ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 483 



in sleep, the solution of which was vainly sought in waking 

 hours. 



Further, in other, less frequent cases the exaltation of emotion 

 and of all psychical activities during sleep may by a kind of 

 involuntary auto-suggestion leave a permanent impress on the 

 mind. These cases prove that dreams are sometimes capable of 

 explaining an astonishing force begotten within the depths of our 

 mental life which far exceeds anything the waking life can bring 

 forth. Myers cites two main classes of this kind : " those, namely, 

 where the dream has led to a 'conversion' or marked religious 

 change ; and those where it has been the starting-point of an 

 ' insistent ' idea, or of a fit of actual insanity." Instances of the 

 first group are common in biographies of the saints (hagiographies), 

 such as the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, which 

 was due to a hypnagogic hallucination ; those of the second are 

 not rare in insanity. Taine relates a typical case where a 

 gendarme was so impressed by an execution at which he assisted 

 that he dreamed that he himself was to be guillotined, and was 

 afterwards so obsessed by the dream that he attempted suicide. 



However marvellous they may be, these phenomena are 

 susceptible, given certain temperaments, certain precedents and 

 physiological predispositions, certain histories of adolescence, of a 

 naturalistic interpretation on the basis of common psychological 

 criteria. Evidence of this is afforded by the subtle and remarkably 

 clear psychological analysis in which A. Manzoni, without resort- 

 ing to any mystical or miraculous intervention, provides a con- 

 vincing explanation of the conversion of the " Innominate " in his 

 immortal romance. 



But when we pass on to consider veridical hallucinations, or 

 telepathic oneiric phenomena, we really transcend the limit of our 

 empirical consciousness, as acquired by way of the senses a 

 boundary that few scientific men have dared to pass, lest they 

 should be reproached as credulous. 



The first accurate investigations of the Society for Psychical 

 Kesearch (founded in London, 1882), and recorded in the famous 

 Phantasms of the Living (1886) by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, 

 included about 150 telepathic phenomena in the form of dreams 

 and another 100 in the form of well-attested hypnagogic hallucina- 

 tions. 1 The great international inquiry undertaken by this 

 Society between 1889 and 1894 ("Census of Hallucinations") led 

 to surprising statistical results. The collection published by the 

 astronomer Flammarion in his book L'inconnu yields another rich 

 compendium of cases, though not always strictly controlled. 



1 Gurney and Myers first introduced the term "telepathy," which expresses 

 their independent position, maintained on the one hand in relation to spiritualists, 

 who lay more stress on their explanations than on the facts they profess to 

 have proved ; on the other, against sceptics, who claim to have destroyed the value 

 of well-ascertained facts by the mere assertion that they were an impossibility. 



