Miss X., in describing the case, adds: "I took considerable trouble to ascertain the cause (of the smell of fire), and was quieted only by the assurance that it was imperceptible to the rest of the household." (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 367.)
When we leave these simple modes of feeling, and consider the affections of the higher senses of hearing and sight, we are confronted with a new problem. Sensations of the first class are almost purely homogeneous, they owe little or nothing to memory and imagination. Moreover, though generally due to an external cause, they are in the case of smell or taste occasionally, and in that of pain frequently, excited by causes within the organism. It is not, therefore, a matter calling for comment that in such cases the transferred idea should assume a definitely sensory form. But when the organs of sight or hearing are sensibly affected, past experience has taught us to look for an external cause; the line between idea and sensation is here sharply drawn and clearly understood.[87] The line, indeed, as drawn by common use may not correspond to any real distinction in the nature of the experience itself. Ideas may be only paler sensations, and a train of thought nothing else than a series of suppressed hallucinations. But at any rate the distinction, whether fundamental or not, serves a useful purpose as a rough-and-ready means of classing our mental experiences. A visual or auditory image either is on the same level of intensity as the series of impressions which represent for us the external world, or it falls below that level. In the former case we call it a sensation or percept, in the latter, an idea. Sensations and percepts may be again subdivided, as objective or hallucinatory, according as they do or do not correspond to a supposed material cause. In the experiments described in the first five chapters, it will have been observed that when the transferred impression was of a visual nature it generally remained ideal, rising occasionally, however, as in some of the experiments with hypnotised percipients, and in Mr. Kirk's cases, to the level of a complete sensory hallucination or quasi-percept. In the present chapter it is proposed to deal with auditory and visual phantasms which, so far as can be judged, were of an ideal kind, though one or two of the cases cited may seem to approximate to sensory embodiment. The more striking hallucinatory effects will be reserved for later chapters.
Transference of Ideas.
There is one kind of coincidence, so common as to have passed into a proverb, which is often referred to as illustrating the action of telepathy; that is, the idea of a person coming into the mind shortly before the person himself actually approaches. In most of the cases cited the coincidence is too indefinite to call for attention, as it is obvious that the narrator has not taken the elementary precaution of noting the "misses" as well as the "hits." But if telepathy acts at all, there is no à priori unlikelihood of its acting in this direction as well as in others, and it is to be desired that persons who believe themselves susceptible to impressions of the kind would keep a full record of their occurrence. Two instances which happened in his own recent experience are recorded by Professor Richet (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 52). Leaving such cases, however, as too indefinite to have much evidential value, we may quote the following as an example of an impression of a more detailed kind.
No. 43.—From MISS X.
On the 12th October 1891, Miss X. wrote to Mr. Myers as follows:—
"... I was much upset yesterday by the consciousness that a Master B. (son of A. B.) had arrived unexpectedly upon the scene ... no nurse—doctor three miles off—husband away. Being Sunday, I could not telegraph, but the news as to hour and sex arrived this morning. My impression was at 2.30 onwards. He arrived at 3.30, and in the interval I heard her voice over and over again calling my name. All is well now, but these impressions are not always comfortable."
In a later letter Miss X. writes:—
"A.'s own account is that (about two, I think), when she was made aware of her danger, the thought passed through her mind how fortunate it was that the impossibility of telegraphing would prevent anxiety at home, and then—that any way I should know. No one expected to have any cause for anxiety for at least a week. Yes; I ought to have sent to Mrs. Sidgwick, but I was so wretchedly ill that—don't shudder—I never at the time even thought of the S.P.R. I had been dreadfully worried all that week, and was utterly worn out."