Telepathy

Gilbert Murray amateur fraud?

Peter Ackroyd

Consider this, in our time, as the layman sees it or the helmeted analyst.Your hearing is extraordinarily acute, distant noises are very clear, you can hear a fly walk across a piece of paper. You like to impress people and play parlour-games with your gift. After lunch, you are taken to another room. You are going to try to understand what is being whispered twenty or thirty feet away, so your senses are geared up. You can hear low sounds, syllables, and rhythms which would be inaudible to the normal ear but in your heightened state they can be sensed just above and below the threshold of conscious sound. You hear words and tones, a familiar voice perhaps and a familiar movement of speech. You go back mto the room, and place these sounds within a context:

Mrs Hobbs: I think of Cecil Sharp the only time I ever heard him in Magdalen and the Prince of Wales looking insufferably bored. Gilbert Murray: I should think this was Cecil Sharp, but that's probably guessing — Cecil Sharp lecturing in Magdalen when the Prince of Wales was there and looking bored.

Amazement, laughter and much shaking of heads. Exit vindicated party, known as Gilbert Murray.

What was Professor Murray's explanation of these happenings? One that has a very different tone from my own reconstruction of events, for he talks of" my own experience in

telepathy . . the currents between two minds" and, as if to be gracious and rational, "these small acts of petty clairvoyance." Nothing to do with acute hearing you might think. But my own account is one that is furnished by Murray's own descriptions: he describes telepathy as " the action of the mind of sense-impressions which are too faint to establish themselves," and he talks of "the fringe of perceptions." And when he describes hyperaesthesia — that matter of acute hearing — as "as common as blackberries,then we come across what can at this stage most charitably be called an ambiguity. Clairvoyance or sensory impression? Telepathy or hyperaesthesia? Professor Murray touches upon hyperaesthesia in his published writings, but asserts that he is a clairvoyant.

In The Spectator of February 17 this year, our Notebook's writer declared (having luoted from an article in the Journal of the Society of Psychical Research), "QED as far as I can see. Murray heard, was not telepathic and was a fraud." The letters we. received expressed, as they say in the press, shock and • anger. Why had no one mentioned this in the last fifty years? Why slang a dead man, especially so eminent a humanist? Who did the Notebook think it, he or she was? Dear Sir ...

disgusted . . signed, eminent don.

The only way to try to get at the truth, of whatever it consisted, was to return to the central source of the controversy. In Adam and Eve Mews, off fashionable High Street, Kensington, is situated the Society for Psychical Research. This whole controversy might be described as a learned squabble between its members living and dead (although the Society might blench at this last). Gilbert Murray was president of the society in 1915 and again in 1952, and it is his presidential addresses which contain his claims to telepathic intercourse. In July 1972, the society published a pamphlet by Professor E. R. Dodds, Gilbert Murray's Last Experiments, which had more of Murray's case-histories and sides with Murray's explanation. And then, in January 1973, the society published a rejoinder by Eric Dingwall, Gilbert Murray's Experiments: Telepathy or Hyperaesthesia, which turned the evidence around and accused Murray, if not of fraudulence, at least of malpractice. There was one sentence in this piece which had caught the eye of The Spectator, the most damning sentence of the argument: "I think it very unlikely indeed that Murray was a conscious fraud when doing these tests, but then people thought it unlikely that Wise was a forger and a thief, that Dawson was a fraud over the Piltdown .skull and numerous other persons whom I could mention." Veiled and ambiguous as this is, it raises a serious question. So I went along to Adam and Eve Mews to sift the evidence.

The library was small but well-appointed. Visitors were being given tea, and there was general talk about table-raising and ectoplasm. Somehow it was the perfect atmosphere for Gilbert Murray's presidential addresses. The central statement is that of Murray in his address of 1915. It is ostensibly concerned with the habitual and universal phenomenon of telepathy, which Murray describes as "nothing more than the action on the mind of sense-impressions too faint to establish themselves." It would amount to a disciplining of attention, a matter of perceiving just at the threshold of conscious sensory perception. This sounds fair, and to laymen like myself and Professor Murray reasonably accurate. Migray adduces the examples of trained hunters and nurses in this connection, who can locate and distinguish sounds which are confused and inaudible to the normal ear. and, writes Murray nonchalantly, "examples of professional hyperaesthesia are as common as blackberries."

Perfectly sound, of course, but difficulties begin to emerge when Murray starts to talk of himself. For after describing hyperaesthesia, he gets on a very different tack: "let us now turn to cases which could generally be classed as abnormal and attributed to clairvoyance or second-sight." The cases are, naturally, his own. He seems to forget about hyperaesthesia being as common as fruit, and writes of his own "experiences in telepathy" as currents between two minds." As uncommon, one assumes, as avocados. There is a shift of emphasis here that can at least be called ambivalent, but it is one that invades all of Murray's experiments and descriptions.

How does Murray describe these 'experiments' of his? Briefly and mysteriously. "I go out of the room, and of course out of earshot." Several yards or feet away? Was the door to the room closed or open? And the 'of course' here seems out of place. Does he mean out of the ordinary range of hearing, or out of his own range? So that the words were simply muffled, or quite inaudible? "Someone in the room, generally my eldest daughter, thinks of a scene or an incident and says it aloud." A familiar voice, with its pitch and rhythms. Its stock of memories, and the familiar concerns of a daughter. Notice that the words have to be spoken aloud, this is the crunch. "It is written down and I am called." A slight feint will appear in Murray's 1952 address: he remembers this part of the experiment, but forgets that the words were first spoken. It is a matter of common knowledge that Murray was specifically sensitive to sound. An experiment failed when maids were singing in the house." Noises," he said, " become intolerable," He mentions hearing the hooves of horses when no one else did. But, most importantly, all of those experiments in which the words were written and not spoken failed, A sequence of ten unspoken tests failed. To put this circumstantial evidence together with Murray's assertion about the universality of professional hyperaesthesia seems reasonable; one might expect Murray to proceed to an explanation of this particular gift upon these lines. No. Murray saw it differently.

Here is the record of one test. Agent: "I think of grandfather at the Harrow and Winchester cricket-match, dropping hot cigar-ash on Mrs Thompson's parasol." This was spoken aloud, and then written down, Gilbert Murray is called back into the room, holds the hand of the agent, and pronounces. And his version? Surprisingly accurate, in the words and the rhythm of the words: " Why, this is grandfather. He's at a cricket match, why it's absurd — he seems to be dropping ash on a lady's parasol." Murray calls this a ' guess,' though it is closer to a verbatim report. But how does Murray explain it? He does not mention the surprising correspondence of language; his hearing doesn't enter the case. He explains it as telepathic sight, the communication of a picture from mind to mind. This smacks of ingenuousness, at the least, But it seems to be something more — either the wilful perversion of evidence, or the refusal to consider it properly, for the sake of pride and display. Cert,ainly it is an attitude very different from the caution and meticulousness of the professional scholar. It is Murray at his worst.

He begins his lecture with the evidence for hyperaesthesia, and then goes on to explain his own acts in terms that are vague and unproven. For sometimes, he says, it is the sense of smell that causes his clairvoyance. Sometimes "the information comes through an indeterminate sense of quality or atmosphere." And, here again the ingenuousness: "Sometimes the impression comes through hearing." It is this sometimes ' which is the central point of the controversy. Is it likely that Gilbert Murray received sights, smells and emotions telepathically and then translated them into words? Or is it that he heard the words as a low threshold of consciousness, and then through memory and atmosphere recreated them? The humming and hawing, the embroidery, the coy hesitations, the additional information, might all then be seen as the rhetorical framing of his hyperaesthesia. It would also suit the role of the hesitant clairvoyant, the man who hardly dares believe in his own gift.

But the Society for Psychical Research is nothing if not thorough, and matters didn't end there. An early defender of Murray's ' telepathy ' is Mrs A. Verrall, who published in 1918 an appendix to his 1915 address, devoted to Murray's experiments between 1910 and 1915. She was a devout espouser of telepathy, but she does offer contrary evidence despite herself. Two points come up very clearly: "When writing was substituted for speaking, during Professor Murray's absence, there was no success . ." and sometimes the Professor would come into the room and murmur "too much noise, no impression." It is to Mrs Verrall's credit that she should mention this, but she pays only lip service to the theory of hyperaesthesia and discounts it for all practical purposes. This is odd, given the facts of the matter. But I am thankful to her for a nice distinction which might save me from slanging the dead: "It must be admitted that Professor Murray's subconscious self, Whether deriving its information from hyperaesthesia or otherwise, at least masquerades here as telepathic." Ah, the masquerade of Murray's subconscious self. This may or may not be plausible, but it underlines the extreme ambiguity of the evidence even as Mrs Verrall understands it. It also shows the imprecision and vagueness that haunts this argument.

And here, by 1918, the matter might have rested: the glory gone to Murray, and the suspicion of masquerade palmed off on his old subconscious self. But Gilbert Murray continued to amaze and impress in houses all over the country, particularly his own at Oxford and at Mrs Henry Sidgwick's at.Fisher's Hall. Mrs Sidgwick published a report on Murray's experiments between 1916 and 1924 in the Proceedings Of The Society For Psychical Research (Vol 34, 1925), but the reaction to these further tests was one of scepticism and distrust. Correspondents in the Times noted the absence of proper conditions or experimental proof, and the burden of professional opinion was obviously against Murray's claims. Doctors Schiller and Thouless complained about the experimental conditions. Professor Haldane wrote that the evidence seemed to prove only auditory hyperaesthesia. And, most significantly, Dr field — who had been present at some of these tests in the 1920s — found that the greater the distance between Murray and his agents the more sketchy the results. Here, again, the matter might have rested, and indeed it did publicly, although the experiments went on.

And in July 1972 Professor Dodds published Gilbert Murray's Last Experiments, experiments conducted between 1920 and 1946 at Murray's house in Oxford. Dodds is also a classical scholar, and it might have been hoped that he would cast a sceptical eye over his late colleague's antics. But there must be some bizarre union between classical scholarship and telepathy, since Dodds doesn't dispute any of Murray's testimony. He even

prints more of the original tests, the now familiar sample of fantastic sentences and remembered incidents, meetings and places. Murray proceeds to feel out the whole sentence with a mixture of verbatim report and circumspect entertainment. It reads rather like a magician fooling us with his sleight of hand, but only on the principle of our willingly entering the illusion.

There is one remarkable telepathic correspondence in Dodds' report. Agent: "The man in Browning who is dying and sees a row of bottles at the end of the bed, and it reminds him of where he met his girl and when he was young." Quite a mouthful for one sentence, but Murray seems to have got the message. He strolls back into the room and quotes from Browning: How sad and mad and bad it was, But oh, how it was sweet An astonishing piece of clairvoyance, according to Dodds. But if we did not know better, we might assume that Murray heard the gist of the sentence and remembered the quote. Collapse of audience in surprise, and a vindication of Murray's powers. But Dodds argues against this: he claims that Murray became l° old to make hyperaesthesia a valid ex , planation. He also remembers how Murray had a clairvoyant dream . . . of course, 1.t takes another psychical buff to refute the evidence of Dodds.

Which is what Eric Dingwall is and does. His Gilbert Murray's Experiments: Telepat1V or Hyperaesthesia is a sustained argument against Dodd's own paper. I have already anticipated some of the points which he ral. ses. That auditory hyperaesthesia over long distances is known and documented. That Murray had a well-known sensitivity to nee se s of all kinds, And what about the experiments themselves? Dingwall notes that Murray and his friends seem "unable or unwilling " to record the conditions of the tests. It was a parlour-game after lunch, when the host shows off and the guests have no aversion to being suitably impressed. There fs r10 experimental proof of Murcay's telepathY; and further, the mistakes which MurraY makes are shown by Dingwall to be most commonly due to the mishearing of sounds. The weight of the evidence is against anY form of clairvoyance, but Murray was unable, to fathom or accept this. He clung to the ena of his life to the assertion that it was all due to telepathic communication.. We have seen that the argument for his claim comes only from him and the friends who participated in the games. They were primarily family affairs. The evidence agains.t him is therefore equally circumstantial, but has the advantage of cogency and the test 01 common sense. It explains more of the known facts. The experiments failed when no words were spoken. If Murray was too far away. the experiments again failed. The words are often repeated verbatim. Murray was hyper-acute. And so why did he. insist upon perpetrating the massive non-sequitur of telepathy? H.e may have liked some relief from scholarshill and the close scrutiny of language. Perhaes the eminent humanist wanted to find sortie interior life as a substitute for ' soul.' wanted to have some fun and tease his friends. He wanted to play the guru, to in" press and entertain. All this, and perhaes more. What better way, then, than to play the clairvoyant rather than the man with acute hearing. It may have been that his hyperaee thesia was almost unconscious, but the dej gree and quality of his successes should haN'" led him to consider the possibility of its eN. istence. But no. He preferred to believe °diet' wise. And he did all he could to foster tha belief. He was an amateur in these matters' and he can be forgiven. He was a bit of s, fraud, an amateur and playful fraud. It is na' a great sin for so distinguished a man.