Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 6. Charles S. Peirce

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СКАЧАТЬ been perfectly justified in representing the size of the group of persons to whom we had had access by the number of them all alive at any one time—say half a million—though the half-million would not have throughout consisted of the same individuals. The reason why this would have been legitimate is that in the calculation the whole population is similarly treated. Of course a much larger number of persons are alive during some portion of a period of twelve years than are simultaneously alive on the day of it when the census is taken. And if the group of half a million were increased so as to allow for persons becoming adults during the period, and thus joining the group (so to speak) at one end while others died off it at the other, the size of the whole population would have to be reckoned in a similar way; and the two increases would balance each other in the calculation, which would only be made more complex without being made more correct. Thus any case of percipience within the given period (where the evidence which reaches us is on a par with first-hand (see Vol. I, p. 148)) may be legitimately included, even though the percipient be dead, if it is practically certain that we should equally have obtained it direct from the percipient, had he or she survived. This applies to three of the four cases which Mr. Peirce cites (his number 237, is, I suppose, a mistake for 238). Cases 170 and 695 were obtained through private channels, and Case 238, though our first knowledge of it was due to a published account, would have been at once procured at first-hand from the percipient had we been at work in 1876. The receipt of Case 214, however, was due to a newspaper-appeal of our own, which it is not certain that the deceased percipient would have independently seen and acted on, had it been published during her lifetime; and as, moreover, it is only by straining a definition (as I have pointed out) that this case can be regarded as on a par with first-hand, it would be best to drop it from the list.

      3^rd. Case 184. Mr. Peirce says that the percipient “seems to have hallucinations nearly every day.” He has had only one other hallucination in his life. This occurred many years ago, in his boyhood, and represented a vague, unrecognized figure. But the list is confined to cases where the appearance was recognized; and the only subjective hallucinations which have to be considered per contra are those presenting the same characteristic. The other experiences from the same informant, Nos. 21, 38, 56, have, in the first place, been coincidental, and have a fair claim to be considered telepathic; and, in the second place, have not been hallucinations at all. They have conveyed no impression of external reality, but are distinctly described as impressions and “mind’s-eye” visions, parallel to those which a good visualizer can summon up at will. Thus Mr. Peirce’s objection is doubly out of place.

      Case 175. The percipient draws a distinct line between the experience which he here describes and those which he has had without any coincidence. In the latter he “quite believes he was asleep,”—i.e., there is no ground for regarding them as hallucinations at all, in the sense in which I throughout employ the word.

      As regards Cases 173 and 298, Mr. Peirce’s use of the plural “other hallucinations” is misleading. Each of the two percipients has had one other hallucination, and neither of these was of a nature to affect the legitimacy of including their cases in the list. The narrator of Case 173 had once seen an unrecognized figure, which seems curiously to have corresponded in aspect with a person who, unknown to her, had recently died in the room in which it appeared; but it has been impossible to obtain corroboratory evidence of this incident. The other hallucination of the narrator of Case 298 was not visual.

      4^th. The percipient in Case 29 was in perfect health. (Query—Is it Case 28 that Mr. Peirce means, where the percipient “had a headache”? If so, does he really consider that such a condition at the end of a day’s work amounts to not being “in good health”?)

      Case 201. The percipient says, “I had been in ill-health for some years, but at that time was stronger than I ever was in my life, the warm climate suiting me—so well that I felt a strength and enjoyment of life for its own sake, which was a delight to me.” Many of us would be glad enough to be “not in good health” on these terms.

      Case 202. The percipient had been ordered to rest and do no work. But hers was not a condition which would have prevented me from counting her hallucination against my argument, as a purely subjective specimen, had she happened to be included in the census, and had no coincidental event occurred.

      Case 214. The percipient’s illness succeeded the vision.

      In Case 174, the percipient, Miss P., was still “far from well,” having recently had a distinct attack of illness; and in Case 702, the percipient, Mr. G., was weak but convalescent after fever. My information on the subject of hallucinations does not lead me to suppose that there was anything in Mr. G.’s state especially favorable to an experience of the sort; as to Miss P., I cannot tell. Unless their state was so favorable,—indeed, unless visual hallucinations, representing recognized figures, are markedly common in such states—which is certainly, I think, not the fact—the cases remain very striking ones. There would, of course, be some force in Mr. Peirce’s objection, if my census-list of non-coincidental hallucinations would have been considerably larger than it is but for the condition as to health (or as to anxiety—see his 5th objection). But I have explained (p. 7) that the interrogatories were put in separate parts—questions as to the person’s bodily or mental state at the time of the experience being kept separate from the question as to the fact of the experience; and the number of yeses struck off the list used in the computation, on the ground of an exceptional bodily or mental state at all comparable to that which existed in a few of the coincidental cases, amounted at most to two or three.

      5^th. I cannot admit the objection in more than one of the cases referred to, and only partially in that one.

      The percipient in Case 702 says, “I had no idea of the lady’s being ill, and had neither been anxious about her nor thinking about her.”

      The percipient in Case 174 was not personally intimate with the gentleman who died; and, though she was “aware that he was in a critical condition,” she says, “At the time of his death he had been quite out of my thoughts and mind.”

      The percipient in Case 182 “had not been thinking about her [the girl who died] at all; she was an acquaintance and neighbor, but not an intimate friend.”

      The percipient in Case 184, having absolutely no ground for anxiety, was naturally not anxious. This boy was perfectly well when he parted from him, and he had since received excellent accounts of him, including an “assurance of the child’s perfect health,” within three days of the experience described.

      The percipient in Case 28 knew that his friend had had an attack of indigestion, and had been given some medicine for it by a chemist. A medical man “thought he wanted a day or two of rest, but expressed no opinion that anything was serious”; and even this not very appalling professional diagnosis did not come to the percipient’s knowledge till afterwards.

      The percipient in Case 195 was not expecting the death of a relative who “had been ailing for years,” and whose “death occurred rather suddenly.” The attitude of mind of young persons towards chronic invalids whom they are not personally tending, and whose death is not held to be imminent, is too habitual and continuous, and not sufficiently exciting or abnormal, to be fairly described as anxiety, for the purpose of the present argument.

      A similar remark applies in Case 27. The percipient had heard two months before that his friend had a complaint which was likely sooner or later to be fatal, but was “in no immediate apprehension of his death.” No more had been heard of him, and the fact that “his name had not been mentioned for weeks” between Mr. R. and his wife is a tolerably conclusive sign that he was not occupying a foremost position in their thoughts. I can scarcely think Mr. Peirce seriously believes that the hallucination here was due to anxiety.¹

      In Case 172, the percipient СКАЧАТЬ