The Project Gutenberg eBook ofOccultism and Common-Sense

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofOccultism and Common-SenseThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Occultism and Common-SenseAuthor: Beckles WillsonAuthor of introduction, etc.: Sir William BarrettRelease date: July 14, 2011 [eBook #36730]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OCCULTISM AND COMMON-SENSE ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Occultism and Common-SenseAuthor: Beckles WillsonAuthor of introduction, etc.: Sir William BarrettRelease date: July 14, 2011 [eBook #36730]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Title: Occultism and Common-Sense

Author: Beckles WillsonAuthor of introduction, etc.: Sir William Barrett

Author: Beckles Willson

Author of introduction, etc.: Sir William Barrett

Release date: July 14, 2011 [eBook #36730]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OCCULTISM AND COMMON-SENSE ***

The following chapters, together with Professor Barrett's comment thereupon, which now figures as an Introduction, originally appeared in the columns ofThe Westminster Gazette.

Those of us who took part in the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research were convinced from personal investigation and from the testimony of competent witnesses that, amidst much illusion and deception, there existed an important body of facts, hitherto unrecognised by science, which, if incontestably established, would be of supreme interest and importance.

It was hoped that by applying scientific methods to their systematic investigation these obscure phenomena might eventually be rescued from the disorderly mystery of ignorance; (but we recognised that this would be a work, not of one generation but of many.) Hence to preserve continuity of effort it was necessary to form a society, the aim of which should be, as we stated at the outset, to bring to bear on these obscure questions the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems once not less obscure nor less hotly debated. And such success as the society has achieved is in no small measuredue to the wise counsel and ungrudging expenditure both of time and means which the late Professor Henry Sidgwick gave, and which Mrs Sidgwick continues to give, to all the details of its work.

Turning now to the author of the following pages, everyone must recognise the industry he has shown and the fairness of spirit he has endeavoured to maintain. With different groups of phenomena, the evidential value varies enormously. The testimony of honest and even careful witnesses requires to be received with caution, owing to the intrusion of two sources of error to which untrained observers are very liable. These are unconsciousmal-observationand unintentionalmis-description.I cannot here enter into the proof of this statement, but it is fully established. Oddly enough, not only a credulous observer but a cynical or ferocious sceptic is singularly prone to these errors when, for the first time, he is induced to investigate psychical phenomena which, in the pride of his superior intelligence, he has hitherto scorned. I could give some amusing illustrations of this within my own knowledge. For instance, a clever but critical friend who had frequently scoffed at the evidence for thought-transference published in the "Proceedings of the Society forPsychical Research," one day seriously informed me he had been converted to a belief in thought-transference by some conclusive experiments he had witnessed. Upon inquiring where these experiments took place I found it was at a public performance of a very inferior Zancig who was then touring through the provinces!

Mr Beckles Willson frankly tells us that "the light heart and open mind" with which he set forth on his inquiry deserted him before he drew his labours to a close. For, entering upon the subject as a novice, he found himself unexpectedly confronted by the mass of evidence and the numerous and profoundly difficult problems which the Psychical Society have had to face. His conclusions are derived from a study of the available evidence, and this study has convinced himâ€”as it has convinced, so far as I know, every other painstaking and honest inquirerâ€”that no theories based on fraud, illusion, nor even on telepathy, are adequate to account for the whole of the phenomena he has reviewed. Contrary to his prepossessions, Mr Willson tells us that he has been led to the conclusion that the only satisfactory explanation of these phenomena is the action of discarnate human beingsâ€”that is to say, the Spiritualistic hypothesis.

I can hardly suppose he means to apply this statement to more than the small residue of phenomena which he finds inexplicable on any other hypothesis. Assuming this restricted view to be meant, the question arises, Is the evidence on which it is based sufficientlyabundant, trustworthy,andconclusive,to warrant such a far-reaching statement? Here we must turn from the author to ascertain what has been the conclusion arrived at by those who have given long years to a searching experimental investigation of these phenomena, and who have approached the subject in a scientific and judicial spirit. The most noteworthy instance is the testimony of that shrewd and able investigator, the late Dr Hodgson. His patient and laborious inquiry into the trance phenomena of Mrs Piper ultimately led him to the conclusion arrived at by Mr Willson. Dr Hodgson's well-known exposure of Madame Blavatsky and other fraudulent mediums and his sane and cautious judgment render his opinion of great weight. Then, again, we find that this also was the conclusion to which Frederic Myers was gradually driven. And long prior to this it was the conclusion arrived at by that acute thinker, the late Professor de Morgan, and it is the conclusion strongly heldby the great naturalist, Dr A. R. Wallace, and held also by several other eminent investigators I might name.

So momentous a conclusion, if capable of such complete verification as to be universally accepted by science, would obviously throw all other discoveries into the background. I say if capable of being verified by scientific methods, but, although the weight of opinion will, in my opinion, ultimately lead to a very wide acceptance of this conclusion, yet it seems to me highly probable that the experimental discovery of the survival of human personality after death will always elude conclusive scientific demonstration. This particular field of psychical investigation belongs to an order other than that with which science deals; and, this being so, it can never be adequately investigated with the limited faculties we now possess.

In any case, as I said in a letter published inThe Times,so long ago as September 1876, before science is in a position to frame any satisfactory hypothesis of the so-called Spiritualistic phenomena, a number of antecedent questions will have to be investigated and decided. Prominent among these, I urged more than thirty years ago, was the question whether ideas or information can be voluntarily or involuntarilytransferred from one mind to another independently of the recognised organs of perception. Experiments I had then recently made led me to the conclusion that something new to science, which might provisionally be called thought-transference, now known in its wider aspect as telepathy, did really exist. This, if established, would, as I pointed out, unquestionably solve some of the so-called spirit communications which had so puzzled investigators. But the idea of thought-transference was at that time just as obnoxious to official science as Spiritualism. Mr Willson quotes the implacable disbelief, even in the possibility of telepathy, which that great man Helmholtz expressed to me. And it is amusing now to recall the fierce outcry aroused by the paper I read at the British Association meeting in 1876, when, after narrating certain apparently transcendental phenomena I had witnessed, I asked that a committee of scientific men should be appointed to investigate preliminary question of the possibility of thought-transference.[1]It is true the evidence on behalfof telepathy has since become so abundant that now few deny its probability, but even telepathy has not yet taken its place among the recognised scientific verities. I hope this recognition will not be long delayed, but until it occurs it is almost as illegitimate to use telepathy, as some do so freely, for the foundation of their theories of transcendental phenomena as to use the spiritualistic hypothesis itself.

To those who have carefully studied the evidence there is, however, little doubt that telepathy does afford an adequate explanation of certain well-attested phenomena, such as phantasms of the living or dying person. And telepathy, which may now be considered as highly probable, leads on to the evidence for man's survival after deathâ€”to this I will return later on.

Then, again, recent investigations have established the fact that the range of human personality must be extended to include something more than our normal self-consciousness. Our Ego is not the simple unitary thing older psychologists taught, but a composite structure embracing a self that extends far beyond the limit of our conscious waking life. Just as experimental physics has shown that each pencil of sunlight embraces an almost endless succession of invisible rays as well as the visible radiationwe perceive, so experimental psychology has shown that each human personality embraces an unconscious as well as a conscious self. Mr Myers, using Du Perl's conception of a threshold, has termed the former oursubliminal self.And just as the invisible radiation of the sun can only be rendered perceptible by some agency outside our vision, so this subliminal self reveals itself only by some agency outside our own volition. The subliminal self not only contains the record of unheeded past impressionsâ€”a latent memoryâ€”but also has activities and faculties far transcending the range of our conscious self. In this it also resembles the invisible radiation of the sun, which is the main source of life and energy in this world.

Certainly the everyday processes of the development, nutrition, and repair of our body and brain, which go on automatically and unconsciously within us, are far beyond the powers of our conscious personality. All life shares with us this miraculous automatism. No chemist, with all his appliances, can turn breadstuff into brainstuff or hay into milk. Further, the subliminal self seems to have faculties which can be emancipated from the limitations of our ordinary life. Glimpses ofthis we get when the conscious self is in abeyance, as in sleep, hypnosis, and trance. Here and there we find certain individuals through whom this sub- or supra-liminal self manifests itself more freely than through others; they have been termed "mediums," a word, it is true, that suggests Browning's "Sludge." But, as scientific investigation has shown all mesmerists and dowsers are not charlatans, so it has shown all mediums are not rogues.

This extension of human faculty, revealing, as it does, more profoundly the mysterious depths of our being, enables us to explain many phenomena that have been attributed to discarnate human beings. The question arises, Does it explain all so-called Spiritualistic phenomena? In my opinion, and in that of others who have given more time to their critical investigation than I have, it does not. At present we have to grope our way, but the ground is being cleared, and the direction which the future explorer of these unknown regions has to take is becoming more evident.

When I first ventured into the wide and misty domain of Occultism, with a light heart I set forth and an open mind. My sole aim was to ascertain, as far as the means at the disposal of an ordinary man with little of the mystic in his composition would allow, what degree of probability attached to published phenomena, which the ordinary laws of Nature, as most of us understand them, could not satisfactorily explain.

At the threshold of my inquiry, one prominent and, as it seemed to me, disconcerting fact confronted meâ€”namely, that although for a couple of generations "supernatural"manifestations had been promiscuously exhibited before the public, challenging full investigation and inviting belief; although almost every day the newspapers report some striking case of spirit apparition or materialisation, coincident dreams, clairvoyance, trance utterances, or possession, often seemingly well attested; yet in spite of all this testimony academic science continued to dispute the very basis of such phenomena. Any investigator must needs recognise here a very anomalous situation. On the one hand are, let us say, half-a-million people, often highly intelligent, cultured, sane people, firmly protesting that they have witnessed certain astonishing occult manifestations, and on the other hand the Royal Society and the British Association, and other organised scientific bodies established for the investigation of truth, absolutely refusing to admit such evidence or to regard it seriously. Forty years ago Faraday, besought to give his opinion, in this wise wrote: "They who say they see these things are not competent witnesses of facts. It would be condescension on my partto pay any more attention to them." Faraday's attitude was that of Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, and Agassiz. The first-named, however, rather gave away his prejudice by saying: "Supposing the phenomena to be genuine, they do not interest me." Tyndall's utterance also deserves to be recalled: "There are people amongst us who, it is alleged, can produce effects before which the discoveries of Newton pale. There are men of science who would sell all that they have, and give the proceeds to the poor, for a glimpse of phenomena which are mere trifles to the spiritualist." He added: "The world will have religion of some kind, even though it should fly for it to the intellectual whoredom of spiritualism." Spencer's words were: "I have settled the question in my own mind on Ã priori grounds." Professor Carpenter called spiritualism "a most mischievous epidemic delusion, comparable to the witchcraft delusion of the seventeenth century."

What, then, has happened to strengthen the case of the believers in ghosts, clairvoyance, thought-transference, sensory automatism,in, say, the last quarter of a century? What new evidence exists which would make the mid-Victorian scientific men reconsider their position? Suppose Faraday and Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall, were alive to-day, would they see reason to alter their opinions?

I remember onceâ€”and I now give it as typicalâ€”overhearing a psychical experience. It was in a first-class compartment on a train coming from Wimbledon. One of my fellow-passengers, an intelligent, well-spoken man of about thirty-five, was relating to three friends the following extraordinary story. As nearly as I can recollect, I give the narrator's own words:â€”

"One week ago last Tuesday, at eleven o'clock at night, my wife, who had just retired to bed upstairs, called out to me: 'Arthur! Arthur!' in a tone of alarm. I sprang up and ran upstairs to see what was the matter. The servants had all gone to bed. 'Arthur,' said my wife, 'I've just seen mother,' and she began to cry. 'Why,' I said, 'your mother's at Scarborough.' 'I know,' shesaid; 'but she appeared before me just there' (pointing to the foot of the bed) 'two minutes ago as plainly as you do.' Well, the next morning there was a telegram on the breakfast-table: 'Mother, died at eleven last night.' Now, how do you account for it?"

There was silence for a full minute.

"A wonderful coincidence. Your wife's hallucination coincided with her mother's death!"

Another occupant of the carriage caught up the word:

"Yes, coincidence. A thing which mightn't happen once in a million years."

Nobody else ventured a remark. Yet they seemed unconvinced. There was no one to tell themâ€”even I did not know thenâ€”that these "coincidences" were constantly happening, every year, perhaps every month; that an intelligent body of menâ€”the Society for Psychical Researchâ€”has made a census of such hallucinations, all apparently well attested; that newspapers devoted to occultmatters constantly record these things; that volumesâ€”monthly, weekly, almostâ€”fairly pour from the press detailing, expounding, dissecting, elaborating such evidence; that the theory of coincidence has already been rejected by many men of the first rank of science; and that official science itself is reluctantly reconsidering its position in more than one direction.

Yet so slowly do the masses move in intellectual life, so tardily do truths, concerning not merely occult but physical and material investigation, percolate through to the workaday world, that the researches, the activities, the ascertained truths of students of psychical phenomena are as a closed book. Perhaps the attitude of apathy with which occult phenomena and occult science are regarded by the average man is not unnatural. To him all miracles that are not Scriptural and ancient and, as it were, institutional are highly improbable, if not impossible. All super-naturalism, he will tell you, is morbid. "There may be something in these things," he says, "but it is not proved. As forspiritualism, my belief is that mediums are impostors. Most of the spiritualists I have seen are 'cranks'â€”they are certainly dupesâ€”and I have no doubt that if I interested myself in these matters I should end by becoming also a 'crank.'"

This I maintain is the position of the ordinarily educated normal man.

"The moment," wrote Lord Lytton, "one deals with things beyond our comprehension, and in which our own senses are appealed to and baffled, we revolt from the probable, as it appears to the senses of those who have not experienced what we have." Now, that is just what the candid inquirer must avoid throughout his inquiry. It is often difficult to resist employing supernormal hypotheses; but, until normal hypotheses are exhausted, the resistance must be made. On the other hand, it is well to bear in mind Mr Andrew Lang's timely remark, "there is a point at which the explanations of common-sense arouse scepticism."

At all events, not even the most materialistic man-in-the-music-hall, with two eyes inhis head, can deny that the great wave of occultism, which twenty years ago seemed to be receding, is again returning with greater force and volume, submerging many of the old sceptical theories and wetting even the utterly callous and ignorant with its spray. It is not so long ago that the very fact of hypnotism was doubtedâ€”Mesmer was long regarded as a mere quackâ€”but to-day the induced trance is universally credited. To hypnotism must the miracle of telepathy now be added? Has it really been ascertained, after a thousand experiments and beyond the possibility of error, that a mode of apprehension exists which has no connection with the five senses? For twenty-five years the members of the Society of Psychical Research have carried on their investigations of both sleeping and waking subjects, under every conceivable condition, and are at last fain to announce that such a mystic faculty does exist by which brain can communicate with brain without any known sensory agency.

As to the kind of "ghost" story recordedabove, what an exact analogy it bears to the following, to be found in a recent volume of the "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research!" The statement was received from a Madame Broussiloff, of St Petersburg:â€”

"On the 16th (28th) of February of this year, between nine and ten o'clock in the evening, I, the undersigned, was sitting in our drawing-roomâ€”the small oneâ€”facing the large drawing-room, which I could see in its entire length. My husband, his brother, with his wife, and my mother, were also sitting in the same room with me round a large round table. I was writing down my household accounts for the day, while the others were carrying on some gay conversation. Having accidentally raised my head and looked into the large drawing-room, I noticed, with astonishment, that a large grey shadow had passed from the door of the dining-room to that of the antechamber; and it came into my head that the figure I had seen bore a striking resemblance in stature to Colonel Ave-Meinander, an acquaintanceof ours, who had lived in this very lodging for a long time. At the first moment, I wished to say at once that a ghost had just flashed before me, but stopped, as I was afraid of being laughed at by my husband's brother and his wife, and also of being scolded by my husband, who, in view of the excitement which I showed when such phenomena were taking place, tried to convince me that they were the fruits of my fancy. As I knew that Meinander was alive and well, and was commander of the MalorossÃ¼sky 40th Regiment of Dragoons, I did not say anything then; but when I was going to bed I related to my mother what I had seen, and the next morning could not refrain from mentioning it to my husband."Our astonishment was extreme when, on the 18th of February (2nd of March), we learned Nicholas Ottovitch Ave-Meinander had actually died after a short illness on the 16th (28th) of February at nine o'clock in the evening, in the town of Strashovo, where his regiment is stationed."The above account is confirmed by thepercipient's mother, Marie von Hagemeister, and by the husband, Colonel Alexis Alexeievitch Broussiloff. Both state solemnly that Colonel Meinander died at nine P.M. on the evening of 16th February (28th) at Stashovo, 1200 versts from St Petersburg."

"Our astonishment was extreme when, on the 18th of February (2nd of March), we learned Nicholas Ottovitch Ave-Meinander had actually died after a short illness on the 16th (28th) of February at nine o'clock in the evening, in the town of Strashovo, where his regiment is stationed.

"The above account is confirmed by thepercipient's mother, Marie von Hagemeister, and by the husband, Colonel Alexis Alexeievitch Broussiloff. Both state solemnly that Colonel Meinander died at nine P.M. on the evening of 16th February (28th) at Stashovo, 1200 versts from St Petersburg."

To explain this phenomenon in the terms of telepathy, the grey shadow seen by Madame Broussiloff was not a ghost, not the "bodiless spirit in the likeness of a man," but "a waking dream projected from the brain of the seer under the impulse of the dying man's thought."

But telepathy itself requires consideration and explanation. Sir William Crookes has repeatedly given publicity to his theory of brain-waves and to a kindred conception of ether substance, along which intelligence can be transmitted at an almost incalculable rate of speed to virtually interminable distances.

That mind should effect mind in a new mode may mean no more than that brain can act upon brain by means of ethereal vibrations hitherto unsuspected. The power itself maybe but a lingering vestige of our inheritance from primeval times, a long-disused faculty "dragged from the dim lumber-room of a primitive consciousness, and galvanised into a belated and halting activity."

Or, on the other hand, may not such faculty be regarded not as vestigial, but as rudimentary? Telepathy, if we follow the gifted author of "Human Personality," is a promise for the future, not an idle inheritance from the past.

Our business now is, all mystic speculations apart, to consider the phenomena in the order in which, if not yet actually accepted, they would seem to evoke least opposition from the academic science of the day. What is the net result of the evidence for all classes of supernormal phenomena? That I shall endeavour to point out, as concisely and lucidly as I can, in the following chapters.

Not least of the wonders of modern psychical research is the discovery that nothing in all the phenomena is newâ€”that under other names and by other races every sort of manifestation was familiar to the most remote peoples. This would certainly seem to meet the argument of the physicistâ€”it is not necessary to refer again to Professor Tyndall's uncomplimentary phraseologyâ€”who declares that all this popular occultism is a product of the last generation or two. Take hypnotism. Hypnotism (or mesmerism) was formerly alleged to be an emanation from the bodyâ€”an effluence of intense will-power. The belief in such an emanation is centuries old. "By the magic power of the will," wrote Paracelsus, "a person on this side of the ocean may make a person on the other side hear what is said on that side ... the etherealbody of a man may know what another man thinks at a distance of 100 miles or more." Twenty years ago this creed was laughed out of court by Huxley, Tyndall, and other leading men of science. To-day we are told by those who have witnessed the experiments of Charcot, Janet, and others that "the existence of an aura of spirit-force surrounding the body like an atmosphere, in some cases at all events, can be proved as a physical fact."

Whatever the explanation, whatever the definition of this miraculous agency, hypnotism is now universally accepted. The manifestations of its power must convince the most sceptical. A spell-bound subject is frequently made to share the sensations of the hypnotist, his ocular perceptions and his sense of touch. In the hypnotic sleep the subject easily becomes insensible to pain. A member of the Society reports that he has seen a youth in this condition who suffered gladly the most injurious attacks upon his own personâ€”who would allow his hair to be pulled, his ears pinched, his fingerseven to be scorched by lighted matches. But the same youth would next moment indignantly resent the slightest injury upon his hypnotiser, who would at the time be standing at the other end of the room.

One thing in common all the hypnotic methods appear to possess, the diversion of attention from external surroundings and the working of a sub-consciousness in a manner not characteristic of the ordinary life of the subject. In cases described by Mr Greenwood no difficulty was encountered in impersonations suggested to the subject unless they savoured too much of the ridiculous. "Thus," he writes, "a suggestion that M., the subject, was myself and that I was he succeeded; and in his reverse capacity he continued the course of experiments upon himself, devising several original and ingenious varieties to which I, for the sake of the experiment, acquiesced in subjecting myself. He also behaved with considerable dignity and verve as King Edward VII., until I threw a match at his head, a proceeding which appeared to conflict so strongly with dramaticverisimilitude that he lapsed back into his ordinary hypnotic condition, nor could I reinduce the impersonation. On the other hand, statements that he was the Emperor of China, and that he was a nurse and I a baby, failed to carry any conviction, being either received with passive consent or rejected with scorn." It is interesting to note that in the waking state of the subject he explained that he was only conscious that he was not the characters he was bidden to assume, and if asked would have said as much, but that he was irresistibly impelled to act as though he were.

The production of sleep in the subject at a distance is one of the latest attested marvels of hypnotism. The long series of experiments made in France by Professor Richet and Professor Janet would appear to attest this power. In some trials made at Havre, in which the experimenters were Professor Janet and Dr Gibert, the subject of the experiment was a certain Madame B. or "LÃ©onie," then a patient of Dr Gibert. The facts were recorded by the late F. W.Myers and his brother, Dr A. T. Myers, who were present:

"We selected (he states) by lot an hour (eleven A.M.) at which M. Gibert should will, from his dispensary (which is close to his house), that Madame B. should go to sleep in the Pavilion. It was agreed that a rather longer time should be allowed for the process to take effect, as it had been observed that she sometimes struggled against the influence and averted the effect for a time by putting her hands in cold water, etc. At 11.25 we entered the Pavilion quietly, and almost at once she descended from her room to thesalon, profoundly asleep. We did not, of course, mention M. Gibert's attempt of the previous night. But she told us in her sleep that she had been very ill in the night, and repeatedly exclaimed: 'Pourquoi M. Gibert m'a-t-il fait souffrir? Mais j'ai lavÃ© les mains continuellement.' This is what she does when she wishes to avoid being influenced."In the evening (22nd) we all dined at M. Gibert's, and in the evening M. Gibertmade another attempt to put her to sleep at a distance from his house in the Rue Seryâ€”she being at the Pavilion, Rue de la Fermeâ€”and to bring her to his house by an effort of will. At 8.55 he retired to his study; and MM. Ochorowicz, Marillier, Janet, and A. T. Myers went to the Pavilion, and waited outside in the street, out of sight of the house. At 9.22 Dr Myers observed Madame B. coming half way out of the garden gate, and again retreating. Those who saw her more closely observed that she was plainly in the somnambulistic state and was wandering about and muttering. At 9.25 she came out with eyes persistently closed, so far as could be seen, walked quickly past MM. Janet and Marillier without noticing them, and made for M. Gibert's house, though not by the usual or shortest route. (It appeared afterwards that the bonne had seen her go into thesalonat 8.45 and issue thence asleep at 9.15; had not looked in between those times.) She avoided lamp-posts, vehicles, etc., but crossed and recrossed the street repeatedly. No one went in front of her or spoke to her.After eight or ten minutes she grew more uncertain in gait, and paused as though she would fall. Dr Myers noted the moment in the Rue Faure; it was 9.35. At about 9.40 she grew bolder, and at 9.45 reached the street in front of M. Gibert's house. There she met him, but did not notice him, and walked into his house, where she rushed hurriedly from room to room on the ground floor. M. Gibert had to take her hand before she recognised him. She then grew calm."On the 23rd M. Janet lunched in our company and retired to his own house at 4.30 (a time chosen by lot), to try to put her to sleep from thence. At 5.5 we all entered thesalonof the Pavilion, and found her asleep with shut eyes, but sewing vigorously (being in that stage in which movements once suggested are automatically continued). Passing into the talkative stage, she said to M. Janet: 'C'est vous qui m'avez fait dormir Ã quatre heures et demi.' The impression as to the hour may have been a suggestion received from M. Janet's mind. We tried tomake her believe that it was M. Gibert who had sent her to sleep, but she maintained that she had felt that it was M. Janet."On 24th April the whole party chanced to meet at M. Janet's house at three P.M., and he then, at my suggestion, entered his study to will that Madame B. should sleep. We waited in his garden, and at 3.20 proceeded together to the Pavilion, which I entered first at 3.30, and found Madame B. profoundly sleeping over her sewing, having ceased to sew. Becoming talkative, she said to M. Janet: 'C'est vous qui m'avez commandÃ©.' She said that she fell asleep at 3.5 P.M."

"In the evening (22nd) we all dined at M. Gibert's, and in the evening M. Gibertmade another attempt to put her to sleep at a distance from his house in the Rue Seryâ€”she being at the Pavilion, Rue de la Fermeâ€”and to bring her to his house by an effort of will. At 8.55 he retired to his study; and MM. Ochorowicz, Marillier, Janet, and A. T. Myers went to the Pavilion, and waited outside in the street, out of sight of the house. At 9.22 Dr Myers observed Madame B. coming half way out of the garden gate, and again retreating. Those who saw her more closely observed that she was plainly in the somnambulistic state and was wandering about and muttering. At 9.25 she came out with eyes persistently closed, so far as could be seen, walked quickly past MM. Janet and Marillier without noticing them, and made for M. Gibert's house, though not by the usual or shortest route. (It appeared afterwards that the bonne had seen her go into thesalonat 8.45 and issue thence asleep at 9.15; had not looked in between those times.) She avoided lamp-posts, vehicles, etc., but crossed and recrossed the street repeatedly. No one went in front of her or spoke to her.After eight or ten minutes she grew more uncertain in gait, and paused as though she would fall. Dr Myers noted the moment in the Rue Faure; it was 9.35. At about 9.40 she grew bolder, and at 9.45 reached the street in front of M. Gibert's house. There she met him, but did not notice him, and walked into his house, where she rushed hurriedly from room to room on the ground floor. M. Gibert had to take her hand before she recognised him. She then grew calm.

"On the 23rd M. Janet lunched in our company and retired to his own house at 4.30 (a time chosen by lot), to try to put her to sleep from thence. At 5.5 we all entered thesalonof the Pavilion, and found her asleep with shut eyes, but sewing vigorously (being in that stage in which movements once suggested are automatically continued). Passing into the talkative stage, she said to M. Janet: 'C'est vous qui m'avez fait dormir Ã quatre heures et demi.' The impression as to the hour may have been a suggestion received from M. Janet's mind. We tried tomake her believe that it was M. Gibert who had sent her to sleep, but she maintained that she had felt that it was M. Janet.

"On 24th April the whole party chanced to meet at M. Janet's house at three P.M., and he then, at my suggestion, entered his study to will that Madame B. should sleep. We waited in his garden, and at 3.20 proceeded together to the Pavilion, which I entered first at 3.30, and found Madame B. profoundly sleeping over her sewing, having ceased to sew. Becoming talkative, she said to M. Janet: 'C'est vous qui m'avez commandÃ©.' She said that she fell asleep at 3.5 P.M."

Of the twenty-five trials made in the course of two months, eighteen were wholly and four partially successful.

This somnolent state might, it is thought, have been induced by telepathy; in fact, as we shall see, telepathy will in some quarters have to bear the burden of most, if not all, of the phenomena under investigation.

Not only is the hypnotic subject frequentlyinduced to do the will of the operator, but he may actually have presented to his intelligence certain ideas or images, material or imaginary, known only to the hypnotiser. After following carefully all the experiments conducted by the late Professor Sidgwick and others, in the presence of witnesses of repute, I do not see how it is possible to deny the fact of telepathy. In these experiments the subject or percipient was always hypnotised, remaining so to a varying degree throughout the experiment.

Albeit, even as regards this thought-transference, we must be on our guard against a too rash acceptance of unknown or supernormal agencies in every bona-fide experiment. Certainly all experiments of the hypnotiser do notipso factoprove that any new method of apprehension has been employed. The hypnotised subject is extremely susceptible to suggestions, and might even glean an indication of what is proceeding through the look, the gestures, the very breathing, of those present. The utmost precautions, therefore, were taken by the Societyfor Psychical Research when it began its experimental inquiries.

The subject of the picture was always carefully chosen by one of the experimentersâ€”Mrs Sidgwick or Miss Alice Johnson. Any possibility of the percipient being able to guess at the subject through chance, association, or ideas was rigorously excluded. To prevent any hint being unconsciously imparted by the third experimenter, Mr G. A. Smith, silence was enjoined upon him, and he was placed behind the percipient or in another room; yet the percipient actually saw and described the projecting impression as if it were a real picture before his eyes. When Mr Smith went downstairs with Miss Johnson he was asked by her to think of an eagle pursuing a sparrow. Mrs Sidgwick, who remained upstairs with P., the percipient, in a few minutes induced him to see a round disc of light on the imaginary lantern-sheet, and then he saw in it "something like a bird," which disappeared immediately. He went on looking (with closed eyes, of course), and presently he thought he saw "somethinglike a birdâ€”something like an eagle." After a pause he said: "I thought I saw a figure thereâ€”I saw 5. The bird's gone. I see 5 again; now it's gone. The bird came twice." Mr Smith then came upstairs, and P. had another impression of an eagle. He was told that the eagle was right, and there was something else besides, no hint being given of what the other thing was. He then said that the first thing he saw "was a little birdâ€”a sparrow, perhapsâ€”he could not sayâ€”about the size of a sparrow; then that disappeared, and he saw the eagle. He had told Mrs Sidgwick so at the time."

We see the mental machinery at work in another case, where the subject agreed upon was "The Babes in the Wood." To begin with, P. sat with closed eyes, but, when no impression came, Mr Smith opened his eyes, without speaking, and made him look for the picture on a card. After we had waited a little while in vain, Mr Smith said to him: "Do you see something like a straw hat?" P. assented to this, and then began to puzzle out something more: "A white apron, somethingdarkâ€”a child. It can't be another child, unless it's a boyâ€”a boy and a girlâ€”the boy to the right and the girl to the left. Little girl with white socks on and shoes with straps." Mr Smith asked: "What are they doing? Is it two children on a raft at sea?" P.: "No; it's like trees in the backgroundâ€”a copse or something. Like a fairy-storyâ€”like babes in a wood or something."

We see it in an even more pronounced degree where the subject sat on a sailing boat. Miss Johnson, who did not know what the subject of the picture was, asked Miss B. whether it was anything like an animal. Miss B. said: "No; got some prong sort of thingsâ€”something at the bottom like a little boat. What can that be up in the air? Cliffs, I supposeâ€”cliffs in the air high upâ€”it's joining the boat. Oh, sails!â€”a sailing-boatâ€”not cliffsâ€”sails." This was not all uttered consecutively, but partly in answer to questions put by Miss Johnson; but, as Miss Johnson was ignorant of the supposed picture, her questions could, of course, give no guidance.

Many experiments have been made in the transference of imaginary scenes, where both operator and subject have attempted to attain a conscious unity of ideas by means of rough drawings. A slight sketch was made, which was then projected to the brain of the percipient, who proceeded to reproduce the unseen, often with amazing fidelity.

In these experiments actual contact was forbidden, to avoid the risk of unconscious indications by pressure. In many cases, however, the agent and percipient have been in the same room, and there has therefore still been some possible risk of unconscious whispering; but this risk has been successfully avoided. It yet remains doubtful how far close proximity really operates in aid of telepathy, or how far its advantage is a mere effect of self-suggestionâ€”on the part either of agent or percipient. Some experimentersâ€”notably the late Mr Kirk and Mr Glardonâ€”have obtained results of just the same type at distances of half-a-mile or more. In the case of induction of hypnotic trance, Dr Gibert, as we have seen, attained at thedistance of nearly a mile results which are commonly believed to exact close and actual presence.

Hypnotic agencies, according to Myers, may be simplified into suggestion and self-suggestion. The same author defines suggestion as "successful appeal to the subliminal self." Many striking cases of moral reforms produced by this means have been recorded by Dr Auguste Voisin. For instance:

"In the summer of 1884 there was at the SalpÃªtriÃ¨re a young woman of a deplorable type. Jeanne Schâ€”â€” was a criminal lunatic, filthy in habits, violent in demeanour, and with a lifelong history of impurity and theft. M. Voisin, who was one of the physicians on the staff, undertook to hypnotise her on 31st May, at a time when she could only be kept quiet by the strait jacket andbonnet d'irrigation, or perpetual cold douche to the head. She would notâ€”indeed, she could notâ€”look steadily at her operator, but raved and spat at him. M. Voisin kept his face close to hers and followed her eyes wherevershe moved them. In about ten minutes a stertorous sleep ensued, and in five minutes more she passed into a sleep-waking state, and began to talk incoherently. The process was repeated on many days, and gradually she became sane when in the trance, though she still raved when awake. Gradually, too, she became able to obey in waking hours commands impressed on her in the tranceâ€”first trivial orders (to sweep the room and so forth), then orders involving a marked change of behaviour. Nay, more; in the hypnotic state she voluntarily expressed repentance for her past life, made a confession which involved more evil than the police were cognisant of (though it agreed with facts otherwise known), and finally of her own impulse made good resolves for the future. Two years later (31st July 1886) M. Voisin wrote that she was then a nurse in a Paris hospital, and that her conduct was irreproachable. It appeared then that this poor woman, whose history since the age of thirteen had been one of reckless folly and vice, had become capable of the steady,self-controlled work of a nurse at a hospital, the reformed character having first manifested itself in the hypnotic state, partly in obedience to suggestion, and partly as the natural result of the tranquilisation of morbid passions."

There is a mass of evidence to testify to the marvellous cures that have been effected in this way. Kleptomania, dipsomania, nicotinism, morphinomania, and several varieties of phobies have all been known to yield to hypnotic suggestion. Nor is it always necessary that the mind of the patient should be influenced by another person; self-suggestion is at times equally efficacious. Here is a case in point, taken from "Proceedings," vol. xi. p. 427. The narrator is Dr D. J. Parsons.

"Sixteen years ago I was a little sick; took half-a-grain of opium, and lay down upon the bed. Soon, as I began to feel the tranquillising effect of the opium, I saw three men approaching me; the one in front said: 'You smoke too much tobacco.' I replied: 'I know I do.' He then said: 'Why don'tyou quit it?' I answered by saying: 'I have been thinking about it, but I am afraid I can't.' He extended his right arm, and placing his forefinger very near my face gave it a few very significant shakes, said, in a very impressive manner: 'You will never want to use tobacco any more as long as you live.' He continued by saying: 'You swear sometimes.' I answered: 'Yes.' He said: 'Will you promise to quit?' I intended to say 'Yes,' but just as I was about to utter the word yes, instantly a change came over me, and I felt like I had been held under some unknown influence, which was suddenly withdrawn or exhausted. I had been a constant smoker for more than twenty years."Since the occurrence of the above incident I have not touched tobacco; have felt ever since like it would poison me, and I now feel like one draw at the pipe would kill me instantly. My desire for tobacco was suddenly and effectually torn out by the roots, but perhaps I shall never know just how it was done."D. J. Parsons, M.D."Sweet Springs, Missouri."

"Since the occurrence of the above incident I have not touched tobacco; have felt ever since like it would poison me, and I now feel like one draw at the pipe would kill me instantly. My desire for tobacco was suddenly and effectually torn out by the roots, but perhaps I shall never know just how it was done.

"D. J. Parsons, M.D.

"Sweet Springs, Missouri."

It would seem in the above case that the suggestibility was heightened by the use of opium, which at the same time developed a monitory hallucination.

Leading men of science now hold that the popular belief in the dangers of hypnotism is grossly exaggerated, it being far less open to abuse than chloroform. Nevertheless some danger is only too manifest, and Parliament may yet be asked to do what Continental governments have doneâ€”viz. to make the practice of hypnotism, save under proper medical supervision, a punishable offence. As an illustration of these dangers I may mention the testimony of an operator given before the Psychical Research Society. Owing to the ready susceptibility of one subject he began to fear that he might acquire an influence which might be inconvenient to both, and so enjoined that he should be unable to hypnotise him unless he previously recited a formula asking the operator to do so. After several failures he states: "I eventually succeeded in impressing this so strongly upon him that it becameabsolutely effective, and the formula became requisite, for I could not, even with the utmost co-operation on his part, influence him in the least. One night, however, after retiring to bed I was surprised by his entering the room with the request that I should waken him. I expressed astonishment and asked whether he was really asleep. He assured me that he was, and explained that while he had been conversing in the drawing-room after dinner, other persons being present, he had experimentally recited the formulasotto voceand had immediately, unperceived by myself or others in the room, gone off in the hypnotic state and could not get out of it again. I protested that this was an extremely unfair trick both on himself and on me, and to guard against its recurrence I enjoined that in future a mere repetition of the formula should not suffice, but that it should be written down, signed and handed to me. This has hitherto proved completely successful, and in the absence of the document no efforts on the part of either of us has had any effect whatever."

It would seem, however, that the hypnotic subject is by no means entirely at the mercy of the operator. Thus Dr Milne Bramwell, in "Proceedings," vol. xii. pp. 176-203, cites a number of cases in which suggestions had been refused by hypnotic subjects. He also mentions two subjects who had rejected certain suggestions and accepted others. A Miss F., for example, recited a poem, but would not help herself to a glass of water from the sideboard; while a Mr G. would play one part, but not others, and committed an imaginary crime. Dr Bramwell comes to the following conclusion:â€”

"The difference between the hypnotised and the normal subject, as it appears to me from a long series of observed facts, is not so much in conduct as in increased mental and physical powers. Any changes in the moral sense, I have noticed, have invariably been for the better, the hypnotised subject evincing superior refinement. As regards obedience to suggestion, there is apparently little to choose between the two. A hypnotisedsubject, who has acquired the power of manifesting various physical and mental phenomena, will do so, in response to suggestion, for much the same reasons as one in the normal condition.... When the act demanded is contrary to the moral sense, it is usually refused by the normal subject, and invariably by the hypnotised one."

The hypnotic state evinces an extraordinary extension of faculty. Dr Bramwell's remarkable series of experiments on "time appreciation" shows that orders were carried out by the subject at expiration of such periods as 20,290 minutes from the beginning of the order. In her normal state the female subject of this experiment was incapable of correctly calculating how many days and hours 20,290 minutes would make, and even in her hypnotised condition could reckon only with errors; yet, what is singular to relate, even when a blunder was made in the former calculation the order of the hypnotist was none the less fulfilled when the correct period expired. The conclusion is not easy to avoid:that beneath the stratum of human consciousness brought to the surface by hypnotism there is oneâ€”perhaps twoâ€”"subliminal" strata more alert and more capable than our ordinary workaday ego.

What light this theory of a "subliminal" self will shed on our subject we will see when we come to discuss clairvoyance and the trance utterances of the spiritualistic "medium."

We have seen that the hypnotic agent is able to project from his own brain certain thoughts and images into the mind of the percipient. "When," writes Professor Barrett, "the subject was in the state of trance or profound hypnotism, I noticed that not only sensations, but also ideas or emotions, occurring in the operator appeared to be reproduced in the subject without the intervention of any sign, or visible or audible communication.... In many other ways I convinced myself that the existence of a distinct idea in my own mind gave rise to some image of the idea in the subject's mind, not always a clear image, but one that could not fail to be recognised as a more or less distorted reflection of my own thought. The important point is that every care was taken to prevent any unconscious muscular action ofthe face, or otherwise giving any indication to the subject."

This presumed mode of communication between one individual and another, without the intervention of any known sense, Professor Barrett, arguing on electrical analogies, is inclined to suggest might be due to some form of nervous induction. But is this faculty restricted in its operation to a hypnotised subject? If it were, the significance of the phenomena would be very much lessened. We should leave telepathy out of our account. But it is not so restricted. The ideas and images are capable of being projected not only to a hypnotised person, but to one who is apparently not under any hypnotic influence whatever. Yet we still must be careful of how we call in the aid of any "supernatural" agency to account for the influences I am about to relateâ€”the translation of ideas and motor impulses from one person to another without the aid of any known sense. The transference of pictures which we described in the last article has been achieved in hundreds of cases by an agent upon ahypnotised percipient. Here we have telepathy apparently at work, but not, however, at any great distance, nor successful in conjuring up really vivid or ominous hallucinations. The scientific term for these is "sensory automatisms," and many instances of these are given by Edmund Gurney, author of "Phantasms of the Living."

At an early period the Society for Psychical Research began a "Census of Hallucinations," which, with Gurney's book, now renders it possible for us to consider these phenomena with some certainty. The net result of all this investigation would seem to demonstrate that a large number of sensory automatisms occur amongst sane and healthy persons. We will later consider what difficulty lies in the way of attributing to telepathy the bulk of these phenomena. There is a widely accepted theory that telepathy is propagated by brain-waves, or, in Sir W. Crooke's phraseology, by ether-waves, of even smaller amplitude and greater frequency than those which carry X-rays. Such waves are supposed to pass from onebrain to another, arousing in the second brain an excitation of image similar to the excitation or image from which they start in the first place. It has been pointed out that on this view there is no theoretical reason for limiting telepathy to human beings. Why may not the impulse pass between men and the lower animals, or between the lower animals themselves?

I myself have exhumed from the records a case in point. General J. C. Thompson describes a remarkable apparition of a dog, with every mark of reality, at the time when the dog was killed in a city more than a hundred miles distant. General Thompson says:

"Jim, the dog whose ghost I refer to, was a beautiful collie, the pet of my family, residing at Cheyenne, Wyoming. His affectionate nature surpassed even that of his kind. He had a wide celebrity in the city as 'the laughing dog,' due to the fact that he manifested his recognition of acquaintances and love for his friends by a joyful laugh, asdistinctively such as that of any human being."One evening in the fall of 1905, about 7.30 P.M., I was walking with a friend on Seventeenth Street in Denver, Colorado. As we approached the entrance to the First National Bank, we observed a dog lying in the middle of the pavement, and on coming up to him I was amazed at his perfect likeness to Jim in Cheyenne. The identity was greatly fortified by his loving recognition of me, and the peculiar laugh of Jim's accompanying it. I said to my friend that nothing but the 105 miles between Denver and Cheyenne would keep me from making oath to the dog being Jim, whose peculiarities I explained to him."The dog astral or ghost was apparently badly hurtâ€”he could not rise. After petting him and giving him a kind adieu, we crossed over Stout Street and stopped to look at him again. He had vanished. The next morning's mail brought a letter from my wife saying that Jim had been accidentally killed the evening before at 7.30 P.M. I shall always believe it was Jim's ghost I saw."

"One evening in the fall of 1905, about 7.30 P.M., I was walking with a friend on Seventeenth Street in Denver, Colorado. As we approached the entrance to the First National Bank, we observed a dog lying in the middle of the pavement, and on coming up to him I was amazed at his perfect likeness to Jim in Cheyenne. The identity was greatly fortified by his loving recognition of me, and the peculiar laugh of Jim's accompanying it. I said to my friend that nothing but the 105 miles between Denver and Cheyenne would keep me from making oath to the dog being Jim, whose peculiarities I explained to him.

"The dog astral or ghost was apparently badly hurtâ€”he could not rise. After petting him and giving him a kind adieu, we crossed over Stout Street and stopped to look at him again. He had vanished. The next morning's mail brought a letter from my wife saying that Jim had been accidentally killed the evening before at 7.30 P.M. I shall always believe it was Jim's ghost I saw."

This story, circumstantially narrated by an American general, recalls Mr Rider Haggard's celebrated dream that he saw his dog, Bob, in a dying condition, probably about three hours after the dog's death.

But we need not pause on such bypaths as these.

Perhaps the simplest form of thought-transference at a distance is that in which we find a vague mental unrest, unaccompanied by any visual or auditory hallucination. Cases are not infrequently met with where the patient suffers from acute depression and anxiety which are not connected at the time with any definite event.The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, July, 1895, yields the following.

Miss W. writes:

"On January 17th of this year (1895) I was haunted all day with an indefinable dread, amounting to positive terror if I yielded in the least to its influence. A little before six o'clock I went to my maid's room and casually inquired of her whether shebelieved in presentiments. She answered: 'Don't let them get hold of you; it is a bad habit.' I replied: 'This is no ordinary presentiment. All day long I have felt that something terrible is impending; of what nature I do not know. I have fought against it, but to no purpose. It is a terror I am positivelypossessedwith.' I was proceeding to describe it in fuller detail, when my mother entered the room with a telegram in her hand. One glance at her face told me that my foreboding had not been a groundless depression. The telegram was to the effect that my brother had been taken very ill at Cambridge and needed my mother at once to nurse him."I presume that the intensity of my foreboding was due to the very serious nature of his illness."I experienced at different times what are in common parlance termed 'presentiments'; but only on one other occasion has the same peculiarterror(a chilling conviction of impending trouble) beset me."

"I presume that the intensity of my foreboding was due to the very serious nature of his illness.

"I experienced at different times what are in common parlance termed 'presentiments'; but only on one other occasion has the same peculiarterror(a chilling conviction of impending trouble) beset me."

This is corroborated both by the maid andMiss W.'s brother, an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge, who had met with a serious accident the same afternoon. The affection between brother and sister was, it is related, very close.

Of a well-known type of case the following is a good example. The Hon. Mrs Fox Powys is the narrator:â€”

"July 1882."I was expecting my husband home, and shortly after the time he ought to have arrived (about ten P.M.) I heard a cab drive up to the door, the bell ring, my husband's voice talking with the cabman, the front door open and his step come up the stairs. I went to the drawing-room, opened it, and to my astonishment saw no one. I could hardly believe he was not there, the whole thing was so vivid, and the street was particularly quiet at the time. About twenty minutes or so after this my husbandreallyarrived, though nothing sounded to me more real than it did the first time. The train was late, and he had been thinking I might be anxious."

"July 1882.

"I was expecting my husband home, and shortly after the time he ought to have arrived (about ten P.M.) I heard a cab drive up to the door, the bell ring, my husband's voice talking with the cabman, the front door open and his step come up the stairs. I went to the drawing-room, opened it, and to my astonishment saw no one. I could hardly believe he was not there, the whole thing was so vivid, and the street was particularly quiet at the time. About twenty minutes or so after this my husbandreallyarrived, though nothing sounded to me more real than it did the first time. The train was late, and he had been thinking I might be anxious."

In response to further inquiries, Mrs Powys added:

"To me the whole thing was very noisy and real, but no one else can have heard anything, for the bell I heard ring was not answered. It was a quiet street in town, and there was no vehicle of any kind passing at the time; and on finding no one on the landing as I expected, I went at once to the window, and there was nothing to be seen, and no sound to be heard, which would have been the case had the cab been driven off."

Here the expectation of Mr Fox Powys' arrival seems to have caused an auditory hallucination. In other cases of a similar nature the hallucination is visual, the percipient actually seeing the figure of the expected person.

The authors of "Phantasms of the Living" give the following case as an "interesting puzzle" and invite the reader to decide whether or not it affords evidence for telepathy. The narrator, Mr W. A. S., is described as an unexceptionable witness whohas never had any other visual hallucination.

"January 14th, 1883."In the month of April 1871, about two o'clock in the afternoon, I was sitting in the drawing-room of my father's house in Pall Mall. The window of the room fronted south; and the sun was shining brightly in at the window. I was sitting between the fireplace and the window, with my back to the light; my niece was sitting on the opposite side of the fireplace; and opposite me at the farther corner of the room was a door partly open, leading directly to the staircase. I saw what I supposed at the first moment to be dirty soapy water running in at the door; and I was in the act of jumping up to scold the housemaid for upsetting the water, when I saw that the supposed water was the tail or train of a lady's dress. The lady glided in backwards, as if she had been slid in on a slide, each part of her dress keeping its place without disturbance. She glided in till I could see the whole of her,except the tip of her nose, her lips and the tip of her chin,which were hidden by the edge of the door. Her head was slightly turned over her shoulder, and her eye also turned, so that it appeared fixed upon me. She held her arm, which was a very fine one, in a peculiar way, as if she were proud of it. She was dressed in a pale blue evening dress, worked with white lace. I instantly recognised the figure as that of a lady whom I had known some twenty-five years or more before; and with whom I had frequently danced. She was a bright, dashing girl, a good dancer, and we were good friends, but nothing more. She had afterwards married and I had occasionally heard of her, but do not think I had seen her for certainly more than twenty or twenty-five years. She looked much as I used to see herâ€”with long curls and bright eyes, but perhaps something stouter and more matronly."I said to myself: 'This is one of those strange apparitions I have often heard of. I will watch it as carefully as I can.' My niece, who did not see the figure, in the course of a minute or two exclaimed: 'Uncle A., what is the matter with you? You lookas if you saw a ghost!' I motioned her to be quiet, as I wished to observe the thing carefully; and an impression came upon me that if I moved, the thing would disappear. I tried to find out whether there was anything in the ornaments on the walls, or anything else which could suggest the figure; but I found that all the lines close to her cut the outline of her figure at all sorts of angles, and none of these coincided with the outline of her figure, and the colour of everything around her strongly contrasted with her colour. In the course of a few minutes, I heard the door bell ring, and I heard my brother's voice in the hall. He came upstairs and walked right through the figure into the room. The figure then began to fade away rather quickly; and though I tried I could in no way recall it."I frequently told the story in society, treating it always as something internal rather than external and supposing that the lady was still alive; and rather making a joke of it than otherwise. Some years afterwards I was staying with some friends inSuffolk and told the story at the dinner-table, saying that it was no ghost as the lady was still alive. The lady of the house said: 'She is not alive, as you suppose, but she has been dead some years.' We looked at the peerage and found she had died in 1871. (I afterwards found out that she had died in November, whereas the apparition was in April.) The conversation continued about her, and I said: 'Poor thing, I am sorry she is dead. I have had many a merry dance with her. What did she die of?' The lady of the house said: 'Poor thing indeed, she died a wretched death; she died of cancer in the face.' She never showed me the front of her face; it was always concealed by the edge of the door."

"January 14th, 1883.

"In the month of April 1871, about two o'clock in the afternoon, I was sitting in the drawing-room of my father's house in Pall Mall. The window of the room fronted south; and the sun was shining brightly in at the window. I was sitting between the fireplace and the window, with my back to the light; my niece was sitting on the opposite side of the fireplace; and opposite me at the farther corner of the room was a door partly open, leading directly to the staircase. I saw what I supposed at the first moment to be dirty soapy water running in at the door; and I was in the act of jumping up to scold the housemaid for upsetting the water, when I saw that the supposed water was the tail or train of a lady's dress. The lady glided in backwards, as if she had been slid in on a slide, each part of her dress keeping its place without disturbance. She glided in till I could see the whole of her,except the tip of her nose, her lips and the tip of her chin,which were hidden by the edge of the door. Her head was slightly turned over her shoulder, and her eye also turned, so that it appeared fixed upon me. She held her arm, which was a very fine one, in a peculiar way, as if she were proud of it. She was dressed in a pale blue evening dress, worked with white lace. I instantly recognised the figure as that of a lady whom I had known some twenty-five years or more before; and with whom I had frequently danced. She was a bright, dashing girl, a good dancer, and we were good friends, but nothing more. She had afterwards married and I had occasionally heard of her, but do not think I had seen her for certainly more than twenty or twenty-five years. She looked much as I used to see herâ€”with long curls and bright eyes, but perhaps something stouter and more matronly.

"I said to myself: 'This is one of those strange apparitions I have often heard of. I will watch it as carefully as I can.' My niece, who did not see the figure, in the course of a minute or two exclaimed: 'Uncle A., what is the matter with you? You lookas if you saw a ghost!' I motioned her to be quiet, as I wished to observe the thing carefully; and an impression came upon me that if I moved, the thing would disappear. I tried to find out whether there was anything in the ornaments on the walls, or anything else which could suggest the figure; but I found that all the lines close to her cut the outline of her figure at all sorts of angles, and none of these coincided with the outline of her figure, and the colour of everything around her strongly contrasted with her colour. In the course of a few minutes, I heard the door bell ring, and I heard my brother's voice in the hall. He came upstairs and walked right through the figure into the room. The figure then began to fade away rather quickly; and though I tried I could in no way recall it.

"I frequently told the story in society, treating it always as something internal rather than external and supposing that the lady was still alive; and rather making a joke of it than otherwise. Some years afterwards I was staying with some friends inSuffolk and told the story at the dinner-table, saying that it was no ghost as the lady was still alive. The lady of the house said: 'She is not alive, as you suppose, but she has been dead some years.' We looked at the peerage and found she had died in 1871. (I afterwards found out that she had died in November, whereas the apparition was in April.) The conversation continued about her, and I said: 'Poor thing, I am sorry she is dead. I have had many a merry dance with her. What did she die of?' The lady of the house said: 'Poor thing indeed, she died a wretched death; she died of cancer in the face.' She never showed me the front of her face; it was always concealed by the edge of the door."

I will now concern myself with the power of an agent to project himself phantasmallyâ€”that is, to make his form and features manifest to some percipient at a distance as though he were actually present. In Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living" is given at length a case of a simple nature.Here there was not one but two percipients.

On a certain Sunday evening in November 1881, having been reading of the great power which the human will is capable of exercising, I determined with the whole force of my being that I would be present in spirit in the front bedroom on the second floor of a house situated at 22 Hogarth Road, Kensington, in which room slept two ladies of my acquaintanceâ€”viz. Miss L. S. V., and Miss E. C. V., aged respectively twenty-five and eleven years. I was living at this time at 23 Kildare Gardens, a distance of about three miles from Hogarth Road, and I had not mentioned in any way my intention of trying this experiment to either of the above ladies, for the simple reason that it was only on retiring to rest upon this Sunday night that I made up my mind to do so. The time at which I determined I would be there was one o'clock in the morning, and I also had a strong intention of making my presence perceptible."On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and in the course of conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part) the elder one told me that on the previous Sunday night she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister, who saw me also."I asked her if she was awake at the time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative, and upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence she replied about one o'clock in the morning."This lady, at my request, wrote down a statement of the event and signed it."This was the first occasion upon which I tried an experiment of this kind, and its complete success startled me very much."Besides exercising my power of volition very strongly, I put forth an effort which I cannot find words to describe. I was conscious of a mysterious influence of some sort permeating in my body, and had a distinct impression that I was exercising some forcewith which I had been hitherto unacquainted, but which I can now at certain times set in motion at will."S. H. B."

"On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and in the course of conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part) the elder one told me that on the previous Sunday night she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister, who saw me also.

"I asked her if she was awake at the time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative, and upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence she replied about one o'clock in the morning.

"This lady, at my request, wrote down a statement of the event and signed it.

"This was the first occasion upon which I tried an experiment of this kind, and its complete success startled me very much.

"Besides exercising my power of volition very strongly, I put forth an effort which I cannot find words to describe. I was conscious of a mysterious influence of some sort permeating in my body, and had a distinct impression that I was exercising some forcewith which I had been hitherto unacquainted, but which I can now at certain times set in motion at will.

"S. H. B."

The account given by Miss Verity is as follows:â€”

"January 18th, 1883."On a certain Sunday evening, about twelve months since, at our house in Hogarth Road, Kensington, I distinctly saw Mr B. in my room, about one o'clock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself. Three days after, when I saw Mr B., I told him what had happened; but it was some time before I could recover from the shock I had received, and the remembrance is too vivid to be ever erased from my memory."L. S. Verity."

"January 18th, 1883.

"On a certain Sunday evening, about twelve months since, at our house in Hogarth Road, Kensington, I distinctly saw Mr B. in my room, about one o'clock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself. Three days after, when I saw Mr B., I told him what had happened; but it was some time before I could recover from the shock I had received, and the remembrance is too vivid to be ever erased from my memory.

"L. S. Verity."

Miss E. C. Verity says:

"I remember the occurrence of the event described by my sister in the annexed paragraph, and her description is quite correct. Isaw the apparition which she saw, at the same time and under the same circumstances."E. C. Verity."

"E. C. Verity."

"The witnesses (comments Gurney) have been very carefully cross-examined by the present writer. There is not the slightest doubt that their mention of the occurrence to S. H. B. was spontaneous. They had not at first intended to mention it; but when they saw him their sense of its oddness overcame their resolution. Miss Verity is a perfectly sober-minded and sensible witness, with no love of marvels, and with a considerable dread and dislike of this particular form of marvel."

On another occasion the agent announced privately to the investigator that he would project himself at a stated time. He did so; and the lady wrote as follows:â€”

"44 Norland Square, W."On Saturday night, March 22nd, 1884, at about midnight, I had a distinct impression that Mr S. H. B. was present in my room,and I distinctly saw him whilst I was quite widely awake. He came towards me, and stroked my hair. Ivoluntarilygave him this information when he called to see me on Wednesday, April 2nd, telling him the time and the circumstances of the apparition, without any suggestion on his part. The appearance in my room was most vivid and quite unmistakable."L. S. Verity."

"44 Norland Square, W.

"On Saturday night, March 22nd, 1884, at about midnight, I had a distinct impression that Mr S. H. B. was present in my room,and I distinctly saw him whilst I was quite widely awake. He came towards me, and stroked my hair. Ivoluntarilygave him this information when he called to see me on Wednesday, April 2nd, telling him the time and the circumstances of the apparition, without any suggestion on his part. The appearance in my room was most vivid and quite unmistakable.

"L. S. Verity."

Mr B.'s own account runs thus:

"On Saturday, March 22nd, I determined to make my presence perceptible to Miss V., at 44 Norland Square, Notting Hill, at twelve midnight, and as I had previously arranged with Mr Gurney that I should post him a letter on the evening on which I tried my next experiment (stating the time and other particulars), I sent a note to acquaint him with the above facts."About ten days afterwards I called upon Miss V., and she voluntarily told me that on March 22nd, at twelve o'clock midnight, she had seen me so vividly in her room (whilstwidely awake) that her nerves had been much shaken, and she had been obliged to send for a doctor in the morning."S. H. B."

"About ten days afterwards I called upon Miss V., and she voluntarily told me that on March 22nd, at twelve o'clock midnight, she had seen me so vividly in her room (whilstwidely awake) that her nerves had been much shaken, and she had been obliged to send for a doctor in the morning.

"S. H. B."

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