Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore

on account of the mass of evidence for it received by us

       § 16. There is also a theoretic fitness in treating of the direct action of mind upon mind before dealing with other supernormal phenomena

       § 17. Reasons for classing apparitions occurring about the moment of death as phantoms of the living, rather than of the dead

       § 18. This book, then, claims to show (1) that experimental telepathy exists, and (2) that apparitions at death, &c., are a result of something beyond chance; whence it follows (3) that these experimental and these spontaneous cases of the action of mind on mind are in some way allied

       § 18. As to the nature and degree of this alliance different views may be taken, and in a “Note on a Suggested Mode of Psychical Interaction,” in Vol. II., a theory somewhat different from Mr. Gurney’s is set forth.

       § 20. This book, however, consists much more largely of evidence than of theories. This evidence has been almost entirely collected by ourselves

       § 21. Inquiries like these, though they may appear at first to degrade great truths or solemn conceptions, are likely to end by exalting and affirming them

       ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS

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       CHAPTER I.

       PRELIMINARY REMARKS: GROUNDS OF CAUTION.

       § 1. The great test of scientific achievement is often held to be the power to predict natural phenomena; but the test, though an authoritative one in the sciences of inorganic nature, has but a limited application to the sciences that deal with life, and especially to the department of mental phenomena

       § 2. In dealing with the implications of life and the developments of human faculty, caution needs to be exercised in two directions. The scientist is in danger of forgetting the unstable and unmechanical nature of the material, and of closing the door too dogmatically on phenomena whose relations with established knowledge he cannot trace; while others take advantage of the fact that the limits of possibility cannot here be scientifically stated, to gratify an uncritical taste for marvels, and to invest their own hasty assumptions with the dignity of laws

       § 3. This state of things subjects the study of “psychical” phenomena to peculiar disadvantages, and imposes on the student peculiar obligations

       § 4. And this should be well recognised by those who advance a conception so new to psychological science as the central conception of this book—to wit, Telepathy, or the ability of one mind to impress or to be impressed by another mind otherwise than through the recognised channels of sense. (Of the two persons concerned, the one whose mind impresses the other will be called the agent, and the one whose mind is impressed the percipient)

       § 5. Telepathy will be here studied chiefly as a system of facts, theoretical discussion being subordinated to the presentation of evidence. The evidence will be of two sorts—spontaneous occurrences, and the results of direct experiment; which latter will have to be carefully distinguished from spurious “thought-reading” exhibitions

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       CHAPTER II.

       THE EXPERIMENTAL BASIS: THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.

       § 1. The term thought-transference has been adopted in preference to thought-reading, the latter term (1) having become identified with exhibitions of muscle-reading, and (2) suggesting a power of reading a person’s thoughts against his will

       § 2. The phenomena of thought-transference first attracted the attention of competent witnesses in connection with “mesmerism,” and were regarded as one of the peculiarities of the mesmeric rapport; which was most prejudicial to their chance of scientific acceptance

       § 3. Hints of thought-transference between persons in a normal state were obtained by Professor Barrett in 1876; and just at that time the attention of others had been attracted to certain phenomena of the “willing-game,” which were not easily explicable (as almost all the so-called “willing” and “thought-reading” exhibitions are) by unconscious muscular guidance. But the issue could never be definitely decided by cases where the two persons concerned were in any sort of contact

       § 4. And even where contact is excluded, other possibilities of unconscious guidance must be taken into account; as also must the possibility of conscious collusion. Anyone who is unable to obtain conviction as to the bona fides of experiments by himself acting as agent or percipient (and so being himself one of the persons who would have to take part in the trick, if trick it were), may fairly demand that the responsibility for the results shall be spread over a considerable group of persons—a group so large that he shall find it impossible to extend to all of them the hypothesis of deceit (or of such imbecility as would take the place of deceit) which he might apply to a smaller number

       § 5. Experiments with the Creery family; earlier trials

      More conclusive experiments, in which knowledge of what was to be transferred (usually the idea of a particular card, name, or number) was confined to the members of the investigating committee who acted as agents; with a table of results, and an estimate of probabilities

      In many cases reckoned as failures there was a degree of approximate success which was very significant

      The form of the impression in the percipient’s mind seems to have been sometimes visual and sometimes auditory

       § 6. Reasons why these experiments were not accessible to a larger number of observers; the chief reason being the gradual decline of the percipient faculty

       § 7. In a course of experiments of the same sort conducted by M. Charles Richet, in France, the would-be percipients were apparently not persons of any special susceptibility; but a sufficient number of trials were made for the excess of the total of successes over the total most probable if chance alone acted to be decidedly striking

      The pursuit of this line of inquiry on a large scale in England has produced results which involve a practical certainty that some cause other than chance has acted

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