TELEPATHY.
[To Tan EDITOR 07 ass .Ersenyos."]
Sts, In your review of " Phantasms of the Living." you are good enough to commend our experimental work. I believe that it is sound ; but it would be disastrous if any one's private con- viction that our case was proved prevented his doing his utmost to broaden the basis of responsibility on which the proof must rest. We get much more sympathy than help. It is tantalising to think of the cumulative result that might be obtained if one hundred pairs of people would only devote ten minutes a day for three weeks to trials of the simple sort described in the book. (Vol. L, pp. 32-33.) May I repeat my appeal on this subject, and may I ask any pair who will pledge their honour to make bond foie trials to send me their names, and also the number of trials that they intend to make before they begin, so that I may be sure that there is no selection of favourable results in the series which eventually reach me ?
As to your criticism of the application of the word "tele- pathy," those who introduce a new term must be allowed some voice in defining it, and a single generic term is urgently needed. The distinction between cases where the agent's thought or sensation is simply reproduced in the percipient, and cases where something more or different is perceived, is an important one, and I have pointed out, in a manner quite concordant with your own, its bearings on any physical or " brain-wave " theory. But I cannot allow that the immense majority of instances of spontaneous telepathy " convey a vision of some distant occur- rence," and have no " misleading " quality. As a rule, the phan- tasm simply represents the familiar aspect (or voice) of the agent, and conveys no information, much less a vision, of the distant occurrence with which it coincides ; and since it misleads the senses, it is not, properly speaking, vision at all, but hallucina- tion telepathically originated. And even in cases which suggest some real extension of the percipient's faculties, any perception of the agent and his surroundings which is conditioned at that particular time by his particular state must surely be referred to "the ability of one mind to impress or be impressed by another mind otherwise than through the recognised channels of sense."—I am, Sir, &c.,
14 Dean's Yard, S.W., January 29th. EDMUND GURNEY.
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