[159] In an earlier part of this paper, I mentioned cases of haunted houses where the apparitions are various, and might therefore all of them be merely subjective hallucinations, sometimes, perhaps, caused by expectancy. It is, of course, also possible to explain these cases by the hypothesis we are now discussing. Another class of cases is, perhaps, worth mentioning in this connection. We have in the collection two cases of what was believed by the narrators to be a quite peculiar feeling of discomfort, in houses where concealed and long since decomposed bodies were subsequently found. Such feelings are seldom dearly defined enough to have much evidential value, for others, at any rate, than the percipient; even though mentioned beforehand, and definitely connected with the place where the skeleton was. But if there be really any connection between the skeleton and the feeling, it may possibly be a subtle physical influence such as I am suggesting.—E. M. S.
[160] To avoid misconception, I may point out that this view in no way negatives the possibility that telepathy (or its correlative telergy) may be in some of its aspects commoner, or more powerful, among savages than among ourselves. Evolutionary processes are not necessarily continuous. The acquirement by our lowly-organised ancestors of the sense of smell (for instance) was a step in evolution. But the sense of smell probably reached its highest energy in races earlier than man; and it has perceptibly declined even in the short space which separates civilised man from existing savages. Yet if, with some change in our environment, the sense of smell again became useful, and we reacquired it, this would be none the less an evolutionary process because the evolution had been interrupted.
[161] I do not wish to assert that all unfamiliar psychical states are necessarily evolutive or dissolutive in any assignable manner. I should prefer to suppose that there are states which may better be styled allotropic;—modifications of the arrangements of nervous elements on which our conscious identity depends, but with no more conspicuous superiority of the one state over the other than (for instance) charcoal possesses over graphite or graphite over charcoal. But there may also be states in which the (metaphorical) carbon becomes diamond;—with so much at least of advance on previous states as is involved in the substitution of the crystalline for the amorphous structure.
[162] See, for instance, Proceedings S.P.R., vol. i. p. 291.
[163] Sensation et Mouvement, par Ch. Féré. Paris: Alcan, 1887.
[164] La Suggestion Mentale (see Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 239 sqq.).
[165] See Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 226-31 [830 A].
[166] See Mr. Wilkinson's book Spirit Drawings: a Personal Narrative. But, of course, like other automatic impulses, this impulse to decorative or symbolical drawing is sometimes seen at its maximum in insane patients. Some drawings of an insane patient, reproduced in the American Journal of Psychology, June 1888, show a noticeable analogy (in my view a predictable analogy) with some of the "spirit-drawings" above discussed. See also the Martian landscapes of Hélène Smith, in Professor Flournoy's Des Indes à la planète Mars.
[167] An account of recorded instances of Socratic monitions and some discussion of them is given in the original edition [§ 813, 814].
[168] Du Démon de Socrate, etc., by L. F. Lélut, Membre de l'Institut. Nouvelle édition, 1856.