764 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



that he was killed by a bullet in the right temple a few hours 

 before I saw the apparition, it certainly suggests the activity of 

 his surviving mind. It does not prove it, for it is impossible 

 to prove that death was instantaneous, which, indeed, it pro- 

 bably never is. He might, therefore, have time to send the 

 message before death occurred. But such cases warn us to be 

 careful about too airily disposing of everything of the kind by 

 a reference to telepathy. The illustrative case just given actually 

 happened to Captain Colt. He was in Scotland when he saw 

 the apparition, and his brother was killed in Russia. Two 

 more points are worth noting: (i) Captain Colt had asked his 

 brother to let him know by "appearing" to him if possible 

 should anything happen to him ; (2) he saw the figure in a 

 kneeling position, and that was the posture in which the body 

 was actually found. 1 



The S.P.R. has made laborious collections of such cases, 

 instituting, e.g., a census in which 17,000 persons were 

 questioned. The report of the Committee, which worked at 

 the data for several years, concludes with the short but weighty 

 statement that " between deaths and apparitions of the dying 

 person a connexion exists which is not due to chance alone." 

 This was signed, among others, by Prof. Sidgwick, who was — 

 according to William James — " the most exasperatingly critical 

 mind in England." 



The Report, in vol. x of Proceedings S.P.R., is worth careful 

 study. All the possibilities of error that could be thought of 

 by acute and experienced investigators were duly considered 

 and allowed for. Some hasty critics have revealed their ignor- 

 ance of the Report by advancing various elementary objections 

 which the Committee had already exhaustively dealt with. 

 Verb. sap. 



Physical Phenomena 



Of these there are various alleged kinds. Small objects — 

 stools, chairs, tables sometimes — are said to move without 

 discoverable application of force. Percussive sounds (" raps ") 

 are said to be produced in some similarly inexplicable fashion. 

 Objects are said to be brought from a distance (apports) by 

 supernormal means, ; as when a bell appears in the seance room 

 without any door having been opened — the bell being usually 



1 Myers's Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, vol. ii. p. 348. 



