56 NATURE OF TELEPATHY 



men, physically strong, no doubt, as the animals are, 

 cultivators of the soil, since they must have sown 

 and harvested the grain they fed on, could exist 

 for long ages on the continent of Europe in a region 

 abounding in powerful beasts of rapine and sur- 

 rounded and pressed upon by more savage men, 

 armed with spears and arrows and axes, hunters, 

 fighters, cannibals — how is it possible they could have 

 maintained existence in such conditions unless by a 

 mental development — mental and physical, let us say 

 — which gave them power over their enemies, man 

 and beast ? And that power could but have been 

 the result of faculties, long trained and highly 

 developed, which with us are rare and startling 

 phenomena, and are described as occult or super- 

 normal or even supernatural. 



Here then for the present I drop the subject, since 

 it cannot be fully treated in this book — this story 

 without an end, in which so many matters can only 

 be touched on. Telepathy here, as stated before, 

 is but one aspect or form or manifestation of what 

 is called thought-transference; not quite rightly so 

 called in this form, seeing that thought, or any mental 

 faculty beyond memory, can have little to do with it. 

 It is rather of the nature of a sudden or spasmodic 

 and unconscious discharge of a violent and painful 

 emotion. How discharged, or how it came to be 

 bottled up so as to make it dischargeable in that 

 special way, is the mystery. Unconscious, spasmodic, 

 violent, yet resulting in something in appearance 



