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Remarks on Professor Peirce’s Paper
| December 1887 | Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research |
BY EDMUND GURNEY
The foregoing review has been to me a source of genuine pleasure and profit; not so much in respect of the special points which the writer raises,—though my pleasure is not diminished by the sense that on most of these his objections can be fairly met,—as on account of the business-like and thorough spirit in which he has gone to work. Criticism, as my colleagues and I should allow, and even insist, is what the exponents of every new doctrine must expect; and in the case of a doctrine so new to science as telepathy, the criticism cannot be too searching. But, on this subject, searching criticism is as rare as loose and hasty comment is the reverse. The world is roughly divided into two parties,—those who will not so much as look seriously at any of the alleged facts, and those who swallow them all wholesale. Thus the evidence is either wholly neglected, or is admitted without due warrant, and discredited by being mixed up with all sorts of baseless rumors and uncritical fancies. One person recognizes no difference between the strongest case that can be adduced and some anonymous “ghost-story,” and would accept telepathy or any other marvel on the score of a few third-hand reports or vague personal experiences. Another turns away from the facts in whatever strength accumulated, on the ground that they are à priori impossible or unprovable. Both are equally remote from the rational scepticism which alone is the proper attitude for approaching psychical investigation. Apart from such an attitude of mind, no treatment of the subject, whether constructive or critical, can be of any value; and here Mr. Peirce and I are wholly at one. But, in an inquiry so novel and difficult, it is likely that two persons, even though they both begin as rational sceptics, will develop differences of opinion; and it is at least equally likely that they will both make mistakes. Thus, some of Mr. Peirce’s strictures depend (as I shall hope to show) on distinct errors and misconceptions, while others appear to me to be unreasonable and overstrained. On the other hand, he has pointed out some errors on my part; and in so doing, and generally in enabling me to make the present apologia, he has done me a valuable service.
Mr. Peirce prefaces his detailed criticisms with a more general remark which cannot be quite passed over. Referring to Phantasms of the Living, Chap. XIII, he objects to the “enormous odds ciphered out in favor of the hypothesis of ghosts,”—more correctly, to the enormous improbability that a certain series of coincidences were due to chance alone—as calculated to “captivate the ignorant,” but to “repel thinking men, who know that no human certitude reaches such figures as trillions or even billions to one.” It is as well to be accurate, even at the risk of repelling “thinking men.” But most thinking men, whose thoughts have been directed to the subject of probabilities, will, I imagine, support me in dissenting from Mr. Peirce’s view. There are many cases of practically absolute certitude, where the actual degree of certitude can be measured. For instance, if dice turned up sixes a hundred times running, which could any day be made to happen, the mathematical probability that the dice were not both evenly weighted and honestly thrown would reach a figure higher than those which have offended Mr. Peirce.
To proceed now at once to his numbered list of objections.
1st. Case 199. The discovery that this incident occurred as long ago as April, 1873, was only made after the work was printed off. (That it was made so late was partly due to a very rare accident—a misspelling of a name in the Register of Deaths at Somerset House. Much time was wasted in the search there, before it occurred to me to apply to the Coroner.) The date has been rectified in the “Additions and Corrections”; and it was careless of me not to remember, when this was done, that the case had been included in the list in Chap. XIII, so as to have added a warning in reference to that list. But, of course, the limitation of the list to cases occurring in a period of twelve years, starting from Jan. 1, 1874, was purely arbitrary. Had a period of thirteen years, starting from Jan. 1, 1873, been selected instead, the numerical argument would not have suffered appreciably, if at all.
Case 355. The inclusion of this case was a bad blunder, for which I take the fullest blame. My eye was misled by the date in the first line of the account; but that, of course, is no excuse.
2nd. This objection seems to me fallacious. We can scarcely doubt that our number of cases would have been increased had we prosecuted our search during the whole period (1874–85), instead of during the last quarter of it only. Had we done so, I should still have been perfectly justified in representing the size of the group of persons to whom we had had access by the number of them all alive at any one time—say half a million—though the half-million would not have throughout consisted of the same individuals. The reason why this would have been legitimate is that in the calculation the whole population is similarly treated. Of course a much larger number of persons are alive during some portion of a period of twelve years than are simultaneously alive on the day of it when the census is taken. And if the group of half a million were increased so as to allow for persons becoming adults during the period, and thus joining the group (so to speak) at one end while others died off it at the other, the size of the whole population would have to be reckoned in a similar way; and the two increases would balance each other in the calculation, which would only be made more complex without being made more correct. Thus any case of percipience within the given period (where the evidence which reaches us is on a par with first-hand (see Vol. I, p. 148)) may be legitimately included, even though the percipient be dead, if it is practically certain that we should equally have obtained it direct from the percipient, had he or she survived. This applies to three of the four cases which Mr. Peirce cites (his number 237, is, I suppose, a mistake for 238). Cases 170 and 695 were obtained through private channels, and Case 238, though our first knowledge of it was due to a published account, would have been at once procured at first-hand from the percipient had we been at work in 1876. The receipt of Case 214, however, was due to a newspaper-appeal of our own, which it is not certain that the deceased percipient would have independently seen and acted on, had it been published during her lifetime; and as, moreover, it is only by straining a definition (as I have pointed out) that this case can be regarded as on a par with first-hand, it would be best to drop it from the list.
3rd. Case 184. Mr. Peirce says that the percipient “seems to have hallucinations nearly every day.” He has had only one other hallucination in his life. This occurred many years ago, in his boyhood, and represented a vague, unrecognized figure. But the list is confined to cases where the appearance was recognized; and the only subjective hallucinations which have to be considered per contra are those presenting the same characteristic. The other experiences from the same informant, Nos. 21, 38, 56, have, in the first place, been coincidental, and have a fair claim to be considered telepathic; and, in the second place, have not been hallucinations at all. They have conveyed no impression of external reality, but are distinctly described as impressions and “mind’s-eye” visions, parallel to those which a good visualizer can summon up at will. Thus Mr. Peirce’s objection is doubly out of place.
Case 175. The percipient draws a distinct line between the experience which he here describes and those which he has had without any coincidence. In the latter he “quite believes he was asleep,”—i.e., there is no ground for regarding them as hallucinations at all, in the sense in which I throughout employ the word.
As regards Cases 173 and 298, Mr. Peirce’s use of the plural “other hallucinations” is misleading. Each of the two percipients has had one other hallucination, and neither of these was of a nature to affect the legitimacy of including their cases in the list. The narrator of Case 173 had once seen an unrecognized figure, which seems curiously to have corresponded in aspect with a person who, unknown to her, had recently died in the room in which it appeared; but it has been impossible to obtain corroboratory evidence of this incident. The other hallucination of the narrator of Case 298 was not visual.
4th. The percipient in Case 29 was in perfect health. (Query—Is it Case 28 that Mr. Peirce means, where the percipient “had a headache”? If so, does he really consider that such a condition at the end of a day’s work amounts to not being “in good health”?)
Case 201. The percipient says, “I had been in ill-health for some years, but at that time was stronger than I ever was in my life, the warm climate suiting me—so well that I felt a strength and enjoyment of life for its own sake, which was a delight to me.” Many of us would be glad enough to be “not in good health” on these terms.
Case 202. The percipient had been ordered to rest and do no work. But hers was not a condition which would have prevented me from counting her hallucination against my argument, as a purely subjective specimen, had she happened to be included in the census, and had no coincidental event occurred.
Case 214. The percipient’s illness succeeded the vision.
In Case 174, the percipient, Miss P., was still “far from well,” having recently had a distinct attack of illness; and in Case 702, the percipient, Mr. G., was weak but convalescent after fever. My information on the subject of hallucinations does not lead me to suppose that there was anything in Mr. G.’s state especially favorable to an experience of the sort; as to Miss P., I cannot tell. Unless their state was so favorable,—indeed, unless visual hallucinations, representing recognized figures, are markedly common in such states—which is certainly, I think, not the fact—the cases remain very striking ones. There would, of course, be some force in Mr. Peirce’s objection, if my census-list of non-coincidental hallucinations would have been considerably larger than it is but for the condition as to health (or as to anxiety—see his 5th objection). But I have explained (p. 7) that the interrogatories were put in separate parts—questions as to the person’s bodily or mental state at the time of the experience being kept separate from the question as to the fact of the experience; and the number of yeses struck off the list used in the computation, on the ground of an exceptional bodily or mental state at all comparable to that which existed in a few of the coincidental cases, amounted at most to two or three.
5th. I cannot admit the objection in more than one of the cases referred to, and only partially in that one.
The percipient in Case 702 says, “I had no idea of the lady’s being ill, and had neither been anxious about her nor thinking about her.”
The percipient in Case 174 was not personally intimate with the gentleman who died; and, though she was “aware that he was in a critical condition,” she says, “At the time of his death he had been quite out of my thoughts and mind.”
The percipient in Case 182 “had not been thinking about her [the girl who died] at all; she was an acquaintance and neighbor, but not an intimate friend.”
The percipient in Case 184, having absolutely no ground for anxiety, was naturally not anxious. This boy was perfectly well when he parted from him, and he had since received excellent accounts of him, including an “assurance of the child’s perfect health,” within three days of the experience described.
The percipient in Case 28 knew that his friend had had an attack of indigestion, and had been given some medicine for it by a chemist. A medical man “thought he wanted a day or two of rest, but expressed no opinion that anything was serious”; and even this not very appalling professional diagnosis did not come to the percipient’s knowledge till afterwards.
The percipient in Case 195 was not expecting the death of a relative who “had been ailing for years,” and whose “death occurred rather suddenly.” The attitude of mind of young persons towards chronic invalids whom they are not personally tending, and whose death is not held to be imminent, is too habitual and continuous, and not sufficiently exciting or abnormal, to be fairly described as anxiety, for the purpose of the present argument.
A similar remark applies in Case 27. The percipient had heard two months before that his friend had a complaint which was likely sooner or later to be fatal, but was “in no immediate apprehension of his death.” No more had been heard of him, and the fact that “his name had not been mentioned for weeks” between Mr. R. and his wife is a tolerably conclusive sign that he was not occupying a foremost position in their thoughts. I can scarcely think Mr. Peirce seriously believes that the hallucination here was due to anxiety.1
In Case 172, the percipient says that her friend “had been for some time seriously ill, and I was anxious about her, though I did not know that death was near.” Here again, though the word “anxious” is used, the anxiety, such as it was, was chronic, not acute; and I certainly should not have felt justified in making such a condition of mind the ground for not reckoning the hallucination, had it happened to fall on the other side of the account, as a non-coincidental instance.
As regards Case 231, I can only quote my own remark,—that it would be pedantic to apply the hypothesis that anxiety may produce purely subjective hallucinations “to cases which occur in the thick of a war, where the idea of death is constant and familiar. In such circumstances, the mental attitude caused by the knowledge that a comrade is in peril seems scarcely parallel to that which similar knowledge might produce among those who are sitting brooding at home. At any rate, if anxiety for the fate of absent comrades be a natural and known source of hallucinations during campaigns, it is odd that, among several hundreds of cases of subjective hallucination, I find no second instance of the phenomenon.”
In Case 240, the percipient, Mrs. E., knew the person whose face she saw to be ill, but “did not know he was so near death.” They were not on friendly terms at the time, and there was probably no anxiety; but the sick man lived only five miles off, and it is possible that Mrs. E.’s mind reverted to him more frequently than to other absent acquaintances. It might be safer, therefore, to drop this case from the list.
Anxiety is clearly a condition which admits of all degrees, while at the same time it cannot be accurately measured; but all that logic demands is that coincidental cases should be excluded when the anxiety was acute enough to be regarded with any probability as the sufficient cause of the hallucination. A person who has been for some time ill, but whose condition has not been seriously dwelt on, is in fact not a bit more likely to be represented in a friend’s hallucination than the friend’s most robust acquaintance. Such, at any rate, is the conclusion to which a wide study of subjective hallucinations has led me. And, to be on the safe side, I have included in the purely subjective group (any increase of which, of course, tells against my argument) “several cases where there was such an amount of anxiety or expectancy on the part of the hallucinated person as would prevent us, if it were present in a coincidental case, from including such a case in our telepathic evidence.”
6th. Case 175. Mr. Peirce ought to have quoted a few additional words: “I only am sure that as the figure disappeared [N.B., not after it disappeared] I was as wide awake as I am now.”
Case 195. Surely a second-hand informant’s use of the word “dream” cannot weigh against the “while yet fully awake” of the percipient, and her statement that she “sat up to see what it was,” and looked round the room to discover if the appearance could be due to some reflection.
Case 702. I cannot understand Mr. Peirce’s remark, which contradicts the percipient’s emphatic statement. He most expressly distinguishes the dream from the waking experience.
Case 28. The “nap” is an inference of Mr. Peirce’s from the fact that the percipient had just leaned back on the couch. The inference is incorrect, and surely ought not to have been put forward as though it was a fact which appeared in the evidence.
Still more inexcusable is the assertion that the percipient in Case 201 was napping. She was reading Kingsley’s Miscellanies, and she says: “I then [i.e., after the apparition] tested myself as to whether I had been sleeping, seeing that it was 10 minutes since I lay down. I said to myself what I thought I had read, began my chapter again, and in 10 minutes had reached the same point.”
In saying that “it is difficult to admit any case where the percipient was in bed,” Mr. Peirce has apparently not observed that similar non-coincidental cases, where the hallucinated person was in bed, but awake, have been reckoned on the other side of the account. (See Vol. II, p. 12, second note.) It is not less legitimate, and decidedly more instructive, to admit such cases on both sides than to reject them on both sides. It is worth adding—what Mr. Peirce has not perceived—that for purposes of comparison with the census-cases, the question is not whether people were awake, but whether they believed they were awake.
7th. Case 170. I have myself drawn attention to the peculiarity of this experience, as regards recognition. The case, however, is one which I am inclined to drop from the list, for a reason which will appear later.
Case 201. Mr. Peirce has misquoted the account. He makes the percipient say, “I could not say who it was.” Her words are, “I knew the face quite well, but could not say whose it was, but the suit of clothes impressed me strongly as being exactly like one which my husband had given to a servant named Ramsay the previous year.” She suggests what seems a very reasonable explanation of the fact that the face, though familiar, did not at once suggest its owner.
Case 236. I cannot think on what Mr. Peirce founds his assertion—which is contrary to the fact—that the percipient had been shown the testimony of a second witness. She states clearly that the apparition reminded her of her brother; and this is independently confirmed by another person to whom she described her experience immediately after it occurred.
Case 249. The important point is surely not how much of a figure is seen, but whether it is unmistakably recognized.
Case 697. Mr. Peirce’s remark is again contrary to the facts. The percipient had not heard of Z.’s death when she announced that it was his face that she had seen. Most readers would, I think, infer this from the printed account, which I had not perceived to be ambiguous.
8th. Case 26. I am obliged to differ from Mr. Peirce in respect both of what he thinks unlikely, and of what he thinks likely. He thinks it unlikely that the percipient should have told his friends of his experience on one day, Friday, and have searched the local paper on the next day, Saturday. But he did both things on the earliest opportunity, the local paper not being published till Saturday. Mr. Peirce thinks it likely, on the other hand, that when he said “About 2 o’clock on the morning of October 21,” which was a Friday, he meant “the night of Friday at 2 A.M.,” i.e., 2 o’clock on the morning of Saturday. Now, had he made the statement which Mr. Peirce incorrectly attributes to him, “The vision occurred on Friday, at 2 A.M.,” there might be some ground for this view; for “Friday at 2 A.M.” is a phrase which one could imagine to be laxly used for 2 A.M. on the night of Friday-Saturday. But the use of the precise phrase “on the morning of,” which Mr. Peirce suppresses, and the giving of the day of the month, not of the week, surely makes a veiy distinct difference. On what ground can it be held that a person is likely to say “2 o’clock on the morning of October 21,” when he means “2 o’clock on the morning of October 22”?
Case 170. I agree that the degree of exactitude in the coincidence is here doubtful, and I would drop the case from the list in consequence.
Case 182. I do not think that there is much doubt here, as the date of the percipient’s experience was particularly remarked at the time, and might well be remembered for a month.
Case 197. I have myself pointed out that it is possible that the limit was exceeded by some hours. But two or three such cases may, I think, fairly be included in the estimate, considering what the object and upshot of the estimate is. The reader may of course be trusted to perceive that had the arbitrary limit been fixed at twenty-four hours instead of twelve, the overwhelming character of the odds against chance would remain. The precise figures would differ, according as a limit of six, twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four hours was selected; but considering that any selection, with the calculation based on it, would lead us to the same conclusion, I see nothing misleading in the inclusion of a case where the interval may have exceeded the actually selected lower limit, provided that it is equally likely not to have done so, and provided due warning is given. These remarks apply equally to Cases 201 and 231.
Case 195. It ought to have been stated that the percipient returned home almost immediately after—she and her mother think the very day after—the death, thereby missing a letter which was sent to her, and finding her grandmother dead. She would thus only have to carry her memory back a day or two to identify the date of her vision with that of the death.
Case 202. The percipient distinctly states that she saw the announcement of the death “two or three days” after her experience; to which, therefore, there is again a very high probability that she assigned the right date.
A similar remark applies to Case 237, where the percipient heard of the death “a day or so after” her experience. The interval certainly cannot have been much longer, as she saw her dead friend before the funeral.
In Case 214 we are told that the percipient “noted the day and the hour”; but the testimony to this effect is second-hand, and there was no written note, so that here there is reasonable ground for doubt as to the closeness of the coincidence. The case has been already dropped from the list for another reason; as also has Case 355, where, however, the coincidence, on the evidence, was extremely close.
Case 199. Mr. Peirce says that “the vision occurred, if at all, on a Saturday; the death on a Wednesday.” This seems unwarranted. The narrator thought that both the vision and the death had been on a Saturday, but he recollects and says nothing which independently marks the day of the week of the vision. Why is it to be assumed that his memory is right as to the quite uninteresting and little noticeable point of the day of the week, and wrong as to the extremely interesting and noticeable point that the day of the two events was the same? The fact remains, however, that he has made one definite mistake; and the probability that the closeness of the coincidence has been exaggerated in memory seems here sufficiently appreciable to condemn the case for the purpose of this particular list—even had not its retention been made impossible by its having occurred before 1874, as already stated.
Case 702. Mr. Peirce says, “The date given for the apparition differs from that of the death by one day.” This is contrary to the fact. The apparition is stated to have taken place on June 11, the day of the death; and as the death occurred in England at 5:20 A.M., and the apparition in Jamaica at a few minutes past 12 A.M., the coincidence of hour would be extraordinarily close if the coincidence of day is correctly remembered. Mr. Peirce’s next sentence conveys a totally false impression. In conversation with me, Mr. G. said that he fancied the date of the two events had been June 15, but that he could not be sure of this till he referred to the letter. What he was sure of was the identity of the two dates, which, according to his account, was noted both by his friend and himself with special care. Mr. Peirce’s way of putting it would imply that there was some independent reason—apart from Mr. G.’s idea that the 15th was the date of the coincidence—for believing that the 15th was the day of the apparition. But this is not the case; and surely it is obvious that correctness of memory as to a very striking coincidence does not necessarily involve infallibility as to the perfectly insignificant point on what particular day of the month the coincidence fell.
9th. Case 202. “The percipient, who is excessively near-sighted,”—this is Mr. Peirce’s version of the sentence, “She is short-sighted, but wears suitable glasses, and was wearing them on this occasion.” “This person’s head was turned away,”—this is his version of “I saw only the three-quarter face.” He has omitted to notice the improbability, specially pointed out in the account, that a lady of flesh and blood should be wearing a seal-skin jacket in August, and also the fact that the bonnet was recognized; nor does he seem to have remarked the importance of the recognition of the child, which tells strongly against the hypothesis of mistaken identity.
Case 249 (I presume that this is the case meant, though the number given is 201). Most readers of the whole case will, I think, agree with me that, if the facts are correctly stated, mistaken identity is a highly improbable explanation. And I cannot think that it is much helped by the hypothesis of the facetious and then conscience-stricken boy. If that hypothesis be adopted, however, I would venture to suggest the further feature of stilts, both as adding to the humor of the “Christmas joke,” and as probably necessary in order to enable the boy’s head (which he would naturally have practised before a mirror in the method of Mr. X’s “peculiar droop”) to be visible above the wall.
10th. Case 350. One of Mr. Peirce’s suppositions contradicts what is plainly stated in the account—that it was not known that the woman was dying, or in any way near death. She was a chronic invalid. I cannot guess how Mr. Peirce knows that she had cancer, which is nowhere mentioned. The hypothesis of the skull is quite inconsistent with M. J. F.’s and Mrs. R.’s evidence. I may add that “looking in and smiling at the girls” is rather a free version of “trying to look in,” which is the expression used in the account.
11th. Case 355 has been already excluded on the ground of the date; but Captain A. impressed our friend and helper, the Rev. J. A. Macdonald, as a reliable witness; and personal knowledge, though not an infallible guide in such matters, is, at any rate, a safer one than such a sweeping presumption as Mr. Peirce enunciates. As to Case 300, I can well imagine a difference of opinion. But, again, the witness appeared to be honest and truthful to a clear-headed cross-examiner, who had begun by disbelieving the story.
12th. By “any room to suspect” I suppose that Mr. Peirce means any appreciable grounds for suspecting. I should be interested to know what his own grounds are. As regards Case 29, would he supplement his assumption that all sea-captains are ignorant and superstitious by the still more robust hypothesis that all gardeners get drunk? The hypothesis, however, whether general or particular, would not at all affect the case, if the percipient’s wife is correct in saying that he mentioned the dying lady, as the person whom he had seen, immediately on his return home; i.e., before the news of her death had arrived. But then, perhaps, all gardeners’ wives are liars,—a particular hereditary taint, derived from our first parents, may cling to this walk in life. I had better, therefore, quote the words of the Rev. C. F. Forster, vicar of the parish, in a letter written to me on August 18, 1887: “I think the hypothesis that B. was intoxicated is quite untenable. Mine is only a small parish, and I should be certain to know of it if a man was inclined that way. I never heard the slightest suspicion of it. On the contrary, I should have said that, whatever faults he had, he was a thoroughly sober man. Added to this you ought to know that he had come three miles on his bicycle before entering the churchyard; and I should have thought this almost impossible if a man was so intoxicated as this account would make out. Again, we have to account for the coincidence that this appearance to him (drunk or sober) occurred at the time of Mrs. de F.’s decease.”
As regards Case 201, though quite in the dark as to Mr. Peirce’s principle of selection, I cannot quite believe that he would pitch on this particular informant in connection with this particular suspicion. If he has really done so, I shall not insult a lady who is my esteemed friend by making a syllable of reply. But I am fain to hope that by No. 201 he again means No. 249, in speaking of which in another place he has mentioned “ the festivities of the season” as a possible element in the case. Not that the idea would be any less absurd in connection with this percipient. Even on Christmas-day, men of business in England are not usually intoxicated at 4 o’clock in the afternoon; and the suspicion seems specially extravagant in the case of an elderly and respected member of the Society of Friends—“a typical Quaker,” as Mr. Podmore describes him in a letter which lies before me. Is it likely, moreover, that a man in his position, if he had really been the worse for liquor, would have cared to revive the recollection of the fact in his friends’ minds, by calling them to bear witness to the occurrence of a hallucination which took place while he was in that state?
Mr. Peirce seems to have taken a rather unfair advantage of the fact that, though much time has been spent in forming a judgment as to witnesses’ characters by personal interviews, and often by prolonged correspondence, I have expressly avoided giving the results in the shape of definite testimonials.
13th. Case 214. There is not a word in the account about “constant delirium,” or about any delirium at all. Like the cancer in a former case, it is a contribution of Mr. Peirce’s. And what authority has he for regarding illness, caused by shock, as likely to produce a single perfectly distinct and isolated “retrospective hallucination”?
14th. This objection seems to me quite fallacious. The fact of experiencing a hallucination of the senses does not make a person an expert in regard to such phenomena, any more than having an illness would make him an expert in disease. If, in the course of long study of the subject, including the formation of a large collection of cases of purely subjective hallucination, I have found no evidence that affectionate thoughts directed to a person, even though that person has been “ailing for years,” as in Case 195, have the power of evoking a distinct visual impression representing that person and another, I am justified in not inventing the hypothesis for this particular case. Nor even if I did invent it, could the coincidence do otherwise than enormously detract from its plausibility.
15th. Mr. Peirce’s axiom seems to me decidedly too sweeping. As to the hypothesis of lying, I must hold that our mode of conducting the investigation reduces the scope of its possible application to an extremely small proportion—I do not myself believe it to be applicable to a single one—of our cases. Each case must be judged on its merits, with the aid of all the knowledge attainable of the witness’s character.
The central fact in Case 173 is an extremely simple one, and there is no attempt at adornment. The account of Case 174 may, to the best of our judgment, be relied on. The absence of any personal relation between the person who died and the percipient makes the narrative a particularly unlikely one to have been consciously invented. In Case 184—also, I believe, quite reliable—we have a second person’s testimony to the percipient’s depression, and his anxiety about the child, though he did not mention the cause before the news of the death arrived. In Case 214 we are told that the percipient was clear-headed and truthful, and never varied in her statement.
I do not quite understand Mr. Peirce’s suggestion that some of the cases may be explained by “the well-known sensation of having undergone a present experience on some previous occasion.” Does he mean that the witness had a sensory hallucination representing the deceased person on some occasion subsequent to the death, accompanied by the delusion of having had it before? But this would involve a double improbability. The supposed delusion is not of the vague sort, unlocalized in time, and often in space, which is the common form of the “well-known sensation” referred to, but a very distinct picture of an experience belonging to a particular hour and a particular place. And, stranger still, the supposed real sensory hallucination, which actually does belong to a particular place and time, is clean forgotten—vanishes from the mind—its place being wholly usurped by the retrospective delusion to which it is supposed to give birth.
16th. Case 27. As Mr. Peirce gives no clue to the “inaccuracy of more or less importance” which he detects in this case, and as careful scrutiny fails to reveal any, I can make no reply with regard to it. Is it, perchance, that while the percipient says “Every feature of the face and form of my old friend X,” his wife, to whom he immediately mentioned his experience, merely says “X’s face”?
Case 180. This case is not included in my list, and I presume that Mr. Peirce has included it in his through rough inadvertence. As he has mentioned it, however, I may quote my comment on it. “It seems practically beyond doubt,” as will be admitted, I think, on a perusal of the account, “that at the time that the news arrived, Mr. C., as well as his wife, fixed the date of the dream [more correctly ‘Borderland’ hallucination] as Monday, the 19th; and the fact that in his letter to us, written more than three years afterwards without reference to documents, he says ‘about the 25th,’ is therefore unimportant.”
Case 182. Mr. Peirce says that the percipient “is positive that her vision took place at half-past ten; and, as no bell is rung at that time, this positive precision is already suspicious.” The reader will be surprised to learn that Mr. Peirce is the sole authority for the suspicious circumstance. There is not a word as to the hour of the vision in the percipient’s account; and in the passage quoted from her letter to her father, the only indication of time is in the words, “in the night, or rather morning.”
The percipient says that she mentioned her experience to “two or three passengers on board, who made a note of it.” Afterwards she gives the names of four persons whom she told “next day,” but adds nothing there about a note. Mr. Peirce’s version of these statements is: “She testifies positively that she mentioned the occurrence the next morning to four persons, who all severally took written notes of it.” (I am forced to notice these frequent inaccuracies in his versions of the facts, as they would, of course, be extremely misleading to any one who did not take the pains to study the original cases.) “Two of these persons,” Mr. Peirce adds, “now profess to know nothing whatever about the matter.” Even this is not quite accurate, as “the matter” was not mentioned by me to one of these two persons; he was merely asked generally if he remembered any singular announcement made by Miss J. during the voyage. I have, however, now received the independent recollections of one of the persons told, to whom I was unable to apply last year, as he was travelling and his address could not be ascertained. He writes as follows:—
June 1, 1887.
It was some years [four] ago that the voyage referred to in your note took place; but I distinctly remember that one morning during that voyage, Miss K. J. told me that during the previous night she had dreamed that a lady friend of hers was dead, or (for I cannot now remember which) that this friend had appeared to her on that night and announced her death.2
A short time after arriving at the Cape (about the time that would be required for the transmission of a letter), Miss J. informed me that she had heard that her friend had died on the identical night of the dream or supposed appearance.
In answer to the question whether he made a written note, he says: “It is possible I may have at the time noted the date and the supposed apparition in an ordinary pocket-book; but if I did so, this pocket-book is now lost. I have some recollection of having seen the letter announcing the death of the lady, but none of comparing the date with that in a pocket-book; it is possible, however, that I have forgotten this circumstance.”
I regard it as not improbable that Miss J. is wrong in thinking that any of the persons to whom she mentioned her experience made a written note of it. This is just the sort of feature that is likely enough to creep into an account without warrant, owing to the tendency of the mind to round off and complete an interesting story. One might expect à priori that this would be so; and the fact is illustrated by the far greater commonness of written notes in second-hand than in first-hand accounts. But in Miss J.’s case, though she is only a second-hand witness as regards the note, I think it probable that the idea of it had some real origin at the time of the event. Very likely one or more of the persons to whom she mentioned her experience said that it was worth making a note of, or that they were going to make a note of it—which has left in her mind the impression that the note was actually made.
Mr. Peirce’s sentence, “She gives May 4th as the date of the vision, but the death occurred on May 2nd,” is extremely misleading. When she wrote her account (as I explain), she had nothing independent by which to mark the day of the vision, and fancied that the vision and the death had both occurred on May 4th. But afterwards (without the real date of the death being recalled to her mind) she stated that she was not sure of the exact date, but that she knew it had been mentioned in a letter from the Cape to her father. It is contrary to what is stated to say that the letter (i.e., the first letter) written to her father has been found by him. He expressly states that he cannot find it. And why does Mr. Peirce make the assumption, for which there is not the slightest ground, that the whole passage about the apparition, in the letter which is quoted, is not given? Why, again, does he assert that “it is stated that the letter gives the date of May 4th,” when it is nowhere so stated, and when the very first words of the extract quoted are, “On the 2nd of May”?
The evidence would, of course, be more complete if it could be proved that the percipient gave a written account of her experience (as well as the verbal account which we now have corroborative testimony that she did give) before hearing of the death. In spite of both her own and her father’s belief that she did so, I think it more probable that she did not, and that the letter of June 5th was really the first letter; as the way in which the fact of the vision is there mentioned does not suggest that it has been mentioned before. The idea that letters have crossed, in a case of this kind, is a likely first dereliction from perfect accuracy. The direction in which imagination and failure of memory gradually tend is just this, of neatening the facts, and supplementing the essential point by details which enhance its interest. Of course it is to be regretted that human memory is not infallible, and that time acts in any way as a distorting medium. But it is very important to avoid confounding the natural growths on the margin (so to speak) of a telepathic record with the vital point at its centre, or concluding that the latter is as likely to be unconsciously invented as the former. Supposing the mistake which I here think probable to have been really made, the substance of the case is not affected. Having specially observed the date, the percipient was likely to retain it correctly for the short period before hearing of the death; and her ability at that time to identify it could not be seriously impugned on the ground of a subsequent mistake as to the date of her first writing home. We should note, too, that in its essentials the case is a specially unlikely one (even apart from the corroborative testimony) to have been the work of imagination; as the percipient was not personally attached to the lady who died, nor had she been thinking about her.
