Adventurings in the Psychical Part 5

But even more singular than any of the foregoing is a happening connected with an accident that occurred to my wife while she was still a mere schoolgirl.

With a party of young people she had gone on an outing to a Maine lake resort, and in the dusk of a pleasant evening started for a drive in an old-fas.h.i.+oned hay-wagon. There was no thought of danger, and the drive was thoroughly enjoyed by all until, coming down a long and rather steep hill, the breeching broke, and the horses ran away. At a sharp turn in the road, half-way down the hill, the drive came to a sudden and disastrous end with the overturning of the wagon.

A number of its occupants were seriously hurt, my wife, with great presence of mind, saving herself by jumping clear of the wagon just as it began to go over. Even so, she did not escape uninjured, her face being badly cut.

Now comes the curious part of the affair. Early the next morning a telegram from her mother in Boston was handed to her. It read: "Are you hurt or ill? Wire at once. Am writing." The letter which followed gave the amazing information that the previous night--that is, the night of the accident--the mother had had an unusually vivid dream in which she saw her daughter driving in a carriage, thrown out of the carriage, and badly cut about the face. So realistic was the dream that on waking it frightened her, and led to the sending of the telegram.

Obviously the question arises: Were these four strange experiences representative merely of extraordinary chance coincidences, or were they indicative of the action of some direct means of communication from mind to mind by other than the ordinary recognized channels of communication?

Personally I am satisfied that chance alone will not suffice to account for them, and that they are veritable instances of the workings of a faculty latent in all mankind and operable in accordance with a true, if as yet little understood, law of nature--call it telepathy, thought transference, or what you will.

And in saying this, I am well aware that, even if my belief is in agreement with that entertained by many eminent men of science--such as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Camille Flammarion, Charles Richet, Theodore Flournoy, Henri Morselli, Professor W. F. Barrett and the late William James--it is contrary to the opinion held by the great majority of scientists at the present day. Their view, to put it briefly, is that there is no such thing as telepathy; that chance coincidence, deliberate or unconscious falsification, and errors of memory are sufficient to explain most instances of alleged telepathic communication; and that the remainder are reducible to the operation of more or less familiar principles in the psychology of the subconscious--notably the law of hyperaesthesia, or unusual extension of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, etc.

I am perfectly willing to admit that much which pa.s.ses as telepathy may be thus reducible. For example, I am seated writing at the desk in my study. Unexpectedly there flashes into my mind an idea concerning a person of whom I have not thought for weeks or months. The next instant the doorbell rings, and presently the maid informs me that the very person of whom I have that moment been thinking has entered the house.

This is a not infrequent experience, as most of my readers will concede. So frequent is it that it is absurd to attempt to account for it on the hypothesis of chance coincidence. But neither would it be always safe to raise the theory of telepathy. For it might well happen that while I was seated intent on my work, with the study windows closed, my ear nevertheless caught the sound of footsteps coming down the street, or on my porch; that I subconsciously recognized in them my friend's walk, and that I consequently, though without knowing why, thought of him at that precise moment. This is a.s.suredly a possible explanation--though I am far from conceding that in all such cases it is the only explanation properly applicable.

So, likewise, one must be constantly on guard against over-readily accepting as evidences of telepathic action the feats of "mind reading"

often undertaken by way of parlor amus.e.m.e.nt. Stage "mind reading" by professional entertainers may be safely left out of the reckoning, as undoubtedly based on methods of conscious trickery and deceit. But in a private gathering, where there can be no question of confederates and deliberate signaling, surprising results are sometimes obtained in the finding of hidden objects, etc. On the surface this would seem explicable only on a telepathic basis, yet in reality it is commonly brought about by "muscle reading" rather than by true "mind reading."

Experiment has shown that the effort to concentrate thought on a given matter--a name or an object--tends to produce some form of muscular activity, either subconscious whispering of the name thought of, or subconscious movement in the direction of the object. If, as is the rule, the spectators are supposed to keep their minds fixed intently on the name or object they have selected for the "test," some of them are apt to give these involuntary muscular hints, which the performer will accept and act upon, it may be without being clearly conscious of the source of his information.

Still it must be added that experiments in the "willing game" have been carried out under conditions and with results indicating that occasionally, at all events, successes are achieved without any such subconscious guidance. Not so very long ago some interesting and most striking experiments of this sort were described to me by Professor J. H. Hyslop.

"The subject of my experiments," said he, "was a young woman of good family, who was credited with having exceptional ability in divining the thoughts and wishes of others. It was arranged that I should investigate her powers, and accordingly for a period of some weeks I had frequent sittings with her, in the presence of a few interested and trustworthy friends.

"The plan followed in every experiment was this: The young woman having left the room, I mentally selected some more or less complicated action for her to perform upon her return. I then wrote down on a slip of paper what I wished her to do, showed it to the others, and concealed it in a book, which did not leave my hand until after the completion of the experiment. From first to last not a word was spoken by any one, so as to guard against any possible hyperaesthesia of hearing on her part.

"The young woman was then called back, and almost invariably proceeded to execute the commands mentally given her. She did this so promptly that I cannot conceive how she could possibly have got any unconscious hints from those present, and conscious signaling was out of the question.

"For instance, I once wrote on my paper an order for her to pick out of a vase a bunch of keys I had hidden there, cross the room with the keys, and place them on the mantel-piece. She entered, stood for but a moment with her eyes closed, and then, swiftly pa.s.sing to the vase, which was on the floor, picked up the keys, turned, and deposited them on the mantel-piece as I had mentally suggested. It was all done so quickly and spontaneously that to my mind it afforded strong evidential proof of true thought transference.

"She was not always successful, but some of her failures were quite as instructive as her successes. On three occasions she executed, not the commands I had written on the paper, but commands I had thought of writing but for one reason or another had abandoned. No one in the room excepting myself knew of these previous intentions, so she could have derived her knowledge of them from the involuntary movements of no one excepting me; and if it had actually been a matter of subconscious guidance, it is obvious that my muscular indications would have related not to the abandoned commands but to the commands I actually wished her to carry out.

"All things considered, my experiments with this young woman satisfy me that the hypothesis of subconscious guidance is not always properly applicable, even when the 'mind reader' is in a position to see or hear the persons testing him."

a.s.suming, however, for the sake of argument, that Professor Hyslop's conclusion is erroneous, and that the involuntary movement theory does always suffice as an explanatory hypothesis when experimenter and subject are in the same rooms, it becomes manifestly and hopelessly inadequate when applied to explain the transmission of ideas between persons a considerable distance apart. Yet what I consider abundant proof has been experimentally obtained that such transmission may, and sometimes does, take place--occasionally in most dramatic form.

Take, for example, the experience of a French lady, Mme. Clarence de Vaux-Royer, who, feeling uneasy one day about a friend who was then living in the United States, thought she would cable to him.

Unfortunately it was Sunday, and her maid found the cable office closed.

Mme. de Vaux-Royer then decided to attempt a telepathic experiment, and, knowing that her friend was mourning the death of his mother and of a favorite sister, decided to try and impress him with an idea that they were near him and would comfort him in any trial he might be undergoing.

She told her maid of her intention, and asked the maid to note the date, so as to be able to give corroborative evidence if the experiment succeeded.

This was on November 7. Ten days later the American mail brought to Mme.

de Vaux-Royer a letter from her absent friend, who, after referring to some matters of wholly private interest, stated:

"Last night (the 7th), while I was praying, I saw, hovering above my head, some gold circles, which gradually floated away until I could no longer see them. At the same time I seemed to hear some one calling to me: 'Mother! Mother! Sister Minnie!' Then the circles floated back, approaching until they almost touched my head. Oh, how much comfort I felt! How they inspired me with sentiments of goodness and happiness!"

From this it is manifestly only a step to the experimental production of telepathic phantasms of the human form, as in the two instances given in the previous chapter (the Wesermann and Sinclair experiments), and in numerous other instances, of which one or two additional may well be narrated here. In one, a Harvard professor, an acquaintance of Professor James, on whose authority I quote the story, having heard of the possibility of telepathic hallucinations, determined one evening that he would try to make an apparition of himself appear to a friend, a young lady who lived half a mile from his home. He did not mention his intention to her or to anybody else. The next day he received a letter, in which she said:

"Last night about ten o'clock I was in the dining-room at supper with B.

Suddenly I thought I saw you looking in through the crack of the door at the end of the room, toward which I was looking. I said to B.: 'There is Blank, looking through the crack of the door!' B., whose back was toward the door, said: 'He can't be there. He would come right in.'

However, I got up and looked in the other room, but there was n.o.body there. Now, what were you doing last night, at that time?"

At that precise moment, as he told Professor James, "Blank" had been at home, sitting alone in his room, and trying "whether I could project my astral body to the presence of A."

Possibly had the young lady been alone, and not actively engaged, she might have had a more definite view of the phantasm of her absent friend, for experience has shown that solitude and quiet are favoring conditions for the perception of telepathic apparitions. In nearly every instance reported to the Society for Psychical Research the percipient of the phantasm is alone and in a more or less pa.s.sive, quiescent frame of mind. Such a condition usually obtains immediately before or immediately after sleep, and it is then that experimental apparitions are seen most plainly. Though occasionally they are vividly experienced when the percipient is in a state of the most active consciousness, as in the following case, reported by the agent--that is, the person sending the telepathic message--and confirmed by the percipient, an English clergyman now dead, the Reverend W. Stainton Moses.

"One evening," runs the agent's account, "I resolved to try to appear to Z., at some miles distance. I did not inform him beforehand of the intended experiment; but retired to rest shortly before midnight with thoughts intently fixed on Z., with whose rooms and surroundings, however, I was quite unacquainted. I soon fell asleep, and awoke next morning unconscious of anything having taken place. On seeing Z. a few days afterward, I inquired:

"'Did anything happen at your rooms on Sat.u.r.day night?'

"'Yes,' replied he, 'a great deal happened. I had been sitting over the fire with M., smoking and chatting. About twelve-thirty he rose to leave, and I let him out myself. I returned to the fire to finish my pipe, when I saw you sitting in the chair just vacated by him.

"'I looked intently at you, and then took up a newspaper to a.s.sure myself I was not dreaming, but on laying it down I saw you still there.

While I gazed without speaking, you faded away.'"

Of course in the case of all single experiments like these,[10] the skeptically inclined might plausibly fall back on the theory of chance coincidence. But it is impossible seriously to entertain this hypothesis in cases where experiments in the telepathic transmission of ideas have been carried on repeatedly and with an astonis.h.i.+ng measure of success.

[10] Accounts of other experiments of the same type will be found in my book, "The Riddle of Personality," pp. 140-142.

To mention only the most notable experiments of this systematic kind, I would call attention to the results obtained by two sets of English investigators, the first comprising two ladies named Clarissa Miles and Hermione Ramsden, the second two gentlemen, F. R. Burt and F. L. Usher.

As I see it, indeed, the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experiments have the additional interest that they not only make clear some of the fundamental laws of genuine thought transference, but also show just why it is that we can never hope to obtain such absolute control of the telepathic process as to be able to send mental messages from one to another with the same ease and certainty as we now send ordinary telegrams and marconigrams.

This inability of control has long been a stock objection against belief in telepathy, especially among the scientifically trained. "Not until we can repeat at will, and with invariable success, the experiment of direct transference of thought, will we accept telepathy as established," say these scientific skeptics. "We know that if, in our chemical and physical laboratories, we bring such and such elements together, such and such action will always follow. We must be able to do as much with telepathy before we will accept it." But the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experiments show that there are excellent reasons for affirming that telepathy is a fact, and that nevertheless its processes cannot be governed with the cert.i.tude possible in the case of chemical and physical processes. There are factors involved which elude, and must always elude, the directive control of the experimenter.

In the experiments by the Misses Miles and Ramsden it was arranged that, at a stated hour of a stated evening in each week, Miss Ramsden--who acted throughout as the percipient, or receiver of the telepathic messages--was to remain for a few minutes in a condition of complete pa.s.sivity, and immediately afterwards was to note on a post-card whatever ideas came into her mind during that time. The post-card was then to be mailed to Miss Miles, who, for her part, was to think of Miss Ramsden at intervals during the day agreed on, and in the evening was to make a post-card entry--to be mailed to her friend forthwith--of the idea or ideas she had tried to convey to her telepathically. Thus, in the event of achieving any degree of success, they would have a perfect doc.u.mentary record to substantiate their claims.

As to the distance separating them, it ranged from a few score to several hundred miles. They made, in fact, three distinct series of experiments, with about a year's interval between each series. During the first they were at their homes, Miss Miles in London, Miss Ramsden in Buckinghams.h.i.+re. During the second, Miss Ramsden was in Inverness, in northern Scotland, and Miss Miles visiting friends in various parts of England. The third series was carried on while Miss Miles was making a tour of the beautiful Ardennes region of France and Belgium, Miss Ramsden at the same time being again in the Scottish Highlands.

Thus there was a progressive increase in the distance between them for each series, but this seems to have made no difference in the result.

In each, as the attested record shows, Miss Ramsden succeeded in getting, completely or in part, no fewer than two out of every five of the messages her co-experimenter tried to "telepath" to her. Such a proportion is clearly too high to be explained away on the theory of chance coincidence, and this theory is rendered still more untenable by the attendant circ.u.mstances which the record reveals.

On one occasion Miss Miles, who is an artist, had been busy in the afternoon painting a model's hands. She thought of this when evening came, and determined to endeavor to impress Miss Ramsden with the idea "hands". In her post-card, written at seven o'clock the same evening, Miss Ramsden stated that of several ideas which had come into her mind at the experiment-hour the "most vivid" was "a little black hand, quite small, much smaller than a child's, well formed, and the fingers straight. This was the chief thing.

Similarly, having noticed at a meeting in London a curious pair of spectacles worn by a gentleman seated near her, Miss Miles, on returning home in the early evening, wrote down the word "spectacles," with the idea of "telepathing" it to Miss Ramsden. The latter's post-card entry for that evening noted that "spectacles" was "the only idea that came to me after waiting a long time."

Again, while on a sketching expedition to an English village, Miss Miles was much amused by an adventure with a large white pig. She selected this pig as the subject of her next telepathic communication, the result of which Miss Ramsden, writing as almost always on the night of the experiment, thus reported:

"You were out of doors rather late, a cold, raw evening, near a railway station; there was a pig with a long snout, and some village children.

It was getting dark."

On the other hand, in several instances Miss Ramsden's impressions contained much which Miss Miles had not consciously sought to convey to her. And this brings us to what is unquestionably the most important feature of the experiments.

As was said, about two out of every five messages were correctly received, in whole or in part. But it frequently happened in the case of the seeming failures, that while Miss Ramsden did not get the ideas which Miss Miles was endeavoring to send to her, she did get ideas relating to people, things and events much in Miss Miles's mind at that moment, or which had been more or less in her mind during the day of the experiment.

To ill.u.s.trate, Miss Miles once tried to make Miss Ramsden think of "p.u.s.s.ies, or cats." What Miss Ramsden did think of was "a ma.n.u.script, pinned by a patent fastener in one corner." And, oddly enough, Miss Miles had spent a good part of that afternoon reading to a friend from a ma.n.u.script "fastened together," as the friend has testified, "with a patent fastener." Similarly, during Miss Miles's visit to the English village above mentioned, Miss Ramsden's report for one experiment ran: