Many experiments have been made in consciously transferring thoughts or emotions from one mind to another. These are very liable to be vitiated by bad observation, collusion and other causes. Meanwhile, intercommunication between mind and mind without the aid of the recognised senses—a supposed process of “telepathy”—is a current explanation of the dreams in which knowledge is obtained that exists in the mind of another person, and of the delusion by virtue of which one person sees another who is perhaps dying, or in some other crisis, at a distance. The idea is popular. A poor Highland woman wrote to her son in Glasgow: “Don’t be thinking too much of us, or I shall be seeing you some evening in the byre”. This is a simple expression of the hypothesis of “telepathy” or “mental telegraphy”.
[{31}] Perhaps among such papers as the Casket Letters, exhibited to the Commission at Westminster, and “tabled” before the Scotch Privy Council.
[{35a}] To Joseph himself she bequeathed the ruby tortoise given to her by his brother. Probably the diamonds were not Rizzio’s gift.
[{35b}] Boismont was a distinguished physician and “Mad Doctor,” or “Alienist”. He was also a Christian, and opposed a tendency, not uncommon in his time, as in ours, to regard all “hallucinations” as a proof of mental disease in the “hallucinated”.
[{39a}] S.P.R., v., 324.
[{39b}] Ibid., 324.
[{42}] Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. v., pp. 324, 325.
[{43}] Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xi., p. 495.
[{45a}] Signed by Mr. Cooper and the Duchess of Hamilton.
[{45b}] See Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, p. 91.