[129] See Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 231.
[130] Some word is much needed to express communications between one state and another, e.g. between the somnambulic and the waking state, or, in hypnotism, the cataleptic and the somnambulic, etc. The word "methectic" (μεθεκτὁς) seems to me the most suitable, especially since μἑθεξις happens to be the word used by Plato (Parm. 132 D.) for participation between ideas and concrete objects. Or the word "inter-state" might be pressed into this new duty.
[131] See for example Mr. Cameron Grant's case. (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 202.)
[132] Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 404-408.
[133] In some experimental cases, it will be remembered, the impression takes effect through the motor, not the sensory, system of the recipient, as by automatic writing, so that he is never directly aware of it at all.
[134] See, for instance, case 500, Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 462.
[135] I mean by "ordinary" the classes which are recognised and treated of in Phantasms of the Living. But if the departed survive, the possibility of thought-transference between them and those who remain is of course a perfectly tenable hypothesis. "As our telepathic theory is a psychical one, and makes no physical assumptions, it would be perfectly applicable (though the name perhaps would be inappropriate) to the conditions of disembodied existence."—Phantasms, vol. i. p. 512.
[136] Certain statistics as to these time-relations are given by Edmund Gurney as follows (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 408): "The statistics drawn from the first-hand records in Phantasms of the Living as to the time-relation of appearances, etc., occurring in close proximity to deaths, are as follows:—In 134 cases the coincidence is represented as having been exact, or, when times are specifically stated, close to within an hour. In 104 cases it is not known whether the percipient's experience preceded or followed the death; such cases cannot be taken account of for our present purpose. There remain 78 cases where it appears that there was an interval of more than an hour; and of these 38 preceded and 40 followed the death. Of the 38 cases where the percipient's experience preceded the death (all of which, of course, took place during a time when the "agent" was seriously ill), 19 fell within twenty-four hours of the death. Of the 40 cases where the percipient's experience followed the death, all followed within an interval of twenty-four hours, and in only one (included by mistake) was the twelve hours' interval certainly exceeded, though there are one or two others where it is possible that it was slightly exceeded."
[137] The Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research (vol. i. p. 405) contain a case where a physician and his wife, sleeping in separate but adjoining rooms, are both of them awakened by a bright light. The physician sees a figure standing in the light; his wife, who gets up to see what the light in her husband's room may be, does not reach that room till the figure has disappeared. The figure is not clearly identified, but has some resemblance to a patient of the physician's, who has died suddenly (from hemorrhage) about three hours before, calling for her doctor, who did not anticipate this sudden end. Even this resemblance did not strike the percipient until after he knew of the death, and the defect in recognition weakens the case evidentially.
[138] The references in this and the two following pages are to Phantasms of the Living.