62 PAR! II. SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



Or, to consider another related problem, that of telepathic 

 hallucinations. Some years ago the (London) Society for Psychi- 

 cal Research selected out of a very much larger aggregate 

 twenty cases of hallucinations alleged to have been experienced 

 by some one at the time of the death of some person known 

 but not expected to die. The investigators argued abstractly 

 that the law of probability made it extremely unlikely that 

 these very remarkable coincidences should have been "chance" 

 coincidences. Now, on closer scrutiny, we learn that these 

 hallucinations were experienced mostly about the time of wak- 

 ing, going to sleep, or dozing, including night time and post- 

 prandial siestas. 1 It would have been, therefore, desirable to 

 engage in an objective or even experimental study of these 

 conditions in order to throw further light on the problem. If 

 this had been done the present author has attempted it it 

 would have transpired that in such a peculiar state hallucina- 

 tions are not rare, and that in this condition men believe them- 

 selves to be awake when they are partially asleep. This has 

 a double bearing on the problem, for, first, it teaches us that 

 hallucinations are not infrequent, and that they have as a rule 

 what is admittedly a natural cause, to the extent of being indeed 

 almost wholly at the mercy of a competent experimenter (see 

 Mind of Man, pp. 433-436), and, secondly, that expectancy 

 favours hallucinations. Moreover, we appreciate the gravity of 

 the fact that in not one instance were those who were said to 

 have experienced the hallucinations able to produce a recording 

 note written at the time. (The editors facetiously speak of 

 ''mental" notes.) If to this be added that in not a few of the 

 cases there was anything but a "chance" coincidence, as the 

 theory assumes; that these hallucinations did not present them- 

 selves altogether or mainly to near or dear relatives and 

 friends; and that no hallucinations occur in myriads of daily 

 happenings of an analogous nature, we shall be compelled to 

 call in question the strictly scientific nature of the enquiry. 



We are supported in our criticism of telepathy by other data, 

 which indicate that random surmises are of scanty use in 

 enquiries of this kind. To venture on one or two illustrations. 

 At a committee meeting I perceive my neighbour gazing half- 

 abstractedly at my notes. Presently he informs the chairman 

 that he desires to propose a certain motion a motion which 

 he had read off my notes without really being aware of this ! 

 Or a friend tells me that by "willing" he had compelled some- 

 body at the table, at which several of us are seated, to write 

 his name backwards, when the fact is that the "willing" was 

 suggested by what he saw somebody do, and not vice versa. 

 Or I observe that I ask myself regularly the question "Is the 

 blotting paper there?" when that article is perceived by me 



1 Volume X of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. 



