she went on, “ a man, black; he’s got something in his hand—an instru¬ ment—sort of guitar thing.” It is, of course, possible to argue that conscious collusion may simulate anything, and that conse¬ quently we have only to deal with an ingenious mystification. But a sceptic who takes this view would probably find it difficult, under similar con¬ ditions, to produce by this means anything equally effective. As regards unconscious indications the 1 Proc. S.P.R. viii., 561. 8 o THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE same holds good, and in this case the additional fact of the circuitous route by which the final result was reached is also in want of explanation. The slow emergence of the correct impression has been so often paralleled in my own experiments, where I am satisfied there was no collusion, I myself being in many cases the agent, and where collusion, and still more unconscious indication implied a so much greater possibility of communicating a pic¬ ture, or still more a nondescript diagram, difficult to paint in words under any circumstances, than experience seemed to admit, that this explanation does not commend itself to me. There are, however, two points in which the con¬ ditions seem open to criticism. In the first place the picture to be transferred was selected, not drawn at random from a number previously prepared. There was, therefore, a certain scope for the working of association, though it would be unwise to attach great importance to this element. More important is the fact that the agent, in order to maintain the concentration of attention and ensure a due distri¬ bution of it over all parts of the picture, was per¬ mitted to make a pencil sketch of the picture to be transferred. In the case of a complicated object, this can hardly have affected the result to any great extent, so far as one can see. Still, in view of our ignorance of the limits of hyperaesthesia, possible HISTORICAL 81 indications of this sort would have been better avoided. In a series of experiments with cards designed expressly for the purpose of seeing how far the audible indications of the pencil could be interpreted, I found the proportion of successes rose, when the card to be guessed was recorded be¬ fore, instead of after, the guess. 1 Numerous other experiments, references to which will be found in the bibliography, were tried in the ten years from 1882 to 1892 ; and the results were so far conclusive that telepathy was regarded as an established fact, not only by the Society itself, or rather by its individual members, hut also by the world at large, so far as daily and, to a large extent, weekly journalism is concerned. This attitude would perhaps have been justified if the same or other experimenters had succeeded in producing a steady flow of experiments with results distinctly above expectation, even if they did not attain the high level of the Brighton series. This was, how¬ ever, by no means the case, and so long as the So¬ ciety fails to produce evidence of this nature, so long will the world he justified in a sceptical attitude, and so long can it he said that one of the main objects of the S.P.R. remains unattained. 1 As the recorder was also the agent, it is possible that the mere act of writing down the card facilitated thought trans¬ ference. I was unable to make a sufficiently extended series to form an opinion on the point. G CHAPTER VI Experiments at a distance—Transference of images —Telepathic hallucinations Although comparatively little evidence has been published, it would not be fair to pass over the trials at a distance. It is manifestly impossible to object to the conditions under which such experiments are tried, provided the diagrams are sufficiently varied and selected at random. The experiments of the Rev. A. Glardon, Miss Despard, and others are worthy of note and seem difficult to explain by any theory of chance coincidence. It should, however, not be forgotten that the series were comparatively short—a defect that could be readily repaired, if it were once realized that the evidence for telepathy is far from being complete, while the laws, if any, that govern its manifestations, and the mode in which ideas are transmitted, are hidden in the deepest mystery. Miss Despard tried her experiments in the summer of 1892 with a friend of hers, Miss Campbell, with whom she had tried a successful series of experi¬ ments at close quarters a few months previously. The 82 EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE 83 conditions of the experiment were recorded in writing beforehand; after the trial the percipient recorded her impression at once and before hearing from the agent. The first experiment was as follows:— 1 No. 1. June 22, 1892. Arranged that R. C. Despard should, when at the School of Medicine in Handel Street, W.C., between the hours of 11.50 and 11.55, h er attention on some object which Miss Campbell, at 77, Chesterton Road, W., is by thought transference to discover. Percipient’s Account. Owing to an unexpected delay, instead of being quietly at home at 11.50 a.m., I was waiting for my train at Baker Street, and as just at that time trains were moving away from both platforms and there was the usual bustle going on, I thought it hopeless to try on my part; but just while I was thinking this I felt a sort of mental pull-up, which made me feel sure that Miss Despard was fixing her attention, and directly after I felt “ my compasses—no, scalpel,” seemed to see a flash of light as if on bright steel, and I thought of two scalpels, first with their points together and then folding together into one; just then my train came up. I write this down before having seen Miss Despard, 1 Podmore, Apparitions, p. 127. 84 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE so am still in ignorance whether I am correct in my surmise, but, as I know what Miss Despard would probably be doing at ten minutes to twelve, I feel that my knowledge may have suggested the thought to me, though this idea did not occur to me until just this minute, as I have written it down. C. M. Campbell. 77, Chesterton Road, W. Agent’s Account. At ten minutes to twelve I concentrated my mind on an object that happened to be in front of me at the time—two scalpels, crossed, with their points together; but in about five minutes, as it occurred to me that the knowledge I was at the School of Medicine might suggest a similar idea to Miss Campbell, I tried to bring up a country scene, of a brook running through a field with a patch of yellow marsh marigolds in the foreground. This second idea made no impression on Miss Campbell —perhaps owing to the bustle around her at the time. R. C. Despard. No. 2. October 25, 1892. At 3.30 p.m. R. C. Despard is to fix her attention on some object, and C. M. Campbell, being in a different part of London, is by thought transference to find out what the object is. EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE 85 Percipient’s Account. At 3.30 I was at home at 77, Chesterton Road, North Kensington, alone in my room. First my attention seemed to flit from one object to another, while nothing definite stood out, but soon I saw a pair of gloves, which became more definitely distinct till they appeared as a pair of baggy tan-coloured kid gloves, certainly a size larger than worn by either R.C.D. or myself, and not quite like any of ours in colour. After this I saw a train going out of a station (I had just re¬ turned from seeing some one off at Victoria), almost obliterated by a picture of a bridge over a small river, but I felt that I was consciously thinking and left off the experiment, being unable to clear my mind sufficiently of outside things. Agent’s Account. At 3.30 on October 25 I was at 30, Handel Street, Brunswick Square, W.C. C.M.C. and myself had arranged beforehand to make an experiment in thought transference at that hour, I to try to transfer some object to her mind, the nature of which was left entirely unspecified. I picked up a pair of rather old tan-coloured gloves—purposely not tak¬ ing a pair of my own—and tried for about five minutes to concentrate my attention on them and the wish to transfer an impression of them to 86 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE C.M.C.’s mind. After this I fixed my attention on a window, but felt my mind getting tired, and therefore rather disturbed by the constant sound of omnibuses and waggons passing the open window. R. C. Despard. October 25, 1892. A month later Miss Campbell wrote, giving some further details as follows: “ With regard to the distant experiments, the notes sent to you were the only ones made. In the first experiment (scalpels), I wrote the account before Miss Despard’s return, and when Miss Despard returned, before seeing what I had written, she told me what she had thought of, and almost directly wrote it down. “ In the second experiment (gloves) I was just going to write my account when Miss Despard returned home, and she asked me at once, ‘ Well, what did you think of?’ I told her a pair of tan gloves, then sat down and wrote my account, and when she had read it through, she said, ‘ Yes, you have exactly described Miss M.’s gloves, which I was then holding while I fixed my attention on them,’ and then she wrote her account.” As has been pointed out above, these experiments are too few in number to give much security against chance successes. Moreover, as Miss Campbell points out, the object in the first case was by no EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE 87 means above suspicion. The trials are also open to some objection on the ground that the notes of the experiments were not made at the earliest possible moment. With feminine caution, the experimenters refrained from recording their own share until they had some assurance that the trial had not been a failure. It is very probable that this little peculi¬ arity made absolutely no difference to the record; but where so much depended upon the form and the words, it would have been wiser to write down all the facts worthy of being recorded as soon as the experiment was finished. Addenda can readily be made and noted as such. It need hardly be said that the objection to record failures, if this was the real reason for the procedure under discussion, is fatal to the value of the experiments; where there is any reason to suppose that only successful trials are recorded, we have no data for estimating the proportion of failures. In the present case, how¬ ever, the two experiments quoted seem to have been the only ones made at a distance. In the same year, Mr. Kirk and Miss G., who had two years previously tried a series of twenty-two with but moderate success, renewed their attempts, and out of the seven experiments tried, two were of a distinctly striking character. 1 The fourth trial of the series was on May 1. Miss G.’s im- 1 Podmore, loc. cit. p. 133. 88 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE pressions were recorded in part the same night, in part the following morning before she saw Mr. Kirk. She saw “ a broken circle, then only faint patches of light, not cloudlike but flat, which alternated with vertical streaks of pale light.” This part of her record, written on the same evening, seems to refer to the first part of Mr. Kirk’s experiment. Later she had, “ soon after lying down last night, a rapid but most realistic glimpse of Mr. Kirk leaning against his dining-room mantelpiece; the room seemed brightly lighted, and he looked rather both¬ ered, and just as I saw him he appeared to say, ‘ Doctor, 1 I haven’t got my pipe.’ This seemed to me very absurd, the more so as I do not know whether Mr. Kirk ever smoked a pipe. I see him occasionally with a cigar or cigarette, but cannot remember ever having seen him with a pipe; if I have, it must have been years ago. I do not know whether my eyes were open or closed, but the vivid¬ ness of the impression quite startled me. This oc¬ curred just after the expiration of time appointed for experiment (10.45-11.15).” After seeing this report, Mr. Kirk, who of course did not record at the time what he supposed to have had no connexion with his experiment, wrote as follows: “ The fact that I had another experiment 1 A familiar name given to Miss G. by Mr. Kirk and his wife, EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE 89 to make [i.e. after the trial with Miss G.] enables me to trace minutely my actions before beginning it. Immediately the time had expired with Miss G. I got up [from the low chair] and rapidly lit the gas and three pieces of candle, which I had ready in the cardboard box cover, to illuminate the diagram. The room was therefore brilliantly lighted. I now rested with my right shoulder against the mantelpiece, with my face towards Miss G. [i.e. in the direction in which she was, for she was not in the same house], but with my eyes bent on the carpet. In this position I thought intensely of my¬ self and the whole room, and feeling really anx¬ ious to make a success, for at least six minutes. By this time my shoulder was aching very much from the constrained attitude and the pressure on the mantelpiece. I broke off, using words [talking to myself] very similar to those given by Miss G. What I muttered, as nearly as I can remember, was, ‘ Now, doctor, I’ll get my pipe.’ . . . Until within the last few weeks I have not smoked a pipe for many years, and I do not think it probable that Miss G. has ever seen me use one; but it is an absolute certainty that she was not aware I had taken to smoke one recently.” There are certain obscurities in this statement; for instance, it seems that, although Mr. Kirk speaks of the time with Miss G. being up, he was 90 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE intent on trying- another experiment with her. This experiment seems to have been with a diagram, but it is not clear whether it was being tried while Mr. Kirk was leaning against the mantelpiece, or subsequently, or not at all. It is likewise not obvious why Mr. Kirk thought-of himself and the room, unless that was part of an experiment; but from the fact that he did not record it until after reading Miss G.’s record, we are bound to suppose that he did not regard it as such. Elowever this may be, the coincidence between the position and actions of Mr. Kirk and the vision which Miss G, records is sufficiently striking to excuse a good deal of obscurity. In the experiment just quoted, the- scene visual¬ ized by Miss G. was the scene which was actually in Mr. Kirk’s mind at the time. But in its inclusion of an hallucinatory figure of the agent himself, the experience stands nearly on the borderline between the experimental thought transference, which is the subject of the present volume, and the spontaneous telepathy, the main evidence for which is based on records of apparitions at or near the moment of death, which will form the subject of a separate volume. The other experiment of Mr. Kirk’s which will be quoted also stands near the spontaneous class, in that the object of which Miss G. became aware," TRANSFERENCE OF IMAGES 9 1 though consciously in Mr. Kirk’s mind, was not what he was trying to transfer; in fact, he was actually trying to banish the thought of it from his mind, thinking that it would interfere with the success of the experiment. In this case the impres¬ sion which Mr. Kirk seems to have transmitted was recorded by him before reading Miss G.’s record, so that this report is, in that respect, more satis¬ factory. On the other hand, there is less detail in this experiment, and it is consequently less evidential. Mr. Kirk's report, after describing an attempt to transfer an image of the room (this was evidently suggested by the success of the previous week, and a success would therefore have been discounted by the possibility of “mental convergence”) and of an imaginary witch, runs as follows: “ Continued to influence her some minutes after limit of time for experiment (11.30 p.m.). During this time I was much bothered by a subcurrent of thought, which I in yain tried to cast off. In the morning, just before time to get up, I had a vivid dream of my lost dog, Laddie (lost, it appears, six years previous¬ ly, but still the subject of dreams and occasional conversation). I dreamt that the dog had returned, and that my wife, Miss G. and myself made much of him. I thought of him all day, and tried to suppress the thought, fearing it would interfere with the 92 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE success of the experiments; feel worried and irri¬ tated at this, being really anxious to make an im¬ pression. Do not expect favourable result. Written same night. J. Iv.” Miss G.'s report was as follows:— “ Experiment last night (9.5.92) most unsatis¬ factory. Saw only a glow of light, and once for a few minutes a figure (of a vase). Some minutes after 11.30 (the time for conclusion of experiment) it seemed as if the door of my room were open, and on the landing I saw a very large dog, moving as though it had just come upstairs. I cannot conceive what suggested this, nor can I understand why I thought of Laddie during time of experiment. I do not think we have mentioned him recently. L. G.” It does not appear why Miss G. regarded this experiment as specially unsatisfactory. If a vase had been the object selected, there would have been no reason for dissatisfaction, and similarly if Laddie had formed the subject of the designed trial, there would have been no reason for feeling surprise at his appearance or recurrence to the mind during the experiment; it is clear that Miss G. had no assurance that a vase and Laddie were not the sub¬ jects selected. Consequently, her dissatisfaction and surprise are not easily accounted for. Although the success was rather spontaneous than experi¬ mental, it was attained during the course of an TRANSFERENCE OF IMAGES 93 arranged experiment, and falls therefore as much under the one head as the other, though such a success could not, it need hardly be said, be included in a tabular statement of the proportion of successes to failures. Although from an evidential point of view somewhat unsatisfactory, the agent having been illiterate and apparently unable to record her experiments independently, some experiences of Dr. Gibotteau’s are perhaps worth recalling here, not only as being interesting in themselves, but because of the close connexion of some of the alleged powers of the agent with the feats attributed all the world over to warlocks and wizards. Her mother had a reputation for sorcery, and Bertha herself claimed to be able, by the exercise of her will, to make people at a distance from her stumble, lose their way, or turn aside from a given path. We are not immediately concerned with these matters here; they will perhaps form the subject of another volume of the series. Three of the most striking of the experiments 1 recorded by Dr. Gibotteau re¬ sulted in one case in a visual impression alone, in one case in a visual and emotional impression, and in one case in an emotional impression alone. One night he woke up, an almost unique experience for him, at 3 in the morning. He at once thought to 1 Ann. des Sciences Psycliiques, vol. ii. 94 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE himself that he was the subject of an experiment, and on opening his eyes he saw opposite him on the wall a luminous patch, and a bright object as large as a melon in the middle. The following morning, it appeared, on questioning Bertha, who came to the hospital where Dr. Gibotteau was engaged, that she had made three attempts to influence him, the third being to make him see a lantern. His impression corresponded very exactly to the selected object. On another occasion she resolved to frighten him, and chose a skeleton, of all things in the world, as an object likely to have this effect on a hospital doctor. Although he did not see or think of a skeleton, which would probably have failed in its intended effect, he had, on arriving home about midnight, a most uneasy feeling; and, although he was quite aware that it was what he called “ one of Bertha’s tricks,” the valiant M. Gibotteau ran up to bed and put his head under the bed clothes in the briefest space possible. On another occasion Dr. Gibotteau and a friend left Bertha near her home and drove back to the Quartier Latin in a carriage which seems to have taken a somewhat devious route. On the way Dr. Gibotteau again felt an unreasoning terror, and on getting out of the carriage at the corner of the “ Boul. Mich ” his friend reported that he had an hallucination of TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS 95 something white floating before him. The follow¬ ing clay Bertha was able, according to the report, to state that the driver had lost his way, that Dr. Gibotteau had felt afraid of nothing at all, without reason, and that they had seen some white pigeons floating round them. The successes of Mr. Kirk and Bertha differ markedly, it should be observed, from those hither¬ to dealt with. In the Sidgwick experiments, it is true, pictures were externalized and seen projected on a card. But in the cases now under considera¬ tion we are dealing with full fledged hallucinations. Cases of this sort are sufficiently rare, and it is a matter for regret that more experiments in this di¬ rection do not seem to have been tried. We have seen that Mr. Kirk, on one occasion, is recorded to have formed part of a vision. The hal¬ lucinatory dog, on the other hand, appeared to move among the objects in the vicinity of the percipient, and in this respect resembled the hallucinations com¬ monly termed ghosts. The recorded phenomena are, it may be noted, connected with the so-called materializations of the spiritualists, so far as they are not, as is unfortu¬ nately frequently the case, of more mundane origin, - or, in other words, merely the medium dressed up to act the part. In this connexion it may be of interest to quote an early account by a good 96 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE witness, or rather recorder, of an apparent case of materialization. Some two hundred and twenty years ago Sir John Reresby was governor of York. An old woman had been arraigned at the assizes as a witch, and was confined in Clifford Tower, York Castle. One of the soldiers who was on guard went to the porch to see what was causing a disturb¬ ance, and saw by the light of the moon a scroll of paper creep from under the door. This scroll then, he assured Sir John, transformed itself into a monkey, and finally turned into the shape of a turkey-cock, which passed to and fro before him. Surprised at this, as well he might be, he went to the under-keeper, and called him. The under¬ keeper, according to the narrative, saw neither turkey-cock nor monkey, but only the scroll of paper dancing up and down. Both witnesses seem then to have seen the scroll creep under the door again, though the space between the door and the ground was no greater than the thickness of half a crown. 1 If this account can be depended on, it presents many curious features. Not only was the sentinel the subject of an auditory as well as of a visual hallucination, but the visual hallucination under¬ went an interesting series of changes, and finally reverted to its pristine form, for all the world like 1 Reresby, Memoirs (London, T734), p. 237. TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS 97 the poodle in Faust. The hallucination was shared by a second witness, who had, we may suppose, received an account of the apparition from his comrade, and was consequently prepared to see a turkey-cock, and this witness, instead of accepting the suggestion of his fellow, saw the hallucination in its original form. So far as can be seen, the sentry also saw no more of the monkey and turkey- cock, but shared the hallucination of the dancing paper. Linally, both saw it disappear in the way it had come. The imagination will play many tricks, and it is conceivable that the second and third forms of the sentry’s hallucination were due solely to his imagina¬ tion. This seems, however, an unnecessary refine¬ ment of theory, for he clearly had an hallucination of some sort, unless we suppose that both he and the under-keeper were the victims of an exceedingly ingenious trick, the mechanism for which would hardly be within the reach of a prisoner, and an old woman to boot. Unfortunately, Sir John Reresby was guiltless of a knowledge of psychical research or telepathy, or any other idea than that the story must either he a lie or literally true. Accordingly, he did not interrogate the witch, and thus perhaps missed the opportunity of handing his name down to posterity and the S.P.R. as the first man to record in due form a telepathic experience. 98 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE Few such experiences seem to have been recorded, though they were perhaps not uncommon in the ages when belief in witchcraft was universal, as may be seen by a reference to the Discourse of Witch¬ craft, by Fairfax, and other early detailed records of cases of alleged witchcraft. Probably one of the first instances in which experiments in this direction were tried was a case recorded by H. N. Weser- mann, 1 himself the agent in the case in question and four other trials, some eighty years ago. Wesermann was a government official at Diisseldorf, and seems to have been a careful investigator. Unfortunately, he does not record how many failures there were in proportion to the five successes which he mentions. One of the trials was singularly successful, and, though the record is not exactly in the form in which the psychical researcher of the present day would put it, the case is well worth quoting. A lady who had been dead five years was to appear to Lieutenant A. B. in a dream at 10.30 p.m., and incite him to good deeds. At half past ten, con¬ trary to expectation, Herr A. B. had not gone to bed, but was sitting in the ante-room with a friend, Lieutenant S-, discussing the French campaign. Suddenly the door opened and a lady entered, dressed in white with a black kerchief and uncovered head; she waved her hand three times to S- - 1 Dcr Magnetismus und die allgemeine Weltsprache, p. 27. TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS 99 in a friendly manner, then* turned to A. B. and nodded to him, and went out again by the door. On receiving this account from Lieutenant A. B. Wesermann was much struck by it, and wrote to the other percipient, Lieutenant S-, who lived some six miles away, for his account of it, which was as follows :— “ On the 13th of March, 1817, Herr A. B. came to pay me a visit at my lodgings, about a league from A-. He stayed the night with me, and after supper, when we both were undressed, I was sitting on the bed and Herr A. B. was standing by the door of the next room, also on the point of going to bed. This was about half-past ten. We were speaking partly about indifferent topics and partly about the events of the French campaign. Suddenly the door out of the kitchen opened without a sound and a lady entered, very pale, taller than Herr A. B., about 5 ft. 4 in. in height, strong and robust in figure, dressed in white but with a large black kerchief, which reached to below the waist. She entered with bare head, saluted me in complimentary fashion three times with her hand, turned to the left to Herr A. B. and waved her hand to him three times. After this the figure went noiselessly out without any creaking of the door. We followed at once to see if there was any deception, but found nothing.” ioo THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE This remarkably interesting narrative is of course from the evidential point of view very defective. We do not learn what the arrangements between Wesermann and A. B. were, whether it was merely agreed that an experiment was to be tried or whether more definite arrangements were made. We must, of course, not forget that the element of suggestion would not be one with which they would reckon as a disturbing factor.. Again, it is not clear whether A. B. knew the deceased lady, nor whether, if he did, he recognized her. Nor do we know whether Herr S-was aware of the proposed experiment. In spite of this, the narrative is a striking one, and if a few people could be found at the present day with similar powers, it would be possible to make more rapid progress in psychical investigation. The important point of the story is that the hallu¬ cination was shared by a second percipient, who was, we may perhaps assume, ignorant of the intended trial. Even if that were not so, his narrative seems to make it clear that he was unacquainted with the deceased lady. If therefore the apparition which he saw exactly resembled her—and Wesermann assures us that it did—it is immaterial whether Wesermann and A. B. had discussed the matter previously and referred to the lady in connexion with the experiment, or not. If the narratives are accurate, and the discrepancies are insignificant, TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS ioi the argument for telepathy can be based on the evidence of Wesermann and Lieutenant S- alone. In recent years a small number of trials of a simi¬ lar nature have been recorded. Some of these were published in Phantasms of the Living , 1 and, apart from an unfortunate defect in the record, one of these, tried by Mr. S. Id. B., seems particularly good. 2 In 1884 he wrote to Mr. Gurney, telling him that he was going to try an experiment on March 22, and that he would try to make him.self appear at midnight to Miss King, at 44, Norland Square, W., he himself being in a different part of London. From a subsequent statement it appears that he in¬ tended to try to touch the hair of the percipient, and if this detail had been mentioned in tbe preliminary letter, the evidence would have been as good as it could possibly be. With a regrettable lack of fore¬ sight, the character of the attempt was, however, not stated, and the independent evidence is thus post facto only, and given by Mr. Gurney, to whom Mr. B. stated shortly after the trial that this was one of the points which made the experiment successful in every detail. The percipient signed a statement, which her sister corroborated, saying that the details were communicated to her before hearing from Mr. B., 1 Phantasms, i. 103 sq. 2 Loc. cit. p. 108. 102 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE to the effect that on March 22, at about midnight, she had an impression that Mr. B. was present in her room, and came towards her and stroked her hair. The agent was informed of the success of the experiment some days after the experiment, and took down the percipient’s account, which she volunteered without prompting from him, from dictation. Experiments of this sort, evidenced by contemporaneous records, are unfortunately rare. Too many experimenters are content, like Miss Verity, to record their impressions some time after their occurrence. Another interesting case was that of the Rev. Clarence Godfrey. In 1886, after reading Phan¬ tasms of the Living, he was seized with a desire to try an experiment similar to the ones just summar¬ ized. According to his report, he never even men¬ tioned that he proposed to try an experiment, much less that he proposed to try and appear “ spiritually *’ at the foot of a lady’s bed. In this respect his example is excellent, but it may be doubted whether it is altogether wise to try experi¬ ments of this sort without any warning. Even if propriety does not forbid to appear spiritually at the foot of the bed of a person of the opposite sex (it must be remembered that there are cases on record in which the agent seems to have been reciprocally aware of the surroundings of the per- TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS 103 cipient, and indeed it was to some extent the case in the present trial), care should at least be taken to discover whether an apparition of the sort de¬ scribed would have a bad effect on their nerves. It is very desirable to keep the evidential quality of the experiments at a high level, but it is hardly justi¬ fiable to endanger the health of one’s friends in order to do so. Mr. Godfrey tried the experiment after going to bed, and kept up the effort to appear for about eight minutes, so far as he could judge. He quickly tired, and was soon asleep. In a dream he seemed to meet the lady, and at once inquired if she had seen him. The reply was, “ I was sitting beside you,” and then Mr. Godfrey woke up. His watch showed 3.40 a.m. O11 the following day Mr. Godfrey received from the percipient, whether spontaneously or in answer to questions is not stated, an account of the incident, which was subsequently reduced to writing. It is very unfortunate that so few people understand the necessity of recording such phenomena on the spot, not only in order to guard against any failure of memory and subsequent hallucinatory recollection, such as we are all familiar with when we attempt to recall a dream a few hours after its occurrence, and find ourselves recalling not the dream itself but rather our recollection of it as we remembered when 104 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE we told the story, possibly with some embellishment, at the breakfast table. The percipient, it appears, woke at about half past three with the impression that some one had entered her room. Experiencing a strange restless longing to leave the room, she got up and went down stairs to get some soda water. On the way back an ap¬ parition of Mr. Godfrey was seen on the staircase, dressed, not in the apparel which he actually had on at that moment, but in his usual clothes. He stood there for some seconds, and the percipient, according to her narrative, was satisfied with a very short look, and then went on upstairs, whereupon the figure vanished. Two other trials were made by the same experi¬ menters, one of which was a failure, being tried under unsuitable circumstances. The other was a success, though less striking perhaps than that in the first experiment. Striking as the experiments recorded in this chapter are, they are not very numerous. In order to be evidential, such experiments require to be recorded with the most rigorous exactness, by pre¬ ference, indeed, by an independent observer, who can keep his mind to the question of evidence and record details which the agent or percipient might in their absorption in their experiment fail to observe or record. The importance of this is seen TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS 105 in the first Kirk case, where none of the facts were recorded at the time, though Mr. Kirk himself evi¬ dently had the idea of some sort of experiment in his mind. Not only must the record be exact in case of the successes; it must also not fail to record the failures. It is indeed desirable, where such experiments are being tried, for a record of the intended trial to be sent to the S.P.R. or other body that can be trusted to preserve it, and then for each party to the trial to post their reports immediately after the trial, making such additions as may seem necessary at a later date. The faculty is probably a rare one, and perhaps not one per cent, of the total number of trials would show any result. Given, however, an agent and percipient who do achieve some measure of success, and their percentage may reach seventy or eighty per cent. The case for telepathy will then, it is clear, not rest on the proportion between the total number of trials and the total number of suc- - cesses, but on the proportions in the trials by the more gifted experimenters, always provided that their series are sufficiently long to exclude chance coincidence as a probable cause. CHAPTER VII Telepathic Hypnotism—Telepathic Dreams Although, properly speaking, the production of the hypnotic state by means of mental suggestion does not fall within the limits of a work dealing with thought transference, inasmuch as it cannot be alleged that any idea is, or appears to be, trans¬ ferred, the subject of the induction of sleep, either at a distance or from close quarters without verbal or other means which influence the patient through the ordinary channels of sense, is sufficiently ger¬ mane to the subject under discussion to make an outline of some of the more important experiments desirable at this point. It has already been pointed out that some of the magnetizers detected, or believed that they detected, what they termed community of sensation between., the operator and his patient. Many of these early experiments are, however, of little value evidentially, for the very simple reason that suggestion was unrecognized in the days when all the phenomena were put down to the passage of a magnetic fluid. Even in the case of experiments in our own day 106 TELEPATHIC HYPNOTISM 107 when this source of error is sufficiently well known, we cannot always be sure that it is sufficiently guarded against, when the operator and patient are in close proximity. Apropos of the clever horse Hans, whose performances have puzzled the scientific men, or some of them, of Germany, a story has been told of a dog belonging to Sir William Huggins. This dog, either with or with¬ out training, it- was not quite clear which from the narrative, gained the power of interpreting its master's unconscious indications so greatly that it was able to select from a pile of letters the one chosen by him, even though he stood behind the dog and out of its sight, the explanation being that when the dog in trying letter after letter arrives at the right one, the subtle change in the respiratory movements of its master, or some equally recondite source of information, gives it the necessary clue. The thinking horse’s performances are, of course, on a different plane. There can be no doubt that he had been deliberately trained to take cognizance of the signals of his master. The only remarkable point about the affair is that any ordinarily acute man should have been puzzled by the trick; much more a man* of science from the Fatherland, some of whose sons make it their boast that “ psychical research and all that humbug ” may find a home in England, but never for a moment imposes on 108 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE the more acute Teutonic man of science. About this, however, it is possible to hold another opinion. 1 If a mere dog can thus seize the clues uncon¬ sciously given and deal with matters which it does not in the least comprehend, like letters and num¬ bers, it is clear that human beings may far more readily pick up slight indications, the interpreta¬ tion of which will enable them to carry out the will of the operator in matters of which they are fully cognizant. While, therefore, it by no means follows that all experiments carried out when the agent and patient are within earshot of each other are necessarily subject to this criticism, it is clear that their evidential quality must be inferior to others, equally good in results, carried out when agent and patient are so far removed as to make appreciation of the wishes of the agent a greater miracle if it is due to the operation of the ordinary senses than it would be if it were due to that other means of communication to which the name of telepathy is given. Fortunately, there is more than one well-attested case of the induction of hypnotic sleep under due precautions by operators of reputation in the world 1 Since the above was written a committee has reported that there is no evidence of anything beyond quick apprehen¬ sion of his master’s signs on the part of the horse. The two committees seem to have been independent. TELEPATHIC HYPNOTISM 109 of science, when the distance between agent and patient was such as to make the hypothesis of ordinary sense transmission absolutely absurd. The first of these is the case of Madame B., a French peasant woman, on whom Dr. Gihert of Havre and Dr. Pierre Janet tried experiments in 1885 and 1886, some of them in the presence of members of the Society for Psychical Research. Before describing the experiments in question, it may be well to say that the patient had shown herself remarkably susceptible, and that there were indications that the hypnotic state was pro¬ duced rather by the operator's will than by any of his acts, even when he was in her presence and actually in contact with her. Dr. Janet remarks, for example, that it was necessary, in order to entrance Madame B., to concentrate one’s thought intensely on the suggestion to sleep which was given her; the more the operator’s thought wan¬ dered, the more difficult it was to induce the trance. This influence of the operator’s thought, however extraordinary it may seem, predominates in this case to such an extent that it replaces all other causes. If one presses Madame B.’s hand without the thought of hypnotizing her, the trance is not induced; but, on the other hand, it is possible to send her to sleep by thinking of it without pressing her hand. I IO THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE For the reasons mentioned above, this class of ex¬ periment is hardly conclusive, and can never be made conclusive, however careful the experi¬ menters may be. A fortiori is it impossible to record the experiments in such a way as to make it clear to the reader that the precautions taken were sufficient. When we essay experiments at a distance, however, the case is otherwise. Not only are the necessary precautions far simpler, but there is never any necessity for hurry. The ob¬ servers can record at their leisure, and the attention to detail thus rendered possible should put an ordi¬ narily intelligent reporter in a position to make clear to his readers exactly what happened. It is impossible here to give the experiments in detail. Those who desire to judge of the precautions taken, and of the completeness of the record, must refer to Prof. Janet’s paper on the subject in the Revue Phil. (Aug., 1886), or to the account in the Proc. S.R.R. (iv. 127, sq.). It may be mentioned that the distance between the operator and the subject was in no case less than a quarter of a mile, sufficient, one may imagine, to exclude the operation of suggestion through the ordinary senses. One determined opponent of telepathy, however, has been found to suggest, either in this or in a similar case, that the subject became aware of an attempt to hypno- TELEPATHIC HYPNOTISM 111 tize her, because the mental concentration on the part of the operator increased the arterial tension in his circulatory system, and that though the distance between operator and subject was at tbe least several hundred yards, such was the state of hyperaesthesia to which the latter, for no reason assignable, bad been brought, that she was able at that distance to hear the change in the throb of the agent’s arteries, and from the change to infer that he was trying to hypnotize her. Of a truth science has her miracles, especially when some obnoxious fact bas to be explained in some respect¬ able manner. Not the least miracle is that any sane man should be found to suggest that such a state of hyperaesthesia may exist and yet not be detected by trained physiologists who are conduct¬ ing the experiments. The state of mind of such a critic is only comparable to that of the insurance company’s expert who assured the court, in a dis¬ puted case, that slipping on a piece of banana skin was evidence of a dangerous mental state, and that the policy of an assured person who made a claim for an accident of a different kind should be held to be invalid, because he had concealed from the company, at the time of effecting his insurance, that he had once sprained his knee through slipping on a piece of banana skin. As a disproof of the hypothesis of accidental 112 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE coincidence, it may be mentioned that Madame B. only twice, so far as is known, fell into a hypnotic trance spontaneously during several weeks that she was under observation; not only so, but on one of these occasions it was clear that it was only a relapse into a hypnotic trance from which she had been insufficiently awakened; in the other case she entranced herself by looking at the picture of her hypnotist, Dr. Gibert, which is very far indeed from being a case of ordinary spontaneous trance, especially if, as is possible, Dr. Gibert had ever entranced her by the method of staring at her. In all, from October, 1885, to May in the follow¬ ing year, twenty-five experiments were tried. Of these nineteen only were reckoned as successes, though in several other cases there was a more or less marked influence on the patient. As a typical case may be quoted the experiment of April 24, 1886, as described by F. W. H. Myers: “On April 24, the whole party [consisting of F. W. H Myers, A. T. Myers, Dr. Gibert, Prof. Janet, Dr. Ochorowicz, and my late friend, Leon Marillier] chanced to meet at M. Janet’s house at 3 p.m., and he then at my (i.e. F. W. H. Myers’s) suggestion entered his study to will that Madame B. should sleep. We waited in his garden, and at 3.20 pro¬ ceeded together to the Pavilion (where Madame B. resided with a sister of Dr. Gibert’s), which I TELEPATHIC HYPNOTISM 113 entered first at 3.30, and found Madame B. pro¬ foundly sleeping over her sewing, having ceased to sew. Becoming talkative, she said to M. Janet “ C’est vous qui m’avez commanded’ She said she fell asleep at 3.5 p.m. From this narrative it is clear that the selection of the time was in the hands of an entirely inde¬ pendent person. It would, of course, be ridiculous to suppose that Prof. Janet was in collusion with Madame B., but experience of the foolish objec¬ tions urged against apparently perfect experi¬ ments teaches one to meet every possible and impossible criticism. The party having met by chance, there was no possibility of M. Janet’s having accidentally communicated to Madame B.; that they were likely to meet at the hour of 3 p.m.; consequently auto-suggestion on her part seems to be excluded. Bearing in mind the remarkable appreciation of time by hypnotized subjects, to which the experiments of Dr. Milne Bramwell bear such conclusive testimony, we may fairly conclude that the hour given by Madame B. as that at which she was entranced was nearly correct. 1 he only criticism possible, and that affects only a very minor item of the case, is that Madame B. may have gone to sleep earlier or later instead of at almost exactly the time at which Prof. Janet willed her to go to sleep, and that her mention of 114 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE the hour of 3.5 was clue to a suggestion somehow conveyed unintentionally by one of the party—a thing improbable in itself, and almost certain to have attracted the attention of one or other of the trained observers who made up the party. It might indeed also be objected that Madame B. was only simulating sleep; but against this hypothesis must be put the testimony of men of great experi¬ ence in such matters that she was really entranced. It might also be objected in the particular case under discussion that she may have observed the approach of the party, and that this operated as a suggestion. But in reply to this it suffices to point out that she named as the hour when she entered the trance a period before the party had come in sight of the Pavilion, or even left the garden of M. Janet’s house; and secondly, that she was in some of the experiments kept under observation by some of the party, so far as possible without disclosing their presence to her for fear of the knowledge that she was being observed operating as a suggestion or otherwise interfering with the success of the experiments, and that the suggestions of the distant operator were carried out under circumstances which preclude the possi¬ bility of their having been in some way transmitted by one of the observers through the ordinary chan¬ nels of the subject’s senses. TELEPATHIC HYPNOTISM 115 This successful series of experiments was fol¬ lowed by another in the autumn of the same year, in which the measure of success was far less, though still considerably above what could he attributed to chance coincidence. A summary of the results will he found in the Proc. S.P.R., v. 43-45. Though the diminished number of successes, to some extent, lessens the evidential value of the whole series, it should not he overlooked that, if telepathy is a fact, such variation is exactly what might he expected. Both portions of the whole series being above expectation, it cannot he contended that later failures cause the argument founded on the earlier results to fall to the ground. The argument for mental suggestion from the facts of hypnotism apparently at a distance gains much force from a series of extraordinarily careful experiments on the same subject, tried by Prof. Richet in Paris with the same subject, whom he designates by the name of Leonie. These trials are discussed by M. Richet with great acuteness and absence of bias in Proc. S.P.R., v. 18 sq., and although he only claims that two of his nine trials were successful, and four partially successful, his canons of evidence are so high that this proportion is sufficiently striking. Prof. Picket’s narrative is an exact resume of his notes made each day immediately after such experiment, and cannot 116 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE be abridged without diminishing its value as evi¬ dence ; I therefore refrain from reproducing them here, and merely refer my readers to M. Richet’s own words— “It is important to notice that in all these ex¬ periments the trance not infrequently supervened some time after the operator willed it; on the other hand, there is not a single clear case where the patient was entranced too soon, and on the few doubtful cases no stress can be laid. In consider¬ ing the possibility of coincidence and auto-suggestion this feature is of much importance.” In a work dealing with telepathy the subject of dreams cannot be entirely neglected, though evi¬ dence drawn from them is, in more than one respect, less satisfactory than that drawn from experiences in the normal waking state or the hypnotic sleep. In the first place, dreams are extraordinarily numerous and varied. There is therefore a great danger of improper selection. Even where any one sets him or herself to experiment systematically there is always the possibility that they have had several dreams on one night, or, it may be, a multi¬ tude of dreams on one night, for there is no way of finding out how much we dream except by recalling them in our waking hours, and we have no assurance that the dreams recalled when we wake are more than a small proportion of the whole TELEPATHIC DREAMS 117 number which an automatic record, if such a thing were possible, would have shown to have passed through our minds, or that part of them which is occupied in producing dreams. Now the evidence for telepathy is not likely, in the long run, to be over-estimated, so far as it is based on results with dreams, for we can readily secure that there shall be no undue selection in the way of recording only those dreams which show a connexion with the selected subject. All that is necessary is for the dreamer to record before bearing from the agent all available data with regard to the dreams, and for no subsequent modification of the recollection of the dreams to be allowed any weight. But, on the other hand, the evidence for tele¬ pathy may easily be under-estimated. If A is in the habit of dreaming ten times each night, we may assume that an attempt at mental suggestion will only influence a certain proportion of these at most, possibly only one. Now, if A has a telepathic dream every night, but habitually forgets nine out of his ten dreams, he will recall his successful tele¬ pathic dream only once in ten nights; the result of this will be that the experiments will show only one-tenth of the proportion of successes which were, as a matter of fact, attained. The difficulty may indeed be, to some extent, overcome by a sug¬ gestion from the agent that the dream to be i iS THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE remembered is the dream telepathically induced; and if telepathy is a fact this should operate to diminish the cause of failure, or apparent failure, just alluded to. Even then, however, we cannot he sure that the statistics are not erroneous. Experiments in which the subject cannot recall his experiences with accuracy, nor yet describe them at the moment of their occurrence, can only occupy a subordinate place in the psychical scheme. Not only is it difficult to make sure that all dreams are recalled, but it is even more difficult to recall the details even of those dreams which we know to have occurred. At the moment of waking perhaps they are, or seem to be, fresh in our memories, but almost before we have got pencil and paper to note them down they are gone. Some¬ times they are revived again in the evening. We all (or if not all, at any rate many of us) know that an inebriated subject will sometimes, like a som¬ nambulist, take an object and put it away; in his sober moments he quite fails to recall the fact, or if he recalls it, he forgets the locality in which the object is deposited. It is possible, however, to reawaken his memory of the incident by reducing him again to a state of inebriation. The same thing perhaps occurs, though to a less noticeable extent, in our transition from wakefulness to sleep, and vice versa. The facts of the dream, remem- TELEPATHIC DREAMS 119 berecl in the morning before we are fully awake, are recalled at night when we reach the same stage of sleepiness. But this naturally does not help us to record the dream; the cause which prevented us from doing so in the morning is there in the evening, and there is the additional difficulty that we are probably resigned to getting up in the morning, whereas in the evening we are very far from being anxious to rouse ourselves. Here too, perhaps, suggestion might be useful. So far as I know, no experiments of any import¬ ance in this direction have been tried, but it would be interesting to see how far suggestion succeeds in recalling to the ordinary person the dreams which have passed through his mind a few hours previously, only to be forgotten as soon as the full stream of waking consciousness begins to flow. Many coincidental dreams have, of course, been recorded. With them, however, we are not con¬ cerned. We have only to deal with the cases in which the dream was or appeared to be the out¬ come of a pre-arranged experiment. Allusion has already been made to the striking experiment recorded by Wesermann, and it will be recollected that the experiment was to have resulted in a dream of the lady whose apparition was seen by the two officers. The four other cases recorded by Wesermann are also of the same class, and in 120 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE their case nothing interfered with carrying out the trial as originally arranged. We have, however as remarked above, no certainty that Wesermann recorded his failures as well as his successes, and this virtually invalidates his narratives from the point of view of evidence, so far as the dream cases are concerned; the apparition is, of course, in a different class, for it was probably the only case of its kind. A long and interesting series of experiments tried by Dr. Ermacora, of Padua, with a child between three and four years old, are of some interest. 1 He was experimenting in 1892 with a medium for automatic writing and other phenomena. Accident suggested that a little girl, a cousin of the medium’s, of the age of three and a half, was a good telepathic subject, and Dr. Ermacora undertook a long series of trials, the object of which was to see how far a personality that manifested itself by automatic writing was able to induce telepathic dreams in the child. So far as Dr. Ermacora is concerned there is no reason to suppose that any precautions which he considered desirable to avoid verbal or other ordinary forms of suggestion were omitted. But he seems to have assumed the good faith of the medium and her relatives, and this in view of some experience in the matter seems to me to be un- 1 Proc. S.P.R. v. 255-308. TELEPATHIC DREAMS 121 desirable. Not only professional mediums but amateurs who have nothing to gain in a pecuniary sense from success or failure are quite capable of attempting, and do actually attempt, to deceive in¬ vestigators in a way that would be astonishing if it were less common. Although but few records of the experiments have been published, the telepathic trials between Dr. van Eeden and Mrs. Thompson cannot be passed over. Mrs. Thompson is a Hampstead lady, not a professional medium, whose trance phenomena are of great interest. Among other members of the S.P.R. who have had sittings with her is Dr. van Eeden, of Bussum, Holland. At the close of a series of sittings at the end of 1899 it was arranged that Nelly, a personality that appears, together with others, in Mrs. Thompson’s trance, should make an attempt to enter into communica¬ tion with Dr. van Eeden after his return to Holland. It should be mentioned that Dr. van Eeden has been in the habit of observing his dreams for a long time, and that he can carry out in his dreams actions which he has planned to execute. In pursuance of this scheme he made up his mind to call Nelly on the first occasion on which be had, what he terms, “ a clear dream,” that is, one in which his volition is sufficiently active to permit him to execute what he has previously planned. 122 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE The last sitting at which Dr. van Eeden was present in 1899 was held on December 4. On January 3 Dr. van Eeden recorded in his diary that on the previous night he had had a clear dream, and called Nelly. His account goes on: “ She appeared to me in the form of a little girl, rather plump and healthy-looking, with loose, light- coloured hair. . . . This was the second dream of the sort after my stay in England. The first oc¬ curred on December 11. In this dream I also tried to call Nelly, but it was no success.” The first point to be noted in connexion with this incident is that between December 4 and the night of January 2-3 five sittings at least had been held with Mrs. Thompson, and at none of them did Nelly make any remark about any summons from Dr. van Eeden. On January 5, however, she remarked, “ Tell Dr. van Eeden he kept calling me last night.” It is true there is a mistake of a day here, but it is easy to make too much of an error of this sort. For it should not be forgotten that Nelly is inaccurate with regard to dates, even when they relate to incidents of which she shows supernormal knowledge. (It is impossible to deal with this question here, however, at length. It must be postponed to a future volume on trance- mediumship.) The next point is that Dr. van Eeden describes TELEPATHIC DREAMS 123 Nelly as having light hair. Now at a sitting on November 29, at which Dr. van Eeden was present, Nelly had described herself as having black curly hair. The dream figure was therefore by no means what we should expect if Dr. van Eeden’s mind alone had been operative in producing it. At a later sitting Nelly, it is true, described her¬ self as having light hair (this was on January 18, so that it had nothing to do with Dr. van Eeden’s idea of Nelly). On a subsequent occasion Nelly, however, stated that the description of January 18 referred not to herself but to Elsie, another per¬ sonality who appears in Mrs. Thompson’s trances. (On this question see the reports of the sittings, Proc. S.P.R.j xvii. 113.) Whether this is so or not, the interesting point is that, on January 18, Nelly stated that Elsie had been to Dr. van Eeden in December, and that her description of Elsie, which was absolutely independent, so far as normally ac¬ quired knowledge goes, of Dr. van Eeden’s ac¬ count of his dream visitor, tallies with the latter, although Dr. van Eeden was expecting to see quite a different person. In the third place, Nelly stated on January 5 that Dr. van Eeden was in bed, alone, not with his wife, and that he was “ inside those curtains.” Dr. van Eeden writes that these particulars are correct; he was alone, and curtains, or rather 124 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE drapery, was before the bed. Slight therefore though the incident is, there are no material errors of de¬ tail, the only one being the post-dating of the dream, which is unimportant, whereas antedating would, of course, have been a fatal flaw. Dr. van Eeden’s next clear dream was on Jan¬ uary 15. At the sitting with Mrs. Thompson on the following day Nelly made no allusion to it, but on January 18 she stated that Elsie had told her before January 16 that “ Old Whiskers ” in the bed was calling her. Nelly’s reply was “ Bother Whiskers! You go,” and she added “ and very likely she did go.” In view of the fact that Nelly says she was told by another trance personality, it is of considerable interest that Dr. van Eeden accidentally, as he noted in his diary, began to call Elsie in his dream instead of Nelly. It is also worthy of note that this dream visitor appeared. This agrees with Nelly’s state¬ ment that she did not go. Trivial as the incidents may appear, they are evidentially important when we reflect how remote is the probability that Nelly would hit upon the dates and details by accident, and that Dr. van Eeden, on his side, would see a figure corresponding to Nelly’s description, though not to his own ex¬ pectation, on the one occasion out of three clear dreams when Nelly stated that a visit had been TELEPATHIC DREAMS 125 paid to him. As bearing on the possibility of co¬ incidence, it may be mentioned that after Dr. van Eeden had left England, and before the sitting at which his name was first mentioned, five, and before the next dream two, seances had been held. In other words, it was ten to one against the right dates being hit upon by chance. Unfortunately, the evidential value of the dream cases is diminished by subsequent ill-success. Though it can hardly be said that definite wrong statements were made, and Nelly showed on two occasions knowledge of Dr. van Eeden’s state of health, she did not succeed in giving any evidential details with regard to dream conversations, and this must, to some extent, diminish the value of the cases quoted above. Whatever be our conclusion with regard to the part played by the trance personalities in the pro¬ duction of the dreams, it cannot be denied that the experiments are interesting. How far the average man is likely to be able to control bis dreams, as Dr. van Eeden does, it is difficult to say. My own dreams are too few in number for me to make any progress in that direction, and perhaps in most cases the necessary patience will be found to be lacking. Probably most people would hardly be content to observe their dreams, and experiment for a long period with little or no result. F. W. H. 126 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE Myers has recorded that thrice only in the course of some 10,000 dreams was he able to control their course, and his interest in psychical investigation and patience in collecting material is shared by few. Even if some of my readers find themselves in a position to influence their sleeping thoughts, they will perhaps be at a loss how to experiment, for lack of a reliable medium with a trance per¬ sonality prepared to experiment. Although it might be worth while, in default of anything better, to utilize the services of an ordinary mortal whose life is uncomplicated by trances, a better plan will be to communicate with the S.P.R., who have more op¬ portunity of finding a co-experimenter of the right brand, and will doubtless welcome the opportunity of adding to their list of sane people with psychical interests and accomplishments. CHAPTER VIII EXPERIMENTS IN I9O2 Pictures — Colours—Diagrams I now turn to the experiments carried on in the rooms of the S.P.R., and mainly directed by myself. Up to the end of March 1902, they were conducted at 19, Buckingham Street, in the small room. The percipient and agent were about seven feet apart, facing in the same direction and separated by a double screen with cloth on one side and wall (?) paper on the other. There were two cupboards with glass doors, one on each side of the fireplace. The agent and percipient were so placed that neither could see the other reflected in either of these doors. With the exception of a picture over the fireplace, equally incapable of disclosing to the percipient the movements of the agent or the object he was con¬ templating, there was no other reflecting surface in the room to act as a disturbing element. The screen was close to my writing table, in such a position that I could watch both agent and per¬ cipient at the same time and hand to the former, without the knowledge of the latter, the object, card, 127 128 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE or diagram to be mentally transferred. In the record everything is noted which was said by the agent or any one acquainted with the object; other remarks, by myself for example, when I was only recording without a knowledge of what the agent was thinking of or looking at, are only noted when they bear on the experiment in the way of suggest¬ ing a remark by the percipient. The objects were in every case kept in closed boxes until the experiments began; they were then withdrawn from the box in such a position that they could not be seen by the percipient and were at once handed to the agent. At the close of the experi¬ ment (or of a series) the success or otherwise was announced, and the objects replaced in the boxes, and in the case of diagrams, colours, numbers or cards, thoroughly shuffled. In the case of the dia¬ grams they were, when not specially noted, prepared by myself before the experiments began; but in order to simplify the calculation of probabilities it may be assumed that the percipients were acquainted with them. The word “ chosen ” indicates that the object was intentionally selected, the word “ drawn ” that it was selected by lot or at random. The agent and percipient were, in all cases subse¬ quently dealt with, members or associates of the S.P.R. and, as a rule, already known to me person- PICTURES 129 ally. In several cases agent and percipient met for the first time at the experiments in which they took part. Pictures. The first experiment of those to be mentioned here, was tried on January 27, 1902; present—Miss T. (percipient), Messrs. W. W. Baggally (agent), J. JT Piddington and N. W. Thomas (recorder). Mr. Piddington arrived first, bringing with him, as I subsequently learnt, a copy of the Windsor Maga¬ zine, which he placed in a closed box behind the screen. The recorder did not, except when specially noted, see any object before the end of the experi¬ ment, and notes as to the object were, in each case, not made until after the experiment was over. The percipient took her seat with her back to the light in a low wicker chair, and was asked to look in a crystal ball. After seeing a figure she described a luminous appearance and went on, “ Now I see a sort of cloudy thing that might be a landscape, very indistinct. I can see a curious light in the centre; is that a reflection? [J.G.P.] Does it come through your landscape ? [Miss T.] Yes. There is a river and mountains, and a group of trees on the left. [N. W. T.] Your left? [Miss T.] Yes. [J. G. P.] Is one part more prominent? [Miss T.] No, it might be Alps or Lucerne where I have just been.” K 130 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE The scene had disappeared when Miss T. looked again, but immediately after she went on, “ Now it has come back to the landscape, snow peaks, the river clearer, rushing down, a group of cottages or houses towards the background on the left. [J. G. P.] Anything on the bank? [Miss T.] I was thinking I saw some boats on the bank, the one nearer me; it might be a lot of wood. [J. G. P.] Are you close to it? [Miss T.] There is a lot of foliage or something of that sort in the immediate foreground; the river is in the foreground, but further back. Those people—it’s very queer—it’s an exact copy of my brain; Eve seen the scene.” Up to this point, Miss T. was not aware that any thought transference was being attempted. Between the two descriptions reported above, J. G. P. showed N. W. T. the. cover of current number of the Windsor Magazine, holding it a few inches beyond the screen and putting it flat on the writing-table, where it remained for about five seconds. It was impossible for Miss T. to have seen it either directly or by reflection. Her eyes, too, were, as J. G. P. afterwards informed me, as a rule, closed. J. G. P. was, when he showed me the cover, on the same side of the screen as the agent, and was invisible from where Miss T. sat. The word Windsor was not mentioned nor any reference made to the object. As a matter of fact Mr. Piddington had, before [Plate II. WINDSOR CASTLE. PICTURES I 3 I the point at which the notes above quoted begins, handed Mr. Baggally the Windsor Magazine ; un¬ known to the recorder, Mr. Baggally, who was behind the screen, had been steadily gazing at the picture on the cover, here reproduced for compari¬ son (PI. II). It will hardly be denied that the re¬ semblance was striking; but this was not all. At 3.47, seventeen minutes after the experiment began, Miss T. took pencil and paper to try auto¬ matic writing. The trials were made without suc¬ cess, and one colour trial. At about 4 o’clock a diagram was tried, but the drawing was again with¬ out resemblance to the object. Later Miss T. closed her eyes to try to get visual impressions, and then remarked that she saw a lot of pictures, mentioning three—a field of wheat, a garden, and Windsor Castle, the latter being especially clear, with the river below. Two other experiments were then tried and re¬ sulted in failures. A comparison of the description with the illus¬ tration shows how close the resemblance was. It is, of course, impossible to estimate the probabilities in a case of this sort, hut the experiment seemed worth recording here in detail to show the sort of trial which good crystal gazers may with advantage make. Several further series of experiments were tried 132 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE with Miss T. in April and May, 1902, with varying success. The trials took place in the rooms of the Society, at 20, Hanover Square, W.; the agent and percipient were separated by a double cloth screen, six feet high, and the objects were kept in an American roll-top desk, and in closed boxes until the percipient was seated, and in such a position as not to be able to see what object was selected. Shorthand notes of descriptions by the percipient were taken by the Society’s shorthand writer, Miss Keates, and a record of the conditions of the ex¬ periment and of the objects was kept by myself or, in my absence, by another recorder. On April 23, eleven trials were made, four with pictures and seven with diagrams. The first picture selected was from Warne’s Easy A.B.C. Painting Book and was the right-hand half of the coloured picture to O; this represented a long¬ eared owl sitting on the branch of a tree growing from a trunk on the right of it, which was covered with ivy; in the background, a mass of high-trees, and behind them the moon represented as pure white without spots and partly concealed by them so as to be only semi-circular, in such a position as to form a halo round the owl’s head. Below the ivy in the foreground and between it and the margin of the page, was white uncoloured paper of a breadth of more than half an inch. One has the impression PICTURES 133 that the owl is high in the air. This picture was from a book bought some weeks previously, used for the experiment and then kept in the drawer of my secretaire until the experiment on the present occa¬ sion. It was taken from my secretaire by myself and handed to the agent, Mr. W. W. Baggally, who was already seated behind the screen. Miss Keates, who took the shorthand notes of all that was said, whether by Miss T. or any one else, and Mr. G. Musgrove, who was also present, remained in ignor¬ ance of what had been selected. Miss T. after seating herself facing Miss Keates, but, with her back to the light, to myself and to the agent, who was behind the screen, took the crystal and said, after a few minutes: “Well, it is very indis¬ tinct, but what it seems to me is a forest, very high trees in the foreground, and then there is a group of animals in it and there is a large-. There is a brilliant light in the centre of the picture, but T cannot make out what it is. It seems like the sun. [Rec. 1 ] What shape is it? [Miss T.] The shape of the Aurora Borealis. [Rec.] And is it uniformly white or what colour? [Miss T.] It is a white dazzling light, the centre is dark. It is so brilliant, it makes my eyes tired. It is quite in the back¬ ground. [Rec.] What is in the foreground, then? [Miss T.] Why, it’s like the sea, like a forest, trees ’ N. W. Thomas. 134 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE on one side and water in the front. [Ree.] Is there anything else you can see in the picture? [Miss T.] I have described everything I can see; there is a great deal more, it is very indistinct. Have you got a magnifying glass? (One brought.) Men, a group of men passing to one side of the picture. I rather think I must have seen it in South Africa. Now it is fading.” It will be seen that, with the exception of the animals at the beginning and the men at the end, the description is singularly accurate. Several points might have been further elucidated, but the per¬ cipient was in a dreamy condition and had to be questioned before she said anything. The picture faded before questions could be asked as to which side the trees were on, and what the dark mass in the centre of the light was. The following points were correctly described: the moon, with a dark object in the centre, in the background, not a complete circle but the shape of the Aurora (i.e. semicircular) ; the trees on one side in the foreground; possibly the white paper appears as water. The next two pictures were: L and D, both fail¬ ures. After a success with a diagram, described be¬ low, there was another unsuccessful picture, R, in the same book. On April 25, four experiments in crystal gazing were tried by Mrs. M. with Miss P. as agent. The PICTURES 135 'first object was a picture of a parrot on a bar with a seed box at each end. The only impression was that of “ a sort of long stalk with a bulb on the end of it.” This was correct as far as it went, but hardly entitles us to count the trial as even partially successful. The -next two trials resulted in the percipient seeing diagrams instead of pictures, and the last, though some resemblance could be traced, was equally unsuccessful. On April 29, Miss T. was again the percipient. Five trials were made with pictures. The first subject was the third coloured picture in Warne’s Merry Moments Painting Book, representing a river or narrow lake in the centre running at the foot of some hills in the right background. In the left foreground a child fishing, just behind her some bushes, no background. The book was purchased by myself on the day in question, and I reached the rooms simultaneously with Miss T. It was, however, put behind the screen unopened. Besides the agent, Mr. Baggally, Mr. Piddington saw the picture selected by myself. The conditions were as described before. Miss T. said, “ I get the impression of a figure; it is a figure. I cannot see whether it is a man or woman, but it is dressed in some sort of flowing drapery in the distance. It seems as if it were walking in front of a terrace; in the distance, there 136 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE is a slight suggestion of a man. It is a very-. There seems something walking into a room, rather into the interior of a palace. That melts away. There is a broad sheet of water, and there is a sky in the distance, and it is very bright on the horizon. That is all I see. [Rec.] Anything on the sheet of water? [Miss T.] Well there is something that looks vaguely like a ship, but that might he a suggestion by the water. It looks like a ship. Have you got a magnifying glass? I see something on the ship. The ship seems approaching nearer, and as it ap¬ proaches you can see something moving on it. I don’t know what it is. It is melting away.” The resemblance here cannot be called more than slight. The sheet of water, however, is correct, and the figure though displaced to the background is fairly described. The second, third, and fourth experiments were failures. Mrs. Thompson arrived during the experiment and went into the library, where she was joined by Mr. Piddington. It was arranged that she should act as agent. The object, the head on an Edward VII half-sovereign, was selected by J. G. Pidding¬ ton. N. W. Thomas, controlling the whole experi¬ ment, W. W. Baggally, and Miss Iveates taking notes of what Miss T. said, remained in ignorance of it until the experiment was over. PICTURES 137 Miss T. said: “ I can’t get a clear impression, I get the impression of a figure. It is very, very vague, much more vague than the others. It is so vague I can hardly tell whether it is a figure or an animal. That is all I get. There is one thing in the whole picture.” The picture developed into three figures subsequently, but this may be regarded as a normal occurrence with Miss T., whose crystal visions were almost invariably living pictures. There is possibly some connexion between the object and the im¬ pression, but the latter was too vague for any stress to be laid on it. On May 6, three experiments were tried, all fail¬ ures, with agent and percipient in different rooms. Two with another percipient also failed. On May 13, four experiments were tried under the same conditions. I11 the first the object was a pic¬ ture of an old man with a load of faggots, shaking hands with a young girl. Miss T. saw in the crystal a figure which might have been a bear on its hind legs. The second was a failure. The third was a picture of a small building with a circular tower at one end, that had a curious peaked roof like an extinguisher; on the right was another building, and the immediate foreground was white. Miss T. said, “ This looks like a building on a hill, and a lake in front, whether it is a church I cannot see. It is a mass of buildings, very like a scene in Switzer- 138 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE land.” The resemblance was not close, bnt it was not altogether absent. In the fourth experiment, Miss T. saw one tall object going up to a sharp point. The object actually was Snowdon from Portmadoc, but the description was perhaps a continuation of that in the previous experiment, a postponed impression of the tower. Several short series of experiments with pictures were tried at Buckingham Street, in February and March, with various percipients. Of four trials on February 28, the only one worthy of note was that with the picture of the owl described above (p. 132). The percipient, Miss P., saw in the crystal “ a figure of some sort; rather like a woman, oldish, something on her head, a sort of cap. Like a caricature.” This can perhaps hardly be regarded as a success, hut, on the other hand, the owl as a caricature of an old woman is not a far-fetched idea, and the cap is supplied by the moon surrounding the head of the bird. The same picture was used a week later with an¬ other percipient, Mrs. C., who, between two failures, described “ a man’s head on a pillow, about 50 or 60, with a beard.” The resemblance is at best very remote, but possibly the moon suggested the pillow. On the same day a picture series was tried, with Mrs. Verrall and Miss P.as agents. The only approx- COLOURS 139 imation to a success in the six trials with pictures was when Miss P. mentioned the letter B in con- g nexion with a picture marked, unknown to her, —. 4i Experience shows that estimates of probabilities differ very widely in cases where exact statistical methods are not available. I therefore refrain from summing up the net results of such experiments, both here and later. It is perhaps worthy of note that some success was attained with the owl picture on each occasion it was used. Colours At various times a number of trials with colours were made. These experiments are much com¬ plicated by the difficulty which most percipients have in naming the colours they see. There are, as a matter of fact, at least 360 names of colours in Engl ish, probably more if names derived from flowers and other natural objects are included. In some of the experiments a numbered sheet of colours corresponding to those used by the agent was hung before the percipient; and this was found to work well in some cases. The matter is further complicated by possible influence of secondary colours and after images, though such influence was not traced in any individual case. Another source of difficulty is that the agent did not always 140 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE see the colours in a bright light. The result of this was to deaden them; on one occasion, for example, bronze was described by the percipient as sepia brown. I was preparing to mark this down a failure, but the agent said that in the dull light the bronze was almost exactly the colour named by the percipi¬ ent. Under, these circumstances the trial was counted as a success. Twenty-one trials were made on various occasions with cards of the following colours—red, blue, bronze, yellow, green, black cross. Of these trials a brightish red was described as pink by one percipient; another percipient saw pink, then some¬ thing dark, and yellow (this was counted a failure) ; canary yellow was given as yellow; mauve, as blue, red as pink, and brown as brown; on a subsequent occasion the same percipient failed four successive times. On May 13, Miss T. made four trials, the agents and percipient being in different rooms. Red was again described as pink; a rainbow effect with pre¬ vailing colour violet was seen when blue would have been correct; a bright yellow dog was seen when one agent had yellow, the other bronze; the fourth trial was a failure. If we count the red = pink as a success, and it should be noted that all the percipients agreed in get¬ ting the impression of pink when the agent was look- COLOURS 141 ing at this colour, with which there were no failures, other than such misdescription as is involved in call¬ ing it pink, we have 6 complete successes, and two partial successes out of 21 trials, the rainbow effect being counted a failure. The expectation was y/ 2 . On the same day a series of trials took place in a studio, with four percipients. The only one of these to get results above expectation was Miss P., who was also markedly successful in the diagram trials to be described later. With myself as agent she named a card of the next shade to the one required, 5 times out of 20 trials, and a card of the same colour, but more remote shade, 5 times more, the total number of colours being 20, arranged in 4 rows, and the expectation in each case, therefore, 3 and 2U>. Twenty trials with other agents were, on the whole, failures. The conditions were here quite satisfactory, as the agent was seated in a gallery, and though his voice was audible to the percipients, he was quite invisible. A sheet of colours, numbered to corre¬ spond with those used by the agent, who drew coloured cards at random, served to identify the percipient’s impressions. The colours in this series were not the same as those previously described. They included several shades of red, blue, yellow, green, brown, grey, etc. 142 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE Diagrams and Nuaibers As in the case of pictures, a statistical discussion of the success or failure of trials with diagrams is, in the nature of things, impossible. 1 In the first place, no exhaustive enumeration of all possible diagrams can be made; we have not therefore any basis on which to calculate the number from which a selection might be taken to be made. In the second place, it frequently happens that the reproduction contains a sufficient number of the elements of the original diagram to enable us to see a resemblance, even when the trial is not com¬ pletely successful. But pari passu with the intro¬ duction of alien elements, or the elimination of the original elements, arises the difficulty of deter¬ mining how far, if at all, the trial has been success¬ ful, and how far the presence of a few points of re¬ semblance is due to coincidence; for it must be noted that the number of independent elements is very few, and the complexity of a thought trans¬ ference diagram is limited, far more than is the case with a picture of which many details are known and need not be specially noted by the agent, such as for example, the lines and shading 1 If we assume that all the diagrams were known to the percipient, and deal only with complete successes, statisti¬ cal methods are available; but this excludes much of the evidence. DIAGRAMS 143 that go to suggest water in motion, by the power of the agent to grasp it in its entirety and by the power of the percipient to reproduce it correctly, almost, if not entirely, from memory. Only by facsimiles of the originals and reproduc¬ tions is it possible to put the evidence forward in such a manner that every one can judge for himself and add to or deduct from the estimate of the writer. The diagrams used in these experiments were, firstly, a series of diagrams drawn by myself, ten in number, on March 7, together with a single printed diagram, and seventy-five in number, on subsequent occasions; and secondly, diagrams drawn (not in the same room, in order to avoid subconscious perception of the character of the drawing) by the agent. This second class was of course liable to the objection that, apart from a diagram-habit, a series of similar diagrams might be drawn by both agent and percipient owing to a train of ideas being suggested by external circumstances. At the same time it should be remembered, in estimating the value of such experiments, that possibility is not probability, far less certainty. The drawings made by the agents were shut up in a large diary, before they entered the room, and I satisfied myself in each case that the diagram remained in the book until the agent 144 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE was seated behind the screen. The other diagrams, B B . . , termed —, — , etc., were m a box until the com- I 2 mencement of the experiments and were, except in the fifth experiment, drawn from the box at ran¬ dom. From the third trial onwards on March 7 the success and failure was known to the percipient as well as the agent, and the diagram was shown ill each case as soon as the individual experiment was ended. The percipient usually closed her eyes until she got an impression, and then reproduced it in pencil on numbered sheets of paper. Each ex¬ periment took from a minute and a half for the first set to two minutes for ten others, including the drawing of the diagrams. Turning to the individual trials on March 7, at 19, Buckingham Street, with Mrs. Verrall as per¬ cipient, Miss P. as agent and N. W. Thomas as recorder, we find a slight resemblance in the first, and a stronger resemblance in the fourth experi¬ ment ; the sixth was completely right; in the third only one of the tails has got into the picture, and that separated from the main portion; the agent remarked afterwards she felt as if she must draw a circle round the diagram; in the fifth ex- jg periment I accidentally exposed diagram — in sight of the percipient, and she said, “ Give me that [Plate III. B £> , 1 t 1 TRIALS ON MARCH 7TH. A. MRS. verrall's DRAWINGS. B. DIAGRAMS USED BY AGENT. [Reduced to one-half .] lo face p. 144. B 4 TRIALS ON MARCH 7TH. L> 2. 1 . a, b. miss p/s drawings. 2 . diagrams used by agents. B 4 . 1 . a, b. do 2 . diagram used by agent. [Same size as original.] To face p. 145. DIAGRAMS M5 one ”; I gave her, however, — ; the diagram 1 4 g reproduced was, however, — , and it can hardly be regarded as accidental that the agent had seen it. The second experiment is virtually a failure, save that the reproduction includes only straight lines and is roughly rectangular, like the diagram. Miss P. now took Mrs. Verrall’s place and the diagrams were drawn by the agents as before de¬ scribed. The first experiment was a failure. In g the second 2 a portion of the diagram — was given correctly; Mrs. Verrall had numbered it, before entering the room, and enclosed the number in a circle; she said subsequently she felt sure this would be a bother; possibly it may account for the small circle near the cross of the diagonal. Un¬ known to the percipient, I took from the box diagram — and tried a duplex experiment; Miss P. remarked, “ I can see two things,” and was told to draw them both. The third trial resulted in a reproduction that seems obviously an after image g 1 For — , see PI. VII. The series is reproduced on PI. III. 6 2 The figures marked a and b are Miss P.’s reproductions; B the figure marked 2 is Mrs. Verrall’s and the last one is L 146 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE from i and 2. The fourth experiment had a curious issue; instead of taking a second diagram, I looked, without telling the percipient, at Mrs. VerraH’s diagram, and then turned to get a diary as a book- rest for Mrs. Verrall; the first reproduction con¬ tained the diagram in duplicate, the reversal of one of the images, as seen by the percipient suggests that the phenomenon of reversal depends on some peculiarity in the agent; it is not impossible that the second refers to the diary, but no stress can be laid on this. The fifth experiment was as good as a failure. For trials 2 and 4 see PI. IV. The next set of four trials with Miss P. as agent were virtually all failures. A sickle shaped figure in the first was a reproduction of a portion of the diagram, and in the third experiment the idea present in my mind of a long-tailed cat seated and seen from behind may have influenced the result (a mushroom was drawn), but the resem¬ blance is, in any case, very slight. On March 24 a further series of 50 with the same ladies as agent and percipient was tried. The diagrams, 75 in number, were made up of the ten previously used and 65 additional ones drawn by N. W. Thomas in the interval. Except in the trials from 31 to 50, the recorder saw the diagram which he handed to the agent, after drawing it at random from the box. Miss P. was the first per- one-half of original .] [Reduced to two-thirds of original .] TRIALS ON MARCH 24TH. A. MISS P. S DRAWINGS. B. DIAGRAMS USED BY AGENT. DIAGRAMS i47 eipient. The first two reproductions were failures; the third was nearly right, and the fourth merely an improvement on the third and quite unconnected with the actual diagram. The fifth was wrong; the sixth, of which Mrs. VerralFs impression was “ A V with a tail and something looking at it,” was partly right; the seventh and eighth were failures; the ninth resulted in a preliminary failure—no impression; a duplex trial was then made and a double impression resulted, one of which resembled one of the diagrams; in the tenth a duplex trial was again made and resulted in a single impression, a part of which bore a slight resemblance to the diagram. For this series see PI. V. 1 In one series of 10 both Miss P. and Mrs. Verrall acted as percipients, and N. W. Thomas as agent. I11 the first of the series both were, independently, partly right, but Miss P. alone met with further success. On the whole the 60 trials, six of which were duplex, resulted in a much lower percentage of success than the former series, the results being: completely right, o; half right or more, 6; partly right, 11; some resemblance, 8; and complete 1 This first series is reproduced as a specimen taken at random to show the general character of the impressions, and the approximation between diagram and impression and to show also that slight resemblances are not unduly emphasized. 3 and 6 were counted a single success between them, 9 as partly R and 10 as some resemblance. 148 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE failures, 41. In two cases postponed successes were obtained, the diagram not having been seen by the percipient in the meantime nor mentioned. The net result of the two series was: Right, 4; half right or more, 8; partly right, 13; some re¬ semblance, 9; wrong, 50 out of 84 trials, including 8 duplex experiments, of which one was completely successful. At the close of the trials an experiment on novel lines was made. Both Miss P. and Mrs. Verrall are good visualizers and reproduce their visualiza¬ tions easily. Laying a watch with a second hand upon my table, I asked them to draw their mental pictures for the next five minutes, which I would mark by calling out at the close of each. In the fifth minute, without saying anything to either, I took two diagrams with the intention of influenc¬ ing them. Mrs. Verrall drew in succession (1) a nonsense word (? English), (2) three Greek words, (3) a circle and an H with a labyrinthine figure between, (4) two Latin words, and (5) a house. Miss P.’s drawings are reproduced on PI. VI. Although the resemblance may not be very close it can hardly be denied that a resemblance is present, to the second of the above figures especially. It should be noted that nothing re¬ sembling them had been drawn previously, the [Plate VI. 2 C*0 Ot|c005|OHN Cards. to Cards. O «o »p « <4 C H 5 N vO v£5 M COM fO vO O to ro Percipient.- AC JK Thomas. All days. Bad days. * Cards below expec¬ tation . Nos. Suits Good days. Nos. above expec¬ tation . Suits C o •2 y •tJ ° C *4 rt £ ^ ; 3 -| n bfl X) So V) ^3 •s-|£ - U C c c 2 £gs HH O »- .C ° JU .2 (0 c M si rt S| S o «•- 3 *- rt "»c •a rt g * a ~ ~ rt ~ w J 3 ^000 rt _ .5 OJ 71 " “S§S3 -3 ■Seg.s e u rt-2 . ° S .-5 x £ Ox 3 £ c O a; >s ~ rt C ■a -'g !2 T1 -E, <*> ssfl** «--rRg P ^ u x S c 2^ 1/1 ^ c rt.- rt O w u •5 73 in °*'Z S K.g.S’g CD „ rt C ~ _c SSS^o O — O M o 'P .a a 8 or 1 ., ti£> c< THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE Suits. X X X X X o Remarks. Nos. X o X X X Cards. o X x x a Suits. ■'T CClH TrtN-*fcOIC|C« HrtT*^0r4H u 3 in O) c. o a £ — 19 & & Cards. c|e*Hrt m r T H Mtoa*c Trials. 1^. O' CO try n n O in N K « N NOO cn co to ivy iv> co O