Читать книгу Phantasms of the Living - Volume I. - Frank Podmore - Страница 12

THE EXPERIMENTAL BASIS: THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.

§ 1. IT is difficult to get a quite satisfactory name for the experimental branch of our subject. “Thought-reading” was the name that we first adopted; but this had several inconveniences. Oddly enough, the term has got identified with what is not thought-reading at all, but muscle-reading—of which more anon. But a more serious objection to it is that it suggests a power to read anything that may be going on in the mind of another person—to probe characters and discover secrets—which raises a needless prejudice against the whole subject. The idea of such a power has, in fact, been converted into an ad absurdum argument against the existence of the faculty for which we contend. To suppose that people’s minds can be thus open to one another, it was justly enough said, would be to contradict the assumption on which all human intercourse has been carried on. Our answer, of course, is that we have never supposed people’s minds to be thus open to one another; that such a supposition would be as remote as possible from the facts on which we rely; and that the most accomplished “thought-reader’s” power is never likely to be a matter of social inconvenience. The mode of experimentation may reassure those who look on the genuine faculty as dangerous or uncanny; for the results, as a rule, have to be tried for by a distinct, and often a very irksome, process of concentration on the part of the person whose “thought” is to be “read.” And this being so, it is clearly important to avoid such an expression as “thought-reading,” which conveys no hint that his thought is anything else than an open page, or that his mental attitude has anything to do with the phenomenon.

The experiments involve, in fact, the will of two persons; and of the two minds, it is rather the one which reads that is passive and the one which is read that is active. It is for the sake of recognising this that we distinguish the two parties as “agent” and “percipient,” and that we have substituted for thought-reading the term thought-transference. Thought must here be taken as including more than it does in ordinary usage; it must include sensations and volitions as well as mere representations or ideas. This being understood, the name serves its purpose fairly well, as long as we are on experimental ground. It will not be forgotten, however, that our aim is to connect an experimental with a spontaneous class of cases; and according to that view it will often be convenient to describe the former no less than the latter as telepathic. We thus get what we need, a single generic term which embraces the whole range of phenomena and brings out their continuity—the simpler experimental forms being the first step in a graduated series.

§ 2. The history of experimental thought-transference has been a singular one. It was not by direct trial, nor in what we should now account their normal form, that the phenomena first attracted the attention of competent witnesses. Their appearance was connected with the discovery that the somnambulic state could be artificially induced. It was after the introduction of “mesmerism” or “magnetism” into France, and in the course of the investigation of that wider subject, that this special feature unexpectedly presented itself. The observations remained, it is true, extremely few and scattered. The greater part of them were made in this country, during the second quarter of the present century; and took the form of community of sensation between the operator and the patient. The transference of impressions here depended on a specific rapport previously induced by mesmeric or hypnotic operations—passes, fixation, and the like. To us, now, this mesmeric rapport (in some, at any rate, of its manifestations) seems nothing more than the faculty of thought-transference confined to a single agent and percipient, and intensified in degree by the very conditions which limit its scope. But the course of discovery inverted the logical order of the phenomena. The recognition of the particular case, where the exercise of the faculty was narrowed down to a single channel, preceded by a long interval the recognition of the more general phenomena, as exhibited by persons in a normal state. The transference of impressions was naturally regarded as belonging essentially to mesmerism. As such, it was only one more wonder in a veritable wonderland; and while obtaining on that account the readier acceptance among those who witnessed it, it to some extent shut out the idea of the possibility of similar manifestations where no specific rapport had been artificially established.

But there was a further result. The early connection of thought-transference with mesmerism distinctly damaged its chance of scientific recognition. Those who believed in cognate marvels might easily believe in this marvel: but cautious minds rejected the whole posse of marvels together. And one can hardly wonder at this, when one remembers the wild and ignorant manner in which the claims of Mesmer and his followers were thrust upon the world. A man who professed to have magnetised the sun could hardly expect a serious hearing; and even the operators who eschewed such extravagant pretensions still too often advocated their cause in a language that could only cover it with contempt. Theories of “odylic” force, and of imponderable fluids pervading the body—as dogmatically set forth as if they ranked in certainty with the doctrine of the circulation of the blood—were not likely to attract scientific inquiry to the facts. And in the later developments of hypnotism—in which many of the old “mesmeric” phenomena have been re-studied from a truer point of view, and rapport of a certain sort between the hypnotist and the “subject” has been admitted—there has been so much to absorb observation in the extraordinary range of mental and physical effects which the operator can command by verbal or visible suggestion, that the far rarer telepathic phenomena have, so to speak, been crowded out.¹ The consequence is that after nearly a century of controversy, the most interesting facts of mesmeric history are quite as little recognised as the less specialised kinds of thought-transference, which have only within the last few years been seriously looked for or definitely obtained.

Some of the older cases referred to will be found quoted in extenso in the first chapter of the Supplement. Though recorded for the most part in a fragmentary and unsatisfactory way, it will be seen that they do not lack good, or even high, scientific authority. The testimony of Mr. Esdaile, for many years Presidency Surgeon in Calcutta, cannot be despised by any instructed physiologist in our day; inasmuch as his work is now recognised as one of the most important contributions ever made to the rapidly-growing science of hypnotism. No one has denied the ability and integrity of Dr. Elliotson, nor (in spite of his speculative extravagances) of Reichenbach—who both witnessed instances of hypnotic telepathy. And though Professor Gregory, Dr. Mayo, the Rev. C. H. Townsend, and others, may not have been men of acute scientific intelligence, they were probably competent to conduct, and to record with accuracy, experiments the conditions of which involved no more than common care and honesty. We cannot but account it strange that such items of testimony as these men supplied should have been neglected, even by those who were most repelled by the ignorance and fanaticism which infected a large amount of the mesmeric literature. But since such was the fact, the observations will hardly now make their weight felt, except in connection with the fuller testimony of a more recent date. It is characteristic of every subject which depends on questions of fact, and which has yet failed to win a secure place in intelligent opinion, that any further advance must for the most part depend on contemporary evidence. I may, therefore, pass at once to the wholly new departure in thought-transference which the last few years have witnessed.

§ 3. The novelty of this departure—as has been already intimated—consists in the fact that successful results have been obtained when the percipient was apparently in a perfectly normal state, and had been subjected to no mesmerising or hypnotising process. The dawn of the discovery must be referred to the years 1875 and 1876. It was in the autumn of the latter year that our colleague, Professor W. F. Barrett, brought under the notice of the British Association, at Glasgow, a cautious statement of some remarkable facts which he had encountered, and a suggestion of the expediency of ascertaining how far recognised physiological laws would account for them. The facts themselves were connected with mesmerism;¹ but the discussion in the Press to which the paper gave rise led to a considerable correspondence, in which Professor Barrett found his first hints of a faculty of thought-transference existing independently of the specific mesmeric rapport.

That these hints happened to be forthcoming, just at the right moment, was a piece of great good fortune, and was due primarily to a circumstance quite unconnected with science, and from which serious results would scarcely have been anticipated—the invention of the “willing-game.” In some form or other this pastime is probably familiar to most of my readers, either through personal trials or through the exhibitions of platform performers. The ordinary process is this. A member of the party, who is to act as “thought-reader,” or percipient, leaves the room; the rest determine on some simple action which he, or she, is to perform, or hide some object which he is to find. The would-be percipient is then recalled, and his hand is taken or his shoulders are lightly touched by one or more of the willers. Under these conditions the action is often quickly performed or the object found. Nothing could at first sight look less like a promising starting-point for a new branch of inquiry. The “willer” usually asserts, with perfect good faith, and often perhaps quite correctly, that he did not push; but so little is it necessary for the guiding impression to be a push that it may be the very reverse—a slight release of tension when the “willed” performer, after various minute indications of a tendency to move in this, that, or the other wrong direction, at last hits on the right one. Even when the utmost care is used to maintain the light contact with absolute neutrality, it is impossible to lay down the limits of any given subject’s sensibility to such slight tactile and muscular hints. The experiments of Drs. Carpenter and Beard, and especially those of a member of our own Society, the Rev. E. H. Sugden, of Bradford,¹ and other unpublished ones on which we can rely, have shown us that the difference between one person and another in this respect is very great, and that with some organisations a variation of pressure so slight that the supposed “willer” may be quite unaware of exercising it, but which he applies according as the movements of the other person are on the right track or not, may afford a kind of yes or no indication quite sufficient for a clue. This, indeed, is the one direct piece of instruction which the game has supplied. We might perhaps have been to some extent prepared for the result by observing the infinitesimal touches to which a horse will respond, or the extremely slight indications on which we ourselves often act in ordinary life. But till this game was played, probably no one fully realised that muscular hints, so slight as to be quite unconsciously given, could be equally unconsciously taken; and that thus a definite course of action might be produced without the faintest idea of guidance on either side. In some cases it appeared that even contact could be dispensed with, and the guidance was presumably of an auditory kind—the “subject” extracting from the mere footsteps of the “willer,” who was following him about, hints of satisfaction or dissatisfaction at the course he was taking.¹ But though this remarkable susceptibility to a particular order of impressions was an interesting discovery, the results which could be thus explained clearly involved nothing new in kind. That recognised faculties may exhibit unsuspected degrees of refinement is a common enough conception. The more important point was that there were certain results which, apparently, could not be thus explained, at any rate, in any off-hand way. Occasionally the actions required of the “willed” performer were of so complicated a sort, and so rapidly carried out, as to cast considerable doubt on the adequacy of any muscular hints to evoke and guide them. Here, then, was the first indication of something new—of a hitherto unrecognised faculty; and by good fortune, as I have said, Professor Barrett’s appeal for further evidence as to transferred impressions came just at the time when the game had obtained a certain amount of popularity, and when its more delicate and unaccountable phenomena had attracted attention.

Meanwhile similar observations were being made in America. America, indeed, was the original home of the “willing” entertainment; and it is to an American, Dr. McGraw, that the credit belongs of having been the first (as far as I am aware) to detect in it the possible germ of something new to science. In the Detroit Review of Medicine for August, 1875, Dr. McGraw gave a clear account of the ordinary physiological process—“the perception by a trained operator of involuntary and unconscious muscular movements”; and then proceeded as follows:—

“It seemed to me that there were features in these exhibitions which could not be satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis of involuntary muscular action, for. . . . we are required to believe a man could unwillingly, and in spite of himself, give information by unconscious and involuntary signs that he could not give under the same circumstances by voluntary and conscious action. . . . . It seems to me there is a hint towards the possibility of the nervous system of one individual being used by the active will of another to accomplish certain simple motions.”

But though there might be enough in the phenomena to justify cautious suggestions of this sort, the ground is at best very uncertain. Even where some nicety of selection is involved, as, for instance, when a particular note is to be struck on the piano, or a particular book to be taken out of a shelf, still, unless the subject’s hand moves with extreme rapidity, it will be perfectly possible for an involuntary and unconscious indication to be given by the “willer” at the instant that the right note or book is reached. In reports of such cases it is sometimes stated that there was no tentative process, and that the “subject’s” hand seemed to obey the other person’s will with almost the same directness as that person’s own hand would have done. But this is a question of degree as to which the confidence of an eye-witness cannot easily be imparted to others. It may be worth while, however, to give an instance of a less common type by which the theory of muscular guidance does undoubtedly seem to be somewhat strained.

The case was observed by Mr. Myers on October 31st, 1877. The performers were two sisters.

“I wrote the letters of the alphabet on scraps of paper. I then thought of the word CLARA and showed it to M. behind R.’s back, R. sitting at the table. M. put her hands on R.’s shoulders, and R. with shut eyes picked out the letters C L A R V—taking the V apparently for a second A, which was not in the pack—and laid them in a heap. She did not know, she said, what letters she had selected. No impulse had consciously passed through her mind, only she had felt her hands impelled to pick up certain bits of paper.

“This was a good case as apparently excluding pushing. The scraps were in a confused heap in front of R., who kept still further confusing them, picking them up and letting them drop with great rapidity. M.’s hands remained apparently motionless on R.’s shoulders, and one can hardly conceive that indications could be given by pressure, from the rapid and snatching manner in which R. collected the right letters, touching several letters in the course of a second. M., however, told me that it was always necessary that she, M., should see the letters which R. was to pick up.”

Such a case may not suggest thought-transference, but it at any rate tempts one to look deeper than crude sensory signs for the springs of action, and to conceive the governance of one organism by another through some sort of nervous induction. It at any rate differs greatly in its conditions from the famous bank-note trick, where a number is written on a board, so slowly, and in figures of so large a size, that at every point the “willer” may mark his opinion of the direction the lines are taking by involuntary muscular hints.

It would be useless to accumulate further instances. The best of them could never be wholly conclusive, and mere multiplication adds nothing to their weight. By some of them, as I have said, the theory of muscular guidance is undoubtedly strained. But then the theory of muscular guidance ought to be strained, and strained to the very utmost, before being declared inadequate; and it would always be a matter of opinion whether the point of “utmost” strain had been overpassed. Dr. McGraw and Professor Barrett surmised that it had; Dr. Beard, of New York, was confident that it had not. The contention between “mind-reading” and “muscle-reading” could never reach a definite issue on this ground. But meanwhile the confident and exclusive adherents of the muscular hypothesis had a position of decided advantage over the doubters, for they could fairly enough represent themselves as the champions of science in its war with popular superstitions. The popular imagination more suo had fastened on the phenomena en bloc, and had decided that they were what they seemed to be—“thought-reading.” To the average sightseer a mysterious word is far more congenial than a physiological explanation; and it was, of course, the interest of the professional exhibitor to adopt and advertise a description which seemed to invest him with novel and magical powers. What more natural, therefore, than that those who saw the absurdity of these pretensions should regard further inquiry or suspension of judgment as a concession to ignorant credulity? “Irving Bishop,” it seemed fair to argue, “is a professed ‘thought-reader ’; Irving Bishop’s tricks are, at best, mere feats of muscular and tactile sensibility; ergo whoever believes that there is such a thing as ‘thought-reading’ is on a par with the crowd who are mystified by Irving Bishop.”

§ 4. If, then, the ground of experiment had remained unchanged—if the old “willing-game” had merely continued to appear in various forms—no definite advance could have been made. But on the path of the old experiments, a quite new phenomenon now presented itself, which no one could have confidently anticipated, but for which the suggestions drawn from the most advanced phenomena of the “willing-game” had to some extent prepared the way. It was discovered that not only transferences of impression could take place without contact, but that there was no necessity for the result aimed at to involve movements; the fact of the transference might be shown, not—as in the “willing-game”—by the subject’s ability to do something, but by his ability to discern and describe an object thought of by the “willer.” Both parties could thus remain perfectly still; which was really a more important condition than even the absence of contact. In this form of experiment, muscle-reading and all the subtler forms of unconscious guidance are completely excluded; and the dangers which remain are such as can, with sufficient care, be clearly defined and safely guarded against. Indications of a visual kind—for instance, by the involuntary direction of glances—have no scope if the object which the percipient is to name is not present or visible in the room. There is, of course, an obvious danger in low whispering, or even soundless movements of the lips; while the faintest accent of approval or disapproval in question or comment may give a hint as to whether the effort is tending in the right direction, and thus guide to the mark by successive approximations. Any exhibition of the kind before a promiscuous company is nearly sure to be vitiated by the latter source of error. But when the experiments are carried on in a limited circle of persons known to each other, and amenable to scientific control, it is not hard for those engaged to set a watch on their own and on each other’s lips; and questions and comments can be entirely forbidden.

I have been speaking of the danger of involuntary guidance. There is, of course, another danger to be considered—that of voluntary guidance—of actual collusion between the agent and percipient. Contact being excluded, such guidance would have to be by signals; and it is impossible to lay down any precise limit to the degree of perfection that a plan of signalling may reach. The long and short signs of the Morse code admit of many varieties of application; and though the channels of sight and touch may be cut off, it is difficult entirely to cut off that of hearing. Shufflings of the feet, coughs, irregularities of breathing, all offer available material. But though the precise line of possibilities in this direction cannot be drawn, we are at any rate able to suggest cases where the line would be clearly overpassed. For instance, if the idea to be transferred from the agent to the percipient is inexpressible in less than twenty words; and if hearing is the only sensory channel left open; and if it is carefully observed that there are no coughs or shufflings, and that the agent’s breathing appears regular, then one seems justified in saying that the necessary information could not be conveyed by a code without a very considerable expenditure of time, and a very abnormally acute sense of hearing on the percipient’s part. There is no relation whatever between a private experiment performed under such conditions as these, and the feats of a conjurer, like Mr. Maskelyne, who commands secret apparatus, and whose every word and gesture may be observed and interpreted by a concealed confederate.

It would be rash, however, to represent as crucial any apparent transferences of thought between persons not absolutely separated, where the good faith of at least one of the two is not accepted as beyond question, and where the genuineness of the result is left to depend on the perfection with which third parties have arranged conditions and guarded against signs. The conditions of a crucial result, for one’s own mind, are either (1) that the agent or the percipient shall be oneself; or (2) that the agent or percipient shall be someone whose experience, as recorded by himself, is indistinguishable in certainty from one’s own; or (3) that there shall be several agents or percipients, in the case of each of whom the improbability of deceit, or of such imbecility as would take the place of deceit, is so great that the combination of improbabilities amounts to a moral impossibility. The third mode of attaining conviction is the most practically important. For it is not to be expected of most people that, within a short time, they will either themselves be, or have intimate friends who are, successful agents or percipients; and they are justified, therefore, in demanding that the evidence to which they might fairly refuse credence if it depended on the veracity and intelligence of one or two persons, of however unblemished a reputation, shall be multiplied for their benefit. Whatever be the experimenter’s assurance as to the perfection of his conditions, it is in the nature of things impossible that strangers, who only read and have not seen, should be infected by it. They cannot be absolutely certain that this, that, or the other stick might not break; then enough sticks must be collected and tied together to make a faggot of a strength which shall defy suspicion.¹ As regards the experiments of which I am about to present a sketch, it is not necessary to my argument that any individual’s honesty shall be completely assumed, in the sense of being used as a certain basis for conclusions. The proof must depend on the number of persons, reputed honest and intelligent, to whom dishonesty or imbecility must be attributed if the conclusions are wrong, i.e., it must be a cumulative proof. Not that my colleagues and I have any doubt as to the bona fides of every case here recorded. But even where our grounds of certainty are most obvious, they cannot be made entirely obvious to those to whom we and our more intimate associates are personally unknown; while outside this inner circle our confidence depends on points that can scarcely even be suggested to others—on views of character gradually built up out of a number of small and often indefinable items of conversation and demeanour. We may venture to say that a candid critic, present during the whole course of the experiments, would have carried away a far more vivid impression of their genuineness than any printed record can convey. But it must be distinctly understood that we discriminate our cases; and that even where the results are to our own minds crucial—in that they can only be impugned by impugning the honesty or sanity of members of our own investigating Committee—we do not demand their acceptance on this ground alone, or attempt accurately to define the number of reputations which should be staked before a fair mind ought to admit the proof as overwhelming. As observations are accumulated, different “fair minds” will give in at different points; and until the most exacting are satisfied, our task will be incomplete.

§ 5. I mentioned above the correspondence which followed Professor Barrett’s appeal for evidence. In this correspondence, among many instances of the higher aspects of the “willing-game,” there was a small residue which pointed to a genuine transference of impression without contact or movement. Of this residue the most important item was that supplied by our friend, the Rev. A. M. Creery, then resident at Buxton, and now working in the diocese of Manchester. He had his attention called to the subject in October, 1880; and was early struck by the impossibility of deciding, in cases where contact was employed, how far the powers of unconscious muscular guidance might extend. He, therefore, instituted experiments with his daughters and with a young maid-servant, in which contact was altogether eschewed. He thus describes the early trials:—

“Each went out of the room in turn, while I and the others fixed on some object which the absent one was to name on returning to the room. After a few trials the successes preponderated so much over the failures that we were all convinced there was something very wonderful coming under our notice. Night after night, for several months, we spent an hour or two each evening in varying the conditions of the experiments, and choosing new subjects for thought-transference. We began by selecting the simplest objects in the room; then chose names of towns, names of people, dates, cards out of a pack, lines from different poems, &c., in fact any things or series of ideas that those present could keep steadily before their minds; and when the children were in good humour, and excited by the wonderful nature of their successful guessing, they very seldom made a mistake. I have seen seventeen cards, chosen by myself, named right in succession, without any mistake. We soon found that a great deal depended on the steadiness with which the ideas were kept before the minds of ‘the thinkers’, and upon the energy with which they willed the ideas to pass. Our worst experiments before strangers have invariably been when the company was dull and undemonstrative; and we are all convinced that when mistakes are made, the fault rests, for the most part, with the thinkers, rather than with the thought-readers.”

In the course of the years 1881 and 1882, a large number of experiments were made with the Creery family, first by Professor Barrett, then by Mr. and Mrs. Sidgwick, by Professor Balfour Stewart, F.R.S., and Professor Alfred Hopkinson, of Owens College, Manchester, and, after the formation of the Society for Psychical Research, by the Thought-transference Committee of that body, of which Mr. Myers and myself were members. The children in turn acted as “percipients,” the other persons present being “agents,” i.e., concentrating their minds on the idea of some selected word or thing, with the intention that this idea should be transferred to the percipient’s mind. The thing selected was either a card, taken at random from a full pack; or a name chosen also at random; or a number, usually of two figures; or occasionally some domestic implement or other object in the house. The percipient was, of course, absent when the selection was made, and when recalled had no means of discovering through the exercise of the senses what it was, unless by signals, consciously or unconsciously given by one or other of the agents. Strict silence was maintained throughout each experiment, and when the group of agents included any members of the Creery family, the closest watch was kept in order to detect any passage of signals; but in hundreds of trials nothing was observed which suggested any attempt of the sort. Still, such simple objects would not demand an elaborate code for their description; nor were any effective means taken to block the percipient’s channels of sense—it being thought expedient in these early trials not to disturb their minds by obtrusive precautions. We could not, therefore, regard the testimony of the investigators present as adding much weight to the experiments in which any members of the family were among the group of agents, unless the percipient was completely isolated from that group. Such a case was the following:—

“Easter, 1881. Present: Mr. and Mrs. Creery and family, and W. F. Barrett, the narrator. One of the children was sent into an adjoining room, the door of which I saw was closed. On returning to the sitting-room and closing its door also, I thought of some object in the house, fixed upon at random; writing the name down, I showed it to the family present, the strictest silence being preserved throughout. We then all silently thought of the name of the thing selected. In a few seconds the door of the adjoining room was heard to open, and after a very short interval the child would enter the sitting-room, generally with the object selected. No one was allowed to leave the sitting-room after the object had been fixed upon; no communication with the child was conceivable, as her place was often changed. Further, the only instructions given to the child were to fetch some object in the house that I would fix upon, and, together with the family, silently keep in mind, to the exclusion, as far as possible, of all other ideas. In this way I wrote down, among other things, a hair-brush; it was brought: an orange; it was brought: a wine glass; it was brought: an apple; it was brought: a toasting-fork; failed on the first attempt, a pair of tongs being brought, but on a second trial it was brought. With another child (among other trials not here mentioned) a cup was written down by me; it was brought: a saucer; this was a failure, a plate being brought; no second trial allowed. The child being told it was a saucer, replied, ‘That came into my head, but I hesitated as I thought it unlikely you would name saucer after cup, as being too easy.’”

But, of course, the most satisfactory condition was that only the members of the investigating Committee should act as agents, so that signals could not possibly be given unless by one of them. This condition clearly makes it idle to represent the means by which the transferences took place as simply a trick which the members of the investigating Committee failed to detect. The trick, if trick there was, must have been one in which they, or one of them, actively shared; the only alternative to collusion on their part being some piece of carelessness amounting almost to idiocy—such as uttering the required word aloud, or leaving the selected card exposed on the table. The following series of experiments was made on April 13th, 1882. The agents were Mr. Myers and the present writer, and two ladies of their acquaintance, the Misses Mason, of Morton Hall, Retford, who had become interested in the subject by the remarkable successes which one of them had obtained in experimenting among friends.¹ As neither of these ladies had ever seen any member of the Creery family till just before the experiments began, they had no opportunities for arranging a code of signals with the children; so that any hypothesis of collusion must in this case be confined to Mr. Myers or the present writer. As regards the hypothesis of want of intelligence, the degree of intelligent behaviour required of each of the four agents was simply this: (1) To keep silence on a particular subject; and (2) to avoid unconsciously displaying a particular card or piece of paper to a person situated at some yards’ distance. The first condition was realised by keeping silence altogether; the second by remaining quite still. The four observers were perfectly satisfied that the children had no means at any moment of seeing, either directly or by reflection, the selected card or the name of the selected object. The following is the list of trials:—

Objects to be named. (These objects had been brought, and still remained, in the pocket of one of the visitors. The name of the object selected for trial was secretly written down, not spoken.)

A White Penknife.—Correctly named, with the colour, the first trial.

Box of Almonds.—Correctly named.

Threepenny piece.—Failed.

Box of Chocolate.—Button-box said; no second trial given.

(A penknife was then hidden; but the place was not discovered.)

Numbers to be named.

Five.—Rightly given on the first trial.

Fourteen.—Failed.

Thirty-three.—54 (No). 34 (No). 33 (Right).

Sixty-eight.—58 (No). 57 (No). 78 (No).

Fictitious names to be guessed.

Martha Billings.—“Biggis” was said.

Catherine Smith.—“Catherine Shaw” was said.

Henry Cowper.—Failed.

Cards to be named.

Two of clubs.—Right first time.

Queen of diamonds.—Right first time.

Four of spades.—Failed.

Four of hearts.—Right first time.

King of hearts.—Right first time.

Two of diamonds.—Right first time.

Ace of hearts.—Right first time.

Nine of spades.—Right first time.

Five of diamonds.—Four of diamonds (No). Four of hearts (No). Five of diamonds (Right).

Two of spades.—Right first time.

Eight of diamonds.—Ace of diamonds said; no second trial given.

Three of hearts.—Right first time.

Five of clubs.—Failed.

Ace of spades.—Failed.

The chances against accidental success in the case of any one card are, of course, 51 to 1; yet out of fourteen successive trials nine were successful at the first guess, and only three trials can be said to have been complete failures. The odds against the occurrence of the five successes running, in the card series, are considerably over 1,000,000 to 1. On none of these occasions was it even remotely possible for the child to obtain by any ordinary means a knowledge of the object selected. Our own facial expression was the only index open to her; and even if we had not purposely looked as neutral as possible, it is difficult to imagine how we could have unconsciously carried, say, the two of diamonds written on our foreheads.

During the ensuing year, the Committee, consisting of Professor Barrett, Mr. Myers, and the present writer, made a number of experiments under similar conditions, which excluded contact and movement, and which confined the knowledge of the selected object—and, therefore, the chance of collusion with the percipient—to their own group. In some of these trials, conducted at Cambridge, Mrs. F. W. H. Myers and Miss Mason also took part. In a long series conducted at Dublin, Professor Barrett was alone with the percipient. Altogether these scrupulously guarded trials amounted to 497; and of this number 95 were completely successful at the first guess, and 45 at the second. The results may be clearer if arranged in a tabular form.

TABLE SHOWING THE SUCCESS OBTAINED WHEN THE SELECTED OBJECT WAS KNOWN TO ONE OR MORE OF THE INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE ONLY.

* A full pack was used, from which a card was in each case drawn at random.

† This number is obtained by multiplying each figure of the third column by the corresponding figure in the fourth column (e.g., 216 x 1/62), and adding the products.

‡ This entry is calculated from the first three totals in the last horizontal row, in the same way that each other entry in the last column is calculated from the first three totals in the corresponding horizontal row.

Mr. F. Y. Edgeworth, to whom these results were submitted, and who calculated the final column of the Table, has kindly appended the following remarks:—

“These observations constitute a chain or rather coil of evidence, which at first sight and upon a general view is seen to be very strong, but of which the full strength cannot be appreciated until the concatenation of the parts is considered.

“Viewed as a whole the Table presents the following data. There are in all 497 trials. Out of these there are 95 successes at the first guess. The number of successes most probable on the hypothesis of mere chance is 27. The problem is one of the class which I have discussed in the Proceedings of the S. P. R., Vol. III., p. 190, &c. The approximative formula there given is not well suited to the present case,¹ in which the number of successes is very great, the probability of their being due to mere chance very small, in relation to the total number of trials. It is better to proceed directly according to the method employed in the paper referred to (p. 198) for the appreciation of M. Richet’s result E P J Y E I O D [see below, p. 75]. By this method,² with the aid of appropriate tables,³ I find for the probability that the observed total of successes have resulted from some other agency than pure chance

·999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 98

“Stupendous as is this probability it falls short of that which the complete solution of our problem yields. For, measuring and joining all the links of evidence according to the methods described in the paper referred to, I obtain a row of thirty-four nines following a decimal point. A fortiori, if we take account of the second guesses.

“These figures more impressively than any words proclaim the certainty that the recorded observations must have resulted either from collusion on the part of those concerned (the hypothesis of illusion being excluded by the simplicity of the experiments), or from thought-transference of the sort which the investigators vindicate.”

A large number of trials were also made in which the group of agents included one or more of the Creery family; and as bearing on the hypothesis of an ingenious family trick, it is worth noting that—except where Mr. Creery himself was thus included—the percentage of successes was, as a rule, not appreciably higher under these conditions than when the Committee alone were in the secret.⁴ When Mr. Creery was among the agents, the average of success was far higher;¹ but his position in the affair was precisely the same as our own; and the most remarkable results were obtained while he was himself still in a state of doubt as to the genuineness of the phenomena which he was investigating.

One further evidential point should be noted. Supposing such a thing as a genuine faculty of thought-transference to exist, and to be capable, for example, of evoking in one mind the idea of a card on which other minds are concentrated, we might naturally expect that the card-pictures conveyed to the percipient would present various degrees of distinctness, and that there would be a considerable number of approximate guesses, as they might be given by a person who was allowed one fleeting glimpse at a card in an imperfect light. Such a person might often fail to name the card correctly, but his failures would be apt to be far more nearly right than those of another person who was simply guessing without any sort of guidance. This expectation was abundantly confirmed in our experiments. Thus, in a series of 32 trials, where only 5 first guesses were completely right, the suit was 14 times running named correctly on the first trial, and reiterated on the second. Knave was very frequently guessed as King, and vice versa, the suit being given correctly. The number of pips named was in many cases only one off the right number, this sort of failure being specially frequent when the number was over six. Again, the correct answer was often given, as it were, piecemeal—in two partially incorrect guesses—the pips or picture being rightly given at the first attempt, and the suit at the second; and in the same way with numbers of two figures, one of them would appear in the first guess and the other in the second.¹

Before we leave these early experiments, one interesting question presents itself, which has an important bearing on the wider subject of this book. In what form was the impression flashed on the percipient’s mind? What were the respective parts in the phenomena played by the mental eye and the mental ear? The points just noticed in connection with the partial guessing of cards seem distinctly in favour of the mental oye. A king looks like a knave, but the names have no similarity. So with numbers. 35 is guessed piecemeal, the answers being 45 and 43; so 57 is attempted as 47 and 45. Now the similarity in sound between three and thirty in 43 and 35, or between five and fifty in 45 and 57, is not extremely strong; while the picture of the 3 or the 5 is identical in either pair. On the other hand, names of approximate sound were often given instead of the true ones; as “Chester” for Leicester, “Biggis” for Billings, “Freemore” for Frogmore. Snelgrove was reproduced as “Singrore”; the last part of the name was soon given as “Grover,” and the attempt was then abandoned—the child remarking afterwards that she thought of “Snail” as the first syllable, but it had seemed to her too ridiculous. Professor Barrett, moreover, successfully obtained a German word of which the percipient could have formed no visual image.¹ The children’s own account was usually to the effect that they “seemed to see” the thing; but this, perhaps, does not come to much; as a known object, however suggested, is likely to be instantly visualised. On the whole, then, the conclusion seems to be that, with these “subjects,” both modes of transference were possible; and that they prevailed in turn, according as this or that was better adapted to the particular case.

§ 6. I have dwelt at some length on our series of trials with the members of the Creery family, as it is to those trials that we owe our own conviction of the possibility of genuine thought-transference between persons in a normal state. I have sufficiently explained that we do not expect the results to be as crucial for persons who were not present, and to whom we are ourselves unknown, as they were for us; and that it cannot be “in the mouth of two or three witnesses” only that such a stupendous fact as the transmission of ideas otherwise than through the recognised sensory channels will be established. The testimony must be multiplied; the responsibility must be spread; and I shall immediately proceed to describe further results obtained with other agents and other percipients. But first it may perhaps be asked of us why we did not exploiter this remarkable family further. It was certainly our intention to do what we could in this direction, and by degrees to procure for our friends an opportunity of judging for themselves. This point, however, was one which could only be cautiously pressed. Mr. Creery was certainly justified in regarding his daughters as something more than mere subjects of experiments, and in hesitating to make a show of them to persons who might, or rather who reasonably must, begin by entertaining grave doubts as to their good faith. It must be remembered that we were dealing, not with chemical substances, but with youthful minds, liable to be reduced to confusion by anything in the demeanour of visitors which inspired distaste or alarm; and even with the best intentions, “a childly way with children” is not easy to adopt where the children concerned are objects of suspicious curiosity. More especially might these considerations have weight, when failure was anticipated for the first attempts made under new conditions. And this suggests another difficulty, which has more than once recurred in the experimental branches of our work. The would-be spectators themselves may be unable or unwilling to fulfil the necessary conditions. Before introducing them, it is indispensable to obtain some guarantee that they on their part will exercise patience, make repeated trials, and give the “subjects” a fair opportunity of getting used to their presence. Questions of mood, of goodwill, of familiarity, may hold the same place in psychical investigation as questions of temperature in a physical laboratory; and till this is fully realised, it will not be easy to multiply testimony to the extent that we should desire.

In the case of the Creery family, however, we met with a difficulty of another kind. Had the faculty of whose existence we assured ourselves continued in full force, it would doubtless have been possible in time to bring the phenomena under the notice of a sufficient number of painstaking and impartial observers. But the faculty did not continue in full force; on the contrary, the average of successes gradually declined, and the children regretfully acknowledged that their capacity and confidence were deserting them. The decline was equally observed even in the trials which they held amongst themselves; and it had nothing whatever to do with any increased stringency in the precautions adopted. No precautions, indeed, could be stricter than that confinement to our own investigating group of the knowledge of the idea to be transferred, which was, from the very first, a condition of the experiments on which we absolutely relied. The fact has just to be accepted, as an illustration of the fleeting character which seems to attach to this and other forms of abnormal sensitiveness. It seems probable that the telepathic faculty, if I may so name it, is not an inborn, or lifelong possession; or, at any rate, that very slight disturbances may suffice to paralyse it. The Creerys had their most startling successes at first, when the affair was a surprise and an amusement, or later, at short and seemingly casual trials; the decline set in with their sense that the experiments had become matters of weighty importance to us, and of somewhat prolonged strain and tediousness to them. So, on a minor scale, in trials among our own friends, we have seen a fortunate evening, when the spectators were interested and the percipient excited and confident, succeeded by a series of failures when the results were more anxiously awaited. It is almost inevitable that a percipient who has aroused interest by a marked success on several occasions, should feel in a way responsible for further results; and yet any real pre-occupation with such an idea seems likely to be fatal. The conditions are clearly unstable. But of course the first question for science is not whether the phenomena can be produced to order, but whether in a sufficient number of series the proportion of success to failure is markedly above the probable result of chance.

§ 7. Before leaving this class of experiments, I may mention an interesting development which it has lately received. In the Revue Philosophique for December, 1884, M. Ch. Richet, the well-known savant and editor of the Revue Scientifique, published a paper, entitled “La Suggestion Mentale et le Calcul des Probabilités,” in the first part of which an account is given of some experiments with cards precisely similar in plan to those above described. A card being drawn at random out of a pack, the “agent” fixed his attention on it, and the “percipient” endeavoured to name it. But M. Richet’s method contained this important novelty—that though the success, as judged by the results of any particular series of trials, seemed slight (showing that he was not experimenting with what we should consider “good subjects”), he made the trials on a sufficiently extended scale to bring out the fact that the right guesses were on the whole, though not strikingly, above the number that pure accident would account for, and that their total was considerably above that number.

This observation involves a new and striking application of the calculus of probabilities. Advantage is taken of the fact that the larger the number of trials made under conditions where success is purely accidental, the more nearly will the total number of successes attained conform to the figure which the formula of probabilities gives. For instance, if some one draws a card at random out of a full pack, and before it has been looked at by anyone present I make a guess at its suit, my chance of being right is, of course, 1 in 4. Similarly, if the process is repeated 52 times, the most probable number of successes, according to the strict calculus of probabilities, is 13; in 520 trials the most probable number of successes is 130. Now, if we consider only a short series of 52 guesses, I may be accidentally right many more times than 13 or many less times. But if the series be prolonged—if 520 guesses be allowed instead of 52—the actual number of successes will vary from the probable number within much smaller limits; and if we suppose an indefinite prolongation, the proportional divergence between the actual and the probable number will become infinitely small. This being so, it is clear that if, in a very short series of trials, we find a considerable difference between the actual number of successes and the probable number, there is no reason for regarding this difference as anything but purely accidental; but if we find a similar difference in a very long series, we are justified in surmising that some condition beyond mere accident has been at work. If cards be drawn in succession from a pack, and I guess the suit rightly in 3 out of 4 trials, I shall be foolish to be surprised; but if I guess the suit rightly in 3,000 out of 4,000 trials, I shall be equally foolish not to be surprised.

Now M. Richet continued his trials until he had obtained a considerable total; and the results were such as at any rate to suggest that accident had not ruled undisturbed—that a guiding condition had been introduced, which affected in the right direction a certain small percentage of the guesses made. That condition, if it existed, could be nothing else than the fact that, prior to the guess being made, a person in the neighbourhood of the guesser had concentrated his attention on the card drawn. Hence the results, so far as they go, make for the reality of the faculty of “mental suggestion.” The faculty, if present, was clearly only slightly developed; whence the necessity of experimenting on a very large scale before its genuine influence on the numbers could be even surmised.

Out of 2,927 trials at guessing the suit of a card, drawn at random, and steadily looked at by another person, the actual number of successes was 789; the most probable number, had pure accident ruled, was 732. The total was made up of thirty-nine series of different lengths, in which eleven persons took part, M. Richet himself being in some cases the guesser, and in others the person who looked at the card. He observed that when a large number of trials were made at one sitting, the aptitude of both persons concerned seemed to be aflected; it became harder for the “agent” to visualise, and the proportion of successes on the guesser’s part decreased. If we agree to reject from the above total all the series in which over 100 trials were consecutively made, the numbers become more striking.¹ Out of 1,833 trials, he then got 510 successes, the most probable number being only 458; that is to say, the actual number exceeds the most probable number by about 1/10.

Clearly no definite conclusion could be based on such figures as the above. They at most contained a hint for more extended trials, but a hint, fortunately, which can be easily followed up. We are often asked by acquaintances what they can do to aid the progress of psychical research. These experiments suggest a most convenient answer; for they can be repeated, and a valuable contribution made to the great aggregate, by any two persons who have a pack of cards and a little perseverance.¹

Up to the time that I write, we have received, in all, the results of 17 batches of trials in the guessing of suits. In 11 of the batches one person acted as agent and another as percipient throughout: the other 6 batches are the collective results of trials made by as many groups of friends. The total number of trials was 17,653, and the total number of successes was 4,760; which exceeds by 347 the number which was the most probable if chance alone acted. The probability afforded by this result for the action of a cause other than chance is ·999,999,98—or practical certainty.² I need hardly say that there has been here no selection of results; all who undertook the trials were specially requested to send in their report, whatever the degree of success or unsuccess; and we have no reason to suppose that this direction has been ignored. It is thus an additional point of interest that in only one of the batches did the result fall below the number which was the most probable one for mere chance to give. And if we take only those batches, 10 in number, in which a couple of experimenters made as many as 1,000 trials and over, the probability of a cause other than chance which the group of results yields is estimated by one method to be ·999,999,999,96, and by another to be ·999,999,999,999,2.

To this record must be added another, not less striking, of experiments which, (though part of the same effort to obtain large collective results,) differed in form from the above, and could not, therefore, figure in the aggregate. Thus, in a set of 976 trials, carried out by Miss B. Lindsay (late of Girton College), and a group of friends, where the choice was between 6 uncoloured forms—9 specimens of each being combined in a pack from which the agent drew at random—the total of right guesses was 198, the odds against obtaining that degree of success by chance being 1,000 to 1. In another case, the choice lay between 4 things, but these were not suits, but simple colours—red, blue, green, and yellow. The percipient throughout was Mr. A. J. Shilton, of 40, Paradise Street, Birmingham; the agent (except in one small group, when Professor Poynting, of Mason College, acted) was Mr. G. T Cashmore, of Albert Road, Handsworth. Out of 505 trials, 261 were successes. The probability here afforded of a cause other than chance is considerably more than a trillion trillions to 1. And still more remarkable is the result obtained by the Misses Wingfield, of The Redings, Totteridge, in some trials where the object to be guessed was a number of two digits—i.e., one of the 90 numbers included in the series from 10 to 99—chosen at random by the agent. Out of 2,624 trials, where the most probable number of successes was 29, the actual number obtained was no less than 275—to say nothing of 78 other cases in which the right digits were guessed in the reverse order. In the last 506 trials the agent (who sat some 6 feet behind the percipient) drew the numbers at random out of a bowl; the odds against the accidental occurrence of the degree of success—21 right guesses—obtained in this batch are over 2,000,000 to 1. The argument for thought-transference afforded by the total of 275 cannot be expressed here in figures, as it requires 167 nines—that is, the probability is far more than the ninth power of a trillion to 1.

Card-experiments of the above type offer special conveniences for the very extended trials which we wish to see carried out: they are easily made and rapidly recorded. At the same time it must not be assumed that the limitation of the field of choice to a very small number of known objects is a favourable condition; it is probably the reverse. For from the descriptions which intelligent percipients have given it would seem that the best condition is a sort of inward blankness, on which the image of the object, sometimes suddenly but often only gradually, takes shape. And this inward blankness is hard to ensure when the objects for choice are both few and known. For their images are then apt to importune the mind, and to lead to guessing; the little procession of them marches so readily across the mental stage that it is difficult to drive it off, and wait for a single image to present itself independently. Moreover idiosyncrasies on the guesser’s part have the opportunity of obtruding themselves—as an inclination, or a disinclination, to repeat the same guess several times in succession. These objections of course reach their maximum if the field of choice be narrowed down to two things—as where not the suit but the colour of the cards is to be guessed. And in fact some French trials of this type, and an aggregate of 5,500 carried out by the American Society for Psychical Research,¹ give a result only very slightly in excess of the most probable number.

§ 8. I may now pass to another class of experiments, in which the impression transferred was almost certainly of the visual sort, inasmuch as any verbal description of the object would require a group of words too numerous to present any clear and compact auditory character. An object of this kind is supplied by any irregular figure or arrangement of lines which suggests nothing in particular. We have had two remarkably successful series of experiments, extending over many days, in which the idea of such a figure has been telepathically transferred from one mind to another. A rough diagram being first drawn by one of the investigating Committee, the agent proceeded to concentrate his attention on it, or on the memory which he retained of it; and in a period varying from a few seconds to a few minutes the percipient was able to reproduce the diagram, or a close approximation to it, on paper. No contact was permitted, except on a few occasions, which, on that very account, we should not present as crucial; and in order to preclude the agent from giving unconscious hints—e.g., by drawing with his finger on the table or making movements suggestive of the figure in the air—he was kept out of the percipient’s sight.

Of the two series mentioned, the second is evidentially to be preferred. For in the first series the agent, as well as the percipient, was always the same person; and we recognise this as pro tanto an objection. Not indeed that the simple hypothesis of collusion would at all meet the difficulties of the case. Faith in the power of a secret code must be carried to the verge of superstition, before it will be easy to believe that auditory signals, the material for which (as I pointed out above) is limited to the faintest variations in the signaller’s method of breathing, can fully and faithfully describe a complicated diagram; especially when the variations, imperceptible to the closest observation of the bystanders, would have to penetrate to the intelligence of a percipient whose head was enveloped in bandage, bolster-case, and blanket. But in spite of all, suspicion will, reasonably or unreasonably, attach to results which are, so to speak, a monopoly of two particular performers. In our second series of experiments this objection was obviated. There were two percipients, and a considerable group of agents, each of whom, when alone with one or other of the percipients, was successful in transferring his impression. It is this series, therefore, that I select for fuller description.

We owe these remarkable experiments to the sagacity and energy of Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, J.P., of Liverpool. At the beginning of 1883, Mr. Guthrie happened to read an article on thought-transference in a magazine, and though completely sceptical, he determined to make some trials on his own account. He was then at the head of an establishment which gives employment to many hundreds of persons; and he was informed by a relative who occupied a position of responsibility in this establishment that she had witnessed remarkable results in some casual trials made by a group of his employées after business hours. He at once took the matter into his own hands, and went steadily, but cautiously, to work. He restricted the practice of the novel accomplishment to weekly meetings; and he arranged with his friend, Mr. James Birchall, the hon. secretary of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, that the latter should make a full and complete record of every experiment made. Mr. Guthrie thus describes the proceedings:—

“I have had the advantage of studying a series of experiments ab ovo. I have witnessed the genuine surprise which the operators and the ‘subjects’ have alike exhibited at their increasing successes, and at the results of our excursions into novel lines of experiment. The affair has not been the discovery of the possession of special powers, first made and then worked up by the parties themselves for gain or glory. The experimenters in this case were disposed to pass the matter over altogether as one of no moment, and only put themselves at my disposal in regard to experiments in order to oblige me. The experiments have all been devised and conducted by myself and Mr. Birchall, without any previous intimation of their nature, and could not possibly have been foreseen. In fact they have been to the young ladies a succession of surprises. No set of experiments of a similar nature has ever been more completely known from its origin, or more completely under the control of the scientific observer.”

I must pass over the record of the earlier experiments, where the ideas transferred were of colours, geometrical figures, cards, and visible objects of all sorts, which the percipient was to name—these being similar in kind, though on the whole superior in the proportion of successes, to those already described.¹ The reproduction of diagrams was introduced in October, 1883, and in that and the following month about 150 trials were made. The whole series has been carefully mounted and preserved by Mr. Guthrie. No one could look through them without perceiving that the hypothesis of chance or guess-work is out of the question; that in most instances some idea, and in many a complete idea, of the original must, by whatever means, have been present in the mind of the person who made the reproduction. In Mr. Guthrie’s words,—

“It is difficult to classify them. A great number of them are decided successes; another large number give part of the drawing; others exhibit the general idea, and others again manifest a kind of composition of form. Others, such as the drawings of flowers, have been described and named, but have been too difficult to draw. A good many are perfect failures. The drawings generally run in lots. A number of successful copies will be produced very quickly, and again a number of failures—indicating, I think, faultiness on the part of the agent, or growing fatigue on the part of the ‘subject.’ Every experiment, whether successful or a failure, is given in the order of trial, with the conditions, name of ‘subject’ and agent, and any remarks made by the ‘subject’ specified at the bottom. Some of the reproductions exhibit the curious phenomenon of inversion. These drawings must speak for themselves. The principal facts to be borne in mind regarding them are that they have been executed through the instrumentality, as agents, of persons of unquestioned probity, and that the responsibility for them is spread over a considerable group of such persons; while the conditions to be observed were so simple—for they amounted really to nothing more than taking care that the original should not be seen by the ‘subject’—that it is extremely difficult to suppose them to have been eluded.”

I give a few specimens—not unduly favourable ones, but illustrating the “spreading of responsibility” to which Mr. Guthrie refers. The agents concerned were Mr. Guthrie; Mr. Steel, the President of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society; Mr. Birchall, mentioned above; Mr. Hughes, B.A., of St. John’s College, Cambridge; and myself. The names of the percipients were Miss Relph and Miss Edwards. The conditions which I shall describe were those of the experiments in which I myself took part; and I have Mr. Guthrie’s authority for stating that they were uniformly observed in the other cases. The originals were for the most part drawn in another room from that in which the percipient was placed. The few executed in the same room were drawn while the percipient was blindfolded, at a distance from her, and in such a way that the process would have been wholly invisible to her or anyone else, even had an attempt been made to observe it. During the process of transference, the agent looked steadily and in perfect silence at the original drawing, which was placed upon an intervening wooden stand; the percipient sitting opposite to him, and behind the stand, blindfolded and quite still. The agent ceased looking at the drawing, and the blindfolding was removed, only when the percipient professed herself ready to make the reproduction, which happened usually in times varying from half-a-minute to two or three minutes. Her position rendered it absolutely impossible that she should obtain a glimpse of the original. Apart from the blindfolding, she could not have done so without rising from her seat and advancing her head several feet; and as she was very nearly in the same line of sight as the drawing, and so very nearly in the centre of the agent’s field of vision, the slightest approach to such a movement must have been instantly detected. The reproductions were made in perfect silence, the agent forbearing to follow the actual process of the drawing with his eyes, though he was, of course, able to keep the percipient under the closest observation.

In the case of all the diagrams, except those numbered 7 and 8, the agent and the percipient were the only two persons in the room during the experiment. In the case of numbers 7 and 8, the agent and Miss Relph were sitting quite apart in a corner of the room, while Mr. Guthrie and Miss Edwards were talking in another part of it. Numbers 1-6 are specially interesting as being the complete and consecutive series of a single sitting.

No. 1. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 1. REPRODUCTION.

No. 2. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 2. REPRODUCTION.

No. 3. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 3. REPRODUCTION.

No. 4. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 4. REPRODUCTION.

No. 5. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 5. REPRODUCTION.

No. 6. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 6. REPRODUCTION.

No. 7. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 7. REPRODUCTION.

No. 8. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 8. REPRODUCTION.

No. 9. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 9. REPRODUCTION.

No. 10. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 10. REPRODUCTION.

No. 11. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 11. REPRODUCTION.

No. 12. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 12. REPRODUCTION.

No. 13. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 13. REPRODUCTION.

No. 14. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 14. REPRODUCTION.

No. 15. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 15. REPRODUCTION.

No. 16. ORIGINAL DRAWING.

No. 16. REPRODUCTION.

§ 9. Soon after the publication of these results, Mr. Guthrie was fortunate enough to obtain the active co-operation of Dr. Oliver J. Lodge, Professor of Physics in University College, Liverpool, who carried out a long and independent series of experiments with the same two percipients, and completely convinced himself of the genuineness of the phenomena. In his report¹ he says:—

“As regards collusion and trickery, no one who has witnessed the absolutely genuine and artless manner in which the impressions are described, but has been perfectly convinced of the transparent honesty of purpose of all concerned. This, however, is not evidence to persons who have not been present, and to them I can only say that to the best of my scientific belief no collusion or trickery was possible under the varied circumstances of the experiments. . . . . . When one has the control of the circumstances, can change them at will and arrange one’s own experiments, one gradually acquires a belief in the phenomena observed quite comparable to that induced by the repetition of ordinary physical experiments. . . . . . We have many times succeeded with agents quite disconnected from the percipient in ordinary life, and sometimes complete strangers to them. Mr. Birchall, the headmaster of the Birkdale Industrial School, frequently acted; and the house physician at the Eye and Ear Hospital, Dr. Shears, had a successful experiment, acting alone, on his first and only visit. All suspicion of a pre-arranged code is thus rendered impossible even to outsiders who are unable to witness the obvious fairness of all the experiments.”

The objects of which the idea was transferred were sometimes things with names (cards, key, teapot, flag, locket, picture of donkey, and so on), sometimes irregular drawings with no name. Professor Lodge satisfied himself that auditory as well as visual impressions played a part—that in some cases the idea transferred was that of the object itself, and in others, that of its name; thus confirming the conclusion which we had come to in the experiments with the Creery family. Of the two percipients one seemed more susceptible to the visual, and the other to the auditory impressions. A case where the auditory element seems clearly to have come in is the following. The object was a tetrahedron rudely drawn in projection, thus—

The percipient said: “Is it another triangle?” No answer was given, but Professor Lodge silently passed round to the agents a scribbled message, “Think of a pyramid.” The percipient then said, “I only see a triangle”—then hastily, “Pyramids of Egypt. No, I shan’t do this.” Asked to draw, she only drew a triangle.

I will give only one other case from this series, which is important as showing that the percipient may be simultaneously influenced by two minds, which are concentrated on two different things. The two agents being seated opposite to one another, Professor Lodge placed between them a piece of paper, on one side of which was drawn a square, and on the other a cross. They thus had different objects to contemplate, and neither knew what the other was looking at; nor did the percipient know that anything unusual was being tried. There was no contact. Very soon the percipient said, “I see things moving about . . . I seem to see two things . . . I see first one up there and then one down there . . . I don’t know which to draw . . . I can’t see either distinctly.” Professor Lodge said: “Well, anyhow, draw what you have seen.” She took off the bandage and drew first a square, and then said, “Then there was the other thing as well . . . afterwards they seemed to go into one,”—and she drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner, adding afterwards, “I don’t know what made me put it inside.” The significance of this experimental proof of joint agency will be more fully realised in connection with some of the spontaneous cases.

The following passage from the close of Professor Lodge’s report has a special interest for us, confirming, as it does, the accounts which we had received from our own former “subjects,” and the views above expressed as to the conditions of success and failure:—

“With regard to the feelings of the percipients when receiving an impression, they seem to have some sort of consciousness of the action of other minds on them; and once or twice, when not so conscious, have complained that there seemed to be ‘no power’ or anything acting, and that they not only received no impression, but did not feel as if they were going to.

“I asked one of them what she felt when impressions were coming freely, and she said she felt a sort of influence or thrill. They both say that several objects appear to them sometimes, but that one among them persistently recurs and they have a feeling when they fix upon one that it is the right one.

“One serious failure rather depresses them, and after a success others often follow. It is because of these rather delicate psychological conditions that one cannot press the variations of an experiment as far as one would do if dealing with inert and more dependable matter. Usually the presence of a stranger spoils the phenomena, though in some cases a stranger has proved a good agent straight off.

“The percipients complain of no fatigue as induced by the experiments, and I have no reason to suppose that any harm is done them.”

It is the “delicate psychological conditions” of which Professor Lodge here speaks that are in danger of being ignored, just because they cannot be measured and handled. The man who first hears of thought-transference very naturally imagines that, if it is a reality, it ought to be demonstrated to him at a moment’s notice. He forgets that the experiment being essentially a mental one, his own presence—so far as he has a mind—may be a factor in it; that he is demanding that a delicate weighing operation shall be carried out, while he himself, a person of unknown weight, sits judicially in one of the scales. After a time he will learn to allow for the conditions of his instruments, and will not expect in the operations of an obscure vital influence the rigorous certainty of a chemical reaction.

I cannot conclude this division of the subject without a reference to a remarkable set of diagrams which appeared in Science for July, 1885—the first-fruits of the investigation of thought-transference set on foot by the American Society for Psychical Research. Most of the trials were carried out by Mr. W. H. Pickering (brother of the eminent astronomer at Harvard), and his sister-in-law. Though the success is far less striking to the eye than in the several English series, the evidence for some agency beyond chance seems, on examination, irresistible.

§ 10. So far the present sketch has included transference of impressions of the visual and auditory sorts only—impressions, moreover, which for the most part represented formed objects or definite groups of sensations, not sensations pure and simple. These are not only by far the most important forms of the phenomenon, in relation to the wider spontaneous operations of telepathy which we shall consider in the sequel; but are also the most convenient forms for experiment. Moreover, I have been tracing the development of the subject historically; and it was in connection with ideas belonging to the higher forms of sense that the transferences to percipients who were in a normal state were first obtained. But the existence of such cases would prepare us for transferences of a more elementary type,—transferences of a simple formless sensation and nothing more, which should impress the percipient not as an idea, but in its direct sensational character; and if the phenomena be arranged in a logical scale from the less to the more complex, such cases would have the priority. For their exhibition, it is naturally to the lower senses that we should look—taste, smell, and touch—which last (since a certain intensity of experience seems necessary) we should hardly expect to prove effective till it reached the degree of pain. These lower forms are, in fact, those which preponderate in the earlier observations of mesmeric rapport in this country; and our own experiments in mesmerism have included several instances of this sort.¹ Thus the discovery that a similar “community of sensation” might exist between persons in a normal state, and without any resort to mesmeric or hypnotic processes, not only filled up an obvious lacuna, but gave a fresh proof of the fundamental unity of our many-sided subject.

In the case of taste, we owe the discovery to Mr. Guthrie—the phenomenon having been, we believe, first observed by him on August 30th, 1883, and first fully examined in the course of a visit which Mr. Myers and the present writer paid to him in the following week. Failing to obtain very marked success in other lines of experiment, it occurred to us to introduce this novel form; but the superiority of the results was probably due simply to the fact that they were obtained on the later days of our visit, when the “subjects” had become accustomed to our presence.

I will quote the report made at the time:—

“The taste to be discerned was known only to one or more of the three actual experimenters; and the sensations experienced were verbally described by the ‘subjects’ (not written down), so that all danger of involuntary muscular guidance was eliminated.

“A selection of about twenty strongly-tasting substances was made. These substances were enclosed in small bottles and small parcels, precisely similar to one another, and kept carefully out of the range of vision of the ‘subjects,’ who were, moreover, blindfolded, so that no grimaces made by the tasters could be seen. The ‘subjects,’ in fact, had no means whatever of knowing, through the sense of sight, what was the substance tasted.

“Smell had to be guarded against with still greater care. When the substance was odoriferous the packet or bottle was opened outside the room, or at such a distance, and so cautiously as to prevent any sensible smell from escaping. The experiments, moreover, were conducted in the close vicinity of a very large kitchen, from whence a strong odour of beefsteak and onions proceeded during almost all the time occupied. The tasters took pains to keep their heads high above the ‘subjects,’ and to avoid breathing with open mouth. One substance (coffee) tried was found to give off a slight smell, in spite of all precautions, and an experiment made with this has been omitted.

“The tasters were Mr. Guthrie (M.G.), Mr. Gurney (E.G.), and Mr. Myers (M.). The percipients may be called R. and E. The tasters lightly placed a hand on one of the shoulders or hands of the percipients—there not being the same objection to contact in trials of this type as where lines and figures are concerned, and the ‘subjects’ themselves seeming to have some faith in it. During the first experiments (September 3rd and 4th) there were one or two other persons in the room, who, however, were kept entirely ignorant of the substance tasted. During the experiments silence was preserved. The last fifteen of them (September 5th) were made when only M. G., E. G., and M., with the two percipients, were present. On this evening E. was, unfortunately, suffering from sore throat, which seemed to blunt her susceptibility. On this occasion none of the substances were allowed even to enter the room where the percipients were. They were kept in a dark lobby outside, and taken by the investigators at random, so that often one investigator did not even know what the other took. Still less could any spy have discerned what was chosen, had such spy been there, which he certainly was not.

“A very small portion of each substance used was found to be enough. The difficulty lies in keeping the mean between the massive impression of a large quantity of a salt, spice, bitter, or acid, which confounds the specific differences under each general head, and the fading impression which is apt to give merely a residual pungency, from which the characteristic flavour has escaped. It is necessary to allow some minutes to elapse between each experiment, as the imaginary taste seems to be fully as persistent as the real one.

“We should have preferred in these experiments to use only substances which were wholly inodorous. But in order to get any description of tastes from the percipients, it was necessary that the tastes should be either very decided or very familiar. It would be desirable, before entering on a series of experiments of this kind, to educate the palates of the percipients by accustoming them to a variety of chemical substances, and also by training them to distinguish, with shut eyes, between the more ordinary flavours. It is well known how much taste is helped by sight and determined by expectation; and when it is considered that the percipients in these cases were judging blindfold of the mere shadow of a savour, it will perhaps be thought that even some of their mistakes are not much wider of the mark than they might have been had a trace of the substance been actually placed upon their tongues.”

In later experiments, Mr. Guthrie endeavoured to meet the difficulty caused by odorous substances, and even succeeded in obtaining what appeared to be transferences of smell-impressions. The “subjects” and the agents were placed in different rooms. An opening, 101 inches square, had been made in the wooden partition between the two rooms; and this had been filled in with a frame, covered with india-rubber and fitting tightly. Through a slit in this frame the agent (Mr. Guthrie or his relative, Miss Redmond) passed a hand, which both the “subjects” could then touch. Under these conditions, as far as could be judged, it was impossible for any scent to pass; and, certainly, if any did pass, it would have needed extreme hyperæsthesia to detect it. The following results were obtained on December 5th, 1883:—

1.—Miss Redmond tasted powdered nutmeg.

E. said “Ginger.”

R. said “Nutmeg.”

2.—Mr. G. tasted powder of dry celery.

E.: “A bitter herb.”

R.: “Something like camomile.”

3.—Miss Redmond tasted coffee.

At the same time, without any previous intimation, Mr. G., with two pins, pricked the front of the right wrist of Miss Redmond.

E. said: “Is it a taste at all?” Mr. G.: “Why do you ask?” “Because I feel a sort of pricking in the left wrist.” She was told it was the right wrist, but said she felt it in the left.

R.: “Is it cocoa or chocolate?” Answer given in the negative.

E.: “Is it coffee?”

4.—Mr. G. tasted Worcestershire sauce.

R.: “Something sweet . . also acid . . a curious taste.”

E.: “Is it vinegar?”

5.—Miss Redmond smelt eau do Cologne.

R.: “Is it eau de Cologne?”

6.—Miss Redmond smelt camphor.

E.: “Don’t taste anything.”

R.: Nothing perceived.

7.—Mr. G. smelt carbolic acid.

R.: “What you use for toothache . . . creosote.”

E. afterwards said she thought of pitch.

8.—Mr. G. Right instep pricked with pins.

E. guessed first the face, then the left shoulder; then R. localised the pain on the right foot.

The pain was then silently transferred to the left foot. E. localised it on the left foot. Both maintained their opinions.

I will quote one more taste-series, for the sake of illustrating a special point—namely, the deferment of the percipient’s consciousness of the sensation until a time when the agent had himself ceased to feel it. This fact is of great interest, on account of the marked analogy to it which we shall encounter in many of the spontaneous telepathic cases. The instances below are too few to be conclusive; but we used to notice the same thing in our experiments with the Creery family—the object on which the attention of the agents had been concentrated being sometimes correctly named after the experiment had been completely abandoned as a failure. (Cf., Vol. II., p. 327.)

June 11th, 1885.

Dr. Hyla Greves was in contact with Miss Relph, having tasted salad oil.

Miss Relph said: “I feel a cool sensation in my mouth, something like that produced by sal prunelle.”

Mr. R. C. Johnson in contact, having tasted Worcestershire sauce in another room.

“I taste something oily; it is very like salad oil.” Then, a few minutes after contact with Mr. Johnson had ceased, “My mouth seems getting hot after the oil.” (N.B.—Nothing at all had been said about the substances tasted either by Dr. Greves or Mr. Johnson.)

Dr. Greves in contact, having tasted bitter aloes.

“I taste something frightfully hot . . . something like vinegar and pepper . . . Is it Worcestershire sauce?”

Mr. Guthrie in contact, also having tasted bitter aloes.

“I taste something extremely bitter, but don’t know what it is, and do not remember tasting it before . . . It is a very horrid taste.”

The possibility of the transference of pain, to a percipient in the normal state, is also a recent discovery. In December, 1882, we obtained some results which—with our well-tried knowledge of the percipient’s character—we regard as completely satisfactory; but our more striking successes in this line happen to have been with hypnotic subjects.¹ The form of experiment has difficulties of its own. For, in mercy to the agent, the pain which it is hoped to transfer cannot be very severely inflicted; and, moreover, in such circumstances of investigation as Mr. Guthrie’s, it is only a very limited amount of the area of the body that can practically be used—a fact which of course increases the percipient’s chances of accidental success. Still, the amount of success obtained with Mr. Guthrie’s “subjects,” in a normal state, is such as certainly excludes the hypothesis of accident. In some of the most remarkable series, contact has been permitted, it being difficult to suppose that unconscious pressure of the hand could convey information as to the exact locality of a pain.² But complete isolation of the percipient is, no doubt, a more satisfactory condition; and at seven of the Liverpool meetings, which took place at intervals from November, 1884, to July, 1885, the experiment was arranged in the following way. The percipient being seated blindfolded, and with her back to the rest of the party, all the other persons present inflicted on themselves the same pain on the same part of the body. Those who took part in this collective agency were three or more of the following: Mr. Guthrie, Professor Herdman, Dr. Hicks, Dr. Hyla Greves, Mr. R. C. Johnson, F.R.A.S., Mr. Birchall, Miss Redmond, and on one occasion another lady. The percipient throughout was Miss Relph.

In all, 20 trials were made. The parts pained were—

1.—Back of left hand pricked. Rightly localised.

2.—Lobe of left ear pricked. Rightly localised.

3.—Left wrist pricked. “Is it in the left hand?”—pointing to the back near the little finger.

4.—Third finger of left hand tightly bound round with wire. A lower joint of that finger was guessed.

5.—Left wrist scratched with pins. “It is in the left wrist, like being scratched.”

6.—Left ankle pricked. Rightly localised.

7.—Spot behind left ear pricked. No result.

8.—Right knee pricked. Rightly localised.

9.—Right shoulder pricked. Rightly localised.

10.—Hands burned over gas. “Like a pulling pain . . then tingling, like cold and hot alternately”—localised by gesture only.

11.—End of tongue bitten. “It is in the lip or the tongue.”

12.—Palm of left hand pricked. “Is it a tingling pain in the hand, here?”—placing her finger on the palm of the left hand.

13.—Back of neck pricked. “Is it a pricking of the neck?”

14.—Front of left arm above elbow pricked. Rightly localised.

15.—Spot just above left ankle pricked. Rightly localised.

16.—Spot just above right wrist pricked. “I am not quite sure, but I feel a pain in the right arm, from the thumb upwards, to above the wrist.”

17.—Inside of left ankle pricked. Outside of left ankle guessed.

18.—Spot beneath right collarbone pricked. The exactly corresponding spot on the left side was guessed.

19.—Back hair pulled. No result.

20.—Inside of right wrist pricked. Right foot guessed.

Thus in 10 out of the 20 cases, the percipient localised the pain with great precision; in 6 the localisation was nearly exact, and with these we may include No. 10, where the pain was probably not confined to a single well-defined area in the hands of all the agents; in 2 no local impression was produced; and in 1, the last, the answer was wholly wrong.

§ 11. We may pass now to a totally new division of experimental cases. So far the effect of thought-transference on the receiving mind has been an effect in consciousness—the actual emergence of an image or sensation which the percipient has recognised and described. But it is not necessary that the effect should be thus recognised by the percipient; his witness to it may be unconscious, instead of conscious, and yet may be quite unmistakeable. The simplest example of this is when some effect is produced on his motor system—when the impression received causes him to perform some action which proves to have distinct reference to the thought in the agent’s mind.¹

The cases fall into two classes. In one class the actions are purely automatic: in the other some conscious idea of what was to be done has preceded and accompanied the muscular effect; so that that effect would be at most semi-automatic. To begin with this semi-automatic class; it might be thought that examples would be found in those rarer cases of the “willing-game” where contact, and movement on the agent’s part, are avoided. But we have received no records of such cases where it is certain that the precautions necessary to exclude the barest possibility of slight unconscious physical signs were rigidly enforced; and it will be preferable to describe some experiments made by members of our own group, where this point was kept steadily in view. We have had several interesting series in which the “subject’s” power of utterance has been inhibited by the silent determination of the operator. Our first experiments of this sort were made in January, 1883. The “subject” was our friend, Mr. Sidney Beard, who had been thrown into a light hypnotic trance by Mr. G. A. Smith. A list of twelve Yeses and Noes in arbitrary order was written by one of ourselves and put into Mr. Smith’s hand, with directions that he should successively “will” the “subject” to respond or not to respond, in accordance with the order of the list. Mr. Beard was lying back with closed eyes; and a tuning-fork was struck and held at his ear, with the question, “Do you hear?” asked by one of ourselves. This was done twelve times with a completely successful result, the answer or the failure to answer corresponding in each case with the “yes” or “no” of the written list—that is to say, with the silently concentrated will of the agent.¹

A much more prolonged series of trials was made in November, 1883, by Professor Barrett, at his house in Dublin. The hypnotist was again Mr. G. A. Smith.

“The ‘subject’ was an entire stranger to Mr. Smith, a youth named Fearnley, to whom nothing whatever was said as to the nature of the experiment about to be tried, until he was thrown into the hypnotic state in my study. He was then in a light sleep-waking condition—his eyes were closed and the pupils upturned—apparently sound asleep; but he readily answered in response to any questions addressed to him by Mr. Smith or by myself.

“I first told him to open the fingers of his closed hand, or not to open them, just as he felt disposed, in response to the question addressed to him. That question, which I always asked in a uniform tone of voice, was in each case, ‘Now, will you open your hand?’ and at the same moment I pointed to the word ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ written on a card, which was held in sight of Mr. Smith, but entirely out of the range of vision of the ‘subject,’ even had his eyes been open, which they were not. Without the slightest change of expression or other observable muscular movement, and quite out of contact with the ‘subject,’ Mr. Smith then silently willed the subject to open or not to open his hand, in accordance with the ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Twenty successive experiments were made in this way; seventeen of these were quite successful, and three were failures. But these three failures were possibly due to inadvertence on Mr. Smith’s part, as he subsequently stated that on those occasions he had not been prompt enough to direct his will in the right direction before the question was asked.

“The experiment was now varied as follows: The word ‘Yes’ was written on one, and the word ‘No’ on the other, of two precisely similar pieces of card. One or other of these cards was handed to Mr. Smith at my arbitrary pleasure, care, of course, being taken that the ‘subject’ had no opportunity of seeing the card, even had he been awake. When ‘Yes’ was handed, Mr. Smith was silently to will the ‘subject’ to answer aloud in response to the question asked by me, ‘Did you hear me?’ When ‘No’ was handed, Mr. Smith was to will that no response should be made in reply to the same question. The object of this series of experiments was to note the effect of increasing the distance between the willer and the willed,—the agent and the percipient. In the first instance Mr. Smith was placed three feet from the ‘subject,’ who remained throughout apparently asleep in an arm-chair in one corner of my study.

“At three feet apart, fifteen trials were successively made, and in every case the ‘subject’ responded or did not respond in exact accordance with the silent will of Mr. Smith, as directed by me.

“At six feet apart, six similar trials were made without a single failure.

“At twelve feet apart, six more trials were made without a single failure.

“At seventeen feet apart, sixmore trials were made without a single failure.

“In this last case Mr. Smith had to be placed outside the study door, which was then closed with the exception of a narrow chink just wide enough to admit of passing a card in or out, whilst I remained in the study observing the ‘subject.’ To avoid any possible indication from the tone in which I asked the question, in all cases except the first dozen experiments, I shuffled the cards face downwards, and then handed the unknown ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to Mr. Smith, who looked at the card and willed accordingly. I noted down the result, and then, and not till then, looked at the card.

“A final experiment was made when Mr. Smith was taken across the hall and placed in the dining-room, at a distance of about thirty feet from the ‘subject,’ two doors, both quite closed, intervening. Under these conditions, three trials were made with success, the ‘Yes’ response being, however, very faint and hardly audible to me, who returned to the study to ask the usual question after handing the card to the distant operator. At this point, the ‘subject’ fell into a deep sleep, and made no further replies to the questions addressed to him.

“Omitting these final experiments, the total number of successive trials at different distances was forty-three. If the result had been due to accident, there would have been an even chance of failures and of successes,—whereas in fact there was not a single failure in the entire series.

“I subsequently made a series of a dozen successive trials in an absolutely dark room, conveying my intention to Mr. Smith by silently squeezing his hand, once for ‘No,’ twice for ‘Yes.’ Every trial was successful. When Mr. Smith was placed outside the darkened room, I handed him the card through a small aperture, which could be closed. Eight trials gave six results quite right, one wrong, and one doubtful. Afterwards twenty trials, made when Mr. Smith was recalled, and the room lighted, were all entirely successful. There was, I need hardly say, no contact between operator and ‘subject’ in any of these experiments.

“The difference in the power of the will of the hypnotist and that of any other person was strikingly manifest, and the proof of the existence of a peculiar ‘rapport’ between operator and subject was simply overwhelming. I several times exerted my will in opposition to that of Mr. Smith—that is to say, willed that the ‘subject’ should or should not respond, when Mr. Smith willed the opposite, both of us being equally distant from the ‘subject.’ In every case his will triumphed. As in the case of Mr. Beard, the ‘subject,’ on being aroused, stated that he had heard the question each time, but that when he gave no answer he felt unaccountably unable to control his muscles so as to frame the word.

“It was noticeable that neither in the normal nor in the hypnotic state was this subject able to tell any word or number or describe any diagram thought of or viewed by the operator. Only his ability to act in a particular way could be controlled, and he was not susceptible to even the most rudimentary form of thought-transference proper.”

The following shorter series with another operator, Mr. Kershaw, of Southport, and with Mrs. Firth, a sick-nurse, as “subject,” though the precautions were less elaborate than in the case just recorded, was to an eye-witness almost equally satisfactory. For the trial was quite suddenly suggested to Mr. Kershaw by the present writer; and not only was it planned out of Mrs. Firth’s hearing, but Mr. Kershaw himself had some difficulty in understanding what was wanted. A variety of small circumstances combined to show that the form of experiment was entirely new both to operator and “subject.”

The trial took place at Southport, on September 7th, 1883. Mrs. Firth, who had been previously thrown into a light stage of trance, was placed in a chair in the middle of a bare room. Mr. Kershaw and I stood about three yards behind her; and sight of us, or of any part of us, on her part was out of the question. The window was in the wall in front of her, but altogether on one side; and there were no other reflecting surfaces in the room. I drew up the subjoined list of yeses and noes, and held it for Mr. Kershaw to see. He made a quiet connecting motion of the hand (not touching me, and being many feet from Mrs. Firth), when there was to be an answer, and an equally quiet transverse or separating pass when there was to be none. I attribute no virtue to the passes, except so far as they were a means of vivifying Mr. Kershaw’s silent intention to himself. The passes were almost absolutely noiseless, and the extremely faint sound which they made, from the very nature of the gentle motion, can scarcely have varied. Complete silence was preserved but for my question, “Do you hear?” repeated time after time, in a perfectly neutral tone and there did not appear to be the very faintest chance of signalling, even had there been an opportunity for arranging a scheme.

1.—Yes.........Right (i.e., Mrs. Firth responded).

2.—No......... Right (i.e., Mrs. Firth did not respond).

3.—Yes.........Right.

4.—Yes.........Right.

5.—No.........Right.

6.—Yes.........Right.

7.—No.........At first no answer, which was right: then I gave a very loud stamp, which provoked a “Yes.”

8.—No.........Right.

9.—Yes.........Right.

I will add one more short series, which took place at my lodgings at Brighton, on September 10th, 1883. The operator was Mr. Smith; the “subject” an intelligent young cabinet-maker, named Conway. Mr. Smith and I stood behind him, without any contact with him. I held the list, and pointed to the desired answer each time. The silence was absolute. I repeated the question, “What is your name?” in a perfectly neutral and monotonous manner.

1.—Yes.........Right (i.e., the “subject” said “Conway”).

2.—Yes.........Right.

3.—No.........This time the answer “Conway” was given; but when the next question was asked, the “subject” seemed unable to answer for some seconds, as though Mr. Smith’s intention had taken effect a little too late.

4.—Yes.........Right.

5.—No.........Right.

6.—No.........Right.

7.—Yes.........Right.

8.—No.........Right.

9.—Yes.........Right.

10.—Yes.........Right.

11.—No.........Right.

12. Yes.........Right.

§ 12. But in experiments of this class it is clearly difficult to be sure that the conscious idea of the evoked or the inhibited action does not precede or accompany the muscular effects. Indeed, as we have seen, the percipient’s own account has sometimes shown that it did so. I proceed, then, to our second class of cases. There is, fortunately, one sort of act where the verdict of the performer that it was automatically performed may be taken as conclusive; the act of writing. If words are written down which the writer is obliged to read over, and even to puzzle over, just as anyone else might do, in order to learn what they are, his unconsciousness of them in the act of writing may be taken as established. Now written words are of course as good as spoken ones, as evidence that a particular idea has been in some way communicated. If, then, one person’s automatic writing corresponds unmistakeably to the idea on which another person’s mind was concentrated at the time, and if the possibility of sensory indications has been excluded, we have a clear example of some novel influence acting, not only without the participation of the recognised organs of sense, but without the participation of the percipient’s conscious intelligence. Here again we find the advantage of the generic word “telepathy”—for it would clearly be inaccurate to call a phenomenon “thought-transference” where what is transferred does not make its appearance, on the percipient’s side, as thought or any other form of conscious perception.

We have in our collection several examples of this motor form of experimental telepathy; where a mental question on the part of some one present has been answered in writing, with a planchette¹ or a simple pencil, without any consciousness of either the question or the answer on the part of the person whose hand was automatically acting. But the following group of cases is decidedly the most remarkable that has come under our notice.

The Rev. P. H. Newnham, Vicar of Maker, Devonport, has had many indications of spontaneous transference of thought from himself to his wife;² and at one period of his life, in 1871, he carried out a long and systematic series of experiments, which were of the motor type that we are now considering—he writing down a question, and the planchette under his wife’s hands replying to it. He recorded the results, day by day, in a private diary, which he has kindly placed at our disposal. From this diary I quote the following extracts:—

My wife always sat at a small low table, in a low chair, leaning backwards. I sat about eight feet distant, at a rather high table, and with my back towards her while writing down the questions. It was absolutely impossible that any gesture or play of features, on my part, could have been visible or intelligible to her. As a rule she kept her eyes shut; but never became in the slightest degree hypnotic, or even naturally drowsy.

Under these conditions we carried on experiments for about eight months, and I have 309 questions and answers recorded in my note-book, spread over this time. But the experiments were found very exhaustive of nerve power, and as my wife’s health was delicate, and the fact of thought-transmission had been abundantly proved, we thought it best to abandon the pursuit.

I may mention that the planchette began to move instantly, with my wife. The answer was often half written before I had completed the question.

On first finding that it would write easily, I asked three simple questions which were known to the operator;¹ then three others, unknown to her, relating to my own private concerns. All six having been instantly answered in a manner to show complete intelligence, I proceeded to ask:—

7.² Write down the lowest temperature here this winter.

A. 8.

Now, this reply at once arrested my interest. The actual lowest temperature had been 7.6° so that 8 was the nearest whole degree; but my wife said at once that, if she had been asked the question, she would have written 7 and not 8; as she had forgotten the decimal, but remembered my having said that the temperature had been down to 7 something.

I simply quote this, as a good instance, at the very outset, of perfect transmission of thought, coupled with a perfectly independent reply; the answer being correct in itself, but different from the impression on the conscious intelligence of both parties.³

Naturally our first desire was to see if we could obtain any information concerning the nature of the intelligence which was operating through the planchette, and of the method by which it produced the written results. We repeated questions on this subject again and again, and I will copy down the principal questions and answers in the connection.

January 29th.

13. Is it the operator’s brain, or some external force, that moves the planchette? Answer “brain” or “force.”

A. Will.

14. Is it the will of a living person, or of an immaterial spirit, distinct from that person? Answer “person” or “spirit.”

A. Wife.

15. Give first the wife’s Christian name; then, my favourite name for her.

(This was accurately done.)

27. What is your own name?

A. Only you.

28. We are not quite sure of the meaning of the answer. Explain.

A. Wife.

Failing to get more than this, at the outset, we turned to the same thought after question 114; when, having been closely pressed on another subject, we received the curt reply—“Told all I know.”

February 18th.

117. Who are you that writes, and has told all you know?

A. Wife.

118. But does no one tell wife what to write? If so, who?

A. Spirit.

119. Whose spirit?

A. Wife’s brain.

120. But how does wife’s brain know (certain) secrets?

A. Wife’s spirit unconsciously guides.

121. But how does wife’s spirit know things it has never been told?

A. No external influence.

122. But by what internal influence does it know (these) secrets?

A. You cannot know.

March 15th.

132. Who, then, makes the impressions upon her?

A. Many strange things.

133. What sort of strange things?

A. Things beyond your knowledge.

134. Do, then, things beyond our knowledge make impressions upon wife?

A. Influences which no man understands or knows.

136. Are these influences which we cannot understand external to wife?

A. External—invisible.

137. Does a spirit, or do spirits, exercise those influences?

A. No, never (written very large and emphatically).

138. Then from whom, or from whence, do the external influences come?

A. Yes; you will never know.

139. What do you mean by writing “yes” in the last answer?

A. That I really meant never.

April 10th.

192. But by what means are my thoughts conveyed to her brain?

A. Electro-biology.

193. What is electro-biology?

A. No one knows.

194. But do not you know?

A. No. Wife does not know.

My object in quoting this large number of questions and replies [N.B. those here given are mere samples] has not been merely to show the instantaneous and unfailing transmission of thought from questioner to operator; but, more especially, to call attention to a remarkable characteristic of the answers given. These answers, consistent and invariable in their tenor from first to last, did not correspond with the opinions or expectations of either myself or my wife. Neither myself nor my wife had ever taken part in any form of (so-called) “spiritual” manifestations before this time; nor had we any decided opinion as to the agency by which phenomena of this kind were brought about. But for such answers as those numbered 14, 27, 137, 192, and 194, we were both of us totally unprepared; and I may add that, so far as we were prepossessed by any opinions whatever, these replies were distinctly opposed to such opinions. In a word, it is simply impossible that these replies should have been either suggested or composed by the conscious intelligence of either of us.

I had a young man reading with me as a private pupil at this time. On February 12th he returned from his vacation; and, on being told of our experiments, expressed his incredulity very strongly. I offered any proof that he liked to insist upon, only stipulating that I should see the question asked. Accordingly, Mrs. Newnham took her accustomed chair in my study, while we went out into the hall, and shut the door behind us. He then wrote down on a piece of paper:—

87. What is the Christian name of my eldest sister?

We at once returned to the study, and found the answer already waiting for us:—

A. Mina.

(This name was the family abbreviation of Wilhelmina; and I should add that it was unknown to myself.)

I must now go on to speak of a series of other experiments, of a very remarkable kind.

We soon found that my wife was perfectly unable to follow the motions of the planchette. Often she only touched it with a single finger; but even with all her fingers resting on the board, she never had the slightest idea of what words were being traced out. It struck me that it would be a good thing to take advantage of this peculiarity on her part, to ask questions upon subjects that it was impossible for her to know anything about. I had taken a deep interest in Masonic archæology, and I now questioned planchette on some subjects connected therewith.

February 14th.

92. What is the English of the great word of the R.A.?

After an interruption, of which I shall speak hereafter, one great word of the degree, but not the one I meant, was written, very slowly and clearly.

February 18 th.

112. What is the translation of the Great Triple Word?

A. (The first syllable of the word in question was written correctly, and then it proceeded.) The end unknown. Three languages. Greece. Egypt. Syriac.

115. Who are you that know?

(Answer scrawled and illegible.)

116. Please repeat same answer legibly.

A. Manifestation triune person.

March 26th.

166. Of what language is the first syllable of the Great Triple R.A. Word?

A. Don’t know.

167. Yes, you do. What are the three languages of which the word is composed?

A. Greek, Egypt, Syriac first syllable (correctly given), rest unknown.

168. Write the syllable which is Syriac.

A. (First syllable correctly written.)

169. Write the syllable which is Egyptian.

A. Second.

170. Can you not write the syllable itself?

A. Third Greek.

174. Write down the word itself.

A. First three and last two letters were written correctly, but four incorrect letters, partly borrowed from another word of the same degree, came in the middle.

176. Why do you write a word of which I know nothing?

A. Wife tried hard to tell the word, but could not quite catch it.

177. Catch it from whom?

A. Not quite sure.

178. Not quite sure of what?

A. I know nothing. Wife doesn’t quite know.

In the above series of answers we have, it seems to me, a very remarkable combination of knowledge and ignorance. There is a perfect appreciation of my thoughts, in the queries; but a strange, persistent, almost dogged, incapability of seeing my thoughts, in the replies. Especially in the answer to 116, and in some other answers [not here quoted], there is a reference to an opinion which was published by Dr. Oliver, whose works I had been carefully reading about four months before, but with whose theory, in this case, I most strongly disagreed. So that here was an opinion intimated which it was impossible that the operator could have been aware of, and which the questioner had absolutely rejected as untenable!

182. Write out the prayer used at the advancement of a Mark Master Mason.

A. Almighty Ruler of the Universe and Architect of all worlds, we beseech Thee to accept this, our brother, whom we have this day received into our most honourable Company of Mark Master Masons. Grant him to be a worthy member of our brotherhood; and may he be in his own person a perfect mirror of all Masonic virtues. Grant that all our doings may be to Thy honour and glory, and to the welfare of all mankind.

This prayer was written off instantaneously and very rapidly. It is a very remarkable production indeed. For the benefit of those who are not members of the craft, I may say that no prayer in the slightest degree resembling it is made use of in the Ritual of any Masonic degree; and yet it contains more than one strictly accurate technicality connected with the degree of Mark Mason. My wife has never seen any Masonic prayers, whether in “Carlile,” or any other real or spurious Ritual of the Masonic Order.

Here, then, assuredly was a formula composed by some intelligence totally distinct from the conscious intelligence of either of the persons engaged in the experiment.

I proceeded to inquire as follows:—

183. I do not know this prayer. Where is it to be found?

A. Old American Ritual.

184. Where can I get one?

A. Most likely none in England.

185. Can you not write the prayer that I made use of in my own Lodge?

A. No, I don’t know it.

In these last answers we see a new moral element introduced. There is evasion, or subterfuge, of a more or less ingenious kind; and totally foreign to the whole character and natural disposition of the operator. A similar attempt at deliberate invention, rather than plead guilty to total ignorance, is contained in the following answers:—

May 7th.

255. In what Masonic degree was the Triple Word first used?

A. Wife does not know.

256. Cannot you tell her?

A. How can wife know what no one else does?

257. Does no one, then, know the answer to this?

A. No one knows now.

258. What do you mean by “now”? Did anyone once know?

A. The last one who knew died at least twenty years ago.

259. What was his name?

A. In America; don’t know name.

[Many more instances of these evasive replies occur.]

May 10th.

Planchette again gave us an example of its sense of the humorous.

I had been obliged to engage a clergyman who was not a favourable specimen of his profession, as I could procure no one else in time to get the Sunday’s work done. He was much amused with planchette, and desired to ask:—

277. How should a bachelor live in this neighbourhood?

(The answer was illegible.)

278. Please repeat answer.

A. Three months.

(Planchette evidently did not catch the exact query.)

279. I did not ask how long but how?

A. Eating and drinking and sleeping and smoking.

That clergyman never consulted planchette again.

I will conclude with a very pretty instance of a mistake instantly corrected. It was on the same evening, May 10th; I had to preach on the following Whit-Monday, on the occasion of laying a foundation-stone with Masonic ceremonial, so I asked:—

275. Give me a text for Whit-Monday’s sermon.

A. If I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you.

The selection of a subject suitable for Whitsuntide is plainly the first idea caught by the intelligence; so I proceeded:—

276. That will not do for my subject. I want a text for the Monday’s sermon.

A. Let brotherly love continue.

I will add one example where, contrary to the usual rule, the idea of the answer, though not that of the question, reached the level of consciousness in Mrs. Newnham’s mind.

59. What name shall we give to our new dog?

A. Nipen.

The name of Nipen, from Feats on the Fiord, shot into the operator’s brain just as the question was asked.

The above quotations form a fair sample of Mr. Newnham’s 309 experiments of the same type; and no one who admits the bona fides of the record, and believes that Mrs. Newnham, sitting with closed eyes eight feet behind her husband, did not obtain through her senses an unconscious knowledge of what he wrote, will deny that some sort of telepathic influence was at work, acting below the level of the percipient’s consciousness. The experiments are further interesting as suggesting, in the character of many of the replies, an unconscious intelligence—a second self quite other than Mrs. Newnham’s conscious self. “Unconscious intelligence” is no doubt a somewhat equivocal phrase, and it is necessary to know in every case exactly what is meant by it. It may be used in a purely physical sense—to describe the unconscious cerebral processes whereby actions are produced which as a rule are held to imply conscious intelligence; as, for instance, when complicated movements, once performed with thought and effort, gradually become mechanical. But it may be used also to describe psychical processes which are severed from the main conscious current of an individual’s life. Unconsciousness in any further sense it would be rash to assert; for intelligent psychic process without consciousness of some sort, if not a contradiction in terms, is at any rate something as impossible to imagine as a fourth dimension in space. The events in question are outside the individual’s consciousness, as the events in another person’s consciousness are; but they differ from these last in not revealing themselves as part of any continuous stream of conscious life; and no one, therefore, can give an account of them as belonging to a self. What their range and conditions of emergence may be we cannot tell; since, in general, their very existence can only be inferred from certain sensible effects to which they lead.¹ I may recall the undoubted phenomena of what has been termed “double consciousness,” where a double psychical life is found connected with a single organism. In those cases the two selves, one of which knows nothing of the other, appear as successive; but if we can regard such segregated existences as united or unified by bonds of reference and association which, for the partial view of one of them at least, remain permanently out of sight, then I do not see what new or fundamental difficulty is introduced by conceiving them as simultaneous; and simultaneity of the sort is what seems to be shown, in a fragmentary way, by cases like the present. I shall have to recur to this conception in connection with some of the facts of spontaneous telepathy (see pp. 230-1).

A further noteworthy point is that so often the questions and not the answers in the agent’s mind should have been telepathically discerned; but we may perhaps conceive that the impulse first conveyed set the percipient’s independent activity to work, and so put an end for the moment to the receptive condition. The power to reproduce the actual word thought of is sufficiently shown in the cases where names were given (15 and 87), and in some of the Masonic answers; and the following examples belong to the same class.

48. What name shall we give to our new clog?

A. Yesterday was not a fair trial.

49. Why was not yesterday a fair trial

A. Dog.

And again:—

108. What do I mean by chaffing C. about a lilac tree?

A. Temper and imagination.

109. You are thinking of somebody else. Please reply to my question.

A. Lilacs.

Here a single image or word seems to have made its mark on the percipient’s mind, without calling any originative activity into play; and we thus get the naked reproduction. In these last examples we again notice the feature of deferred impression. The influence only gradually became effective, the immediate answer being irrelevant to the question. We may suppose, therefore, that the first effect took place below the threshold of consciousness.¹

§ 13. I may now proceed to some further results which were obtained with percipients of less abnormal sensibility, and which demand, therefore, a careful application of the theory of probabilities. For the development of the motor form of experiment in this direction, we have again to thank M. Richet; who here, as in the case of the card-guessing, has brought the calculus to bear effectively on various sets of results many of which, if looked at in separation, would have had no significance.¹ The fact that the “subjects” of his trials were persons who had betrayed no special aptitude for “mental suggestion,” made it clearly desirable that the bodily action required should be of the very simplest sort. The formation of words by a planchette-writer requires, of course, a very complex set of muscular co-ordinations: all that M. Richet sought to obtain was a single movement or twitch. In the earlier trials an object was hidden, and the percipient endeavoured to discover it by means of a sort of divining-rod—the idea being that he involuntarily twitched the rod at the right moment under the influence of “mental suggestion” from the agent, who was watching his movements. But where the subject of communication is of such an extremely simple kind, very elaborate precautions would be needed to guard against unconscious hints. Indications from the expression or attitude of the “agent” may be prevented by blindfolding the “percipient,” and in other ways; but if the two are in close proximity, it is harder to exclude such signs as may be given by involuntary movements, or by changes of breathing. M. Richet’s later experiments were ingeniously contrived so as to obviate this objection.

The place of a planchette was taken by a table, and M. Richet prefaces his account by a succinct statement of the orthodox view as to “table-turning.” Rejecting altogether the three theories which attribute the phenomena to wholesale fraud, to spirits, and to an unknown force, he regards the gyrations and oscillations of séance-tables as due wholly to the unconscious muscular contractions of the sitters. It thus occurred to him to employ a table as an indicator of the movements that might be produced, by “mental suggestion.” The plan of the experiments was as follows. Three persons (C, D, and E,) took their seats in a semi-circle, at a little table on which their hands rested. One of these three was always a “medium”—a term used by M. Richet to denote a person liable to exhibit intelligent movements in which consciousness and will apparently take no part. Attached to the table was a simple electrical apparatus, the effect of which was to ring a bell whenever the current was broken by the tilting of the table. Behind the backs of the sitters at the table was another table, on which was a large alphabet, completely screened from the view of C, D, and E, even had they turned round and endeavoured to see it. In front of this alphabet sat A, whose duty was to follow the letters slowly and steadily with a pen, returning at once to the beginning as soon as he arrived at the end. At A’s side sat B, with a note-book; his duty was to write down the letter at which A’s pen happened to be pointing whenever the bell rang. This happened whenever one of the sitters at the table made the simple movement necessary to tilt it. Under these conditions, A and B are apparently mere automata. C, D, and E are little more, being unconscious of tilting the table, which appears to them to tilt itself; but even if they tilted it consciously, and with a conscious desire to dictate words, they have no means of ascertaining at what letter A’s pen is pointing at any particular moment; and they might tilt for ever without producing more than an endless series of incoherent letters. Things being arranged thus, a sixth operator, F, stationed himself apart both from the tilting table and from the alphabet, and concentrated his thought on some word of his own choosing, which he had not communicated to the others. The three sitters at the first table engaged in conversation, sang, or told stories; but at intervals the table tilted, the bell rang, and B wrote down the letter which A’s pen was opposite to at that moment. Now, to the astonishment of all concerned, these letters, when arranged in a series, turned out to produce a more or less close approximation to the word of which F was thinking.

For the sake of comparing the results with those which pure accident would give, M. Richet first considers some cases of the latter sort. He writes the word NAPOLEON; he then takes a box containing a number of letters, and makes eight draws; the eight letters, in the order of drawing, turn out to be U P M T D E Y V He then places this set below the other, thus:—

N A P O L E O N

U P M T D E Y V

Taking the number of letters in the French alphabet to be 24, the probability of the correspondence of any letter in the lower line with the letter immediately above it is, of course 1/24; and in the series of 8 letters it is more probable than not that there will not be a single correspondence. If we reckon as a success any case where the letter in the lower line corresponds not only with the letter above it, but with either of the neighbours of that letter in the alphabet¹ (e.g., where L has above it either K, L, or M), then a single correspondence represents the most probable amount of success. In the actual result, it will be seen, there is just one correspondence, which happens to be a complete one—the letter E in the sixth place. It will not be necessary to quote other instances. Suffice it to say that the total result, of trials involving the use of 64 letters, gives 3 exact correspondences, while the expression indicating the most probable number was 27; and 7 correspondences of the other type, while the most probable number was 8. Thus even in this short set of trials, the accidental result very nearly coincided with the strict theoretic number.

We are now in a position to appreciate the results obtained when the factor of “mental suggestion” was introduced. In the first experiment made, M. Richet, standing apart both from the table and from the alphabet, selected from Littré’s dictionary a line of poetry which was unknown to his friends, and asked the name of the author. The letters obtained by the process above described were J F A R D; and there the tilting stopped. After M. Richet’s friends had puzzled in vain over this answer, he informed them that the author of the line was Racine; and juxtaposition of the letters thus—

J F A R D

J E A N R

shows that the number of complete successes was 2, which is about 10 times the fraction representing the most probable number; and that the number of successes of the type where neighbouring letters are reckoned was 3, which is about 5 times the fraction representing the most probable number. M. Richet tells us, however, that he was not actually concentrating his thought on the author’s Christian name. Even so, it probably had a sub-conscious place in his mind, which might sufficiently account for its appearance. At the same time accident has of course a wider scope when there is more than one result that would be allowed as successful; and the amount of success was here not nearly striking enough to have any independent weight.

It is clearly desirable—with the view of making sure that F’s mind, if any, is the operative one—not to ask a question of which the answer might possibly at some time have been within the knowledge of the sitters at the table; and in the subsequent experiments the name was silently fixed on by F. The most striking success was this:—

Name thought of: C H E V A L O N

Letters produced: C H E V A L

Here the most probable number of exact successes was 0, and the actual number was 6.

Taking the sum of eight trials, we find that the most probable number of exact successes was 2, and the actual number 14; and that the most probable number of successes of the other type was 7, and the actual number 24. It was observed, moreover, that the correspondences were much more numerous in the earlier letters of each set than in the later ones. The first three letters of each set were as follows—

J F A—N E F—F O Q—H E N—C H E—E P J—C H E—A L L

J E A—L E G—E S T—H I G—D I E—D O R—C H E—Z K O

Here, out of 24 trials, the most probable number of exact successes being 1, the actual number is 8; the most probable number of successes of the other type being 3, the actual number is 17. The figures become still more striking if we regard certain consecutive series in the results. Thus the probability of obtaining by chance the three consecutive correspondences in the first experiment here quoted was 1/512; and that of obtaining the 6 consecutive correspondences in the C H E V A L O N experiment was about 1/100,000,000.

The experiment was repeated four times in another form. A line of poetry was secretly and silently written down by the agent, with the omission of a single letter. He then asked what the omitted letter was; it was correctly produced in every one of the four trials. The probability of such a result was less than 1/300,000.

And now follows a very interesting observation. In some cases, after the result was obtained, subsequent trials were made with the same word, which of course the agent did not reveal in the meantime; and the amount of success was sometimes markedly increased on these subsequent trials. Thus, when the name thought of was D’O R M O N T,

the first three letters produced on the first trial were E P J

the first three letters produced on the second trial were E P F

the first three letters produced on the third trial were E P S

the first three letters produced on the fourth trial were D O R

Summing up these four trials, the most probable number of exact successes was 0, and the actual number was 3; the most probable number of successes of the other type was 1 or at most 2; and the actual number was 10. The probability of the 3 consecutive successes in the last trial was about 3/10,000.

In respect of this name d’Ormont, there was a further very peculiar result. On the fourth trial, the letters produced in the manner described stood thus—D O R E M I O D.

Thus, if the name thought of were spelt D O R E M O D, the approximation would be extraordinarily close, the probability of the accidental occurrence of the 5 consecutive successes being something infinitesimal.¹ Now, as long as we are merely aiming at an unassailable mathematical estimate of probabilities for each particular case, it does not seem justifiable to take ifs of any sortinto consideration. M. Richet, who was the agent, expressly tells us that he was imagining the name spelt as d’Ormont; and on the strict account, therefore, the success reached a point against which the odds, though still enormous, were decidedly less enormous than if he had been imagining the other spelling. But when we are endeavouring to form a correct view of what really takes place, it would be unintelligent not to take a somewhat wider view of the phenomena. And such a view seems to show that in those underground mental regions where M. Richet’s results (if more than accidental) must have had their preparation, a mistake or a piece of independence in spelling is by no means an unusual occurrence. The records of automatism, quite apart from telepathy, afford many instances of such independence. Thus a gentleman, writing automatically, was puzzled by the mention of a friend at Frontunac—a place he had never heard of; weeks afterwards his own writing gave him the correct name—Fond du Lac. Mr. Myers’ paper, above referred to, contains one case where a planchette wrote, “My name is Norman,” presumably meaning Norval; and another, witnessed by Professor Sidgwick, where the Greek letter x was automatically written as K H, with the result that for a time the word completely puzzled the writer. And while engaged on this very point I have received a letter from Mr. Julian Hawthorne, in which he tells me that the spelling of the planchette-writing obtained through the automatism of a young child of his own was “much better than in her own letters and journals.”

I will insert here an incident to which, since it occurred in connection with a person who has been detected in the production of spurious phenomena, I wish to attribute no evidential importance. Throughout this book care has been taken to rest our case exclusively on phenomena and records of phenomena derived from (as we believe) quite untainted sources; but there are two reasons which seem to me to make the following experience worth describing. First, those who already believe in thought-transference will feel little doubt that we have here an instance of it, which is in itself independent of the character and pretensions of the percipient; and this being so, they will find, in the close parallelism that the case presents in some points to M. Richet’s experiments, an interesting confirmation of these. And secondly, it may be useful to suggest that thought-transference is probably the true explanation of certain results professedly produced by “spiritualistic mediumship”; for till telepathic percipience is allowed for, as a natural human faculty, the occasional manifestations of it in dubious circumstances are certain to be a source of confusion and error.

On September 2, 1885, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, Dr. A. T. Myers, and the present writer paid an impromptu visit to a professional “medium” in a foreign town, who had no clue whatever to our names and identity. We had decided beforehand on a name on which to concentrate our thoughts, with a view to getting it reproduced. There was no opportunity for employing M. Richet’s precautions and checks. The “medium,” her daughter, and the three visitors sat round a table on which their hands were placed, and the present writer pointed to the successive letters of a printed alphabet; at intervals the sound of a rap was heard, and the letter thus indicated was written down. Now these conditions could not have been considered adequate, had the result been that the name in our minds was correctly given; for though our two companions were not apparently looking at us and not in contact with us, it might have been supposed that some involuntary and unconscious movement on our part revealed to one of them at what points to make the raps. But as the result turned out, it will be seen, I think, that this objection does not apply. The name that had been selected was John Henry Pratt. The result obtained in the way described was J O N H N Y E S R O S A T.

From the N in the fifth place to the end, Dr. Myers and myself regarded the letters that were being given as purely fortuitous, and as forming gibberish; and though Mr. F. W. H. Myers detected a method in them, he was as far as we were from expecting the successive letters before they appeared. On inspection, the method becomes apparent. If in three places an approximation (of the sort so often met with by M. Richet) be allowed, and a contiguous letter be substituted, the complete name will be found to be given, thus:—

R P T

J O N H N Y E S R O S A T

the first word being phonetically spelt, and the other two being correct anagrams. It is highly improbable that such an amount of resemblance was accidental; and it is difficult to suppose that it was due to muscular indications unconsciously given by us in accordance with an unconscious arrangement of the letters in our minds in phonetic and anagrammatic order. If these suppositions be excluded, the only alternative will be thought-transference—the letters whose image or sound was transferred being modified by the percipient herself, in a way which seems, from some experiments unconnected with thought-transference, to be quite within the scope of the mind’s unconscious operations.¹ But in whatever way the knowledge of the letters or syllables reached the “medium’s” mind, I see no reason to think that the expression of it by raps was other than a conscious act. The sounds were such as would be made by gently tapping the foot against the wooden frame of the table; and at a subsequent trial with one of these so-called “mediums”—the daughter—I managed by very gradually advancing my own foot to receive on it first a part and ultimately the whole of the impact. The movement required to make the raps may have become semiautomatic from long habit, but can hardly have been unconscious. I may add that, out of a good many words and sentences which were spelt out in the same way at several different sittings, the case recorded was (with a single doubtful exception) the only one that contained the slightest indication of any abnormal faculty.

To return to M. Richet’s experiments—a result of a different kind was the following, which is especially noteworthy as due to the agency of an idea that was itself on the verge of the unconscious. M. Richet chose a quotation at random from Littré’s dictionary, and asked for the name of the author, which was Legouvé. The letters produced were J O S E P H C H D, which looked like a complete failure. But the quotation in the dictionary was adjacent to another from the works of Joseph Chénier; and M. Richet’s eye, in running over the page, had certainly encountered the latter name, which had probably retained a certain low place in his consciousness. Another very interesting case of a result unintended by the agent, though probably due to something in his mind, was this. The name thought of was Victor; the letters produced on three trials were

D A L E N

D A M E S

D A N D S

—seemingly complete failures. But it appeared that while the agent had been concentrating his thoughts on “Victor,” the name of a friend, Danet, had spontaneously recurred to his memory. We should, of course, be greatly extending the chances of accidental success, if we reckoned collocations of letters as successful on the ground of their resemblance to any one of the names or words which may have momentarily found their way into the agent’s mind while the experiment was in progress. Here, however, the name seems to have suggested itself with considerable persistence, and the resemblance is very close. And if the result may fairly be attributed to “mental suggestion,” then, of the two names which had a certain lodgment in the agent’s mind, the one intended to be effective was ineffective, and vice versâ.

It is a remarkable fact that in the few hitherto recorded cases of experimental telepathy, where words have been indicated by writing or by other movements on the percipient’s part, the idea or word transferred seems as often as not to have been one which was not at the moment occupying the agent’s consciousness; that is to say, the influence has proceeded from some part of the agent’s mind which is below the threshold of conscious attention. (See p. 84 below, and Vol. II., pp. 670-1.) This conception of unconscious agency—of an “unconscious intelligence” in the agent as well as in the percipient—will present itself again very prominently when we come to consider the cases of spontaneous telepathy. But the experimental instances have a theoretic importance of another sort. They seem to exhibit telepathic production of movements by what is at most an idea, and not a volition, on the agent’s part. This, indeed, is a hypothesis which seems justified even by M. Richet’s less exceptional results. For we must remember that in a sense A is throughout more immediately the agent than F; it is what A’s mind contributes, not what F’s mind contributes, that produces the tilts at the right moments.¹ But this is of course through no will of A’s; he is ignorant of the required word, and has absolutely no opportunity of bringing his volition into play. His “agency” is of a wholly passive sort; and his mind, as it follows the course of his pen, is a mere conduit-pipe, whereby knowledge of a certain kind obtains access to the “unconscious intelligence” which evokes the tilts. If, then, the knowledge manifests itself as impulse, can we avoid the conclusion that in this particular mode of access—in “mental suggestion” or telepathy as such—a certain impulsive quality is involved? We shall encounter further signs of such an impulsive quality among the spontaneous cases.¹ (See pp. 294, 537-8.)

But of course the relation between F and the “medium” plays also a necessary part in the result; the impulse to tilt when a particular letter is reached only takes effect when it falls (so to speak) on ground prepared by “mental suggestion” from F—on a mind in which the word imagined by him has obtained an unconscious lodgment. The unconscious part of the percipient’s mind would thus be the scene of confluence of two separate telepathic streams, which proceed to combine there in an intelligent way—one proceeding from F’s mind, which produces unconscious knowledge of the word, and the other proceeding from A’s mind, which produces an unconscious image of the successive letters.¹ Another possible supposition would be that F’s thought affects, not the “medium.” but A; or conversely, that A’s thought affects not the “medium,” but F;—that A obtains unconscious knowledge of the word, or that F obtains unconscious knowledge of the letter, and so is enabled to communicate an impulse to the “medium” at the right moment. And we should then have to suppose a secret understanding between two parts of A’s or F’s mind the part which takes account of the letters of the alphabet, and the part which takes account of the letters of the word—the former being conscious and the latter unconscious, or vice versâ, according as A or F is the party affected.

One hesitates to launch oneself on the conceptions which these experiments open up; but the only alternative would be to question the facts from an evidential point of view. So regarded, they are of an extremely simple kind; and if their genuineness be granted, we are reft once and for all from our old psychological moorings. The whole question of the psychical constitution of man is opened to its furthest depths; and our central conception—telepathy—the interest of which, even in its simpler phases, seemed almost unsurpassable, takes on an interest of a wholly unlooked-for kind. For it now appears as an all-important method or instrument for testing the mind in its hidden parts, and for measuring its unconscious operations.

§ 14. The above sketch (for it is little more) may give an idea of the chief experimental results so far obtained in the course of serious and systematic research.² But though the investigation may be laboriously and consecutively pursued by those who make a special study of the subject, it is one which admits also of being prosecuted in a more haphazard and sporadic manner. A group of friends may take it up for a few evenings, and then get tired of it; and it is quite possible for valuable results to be obtained without any recognition of their value. One or two specimens of these casual successes that we so frequently hear of may be worth citing, if only because the knowledge that such results are obtainable may stimulate further trials. Our own satisfaction in such fragments of evidence is often more than counterbalanced by the impossibility of getting our friends to devote time and trouble to the work.

The following case, received in September, 1885, from Mrs. Wilson, of Westal, Cheltenham, is interesting as an apparent victory of “thought-reading” over “muscle-reading.” A group of five “willers” one of whom was in contact with the would-be percipient, were to concentrate their minds on the desire that the latter should sit down to the piano and strike the middle C. Had she done so, the result would have been worth little; but this was what happened:—

“When A. I. entered blindfolded—her hand in the hand of B, held over the forehead—M. A. W. was possessed with the desire to will her, without bodily contact, to come to her and give her a kiss on the forehead, and she at once exerted (unknown to the others) all her will to achieve this object. A. I. came slowly up to M. A. W., till she stood quite close, touching her, and commenced bending down towards her, when M. A. W., thinking it was hardly fair to succeed against the other ‘willers,’ tried to reverse her will, and with intense effort willed A. I. to turn away and not give the intended kiss. Slowly A. I raised her head, stood a moment still, then turned in another direction towards the piano, but not near it, and sat down in an armchair. A few seconds after she said: ‘I can’t feel any impression now, nor any wish to do anything.’ She was released from her bandage and questioned as to her feelings. ‘Did you get any impression of what you had to do 1 What did you feel?’ She replied: ‘I had a distinct feeling that I had to go and kiss M. A. W. on the forehead; but when I came up to someone and bent down to do it, I was sensible of a strong feeling that I was not to do it—and could not do it; and after that I could get no impression whatever.’

“MARY A. WILSON

“ALICE M. W. INGRAM

The percipient in both the following cases was our friend, the Hon. Alexander Yorke. In the summer of 1884 he mentioned to two nieces, as a joke, that some one had suggested to him the possibility of discerning the contents of letters pressed to the forehead; and this quack suggestion led by accident to an apparently genuine experiment in thought-transference.

The account is from the Misses Adeane, of 19, Ennismore Gardens, S.W.

“June, 1884.

“Taking a letter from a heap on my mother’s table, I glanced at the contents, and then placed it on my uncle’s head, where he held it. A minute had hardly elapsed before he said, quite quietly, ‘This letter is not addressed to your mother.’ He then paused, as if waiting for another impression. ‘It is written to Charlie’ (my brother), and another pause, ‘by an uncle—not a real uncle—a sort of uncle.’ Another pause, ‘It must be about business.’ At this point I was so much astonished that I could not help telling him how true and correct all his impressions had been, which practically put an end to the experiment by giving a clue as to what the business was, &c. My younger sister was the only other person in the room at the time. The letter was addressed to my brother at Oxford by his trustee, and uncle by marriage, and related to business; he had forwarded it to my mother to read, and I selected it partly by chance, and partly because I thought, if there was only guessing in the case, it would have been a puzzler. My uncle, Mr. Yorke, does not know the writer of the letter or his handwriting.

“MARIE C. ADEANE.”

“MAUDE ADEANE.”

Again, the mother of these informants, Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, writes to us, on June 12, 1884:—

“My girls came down to the drawing-room with my brother, Mr. Alexander Yorke, about 3.30 on Sunday afternoon, May 18th. I was sitting with one of Mr. Biddulph’s brothers, and his sister, Mrs. L. They had just brought me a letter sent by mistake to 31, Eaton Place. Presently Captain and Lady Edith Adeane came in, and then my two girls began telling us of what had happened upstairs. I immediately rushed at the letter I had just received, and laughing, held it to Mr. Yorke’s forehead: he objected, saying, ‘I shall probably fail, and then you will only laugh at the whole thing.’ He thrust my hand away, and I left the matter alone and went on talking to my relations. Presently my brother rose to go, and hesitating rather, said, ‘Well, my dear, the impression about that letter is so strong that I must tell you the Duchess of St. Albans wrote it.’ It was so. She does not correspond with me; the letter, too, having been addressed by mistake to 31, Eaton Place, made it more unlikely there should be any clue, and its contents were purely of a business-like character.

“ELIZABETH P. BIDDULPH.”

On another similar occasion, the present writer saw a letter taken up casually from a writing-table, and held to Mr. Yorke’s forehead, in such a way that he could not possibly catch a glimpse of the writing. He correctly described the writer as an elderly man, formerly connected with himself, but could not name him. The writer had, in fact, been his tutor at one time. It need hardly be said that no importance is to be attributed to the holding of the letters to the forehead. In every case the writer and the contents of the letter were known to some person in the percipient’s immediate vicinity, and that being so, any other hypothesis than that of thought-transference is gratuitous.

The following incident is an excellent casual illustration of the motor form of experiment to which the cases described on pp. 78-9 belonged. It presents, indeed, a point which would lead some to place it in a separate category: the names unexpectedly produced were those of dead persons. But where the “communication” contains nothing beyond the content, or the possible manufacture, of the minds of the living persons present, it seems reasonable to refer it to those minds—at any rate until the power of the dead to communicate with the living be established by accumulated and irrefragable evidence.

One evening in August, 1885, some friends were assembled in a house at Rustington; and the younger members of the party suggested “table-turning” as an amusement. Three ladies—Mrs. W. B. Richmond, Mrs. Perceval Clark, and another—were seated apart from the larger group; and a small table on which they laid their hands, and which was light enough to be easily moved by unconscious pressure, soon became lively. The alphabet being repeated, the sentence “Harriet knew me years ago,” was tilted out. The name of me was asked for. “Kate Gardiner” was the answer. These names conveyed nothing to the three ladies at the table, but they caught the attention of a member of the other group, Mr. R. L. Morant. This gentleman was acting as holiday-tutor to Mrs. Richmond’s boys, and had not before that been acquainted with any of the party; nor had Mrs. Richmond herself the slightest knowledge of his family-history. On hearing the names, he asked that “Harriet’s” surname should be given. The name “Morant” was tilted out. In reply to further questions, put of course in such a way as not to suggest the answers, and while Mr. Morant remained at the further end of the room, the tilts produced the information that Harriet and Kate met at Kingstown, and that Harriet was Mr. Morant’s great-aunt, his father “Robin” Morant being her nephew.

We have received in writing three independent and concordant accounts of this occurrence—from Mrs. Richmond, from the third lady at the table (who is hostile to the subject, but who was probably the unconscious percipient), and from Mr. Morant, who adds:—

“I felt distinctly and always rightly, when it would answer, and what it would answer. I found that it always answered the questions of which I knew the answer; and was silent when I did not: e.g., it would not say how many years ago [the meeting was]. I was quite ignorant of where they met; that was the only answer beyond my knowledge. [It is not known if this answer was correct.] All the names given are correct: my father’s name was Robert, but he was always called Robin. Kate Gardiner was a friend of my father; I believe she helped to arrange his marriage. Harriet Morant was his aunt. I am ignorant of much about this aunt; and from reading some old correspondence in June, I was particularly anxious to learn more about these names. No one at the table can possibly have known anything whatever about any one of the names given.”¹

It is, of course, a matter of interest to know what indications of genuine telepathy may be afforded by these less systematic trials. For experiments with a comparatively small number of “subjects” (like those before described), however conclusive we may consider them as to the existence of a special faculty, afford no means of judging how common that faculty may be. If it exists, we have no reason to expect it to be extremely uncommon; on the contrary, we should rather expect to find an appreciable degree of it tolerably widely diffused. But (putting aside the results of § 7, above,) our only means, at present, for judging how far this is the case is by considering the evidence of persons who were, so to speak, amateur observers, and who in some cases were not even aware that the matter had any scientific importance. Such evidence must, of course, be received with due allowances, and, if it stood alone, might be wholly inadequate to establish the case for telepathic phenomena; but if these be otherwise established, it would be illogical to shut our eyes to alleged results which fall readily into the same class, provided the trials appear to have been conducted with intelligence and care.

It is unnecessary to say that this last proviso at once excludes the vast majority of the cases which one reads about in the newspapers, or hears discussed in private circles. We have already seen that the subject of “thought-reading” has obtained its vogue by dint of exhibitions which, however clever and interesting, have no sort of claim to the name. The prime requisite is that the conditions shall preclude the possibility of unconscious guidance; that contact between the agent and the percipient shall be avoided; or that the form of experiment shall not require movements, but the percipient shall give his notion of the transferred impression—card, number, taste, or whatever it may be—by word of mouth. That these conditions have been observed is itself an indication that experiments have been intelligently conducted; and the cases of this sort of which we have received records are at any rate numerous enough to dispel the disquieting sense that the possibility of accumulating evidence for our hypothesis depends on the transient endowment of a few most exceptional individuals. I have spoken above of the urgent importance of spreading the responsibility for the evidence as widely as possible—in other words, of largely increasing the number of persons, reputed honest and intelligent, who must be either knaves or idiots if the alleged transference of thought took place through any hitherto recognised channels. And our hopes in this direction are, of course, the better founded, in so far as the necessary material for experimentation is not of extreme rarity. If what has been here said induces a wider and more systematic search for this material, and increased perseverance in following up all indications of its existence, a very distinct step will have been taken towards the general acceptance of the facts.

¹ I refer specially to the eminent group of hypnotists at Nancy—Dr. Liébeault, and Professors Keaunis, Bernheim, and Liégeois. Dr. Liébeault has, however, personally described to us several instances of apparently telepathic transference which he has encountered in the course of his professional experience; and some observations recorded by Professor Beam, is (in his admirable article on hypnotism in the Revue Philosophique for August, 1885, p. 126), at any rate point, as he admits, to a new mode of sensibility. And since the above remarks were written, both these gentlemen have made definite experiments in telepathy, some of the results of which will be found in Vol. ii., pp. 333-4 and 657-60.

¹ Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. i., pp. 241-2.

¹ Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. i, p. 291; Vol. ii., p. 11.

¹ See the record of Mr. A. E. Outerbridge’s experiments, published by Dr. Beard in the American Popular Science Monthly for July, 1877.

¹ In reference to the objection that the demand for quantity of evidence shows that we know the quality of each item to be bad, I may quote the following passage from a presidential address of Professor Sidgwick’s: “The quality of much of our evidence—when considered apart from the strangeness of the matters to which it refers—is not bad, but very good: it is such that one or two items of it would be held to establish the occurrence, at any particular time and place, of any phenomenon whose existence was generally accepted. Since, however, on this subject the best single testimony only yields an improbability of the testimony being false that is outweighed by the improbability of the fact being true, the only way to make the scale fall on the side of the testimony is to increase the quantity. If the testimony were not good, this increase of quantity would be of little value; but if it is such that the hypothesis of its falsity requires us to suppose abnormal motiveless deceit, or abnormal stupidity or carelessness, in a person hitherto reputed honest and intelligent, then an increase in the number of cases in which such a supposition is required adds importantly to the improbability of the general hypothesis. It is sometimes said by loose thinkers that the ‘moral factor’ ought not to come in at all. But the least reflection shows that the moral factor must come in in all the reasonings of experimental science, except for those who have personally repeated all the experiments on which their conclusions are based. Any one who accepts the report of the experiments of another must rely, not only on his intelligence, but on his honesty: only ordinarily his honesty is so completely assumed that the assumption is not noticed.”

¹ See Mias Mason’s interesting paper on the subject in Macmillan’s Magazine for October, 1882.

¹ The formula is adequate to prove that an inferior limit of the sought probability is ·9999.

² Owing to the rapid convergency of the series which we have to sum, it will be found sufficient to evaluate two or three terms.

³ Tables of Logarithms, and of the values of log (x + 1).

⁴ Here, for instance, is Professor Barrett’s record of a casual trial made on August 4th, 1882—only he and Mrs. Myers knowing the card selected. Eight cards were successively drawn from a pack; of these, three were guessed completely right—two of them at the first attempt and the third at the second attempt; in this last case the first guess was the nine of clubs, and the second the nine of spades, that being the card chosen. In addition to these the suit was given rightly three out of the remaining five times, the pips or court card twice out of the five. Immediately after this experiment the two younger sisters of the guesser were called in and allowed to know the card chosen by Mrs. Myers and Professor Barrett. The results, compared with the preceding, were as follows:—

In the absence of the sisters. Eight experiments. Two complete successes on the first attempt and one on the second.

With the assistance of the sisters as agents. Seven experiments. Two complete successes on the first attempt and one on the second.

And to make the coincidence more curious, the partial successes were identical in number in the two series.

¹ Even the successes obtained when Mr. Creery was helping us were less remarkable than those which, according to his records, had been obtained in the earlier trials, when the whole affair was regarded as an evening’s amusement, and the children were without any sort of gêne or anxiety. Still, with his assistance, we have had such successes as the following. Out of 31 trials with cards (the chances against success by accident being in each case 51 to 1) 17 rightly guessed at the first attempt, 9 at the second, 4 at the third; 8 consecutive successes in naming cards drawn at random from a full pack; and the following series, where the names on the left hand, written down at random by one of ourselves, are what the agents silently concentrated their minds on, and the names on the right hand are what the percipient said, usually in two or three seconds after the experiment began:—

William Stubbs.—William Stubbs.

Eliza Holmes.—Eliza H—

Isaac Harding.—Isaac Harding.

Sophia Shaw.—Sophia Shaw.

Hester Willis.—Cassandra, then Hester Wilson.

John Jones.—John Jones.

Timothy Taylor.—Tom, then Timothy Taylor.

Esther Ogle.—Esther Ogle.

Arthur Higgins.—Arthur Higgins.

Alfred Henderson.—Alfred Henderson.

Amy Frogmore.—Amv Ereemore. Amy Frogmore.

Albert Snelgrove.—Albert Singrore. Albert Grover.

¹ To illustrate these various points, I will give one series where the success was below the average.

Cambridge, August 3rd, 1882.

Miss Mary Creery was outside the closed and locked door,—a thick arid well-fitting one—and a yard or two from it, under the close observation of a member of the Committee, who observed her attentively. A card was chosen by one of the Committee cutting a pack; the fact that the card had been selected was indicated to the guesser by a single tap on the door. The selected card was placed in view of all the agents, who regarded it intently. After the guesser had named a card loudly enough to be heard through the door, the word “No” or “Right,” sas the case might be, was said by one of the Committee; otherwise complete silence preserved.

The cards chosen are printed on the left, the guesses on the right. Two guesses only were allowed.

1. Three of hearts.—Ten of spades (No). King of clubs (No).

2. Seven of clubs.—Nine of diamonds (No). Seven of hearts (No).

3. Ten of diamonds.—Queen of spades (No). Ten of diamonds (Right).

4. Eight of spades.—King of clubs (No). Ten of spades (No).

5. Nine of hearts.—Nine of clubs (No). Ace of hearts (No).

6. Three of diamonds.—Six of diamonds (No). Ten of diamonds (No).

7. Knave of spades.—King of spades (No). Queen of clubs (No).

8. Six of spades.—Six of spades (Right).

9. Queen of elubs.—Queen of diamonds (No). Ten of clubs (No).

10. Two of eiubs.—Ten of diamonds (No). Ace of diamonds (No).

Here there were only two complete successes; and in tabulating results and computing averages we should of course count all the trials except the third and eighth as complete failures. But the result numbered 7 was on the verge of complete success; in 5 and 9 the correct description was given piecemeal; and in 2 the number of pips was correctly given.

¹ In an account of some experiments with words, which we have received from a correspondent, it is stated that success was decidedly more marked in cases where there was a broad vowel sound.

¹ It should be remarked, however, that the introduction of any principle of selection, after one experiment, is always objectionable. For some more or less plausible reason could probably always be found for setting aside the less favourable results.

¹ The rules to observe are these: (1) The number of trials contemplated (1,000, 2,000, or whatever it may be) should be specified beforehand. (2) Not more than 50 trials should be made on any one occasion. (3) The agent should draw the card at random, and cut the pack between each draw. (4) The success or failure of each guess should be silently recorded, and the percipient should be kept in ignorance of the results until the whole series is completed. The results should be sent to me at 14, Dean’s Yard, S.W.

² For these calculations we have again to thank Mr. F. Y. Edgeworth. For an explanation of the methods employed, see his article in Vol. iii. of the Proceedings of the S.P.R., already referred to, and also his paper on “Methods of Statistics” (sub. fin.) in the Journal of the Statistical Society for 1885.

¹ Report by Professors J. M. Peirce and E. C. Pickering, in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. i., p. 19. This Society has also carried out 12,130 trials with the 10 digits—which similarly gave a result only slightly in excess af theoretic probability. But here the digits to be thought of by the agent were not taken throughout in a purely accidental order, but in regularly recurring decads, in each of which each digit occurred once; and consequently the later guesses (both within the same decad and in successive decade) might easily be biassed by the earlier ones. This system may lead to interesting statistics in other ways; but to give thought-transference fair play in experiments with a limited number of objects, it seems essential that the order of selection shall be entirely haphazard, and that the guesser’s mind shall be quite unembarrassed by the notion of a scheme.

¹ The full record of the experiments will be found in the Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol, i., p. 264, &c., and Vol. ii., p. 24, &c. There is one point of novelty which is thus described by Mr. Guthrie: “We tried also the perception of motion, and found that the movements of objects exhibited could be discerned. The idea was suggested by an experiment tried with a card, which in order that all present should see, I moved about, and was informed by the percipient that it was a card, but she could not tell which one because it seemed to be moving about. On a subsequent occasion, in order to test this perception of motion, I bought a toy monkey, which worked up and down on a stick by means of a string drawing the arms and legs together. The answer was: “I see red and yellow, and it is darker at one end than the other. It is like a flag moving about—it is moving. . . . Now it is opening and shutting like a pair of scissors.’”

¹ Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. ii., p. 189, &c.

¹ It is impossible here to give more than a selection of cases. I must refer the reader to Chap. i. of the Supplement, and to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. i., p. 225, &c., Vol. ii., p. 17, &c., and p. 205, &c.; and Mr. Guthrie’s “Further Report” in Vol. iii.

¹ In some cases two experiments were carried on simultaneously with the same substance; and when this was done, the first percipient was of course not told whether her answer was right or wrong. But it will perhaps be suggested that, when her answer was right, the agent who was touching her unconsciously gave her an intimation of the fact by the pressure of his hand; and that she then coughed or made some audible signal to her companion, who followed suit. Whatever the theory may be worth, it will, we think, be seen that the success of the second percipient with the nutmeg was the only occasion, throughout the series, to which it can be applied.

¹ See Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. i., pp. 225-6; Vol. ii., p. 250.

² See, for instance, the record of Mr. Hughes’s series in Mr. Guthrie’s “Further Report,” above referred to.

¹ Even an effect on the sensory system may bear witness to an unconscious impression, if it is an indirect effect, led up to by certain hidden processes. In the Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. i., pp. 257-60, Vol. ii., pp. 203-4, and Vol. iii., pp. 453-9, a case in point is given. A young man’s fingers having been concealed from him by a paper screen, anæsthesia and rigidity were repeatedly produced in one or another of them, by a process in which the concentrated attention of the “agent” on the particular finger proved to be an indispensable element. A psychical account of this result seems possible, if thought-transference can work, so to speak, underground. Such a case, however, may possibly indicate something beyond simple thought-transference—some sort of specific physical influence; and it should be noted that the “subject,” though at the time he was wide awake and in a perfectly normal state, had frequently on former occasions been hypnotised by the agent.

It is only in connection with hypnotism, again, that we find authentic cases of the direct effect of volition in producing the identical movement willed—such as raising the hand, dropping a book, &c. Some of these will be given in the next chapter.

¹ Similar trials on other occasions were equally successful; as also were trials where the tuning-fork was dispensed with, and the only sound was the question, “Do you hear?” asked by one of the observers. On these latter occasions, however, Mr. Smith was holding Mr. Beard’s hand; and it might be maintained that “yes” and “no” indications were given by unconscious variations of pressure. How completely unconscious the supposed “reader” was of any sensible guidance will be evident from Mr. Beard’s own account. “During the experiments of January 1st, when Mr. Smith mesmerised me, I did not entirely lose consciousness at any time, but only experienced a sensation of total numbness in my limbs. When the trial as to whether I could hear sounds was made, I heard the sounds distinctly each time, but in a large number of instances I felt totally unable to acknowledge that I heard them. I seemed to know each time whether Mr. Smith wished me to say that I heard them; and as I had surrendered my will to his at the commencement of the experiment, I was unable to reassert my power of volition whilst under his influence.”

¹ A planchette has two advantages over a simple pencil. It is very much more easily moved to write; and it is very much easier to make with it the movements necessary for the formation of letters without realising what the letters are.

² See, e.g., the cases quoted in Chap. v., §§2 and 8.

¹ Mr. Newnham uses this word where we should use “subject” or “percipient.”

² The numbers prefixed to the questions are those in the note-book.

³ It will be borne in mind throughout that Mrs. Newnham had, at the time when the answer was produced, no conscious knowledge of the question which her husband had written down.

¹ It may be asked what right I have to make any such inference; since à la rigueur, the effects, being sensible and physical, do not require us to suppose that they had any other than physical antecedents. It is true that it is impossible to demonstrate that the physical antecedents, which undoubtedly exist, have any psychical correlative. But the results in question have often no analogy to the automatic actions which we are accustomed to attribute to “unconscious cerebration.” They are not the effects of habit and practice; they are new results, of a sort which has in all our experience been preceded by intention and reflection, and referable to a self. But perhaps the simplest illustration of what is here meant by “unconscious intelligence” is to be found in occasional facts of dreaming. Thus, it has occurred to me at least once, in a dream, to be asked a riddle, to give it up, and then to be told the answer—which, on waking, I found quite sufficiently pertinent to show that the question could not have been framed without distinct reference to it. Yet for the consciousness which I call mine, that reference had remained wholly concealed: so little had I known myself as the composer of the riddle that the answer came to me as a complete surprise. The philosophical problem of partial selves cannot be here enlarged on. For a discussion of the subject from the point of view of cerebral localisation, as well as for further quotations from Mr. Newnham’s record, I may refer the reader to Mr. Myers’ paper on “Automatic Writing,” in Vol. iii. of the Proceedings of the S.P.R.

¹ The following case, though not strictly experimental, is sufficiently in point to be worth quoting. Though unfortunately not recorded in writing at the time, it was described within a few days of its occurrence to Mr. Podmore, who is acquainted with all the persons concerned. The narrator is Miss Robertson, of 229, Marylebone Road, W.

“About three years ago I was speaking of planchette-writing to some of my friends, when a young lady, a daughter of the house where I was spending the evening, mentioneα that she had played with planchette at school, and that it had always written for her. Thereupon I asked her to spend the evening with me, and try it again, which she agreed to do. On the morning of the day on which she had arranged to come to me, her brother, on leaving the house, said, laughing, ‘Well, Edith, it is all humbug, but if planchette tells you the name and sum of money which are on a cheque which 1 have in my pocket, and which I am going to cash for mother, I will believe there is something in it.’ Edith, on her arrival at my house in the evening, told me of this, and I said, ‘We must not expect that; planchette never does what one wants,’ or words to that effect. A couple of hours after, we tried the planchette, Edith’s hand alone touching it. It almost immediately wrote, quite clearly:—

‘I. SPALDING. £6:13:4.’

I had forgotten about the cheque, and I said, ‘What can that mean?’ Upon which Edith replied, ‘It is ‘H.’s cheque, perhaps.’ I was incredulous, having a long acquaintance with planchette. I said, ‘If it is right, send me word directly you get home; I am sure it will not be.’ But the next day I received a letter from Edith, telling me that she had astonished her brother greatly by telling him the name and the amount on the cheque, which was perfectly correct. I have read this account to the young lady and her brother, who sign it as well as myself.

“NORA ROBERTSON.

“E. C.

“D. C. H. C.”

In answer to an inquiry, Miss Robertson adds, on Feb. 12, 1885:—

“Miss E. C. says, in answer to your question, that she is quite certain she could not have known, or surmised, the name and amount of the cheque.

“I can confirm her on the first point, for I remember questioning everybody all round at the time. She had just returned from school, and knew nothing at all about her mother’s business or money matters.”

Here, it will be observed, the impression seems not only to have been unconscious, but to have remained latent for several hours before taking effect; for it is at any rate the most natural supposition that the transference actually occurred at the time when the conversation on the subject took place between the brother and sister.

This latency of an impression which finally takes effect in distinct automatic or semi-automatic movements, may be seen in cases which have no connection with telepathy. It occurs, for instance, in the following “muscle-reading” experiment, described to us by Mr. George B. Trent, of 65, Sandgate Road, Folkestone:—

“March 24th, 1883.

“Some two months back, I was asked by a gentleman, who had read of my experiments in the paper, to oblige him with a séance. I called upon him one afternoon, and he told me that he had hidden some object, in the early morning, and he thought he had given me a puzzle. I first experimented with pins; I led him to their hiding-places at once, without the least hesitation. I then asked him to concentrate the whole of his thoughts on what he had done in the morning. I immediately led him to a davenport, unlocked it, and from amongst, I may say, perhaps a hundred papers and other articles, I selected three photographs, and from the three I fixed upon one—that of his wife. He then said he was perfectly astonished, as I had positively gone through an experiment he had set himself to do, but abandoned in favour of another he had done.”

It seems probable that, at any rate in the earlier stages of this performance, the idea of what was to be done was not consciously present in the “willer’s” mind, which was apparently concentrated on something else. And if so, his muscular indications must have been the result of unconscious cerebration—an effect of nervous activity, continuing to act in accordance with a previous impulse which had lapsed from consciousness.

¹ I have given a fuller description and criticism of M. Richet’s investigations in Vol. ii. of the Proceedings of the S.P.R.

¹ This procedure of counting neighbouring letters seems to require some justification. It might be justified by the difficulty, on the theory of mental suggestion, of obtaining an exact coincidence of time between the tilting and the pointing. But I think that M. Richet does justify it (Rev. Phil., p. 654), by reference to some other experiments—not yet published, but of which he has shown us the record—where intelligible words were produced of which no one in the room was, or had been, thinking. For here also neighbouring letters appeared, but in such a way as left no room for doubt, in the reader’s mind, as to what the letter should have been.

¹ Moreover the E in the 4th place had appeared in two of the preceding trials and the final O D in one of them.

¹ For a curious case of the automatic production of anagrams, see Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. ii., pp. 226-31.

¹ When A, in pointing, began at the beginning of the alphabet, the sense of time might conceivably have led to an unconscious judgment as to the point arrived at. This idea had occurred to M. Richet. It seems, however, an unnecessary multiplication of hypotheses; for we learn from him that in some trials A began at uncertain places, and that under these conditions coherent words were obtained. The fact that so often the approximate letter was given, instead of the exact one, might seem at first sight to favour the hypothesis of unconscious reckoning; but it will be observed that exactly the same approximations took place in our own experiment (pp.77-8), where the alphabet was in the “medium’s” sight.

¹ The impulse might no doubt be otherwise accounted for if we supposed that a close connection was established in F’s mind between the idea of the object—i.e., the successive letters—and the idea of the movement, and that this complex idea was what was transferred and what ultimately took effect. But it is hard to apply this hypothesis to cases where a word is produced which, though latent in F’s mind, has no resemblance to the word whose production he is willing. The transference of the idea of the latent word, even to the exclusion of the right word, can be quite conceived; but can we suppose that, subconsciously or unconsciously, an idea of movement was combined with the idea of its letters in the agent’s mind, at the very moment when that on which his attention was fixed, and with which exhypothesi the conscious idea of movement was connected, was a quite different set of letters? Can we suppose that the idea of movement overflowed into the unconscious region of his mind, and there on its own account formed an alliance with alien elements, the effect of which on the percipient would prevent the effect intended? It must be remembered that where a word which is not the one intended gets transferred from F to the “medium,” there is no knowledge, conscious or unconscious, on F’s part, as to what that word will be. A number of words are latent in his mind; one of these finds an echo in another mind. But how should the idea of movement find out which particular one, out of all the words, is destined thus to find an echo, so as to associate itself with its letters and no others? And if we suppose the association to be between the unconscious idea of movement and the unconscious idea of letters in general, this is no less dissimilar and opposed to anything that the conscious part of F’s mind has conceived. For it is not in letters as such, but in the exclusive constituents of a particular word, that he is interested; if indeed he is interested in anything beyond the word as a whole. The difficulty here seems to justify the suggestion—with which I imagine that M. Richet would agree—that the physiological impulse does not depend on any idea of movement, or any special direction of the agent’s will to that result. This might be tested, if F were a person ignorant of the form of the experiment, and out of sight of the table.

¹ It will be seen that the results of such “unconscious intelligence” go considerably beyond the received results of mere “unconscious cerebration.” Unconscious cerebration is amply competent to produce such seemingly intelligent actions as ordinary writing; but what is now done more resembles the formation of a word by picking letters from a heap, or type-writing by a person who is unused to his instrument. The process is not one in which every item is connected by long-standing association with the one before and after it; every item is independent, and implies the recognition, at an uncertain moment, of a particular relation—that between the next letter required for the word and the same letter in its place in a quite distinct series.

² Some further experimental cases will be found in Chap. i. of the Supplement, and in the Additional Chapter at the end of Vol. ii.

¹ See another very similar case in Vol. ii., pp. 670-1.