ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 485 



If we accept telepathy among the living as proven, then 

 telepathy between the living and the dead becomes at least 

 probable. According to Myers, observed facts justify this 

 conclusion. Many cases of veridical hallucinations have been 

 proved, either by their specific content, or by the moment of 

 their production, to have emanated from people who were either 

 at the point of death, or had already died some time before. 



Myers held that the independence of mind and body is proved 

 by cases of telepathy between the living, and the survival of the 

 spirit after death by cases of telepathy between the living and 

 the dead, and he attempted to develop this into a cosmic scheme 

 in which science and philosophy and religion are combined. In 

 this synthesis telepathy is extended into a universal law, a 

 supreme cosmic truth, which unites all living beings, incarnate 

 and discarnate, in this or other worlds, into one glorious universe 

 of spiritual and moral life. 



" Such a conception is strange indeed," exclaims Th. Flournoy, 

 " when summarised thus in a few words and severed from its 

 context, but it seems far less so, and becomes almost natural 

 when described by the pen of Myers, and supported by certain 

 facts enveloped indeed by hypotheses, and yet so ingenious and 

 sometimes so profound that it commands the admiration of the 

 reader, and for a while compels his unquestioning assent." 



Take, again, the verdict of a famous scientific man, who 

 has scrupulously for twenty-five years applied to metaphysical 

 problems the strict methods of research employed in solving the 

 most arduous problems of physics. Speaking of telepathic pheno- 

 mena, Sir Oliver Lodge affirms that " the evidence is so cumulative, 

 and some of it is so well established, as to bear down the dead 

 wall of scepticism in all those who have submitted to the drudgery 

 of a study of the material. ... I am prepared," he continues, " to 

 confess that the weight of testimony is sufficient to satisfy my 

 own mind that such things do undoubtedly occur. . . . We call 

 the process telepathy sympathy at a distance ; we do not under- 

 stand it. What is the medium of communication ? Is it through 

 the air, like the tuning-forks; or through the ether, like the 

 magnets ; or is it something non-physical, and exclusively psychi- 

 cal ? No one as yet can tell you. We must know far more about 

 it before we can answer that question perhaps before we can be 

 sure whether the question has a meaning or not. Undoubtedly 

 the scientific attitude, after being forced to admit the fact, is to 

 assume a physical medium, and to discover it and its processes 

 if possible. When the attempt has failed, it will be time enough 

 to enter upon fresh hypotheses. 



" Meanwhile, plainly, telepathy strikes us as a spontaneous 

 occurrence of that intercommunication between mind and mind 

 (or brain and brain) which for want of a better term we at present 



