Part 7

The place which the explanation of spiritualistic and theosophic manifestations occupies in Psychical Research has already been noted; that of ghosts and rappings and haunted houses and _poltergeists_ is quite similar. Not wholly yet measurably different is the status of the study of hallucinations, presentiments, and previsions or premonitions. In this entire group of phenomena, the interests of Psychology and of Psychical Research are in the main distinct. This is readily illustrated with reference to the study of hallucinations. These are interesting to the psychologist quite in the same sense as any other natural product of psycho-physiological action; the prevalence of hallucinations under fairly normal conditions presents one out of a large number of interesting details, and forms a proper investigation for the Society for Psychical Research. Their census of hallucinations hardly bears out the conclusions which have been drawn therefrom, but contains much interesting information. When, however, the emphasis of the investigation is placed upon "veridical" hallucinations, and the establishment of the conclusion that so many more of these hallucinations and presentiments "come true," or have a mysterious significance, than chance would allow, then the psychological interest is quite obscured by an interest of a totally different character. A "veridical" hallucination has little psychological pertinence; for it is equally interesting psychologically whether it happens to come true or not. The bearing of the hallucination upon or its origin in some of the occupations of normal waking life; the possibility of its interpretation as a peculiar retroactive illusion of memory, as Professor Royce has suggested for some cases; its significance as an unconscious perception of the shadow already present, not yet visible to consciousness, but coming before the event,--such are significant characteristics of hallucinations. The results of the study of hallucinations may likewise be applied to a determination of their relation to the sum total of the sequences of consciousness that constitute our mental life; but there is only a most incidental psychological interest in the apparently personally significant or "veridical" aspect of the phenomena. And furthermore, whether they are truly "veridical" or only seemingly so; whether, in other words, there is evidence enough in quality and quantity to make it a proper scientific inquiry as to the existence of a cause-and-effect-like relation between presentiment and issue,--this is a logical inquiry, although one which, along with other factors, includes psychological considerations.

We here naturally approach what has, on the whole, formed the most conspicuous problem of Psychical Research--that associated with the term "telepathy." It will contribute to clearness of distinction to consider separately the question, whether the evidence accumulated in any wise justifies the conclusion, that there exists a form of communication occasionally going on between mind and mind apart from the recognized channels of sensation. This, too, is a strictly logical question, and is so presented in the following essay. We are here concerned with the status of telepathy in its relation to Psychology and Psychical Research; this it is possible to indicate briefly. First, if there really exist this extra-normal, fitful and occasional, uncertain and sporadic form of communication, and if it can be conceived of in psychological terms, it forms an interesting, possibly even a momentous contribution to our knowledge of mental processes. In the present status of the alleged conditions of operations of telepathy, it will hardly modify seriously the direction or scope of the development of Psychology. It being unnecessary to cross bridges before coming to them, it may be sufficient to observe that up to the present there exists no decided prospect either of the demonstration of the reality of this process or of its psychological formulation; and far less either of its inclusion within the science of Psychology, or of its practical utilization. When the day comes when the incontestable establishment of telepathy, as indeed of any totally novel contribution to Psychology, shall require a revision of psychological principles, Psychology will certainly have to be revised. What, then, many will retort, can be more important for the psychologist than to devote himself to the investigation of telepathy, to decide whether his Psychology needs reconstruction or not? The answer is near at hand: there is no obligation upon any science to reconstruct its basal principles whenever it is suggested that these are incorrect or inadequate. It is not the suggestion of their inadequacy that is significant, but the concrete facts and evidence available to prove their inadequacy. If a new view can establish itself by its logical cogency and displace an accepted doctrine, if new facts, adequately established, make necessary a revision of current generalizations, no scientist and no science will protest. The present status of telepathy is simply not a formidable candidate for this distinction.

That the evidence brought forward in proof of telepathy, similarly to that adduced for "veridical hallucinations," is capable of psychological interpretation, and also contains interesting illustrations of obscure and subtle mental processes, becomes evident to the discerning student, and merits an extended demonstration. It is in the pursuit of such a demonstration that the psychologist turns to the records of "phantasms of the living," and of experimental thought-transference, thereby adding to an already significant and extensive collection of material illustrative of the influences of the undercurrents of thought-processes. Yet it is by no means urged that this is the only phase of utility which the study of telepathy holds out. That any one who is convinced of his ability to demonstrate telepathy is free to follow his conviction, will not be disputed; that in the course of his investigations he may succeed in revealing the presence of unrecognized forms of mental action, it would be mere dogmatism to deny. Two things, however, should be clearly understood; the first, that his data cannot claim serious attention before they are strong in their validity, and extensive in their scope, and consistently significant in their structure; then, and not before, are they ready for the crucible of scientific logic, from which they may or may not emerge as standard metal, to be stamped and circulated as accepted coin of the realm. The second point relates to the status of the obligation to disprove the telepathic position. This is more often a question of expediency than of right. If the obligation can readily be discharged, it is usually desirable to do so, for the reason that the removal of actual error and misconception is often one of the methods of advancing science; but there is no burden of disproof resting upon the scientist.

V

That the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research contain valuable material in creditable quantity is evident to any unprejudiced reader; in many ways they are neither so bad nor so good as they are painted to be. That "psychical researchers," though pursuing their labors with different motives, have in one direction and another contributed to the advance of Psychology, I have attempted to make clear. Furthermore, the activity of this Society has been prominent in making the borderland of science of to-day present a far more hopeful aspect than ever before. It has substituted definiteness of statement, careful examination, recognition of sources of error, close adherence to as carefully authenticated fact as is attainable, for loose and extravagant speculation, for bare assertion and obscuring irrelevancy. It has made possible a scientific statement and a definiteness of conception of problems, even where its proposed solution of them may be thought misleading or inadequate. But in my opinion the debit side of the ledger far outbalances the credit side. The influence which Psychical Research has cast in favor of the occult, the enrollment under a common protective authority of the credulous and the superstitious, and the believers in mystery and in the personal significance of things, is but one of the evils which must be laid at its door. Equally pernicious is the distorted conception, which the prominence of Psychical Research has scattered broadcast, of the purposes and methods of Psychology. The status of that science has suffered, its representatives have been misunderstood, its advancement has been hampered, its appreciation by the public at large has been weakened and wrongly estimated, by reason of the popularity of the unfortunate aspects of Psychical Research, and of its confusion with them. Whatever in the publications of Psychical Research seems to favor mystery and to substantiate supernormal powers is readily absorbed, and its bearings fancifully interpreted and exaggerated; the more critical and successfully explanatory papers meet with a less extended and less sensational reception. Unless most wisely directed Psychical Research is likely, by not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing, to foster the undesirable propensities of human nature as rapidly as it antagonizes them. Like indiscriminate almsgiving, it has the possibilities of affording relief and of making paupers at the same time. Particularly by the unwarranted acceptance of telepathy as a reality or as a working hypothesis, and the still more unwarranted use of this highly hypothetical process as a means of explaining more complex and obscure phenomena, has it defeated one of the most important purposes which it might have served.

The popular as well as the more critical acceptance of Psychical Research, both of the term and of the conceptions associated with it, has disseminated a totally false estimate on the part of the public at large of the scope and purposes of modern Psychology; and has quite possibly given an unfortunate twist to the trend of recent psychological thought. The right appreciation of scientific aims and ideals by the intelligent and influential public has come to be almost indispensable to the favorable advancement of science. Psychology can less afford than many another science to dispense with this helpful influence; and no science can remain unaffected by persistent misinterpretation of its true end and aims. If Psychical Research is to continue in its present temper, it becomes essential to have it clearly understood just how far its purposes and spirit are, and how much farther they are not, in accord with the purposes and the spirit of Psychology. The optimistic psychologist anticipates the day when he will no longer be regarded, either in high life or in low life, as a collector of ghost stories or an investigator of mediums. The disuse of the unfortunate term "Psychical Research," and far more, the modification of the conceptions animating this type of investigation, the pursuit of its more intrinsically psychological problems in a more truly psychological spirit, and perhaps, most of all, the disassociation of the term "Psychology" from the undesirable and irrelevant connotations of Psychical Research, are all consummations devoutly to be desired.

THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY

What will be pronounced strange or curious is largely determined by the range and composition of the common body of knowledge to whose laws and uniformities the phenomena in question apparently fail to conform. What is passing strange to one generation may become easily intelligible to the next. We all have eyes that see not for all but a limited range of facts and views; and we unconsciously fill out the blind-spots of our mental retinæ according to the habits and acquisitions of the surrounding areas. We observe and record what interests us; and this interest is in turn the outcome of a greater or lesser endowment, knowledge, and training. A new observation requires, as a rule, not a new sense-organ or an additional faculty, nor even more powerful or novel apparatus, but an insight into the significance of quite lowly and frequent things. Most of the appearances of the earth's crust, which the modern geologist so intelligently describes, were just as patent centuries ago as now; what we have added is the body of knowledge that makes men look for such facts and gives them a meaning. And although "the heir of all the ages," we can hardly presume to have investigated more than a modest portion of our potential inheritance; future generations will doubtless acquire interests and points of view which will enable them to fill some of the many gaps in our knowledge, to find a meaning in what we perchance ignore or regard as trivial, and to reduce to order and consistency what to us seems strange or curious or unintelligible. And future generations, by virtue of a broader perspective and a deeper insight, may give little heed to what we look upon as significant,--much as we pronounce irrelevant and superstitious the minute observances whereby primitive folk strive to attract the good fortunes and to avoid the dangers of human existence.

I

The possibility of the transference of thought, apart from the recognized channels of sensation, has been too frequently discussed, with the suppressed or unconscious assumption that our knowledge of the means whereby we ordinarily and normally, consciously and unconsciously, convey to others some notion of what is passing in our own minds, is comprehensive and exhaustive. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Whenever a mode of perception, no matter how limited or apparently trivial, has been thoroughly investigated, there have been discovered, or at least suggested, unrecognized possibilities of its use and development. And no result of experimental inquiry is more constantly illustrated than the extent to which inferences from sensations and the exercise of faculties may proceed without arousing consciousness of their existence. Many color-blind persons remain quite ignorant of their defect; and it was only after the description of his own notable deficiencies by Dalton (in 1794) that the general prevalence of color-blindness became recognized. The fact that a portion of every one's retina is as blind as his finger-tip escaped observation until about two centuries ago; and this because the normal use of our eyes does not present the conditions of its easy detection; and for a like reason we persistently refuse to see the double images that are constantly formed upon our retinæ. With the same unconsciousness that we receive sensations and draw inferences from them, do we give to others indications of what is going on in our minds, and read between their words and under their expressions what "half reveals and half conceals the thoughts that lie within." It is important to emphasize the serious limitations as yet attaching to our knowledge of the detailed possibilities of normal perception and inference, in order to realize the corresponding hesitancy with which we should regard any series of facts, no matter how apparently inexplicable, as evidence of a supernormal kind of mental telegraphy.

A further principle important in this connection, and one which is likewise borne out by experimental inquiry, is the general similarity in our mental machinery in matters great and small, and the resulting frequency with which similar trains of thought may be carried on by different persons as the outcome of similar but independent brain-functioning. There is a natural tendency to exaggerate the individuality of our own ways of thought and expression; and yet but little reflection is necessary to suggest how easily this fond belief may be at least partially delusive. In certain lines of thought, such as mathematics, we should regard it as strange if two thinkers, starting with the premises determined by the problem in hand, should not reach the same conclusion; in others, such as economic or political questions, we observe the preponderance of evidence in one direction, and yet can appreciate the grounds of a contrary opinion; and while in still other cases we regard the verdict as a matter of taste or of individual preference, it may be questioned whether this is so unmotived or lawless a process as is commonly assumed. While we properly expect more mental community in certain lines than in others, we have good grounds for believing that it exists everywhere and only awaits the proper modes of investigation to reveal it in its full extent and significance. With the marvelously increased facilities for the dissemination and transportation of thought, the range of such mental community is certain to be correspondingly extended. Coincidences arising from the bringing together of widely separated and apparently unrelated happenings are sure to multiply, when the means of bringing them together are so vastly increased. Each man's world is enlarged by the enlargement of the whole. It becomes possible for him to come into relation with infinitely more persons and events, and the resulting coincidences are nowadays more likely to be noticed and recorded.

If we consider the logical ease with which the successful solution of one portion of a problem suggests the next step; how imperceptibly and yet effectively sentiments and points of view and the spirit of the time are disseminated; how many persons there are in this busily reflective era occupied with similar thoughts and schemes, and how readily they may come into communication; how many are anxiously studying the popular taste and demand to determine what literary venture or mechanical invention is likely to be timely and successful; how the possession of a common inheritance, patriotic interests, education, literature, political arena, social usages, newspaper intelligence, household conveniences, and the endless everyday factors of our complex, richly detailed existence all contribute to our common life,--shall we wonder that some two or half a dozen intellects should give expression to similar thoughts at nearly the same time? Would it not be infinitely more wonderful if such coincidences did not constantly occur? In the more original contributions to literature, science, and inventions, such thought-correspondences should be rarer; and certainly this is true. Contrast the number of striking similarities in the higher walks of literature and science with those that occur in small inventions. Hardly a day passes without the coincidence of two persons thinking of devices for accomplishing the same purposes, so essentially similar that patents could not be given to both. It is certainly not difficult to understand why several different patterns of typewriting machines should be invented nearly simultaneously, and it would not be altogether mysterious if, at the first, two inventors had independently reached the idea of a writing-machine at nearly the same time. The experience of offering an article to an editor and receiving a reply to the effect that another article dealing with a similar topic in a similar way was already awaiting the compositor is not unusual. It is true that these coincidences are of a minor order, but it seems desirable to emphasize the frequency of these minor forms in order to suggest the law-abiding character of the rarer or the more striking forms; for this is just what the normal distribution of such phenomena would lead us to expect.

It would be pleasant to believe that the application of the doctrine of chances to problems of this character is quite generally recognized; but this recognition is so often accompanied by the feeling that the law very clearly applies to all cases but the one that happens to be under discussion, that I fear the belief is unwarranted. Moreover, the notion seems to prevail that these coincidences should occur with equal frequency to all persons; while, in fact, the law of probability provides for the most various distribution among individuals. However, the attempt, and it may be the sincere attempt, to apply proper conceptions of probability and improbability to such problems often fails, because of an unfortunate mental attitude which presents, with an outward acquiescence in the objective view of the problem, an inward conviction in which the subjective interpretation is really dominant; for this and other reasons, this objective method of viewing the matter, however pertinent, is not the most important.

II

One of the most deplorable attitudes towards the borderland phenomena of which mental telegraphy or telepathy forms a type, is that which insists upon an exact and detailed explanation of concrete personal experiences, and regards these as so essentially peculiar that it refuses to consider them in connection with the many other instances of the same class, without reference to which a rational explanation is unattainable. This tendency, to insist that the laws of science shall be precisely and in detail applicable to individual experiences possessing a personal interest for us, has wrought much havoc; it has contributed to superstition, fostered pseudo-science, and encouraged charlatanism. To antagonize this tendency it is necessary to insist upon the statistical nature of the inquiry. We should certainly be familiar in this statistic-filled age with the law-abiding character of individual happenings when considered in large groups. So many types of facts depending upon individual and heterogeneous motives shoot together and form curves of surprising regularity; the number of marriages or of misdirected letters, the falsification of ages or the distribution of heights of individuals, and countless other items that in individual cases seem accidental, or capricious, or due to a host of minute and unaccountable factors, none the less present a striking statistical regularity. The owners of a gaming-table, counting upon the statistical regularity of the accidental, are assured of a steady income; they are interested long enough to obtain an extensive view of the fluctuations, and to see the law that guides the whole. Not so the individual player; he is interested only in that particular portion of the game in which his money is at stake. He detects mysterious laws of fortune and freaks of luck; sees in a series of coincidences or momentary successes the proofs of his pet schemes, and dismisses the general doctrine of chances with disdain, because it is not obviously applicable to his case. This influences the losers as well as the winners; both are absorbed in their own minute portions of the game, and forget that the law makes distinct provision for temporary losses and gains, great and small, but is as indifferent to the times and order of such occurrences as to the personality of those affected.