Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy

by Frank Podmore

In current theories it is assumed that there are changes in brain-substance correlated with psychical events, and that these changes, in their ultimate analysis, are of the nature of vibrations. That these vibrations should be capable of in some way propagating themselves through the surrounding medium would seem therefore a natural corollary. The real objections to such physical theories appear to be of a more general kind—viz., the improbability that any such capacity of nervous induction should have remained unobserved until now; and the difficulty of supposing vibrations so minute to be capable of producing effects at so great a distance, and to have a selective capacity so finely adjusted that out of all the thousands of persons within the radius, say, of such a brain-wave as that set a-going by Mr. Cleave (p. 234), only one set of brain-molecules should be stirred to sympathetic vibration. The first difficulty in its psychical aspect has already been touched upon at the commencement of this chapter, and need not here be further considered. The second is more serious. It is difficult to find an exact parallel for the transmission across a considerable intervening space of energy at once so minute in quantity and so highly specialised. Mr. W. H. Preece has indeed shown that a current can be induced in a closed circuit at a distance of some three miles or more, and Professor Lodge has reminded us (loc. cit.) that "all magnets are sympathetically connected, so that, if suitably suspended, a vibration from one disturbs others, even though they be distant ninety-two million miles." But the forces engaged are in the one case on a commercial, in the other on a cosmic scale. Yet the difficulty is not, perhaps, insuperable. The amount of energy which has been proved capable, at the distance of half a mile, of inducing sleep in a French peasant woman may be readily conceived as not more attenuated than those "sweet influences" which are yet potent enough to summon up before us the vision of the Pleiades or the glowing nebula of Orion. Nor need the difficulty of selection trouble us much; for, after all, one of the chief characteristics of organic life in general is the power—a power ever more differentiated in the higher organisms—of reacting only to selected stimuli. In short, it is too soon to say that any physical communication between living beings of the kind suggested is inconceivable. We shall be justified in affirming or denying its possibility on the day when we have guessed the secret of our own existence, and are able to explain how some fraction of a millegramme of albumen can contain not merely the promise of life, but the germ of a particular and individual organism, which shall reveal its own pedigree and contain in itself an epitome of life on our planet.

Until, therefore, we know more of the nature of the cerebral changes which are presumed to be the physical concomitants of thought, we are at most entitled to suggest that some kind of vibrations, propagated somehow through a conjectural medium from an unspecified nerve-centre, may possibly explain the transference of thought. Our main justification at the present time for discussing theories which aim at some solution is that they may indicate the lines on which experiment and observation may be usefully directed. Thus, it is not known how far the results depend on the state of health of the parties to the experiments, on their occupations and state of consciousness at the time; whether blood-relationship or familiar intimacy between agent and percipient is conducive to success; or whether the transmission is in any way affected by the introduction of more than one agent. And though some progress has been made in tracing the development of the transmitted idea after it has reached the percipient's mind, observations on the relation of the agent's impression to that of the percipient are at present few and isolated. The difficulties of systematic experiment in this direction are considerable, as will be apparent to any one who carefully studies the reports of the Brighton experiments (pp. 65-80); but it would seem that further investigation might be expected to throw light upon such questions as whether the percipient's original impression is necessarily of the same kind as the agent's; whether in the case of visual impressions lateral inversion or complementary colours can be detected, and so on.

Once more, but little has been learnt of the purely mechanical conditions under which the transmission is effected. There are indeed indications that contact facilitates the transference;[171] but from the difficulty of discriminating, when contact is permitted, between thought-transference and muscle-reading, even thus much can hardly be affirmed with certainty. On the analogy of the known physical forces it is of course to be anticipated that the difficulty of effecting telepathic communication would increase very rapidly with the distance. Yet even here experimental verification is difficult to obtain. It is obvious, indeed, in our experiments, that an increased interval between agent and percipient, especially if a wall or floor is made to intervene, has affected the results prejudicially. But it is by no means clear, as already said, how far the observed effects are to be attributed, not to the physical obstacle of the intervening space, but to the psychical effect produced thereby on the parties to the experiment.

There is, however, a difference, already referred to, in the characteristics of the ideas transferred at close quarters, and those transferred at a distance, which is so marked and so general as to call for some explanation of this kind. In the experiments conducted in the same room or house, and in most of the spontaneous cases at close quarters, the idea transferred corresponds to a mental image consciously present to the mind of the agent. But the cases, whether experimental or spontaneous, of such detailed transference at a distance of more than a mile or two are very few—too few to justify any valid generalisation. For in most cases of thought-transference at a distance the idea transferred is one not consciously present to the agent's mind at all—the idea of his own personality.

To some critics indeed (see Mind, 1887, p. 280) this difficulty has seemed so serious as to suggest doubts of the propriety of referring the two sets of results to a common category; and Von Hartmann, whilst claiming, as already said, connection through the Absolute as the explanation of the results obtained at a distance, is content to postulate some kind of nervous induction in the case of experiments at close quarters. But if we examine the facts more closely we find, as has already been shown in some of the trials conducted by MM Gibert and Pierre Janet in inducing sleep at a distance, and in a few other cases (e.g., Nos. 40, 53, 58), that the idea of the personality of the agent may be transferred to the percipient, together with the specific idea present to the agent's mind. Moreover, in the recorded cases of thought-transference at close quarters, with hardly any exception, the presence of the agent was known to the percipient, and no evidence for the telepathic transmission of the idea of him can therefore be furnished. But since the idea of self is probably always present as part of the permanent substratum of consciousness, and since we have actual evidence that in some cases that idea may be communicated to the percipient, together with the idea consciously willed by the agent, it seems permissible to conclude that it may form an element in every case of transference. And if this be admitted, not merely will the difficulty referred to disappear, but some progress will have been made towards obtaining experimental verification of the physical effects of distance on telepathic transmission. For it would seem to follow that the telepathic energy, which at close quarters is able to effect the transference even of the trivial and momentary contents of the agent's mind, is competent when acting at a distance to convey only those continuous and more massive vibrations which may be presumed to correspond to his conception of his own personality. That the agent is not consciously "thinking of himself" need not prevent us from accepting this view. Nor would a like unconsciousness on the part of the percipient be a serious objection. For, as we have already seen (Nos. 24, 25, 27, etc.), ideas can be transferred from the subconscious to the subconscious; and indeed there is some ground for thinking that, outside of direct experiment, the intervention of the conscious mind in the telepathic transmission of thought is exceptional. Even in some of the most striking experimental cases it has been shown that either agent or percipient, or both, were asleep or entranced at the time. (See Chapter X., p. 239.)

This close connection of the activity of thought-transference with the subliminal consciousness, the consciousness which appears in hypnosis, and occasionally in dream-life and in spontaneous trance and automatism, may perhaps offer a clue to the origin of the faculty. For the future place of telepathy in the history of the race concerns us even more nearly than the mode of its operation; and we are led therefore to ask whether the faculty as we know it is but the germ of a more splendid capacity, or the last vestige of a power grown stunted through disuse. By those who view the matter simply as a topic of natural history the latter alternative will be preferred. The possible utility of telepathy as a supplement to gesture, etc., at a time when speech and writing were not yet evolved, is too obvious for comment. Whilst, on the other hand, such a faculty can with difficulty be conceived as originating by any physical process of evolution in our modern civilisation. But more direct evidence of the place of telepathy in our development is not wanting. For there are indications that the consciousness which lies below the threshold, with which the activity of telepathy is constantly associated, may be regarded as representing an earlier stage in the consciousness of the individual, and even it may be an earlier stage in the history of the race. The readiest means of summoning into temporary activity this subterranean consciousness is in the hypnotic trance. Now the consciousness displayed by the hypnotised subject includes, as a rule, the whole of the normal consciousness, and also extends beyond it. That is, the hypnotised subject is aware not only of what goes on in the trance but also of his normal life: when awaked the events of the trance have passed from his memory and are not revived until the next period of trance. Our work-a-day consciousness would appear to be, in fact, a selection from a much larger field of potential consciousness. Or, to put it in another way, the pressure on the narrow limits of our working consciousness is so great that ideas and sensations are continually being crowded out and forced down below the threshold. The subliminal consciousness thus becomes the receptacle of lapsed memories and sensations; and up to a certain point in the history of each individual these lapsed ideas can be temporarily revived. Long forgotten memories of childhood, for instance, can be resuscitated in the hypnotic trance, and ideas which have demonstrably never penetrated into consciousness at all can be brought to light by crystal-vision, planchette-writing, or other automatic processes.

Again, one of the most marked characteristics of the subliminal consciousness, whether in dream, hypnosis, spontaneous trance, or in crystal vision and other automatism, is its power of visualisation—a power which, as Mr. Galton has shown, and our daily experience proves, tends to become aborted in later life. And beyond these indications of memories lost and imagery crowded out in the lifetime of the individual, we come across traces of faculties which have long ceased to obey the guidance or minister to the needs of civilised man—the psychological lumber of many generations ago. Such at least, it may be suggested, is a possible interpretation of the control frequently exercised by the hypnotic over the processes of digestion and circulation and the functions of the organic life generally. And the more doubtful observations, which seem to indicate the possession by the subconscious life of a sense of the passage of time and of a muscular sense superior to that of the waking state, may be held to point in the same direction.

From such facts and such analogies as these it may be argued that telepathy is perchance the relic of a once-serviceable faculty, which eked out the primitive alphabet of gesture, and helped to bind our ancestors of the cave or the tree in as yet inarticulate community, Dr. Jules Héricourt,[172] indeed, goes further, and suggests that we find here traces of the primeval unspecialised sensitiveness which preceded the development of a nervous system—a heritage shared with the amœba and the sea-anemone.

On the other hand, it may be urged that our present knowledge, either of telepathy itself or of the subconscious activities with which it is sought to link it, cannot by any means be held sufficient to support such an inference as to the probable origin of the faculty; and further, that the absence of mundane analogies, and the difficulties attending any such explanation yet suggested, forbid us to assume that the facts are capable of expression in physical terms.