Psychic Science 571 



to the requirements of science. There must be system and orderly 

 arrangement, before disjecta membra can be assimilated and 

 incorporated into the main body of organised knowledge. 



2 



Firstfruits of the Inquiry 



One of the firstfruits of the labours of the S.P.R., or rather 

 of the pioneers who founded it, was the discovery of "telepathy," 

 or thought-transference between mind and mind without the use 

 apparently of any of the known organs of sense. It was found 

 by careful experiment that an idea or visual image, or other 

 familiar notion, could be conveyed to another person, provided 

 he possessed the faculty of receptivity, although that person was 

 screened from all normal channels of communication. Experi- 

 ments of this kind were at first conducted in the same room, 

 usually with trivial things like portable objects and diagrams and 

 numbers stringent precautions being taken, by the use of opaque 

 screens without dependence on the completeness of blindfolding, 

 that normal means of acquiring information about the diagrams 

 or objects were excluded. Experiments of this kind will be 

 found in most of the earlier volumes of the Proceedings of the 

 S.P.R. 



Similar or slightly modified experiments were afterwards 

 extended to a considerable distance ; and still, between so to speak 

 "attuned" persons, the amount of correspondence was found to 

 be beyond chance. The evidence is bulky, and perhaps rather 

 tedious, but the establishment of such a faculty is of prime 

 importance, and is worth the labour, for manifestly it begins the 

 demonstration of the possible independence and separation of 

 mind from its ordinarily used methods of communication. The 

 voice and the hand, the ear and the eye, are no longer the only 

 transmitters and receivers of mental impressions. 



Several series of experiments in thought-transference in the 



