Psychical Research

For telekinesis pure and simple it is easy to formulate methods of control, adequate to prevent deception without being harassing to the medium. Telekinesis would rest on a firm basis if it were certain that in all cases where positive results are reported, the conditions of control stated in the reports had, in fact, been con tinuously exercised throughout the sittings. But telekinesis has, of recent years, become very closely associated with teleplasm, and the control adequate for telekinesis is not adequate for tele plasm. This substance is reported to possess at different times such contradictory properties as to make the task of formulating con ditions for sittings where its production is anticipated extremely difficult. Too delicate to endure even the lightest touch, but strong enough to shift heavy weights ; sometimes so sensitive to light as not to be able to endure even the dim glow of a red lamp, at other times so insensitive as to be capable of being photo graphed by flash-light ; how is the researcher to plan conditions in advance, when he cannot know in which form the substance may appear? At present there is a deadlock in the research into "physical" phenomena, owing to the encouragement given to mediums who pick and choose their sitters, and dictate conditions which seem to serve no purpose except to make control more difficult (e.g., the constant presence of a "next friend" at all sittings). Such mediums can find no lack of investigators willing to take them seriously, and all the publicity they need in the all too hospitable columns of many "psychic" periodicals. Unless and until an international pact between researchers is made (and observed) not to print any report of mediums who decline to sit under reasonable test conditions (without a "next friend") to any responsible investi gator who asks for a sitting, no progress can be made. Much of the literature on telekinesis and teleplasm is worthless, but a good prima facie case for further investigation can be found in the reports in S.P.R. Proceedings on Eusapia Palladino (vol. xxiii.), Eva C. (vol. xxxii.) and Willy Schneider (vol. xxxvi.), and in Schrenck-Notzing's records of his sittings with the two last-named.

Combined Mental and Physical Phenomena.—Slate-writ ing, "spirit photography" and trumpet-mediumship all seem con vincingly fraud-proof to those who have not made themselves familiar with the records of what can be, and has been, done in the way of reproducing these phenomena without recourse to the supernormal; see, e.g., Hodgson and Davey's paper in S.P.R. Proceedings, vol. iv. The "mental" and "physical" elements should be judged separately, neither being permitted either to support or to discredit the other. Thus, though the trumpet business is, in general, open to suspicion, there is some evidence for super. normality in the content of messages received through some trumpet-mediums (e.g., Valiantine and Mrs. Blanche Cooper).

Mental Phenomena.

These consist, for the most part, in some form of "supernormal cognition," that is, knowledge shown by a percipient of matters which he has no normal means of knowing. ("Percipient" is here used, for lack of a better word, to include not only percipients in telepathy, but automatists of all kinds, trance mediums, etc.) The supernormal knowledge may

relate to another person's thoughts, or to events distant in time or space; it may arise spontaneously, so far as the percipient is concerned, or as the result of deliberate experiment on his part. The percipient may be in the normal waking condition, or asleep, or in trance, or in the state of slight dissociation produced by crystal-gazing (see separate article) or other similar devices.

Telepathy and Clairvoyance.

It is best to treat these two terms as complementary and mutually exclusive, assigning all manifestations of supernormal knowledge derived from another person's mind to telepathy, and all manifestations of supernormal knowledge not so derived to clairvoyance. It is not, however, easy to say under which head every particular case should be classified: to meet this difficulty Richet has coined the inclusive word "cryptaestheoia." Supernormal cognition in some form is the most generally ac cepted phenomena of psychical research. The evidence for it, both spontaneous and experimental, is impressive alike in quan tity and quality. Some of it is ambiguous as between telepathy and clairvoyance ;.so far as discrimination is possible, the first is better attested than the second.

Spontaneous and Experimental Phenomena.

The spon taneous evidence is particularly strong. One of the first tasks of the S.P.R. was to undertake a "census of hallucinations" of various kinds, particularly of apparitions of dying or recently dead persons, seen by friends who were at a distance, and who had no normal reason for anxiety. Gurney, Myers and Podmore, who analysed the results (Phantasms of the Living, 1886) came to the conclusions : (I) That such apparitions occurred too fre quently to be explicable by chance-coincidence : elaborate statis tics are given in support of this conclusion; (2) that in the majority of cases the most probable explanation was the trans mission of an impression from the mind of the dying man to the mind of his friend, and these externalized in the form of a "sub jective hallucination," rather than the presence of any semi material wraith. The society has continued to investigate cases of this kind ; a large number are collected and classified by Mrs. Sidgwick in vol. xxxiii. of its Proceedings.

If the experimental evidence for clairvoyance were as good that for telepathy, veridical hallucinations could, in most cases, be attributed with equal probability to either faculty, although the rare cases, in which the agent has succeeded in consciously willing that the percipient should see an apparition of him, are clearly telepathic. At the time when Phantasms of the Living was written the experimental evidence for clairvoyance was so slight as to lead the authors decisively to reject it as an ex planation of the cases they were considering. The evidence for clairvoyance is rather stronger now, and in cases of veridical hallucinations not coincidental with the death of the person whose phantasm is seen, or with any other crisis, such as illness or accident, from which telepathic activity on the part of his sub-conscious mind might reasonably be inferred, the possibility of clairvoyance pure and simple cannot be excluded.