TELEPATHY (from Gk. 7-06, Me, afar + irdOeia, -patheia, from vcieos, pathos, feeling). A term coined by members of the Society for Psychical Research: "We venture to introduce the words Tehrsthesia and Telepathy to cover all cases of impression received at a distance without the normal operation of the recognized sense organs." (See PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, SO CIETY FOR.) E. Gurney, F. :Myers, and F. Pod more in Phantasms of the Living (1886) say that "under particular conditions of excitement—the rationale of which we probably do not under stand, though insensibility and the near approach of death are apparently some of the most effec tual of these conditions—certain persons seem to have the faculty of communicating to other persons at a distance what is happening to them, often without any intention or consciousness of doing so on their own parts," and further, that "certain small experimental results can be pro duced," and that "certain impressive spontaneous phenomena are shown to belong to the same class." It seems now to be clearly enough dem onstrated that only the experimental results are worthy of attention. There are many accounts of telepathic phenomena of earlier date. Thus the hypnotized subjects of Mesmer were said to have frequently obeyed the silent will of the operator ; but all such reports are useless as evi dence, on account of the lack of sufficient data, the neglect of suitable precautions. and the ignorance of the extreme suggestibility of the hypnotic subject. So, too, the countless stories as to the feats performed in the popular game of 'mind-reading' are of little significance. once the possibilities of 'muscle-reading' are clearly understood. The actual evidence upon which
telepathy now rests is of an extremely fragment ary nature. It may be classified as (1) experi mental, the communication from 'agent' to 'per cipient' of simple visual impressions—diagrams, and color, suit, and number of playing cards, etc.; (2) certain striking cases of the induction of sleep at a distance. notably that of 1\ladame B. or ff.konie,' reported by J. Ochorowicz; (3) sta tistics of what are known as 'veridical hallucina tions,' i.e. apparitions of a person to some dis tant friend at the time of the person's death; (4) the performances of certain 'test mediums,' especially of one, Mrs. Piper, whose ease has been investigated at length by the Society for Psychical Research. (See their Proceedings, 1890, 1892, 1895.) All this evidence rests upon the assertion that the number of coincidences exceeds the number attributable to chance ac cording to the law of probability; e.g. veridical hallucinations are said to be 440 times more nu merous than they should be according to chance alone. The verdict of science is still, however, `not proven.' BIBLIOGRAPHY. Proceedings) Society for PsychiBibliography. Proceedings) Society for Psychi- cal Research, passim; Beard, The Study of Trance, Muscle-Reading, and Allied N CrtiOUS Phenomena (New York, 1882) ; Jastrow', Fact and Fable in Psychology (Boston, 1900) ; Elam marion, The Unknown. (Eng. trans., New York, 1900) ; Ochorowicz, De la suggestion mentale (Paris, 1887) ; Parish, Zur Kritik des telepatlai schen Beweisimaterials (Leipzig, 1897) ; Podmore, Apparitions and Thought-Transference (New York, 1895).