Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore

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СКАЧАТЬ rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_0a6b6a1e-09d4-5688-a2eb-e111ba0d627f">¹ Now, as long as we are merely aiming at an unassailable mathematical estimate of probabilities for each particular case, it does not seem justifiable to take ifs of any sortinto consideration. M. Richet, who was the agent, expressly tells us that he was imagining the name spelt as d’Ormont; and on the strict account, therefore, the success reached a point against which the odds, though still enormous, were decidedly less enormous than if he had been imagining the other spelling. But when we are endeavouring to form a correct view of what really takes place, it would be unintelligent not to take a somewhat wider view of the phenomena. And such a view seems to show that in those underground mental regions where M. Richet’s results (if more than accidental) must have had their preparation, a mistake or a piece of independence in spelling is by no means an unusual occurrence. The records of automatism, quite apart from telepathy, afford many instances of such independence. Thus a gentleman, writing automatically, was puzzled by the mention of a friend at Frontunac—a place he had never heard of; weeks afterwards his own writing gave him the correct name—Fond du Lac. Mr. Myers’ paper, above referred to, contains one case where a planchette wrote, “My name is Norman,” presumably meaning Norval; and another, witnessed by Professor Sidgwick, where the Greek letter x was automatically written as K H, with the result that for a time the word completely puzzled the writer. And while engaged on this very point I have received a letter from Mr. Julian Hawthorne, in which he tells me that the spelling of the planchette-writing obtained through the automatism of a young child of his own was “much better than in her own letters and journals.”

      I will insert here an incident to which, since it occurred in connection with a person who has been detected in the production of spurious phenomena, I wish to attribute no evidential importance. Throughout this book care has been taken to rest our case exclusively on phenomena and records of phenomena derived from (as we believe) quite untainted sources; but there are two reasons which seem to me to make the following experience worth describing. First, those who already believe in thought-transference will feel little doubt that we have here an instance of it, which is in itself independent of the character and pretensions of the percipient; and this being so, they will find, in the close parallelism that the case presents in some points to M. Richet’s experiments, an interesting confirmation of these. And secondly, it may be useful to suggest that thought-transference is probably the true explanation of certain results professedly produced by “spiritualistic mediumship”; for till telepathic percipience is allowed for, as a natural human faculty, the occasional manifestations of it in dubious circumstances are certain to be a source of confusion and error.

      On September 2, 1885, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, Dr. A. T. Myers, and the present writer paid an impromptu visit to a professional “medium” in a foreign town, who had no clue whatever to our names and identity. We had decided beforehand on a name on which to concentrate our thoughts, with a view to getting it reproduced. There was no opportunity for employing M. Richet’s precautions and checks. The “medium,” her daughter, and the three visitors sat round a table on which their hands were placed, and the present writer pointed to the successive letters of a printed alphabet; at intervals the sound of a rap was heard, and the letter thus indicated was written down. Now these conditions could not have been considered adequate, had the result been that the name in our minds was correctly given; for though our two companions were not apparently looking at us and not in contact with us, it might have been supposed that some involuntary and unconscious movement on our part revealed to one of them at what points to make the raps. But as the result turned out, it will be seen, I think, that this objection does not apply. The name that had been selected was John Henry Pratt. The result obtained in the way described was J O N H N Y E S R O S A T.

      From the N in the fifth place to the end, Dr. Myers and myself regarded the letters that were being given as purely fortuitous, and as forming gibberish; and though Mr. F. W. H. Myers detected a method in them, he was as far as we were from expecting the successive letters before they appeared. On inspection, the method becomes apparent. If in three places an approximation (of the sort so often met with by M. Richet) be allowed, and a contiguous letter be substituted, the complete name will be found to be given, thus:—

      R P T

      J O N H N Y E S R O S A T

the first word being phonetically spelt, and the other two being correct anagrams. It is highly improbable that such an amount of resemblance was accidental; and it is difficult to suppose that it was due to muscular indications unconsciously given by us in accordance with an unconscious arrangement of the letters in our minds in phonetic and anagrammatic order. If these suppositions be excluded, the only alternative will be thought-transference—the letters whose image or sound was transferred being modified by the percipient herself, in a way which seems, from some experiments unconnected with thought-transference, to be quite within the scope of the mind’s unconscious operations.¹ But in whatever way the knowledge of the letters or syllables reached the “medium’s” mind, I see no reason to think that the expression of it by raps was other than a conscious act. The sounds were such as would be made by gently tapping the foot against the wooden frame of the table; and at a subsequent trial with one of these so-called “mediums”—the daughter—I managed by very gradually advancing my own foot to receive on it first a part and ultimately the whole of the impact. The movement required to make the raps may have become semiautomatic from long habit, but can hardly have been unconscious. I may add that, out of a good many words and sentences which were spelt out in the same way at several different sittings, the case recorded was (with a single doubtful exception) the only one that contained the slightest indication of any abnormal faculty.

      To return to M. Richet’s experiments—a result of a different kind was the following, which is especially noteworthy as due to the agency of an idea that was itself on the verge of the unconscious. M. Richet chose a quotation at random from Littré’s dictionary, and asked for the name of the author, which was Legouvé. The letters produced were J O S E P H C H D, which looked like a complete failure. But the quotation in the dictionary was adjacent to another from the works of Joseph Chénier; and M. Richet’s eye, in running over the page, had certainly encountered the latter name, which had probably retained a certain low place in his consciousness. Another very interesting case of a result unintended by the agent, though probably due to something in his mind, was this. The name thought of was Victor; the letters produced on three trials were

      D A L E N

      D A M E S

      D A N D S

      —seemingly complete failures. But it appeared that while the agent had been concentrating his thoughts on “Victor,” the name of a friend, Danet, had spontaneously recurred to his memory. We should, of course, be greatly extending the chances of accidental success, if we reckoned collocations of letters as successful on the ground of their resemblance to any one of the names or words which may have momentarily found their way into the agent’s mind while the experiment was in progress. Here, however, the name seems to have suggested itself with considerable persistence, and the resemblance is very close. And if the result may fairly be attributed to “mental suggestion,” then, of the two names which had a certain lodgment in the agent’s mind, the one intended to be effective was ineffective, and vice versâ.

It is a remarkable fact that in the few hitherto recorded cases of experimental telepathy, where words have been indicated by writing or by other movements on the percipient’s part, the idea or word transferred seems as often as not to have been one which was not at the moment occupying the agent’s consciousness; that is to say, the influence has proceeded from some part of the agent’s mind which is below the threshold of conscious attention. (See p. 84 below, and Vol. II., pp. 670-1.) This conception of unconscious agency—of an “unconscious intelligence” in the agent as well as in the percipient—will present itself again very prominently when we come to consider the cases of spontaneous telepathy. But the experimental СКАЧАТЬ