CHAPTER XVI.
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS.
Consideration more or less adequate has now been given to the various phenomena in which there is proof apparent of the action of telepathy. The experimental evidence has shown that a simple sensation or idea may be transferred from one mind to another, and that this transference may take place alike in the normal state and in the hypnotic trance. It has been shown also that the transferred idea may be reproduced in the percipient's organism under various disguises; at one time, for instance, it may cause vague distress or terror, or a blind impulse to action; under other circumstances it may inspire definite and complicated movements, as those involved in writing. Again, it may induce sleep or even more deep-seated organic effects, such as hysteria or local anæsthesia. Once more, it may be embellished with imagery presumably furnished by the percipient's own mind, and may appear as a dream or hallucination representing the distant agent. And these various results may be obtained either by deliberate experiment; as the result of some crisis affecting another mind; or, lastly, as following on some peculiar state of receptivity established, under conditions not yet clearly ascertained, in the percipient's mind.
But it would not be reasonable to infer that the few hundreds or thousands of examples collected during the last twelve years by a few groups of investigators exhaust the possibilities or indicate the limits of telepathic action. By those, at least, who accept the demonstration of telepathy as a real agency it will hardly be anticipated that its action should be confined to the comparatively few cases which present a coincidence sufficiently striking to be quoted as ostensive instances. That the distribution, indeed, of telepathic sensitiveness at the present time should be sporadic—as the distribution of a musical ear or the power of visualisation is sporadic—may appear not improbable. But we should be prepared to find instances of its presumptive operation which fall below the level of demonstration, and might with almost equal plausibility be referred to some other cause. And such instances we do certainly find, in simultaneous dreams and in vague presentiments, and in innumerable coincidences of thought and expression in ordinary life. And the suggestion that the same power may serve as an auxiliary to more completely systematised modes of expression, though incapable of proof, may yet be thought worthy of consideration. It is conceivable, for instance, that it may aid the intercourse of a mother with her infant child, that the influence of the orator may be due not only to the spoken word, and that even in our daily conversation thoughts may pass by this means which find no outward expression. The personal influence of the operator in hypnotism may perhaps be regarded as a proof presumptive of telepathy. When all the phenomena of "mesmerism" were attributed, by the few who believed in them, to the passage of a fluid from the mesmerist to his patient, it was easy to credit the successful operator with as large an endowment of available fluid as the facts might seem to require. But from those who assert that the results are not merely explicable, but are in practice to be explained, as due to suggestion alone, no entirely satisfactory explanation has ever been forthcoming of the observed differences between one operator and another. It is difficult to believe that Liébeault, Bernheim, Schrenck-Notzing, Van Eeden, Lloyd Tuckey, Bramwell, etc., have succeeded where so many others have failed, merely through the exercise of greater patience, or the possession of an established reputation, which after all is based on the successes which it is now invoked to explain.[150] And the fact that a large proportion of well-known hypnotists have acted as agents in successful telepathic experiments of an unusual kind is a further argument in the same direction. There are, moreover, some more dubious beliefs, for the most part discredited by educated persons, yet persisting with a singular vitality, which receive in telepathy a simple and perhaps sufficient explanation. It has already been shown that some of the marvels of Dr. Dee and the Specularii have been paralleled by recent visions in "the crystal," revealing events then passing at a distance unknown to the seer; and that the nucleus of fact in some legends of ghosts and haunted houses is probably to be sought in a telepathic hallucination. And many of the alleged wonders of witchcraft and of ancient magic in general, when disentangled from the accretions formed round them by popular myth and superstition, present a marked resemblance to some of the facts recorded in this book. It is obvious, for instance, that the same power which inhibited Mr. Beard's utterance (p. 83) could have prevented the witch's victim from repeating the Lord's Prayer. And Mr. Godfrey (p. 228), in the sixteenth century, might have found that to appear in two places at once would be perilously strong evidence of unlawful powers.[151]
But there are two special kinds of marvels, whose occurrence has been widely vouched for within quite recent times by men of proved ability and trained in the experimental methods of the modern laboratory, which deserve to be considered in this connection—the influence of metals and magnets on the human organism, and the physical phenomena of Spiritualism. Baron von Reichenbach in the last generation published the results of numerous observations on various sensitives, who alleged that they could see flame-like emanations from crystals, from the poles of a magnet, from the bodies of the sick, and from newly-made graves, and that they experienced various sensations from contact with magnets and metals. On the evidence of Reichenbach's prolonged and laborious researches the existence of this supposed magnetic sense obtained a certain degree of credence. Accordingly the S.P.R., shortly after its foundation in 1882, conducted a series of control experiments on a number of persons with a powerful electro-magnet, which was alternately magnetised and demagnetised by a commutator in an adjoining room. Of forty-five persons tested three professed to see luminous appearances on the poles of the magnet; and on two or three occasions they were able to indicate with surprising accuracy throughout a whole evening the exact moment at which the current was switched on or off—the light, as they alleged, appearing or disappearing simultaneously. But these isolated successes were not repeated, and the very conditions of the experiment implied that it was known to some of those present whether or not the magnet was charged. Now it is obvious that unless special precautions are taken to guard against the telepathic[152] communication of this knowledge all experiments of the kind must be inconclusive; and other investigators have failed to detect any trace of the so-called magnetic sense.[153]
Within the last few years this supposed sensitiveness has appeared in another form. M. Babinski of the Salpetrière claims to have shown that certain ailments—such, for example, as hemiplegia and hysterical mutism—can be transferred by the influence of a magnet from one side of the body to another, or from one patient to another. MM. Binet and Féré[154] find that unilateral hallucinations can be shifted by the same influence from one side of the body to the other, and that in general memories and sensations—real or imaginary—can be modified and destroyed by the magnet. And MM. Bourru, Burot, Luys, and others have published whole treatises dealing with the alleged influence of various drugs and metals on certain patients. A few drops of laurel-water enclosed in a flask and brought near to the patient, will, according to these writers, induce ecstasy; ipecacuanha will cause vomiting; alcohol intoxication, and so on; each drug, though securely stoppered and sealed, giving rise to the appropriate physical symptoms in the patient. However, MM. Bernheim,[155] Delboeuf,[156] and Jules Voisin[157] showed some time since, and Mr. Ernest Hart[158] has lately repeated the demonstration, that the same results can be made to follow if the patient is led to believe that an inert piece of wood is a magnet, or that an empty flask contains a powerful drug. It may be fairly assumed therefore that when special precautions are not shown to have been taken—and there is little evidence that such precautions were as a rule taken—suggestion by word or look would be sufficient to account for the phenomena observed. But it is obvious that negative experiments of this kind are not in themselves conclusive; and it is difficult to believe that all the results recorded by investigators of such experience as Babinski, Féré, and others could have been due simply to carelessness on their part, or hypnotic cunning on the part of the subject. Indeed, in commenting on the counter experiments made by M. Jules Voisin, MM. Bourru and Burot expressly state that if the results obtained by them are to be attributed to suggestion, as he proposes, it is "une suggestion sans parole, sans geste, sans pensée même."[159] But a suggestion without word, gesture, or conscious thought is an accurate description of one form of telepathic suggestion; and if such suggestion has indeed been at work we have an explanation of the otherwise inexplicable reliance placed by these French investigators upon experiments so much controverted, and their faith in an interpretation so little supported by scientific analogy.
That in general the so-called physical phenomena of Spiritualism are due to self-deception and exaggeration on the one hand, and to fraud on the other, is a proposition which to most readers, it is likely, will seem to need little demonstration. And there are of course many cases, such as the recent experiments with Eusapia Palladino[160] at Milan, where, though competent observers—Richet, Schiaparelli, Lombroso, Brofferio—have seen things beyond their power to explain, yet the line between what was possible to fraudulent ingenuity and what was not possible cannot be drawn with sufficient sharpness to warrant the invocation of any new agency. But there are other records which cannot be so summarily dismissed. Thus Mr. Crookes, F.R.S.,[161] has described the movements of a balance, specially constructed for the purpose of the experiments, in the presence of himself and other observers, under conditions which seemed to render it impossible for the effects to have been produced by the muscular force of any of those present. Lord Lindsay has testified to having seen Home's stature elongated to the extent of 11 inches, and heavy tables and other articles of furniture rise in the air without visible support, and to having himself, at Home's instance, handled, and seen others handle, red-hot coals with impunity. Other witnesses of repute have testified to the appearance of strange luminous bodies, the raining down of liquid scent, the production of inexplicable musical sounds and other phenomena equally marvellous.[162]
Now it is difficult to believe that Mr. Crookes and those with him could in their normal senses have imagined movements of a self-registering balance which never really took place, or have failed to detect actual movements on Home's part; or that Home could have seemed to Lord Lindsay and others to add some fraction of a cubit to his stature or to float unsupported in the air, when he was really only stretching cramped muscles, or supporting himself on a captive balloon, or by unseen wires; or that when he was seen to carry hot coals about the room, and to place them, still glowing, upon the bare head of Mr. S. C. Hall, he relied upon the observers overlooking such inconspicuous objects as a pair of tongs and an asbestos skull-cap—alternatives which must have been at least as obvious at the time to the observers who, by recording these things, have imperilled their reputation for scientific acumen, and even for common sense, as now to their irresponsible critics. But it is certainly not less difficult to believe, on such grounds as these, in the discovery of a new physical force—or rather new forces; for the energy which could move a balance cannot properly be assumed to be identical with the energy which could increase Home's stature, or restrain the action of fire; or, as elsewhere recorded, bring delicate flowers uninjured through closed doors. But fortunately we are not compelled to choose between the alternatives of such almost incredible stupidity and a multiplicity of new modes of energy. It has been plausibly suggested that the observers in such cases are the subjects of a collective hallucination. It is true that we have no precise analogy to support such a hypothesis. The hallucinations of hypnotism can be imposed upon several subjects simultaneously by dint of repeated verbal suggestions. But here there were none of the recognised preliminaries to the hypnotic trance: in many of the recorded cases the observers did not know what to expect, and it is clear that verbal suggestion was not essential to the results; while there is no trace of that break in the continuity of consciousness which elsewhere marks the passage from the hypnotic to the normal state. Moreover, in some of the best-attested cases it was the presumed operator, and not the witnesses, who was entranced. Assuredly if the phenomena described were due to hypnotic hallucination, it was hallucination without any of the characteristic features of hypnotism. But if we assume—as in the absence of any evidence to the contrary we are entitled, if not bound, to assume—that the observers were in their normal state, we can find no nearer parallel to this supposed hallucination than the collective telepathic hallucinations of which examples have been given in Chapter XII.[163]