484 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



Prof. Sante de Sanctis (1899) also contributed a valuable 

 book 1 sogni, based on the clinical method of studying dreams. 

 Lastly, in a remarkable number of periodicals devoted to the 

 study of the so-called " spiritist phenomena/' accounts are given of 

 dreams and telepathic visions, which are very frequently collated 

 with documents to prove their authenticity. 



In the third International Congress of Psychology held at 

 Munich (August 1896) a whole session was given up to a 

 discussion on telepathy. The Congress considered the Eeport on 

 the Census of Hallucinations undertaken in 1889 by a Committee 

 of the Society for Psychical Eesearch, the object of the inquiry 

 being " to test whether the number of ' veridical hallucinations ' 

 (i.e. hallucinations representing some external fact) was or was 

 not sufficiently numerous in proportion to the whole to preclude 

 us from regarding as merely accidental the coincidence of fact and 

 phantasm." 



During the three years 1889-92, 17,000 persons were 

 questioned, with due precautions against sources of error. The 

 final conclusion was that there were about 30 death -coincidences 

 out of 1300 cases, or a proportion of about 1 in 43. 



In Myers' posthumous work, telepathic phenomena natur- 

 ally constitute a corner-stone of the new psychology, which 

 W. James termed romantic or Gothic in opposition to classical 

 or academic psychology. Classical psychology may be compared 

 to a coherent system of fine Greek architecture, but it contem- 

 plates only the superficial and fully conscious part of our mind, 

 and completely ignores the deeper strata, the true underlying 

 realities. The importance and originality of Myers' work in 

 psychology is, according to James, that he brought forward the 

 problem of the subliminal, which must be the chief preoccupation 

 of the psychologists of the future. 



After a scrupulous examination of certain concrete cases and 

 special categories of veridical hallucinations (reciprocal, collective, 

 etc.) Myers became convinced that they could not be explained 

 on a physical hypothesis, or by any conceivable form of material 

 or ethereal undulations or vibrations, such as might bring 

 distant organisms into relation with one another. According to 

 Myers, telepathy is a "psychical invasion," or direct inter- 

 communication of minds, as already set forth by Christianity 

 in the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. Telepathic 

 phenomena prove that the mind of the agent, or rather certain 

 parts of his subliminal personality, dissociated from the rest 

 and detached from the body, may at times act from a distance 

 upon the brain and thus upon the mind of the percipient. In 

 less frequent cases the percipient again may influence all the 

 persons within a certain range and thus produce the phenomenon 

 of collective hallucination. 



