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

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СКАЧАТЬ was near.” Here again, though the word “anxious” is used, the anxiety, such as it was, was chronic, not acute; and I certainly should not have felt justified in making such a condition of mind the ground for not reckoning the hallucination, had it happened to fall on the other side of the account, as a non-coincidental instance.

      As regards Case 231, I can only quote my own remark,—that it would be pedantic to apply the hypothesis that anxiety may produce purely subjective hallucinations “to cases which occur in the thick of a war, where the idea of death is constant and familiar. In such circumstances, the mental attitude caused by the knowledge that a comrade is in peril seems scarcely parallel to that which similar knowledge might produce among those who are sitting brooding at home. At any rate, if anxiety for the fate of absent comrades be a natural and known source of hallucinations during campaigns, it is odd that, among several hundreds of cases of subjective hallucination, I find no second instance of the phenomenon.”

      In Case 240, the percipient, Mrs. E., knew the person whose face she saw to be ill, but “did not know he was so near death.” They were not on friendly terms at the time, and there was probably no anxiety; but the sick man lived only five miles off, and it is possible that Mrs. E.’s mind reverted to him more frequently than to other absent acquaintances. It might be safer, therefore, to drop this case from the list.

      Anxiety is clearly a condition which admits of all degrees, while at the same time it cannot be accurately measured; but all that logic demands is that coincidental cases should be excluded when the anxiety was acute enough to be regarded with any probability as the sufficient cause of the hallucination. A person who has been for some time ill, but whose condition has not been seriously dwelt on, is in fact not a bit more likely to be represented in a friend’s hallucination than the friend’s most robust acquaintance. Such, at any rate, is the conclusion to which a wide study of subjective hallucinations has led me. And, to be on the safe side, I have included in the purely subjective group (any increase of which, of course, tells against my argument) “several cases where there was such an amount of anxiety or expectancy on the part of the hallucinated person as would prevent us, if it were present in a coincidental case, from including such a case in our telepathic evidence.”

      6^th. Case 175. Mr. Peirce ought to have quoted a few additional words: “I only am sure that as the figure disappeared [N.B., not after it disappeared] I was as wide awake as I am now.”

      Case 195. Surely a second-hand informant’s use of the word “dream” cannot weigh against the “while yet fully awake” of the percipient, and her statement that she “sat up to see what it was,” and looked round the room to discover if the appearance could be due to some reflection.

      Case 702. I cannot understand Mr. Peirce’s remark, which contradicts the percipient’s emphatic statement. He most expressly distinguishes the dream from the waking experience.

      Case 28. The “nap” is an inference of Mr. Peirce’s from the fact that the percipient had just leaned back on the couch. The inference is incorrect, and surely ought not to have been put forward as though it was a fact which appeared in the evidence.

      Still more inexcusable is the assertion that the percipient in Case 201 was napping. She was reading Kingsley’s Miscellanies, and she says: “I then [i.e., after the apparition] tested myself as to whether I had been sleeping, seeing that it was 10 minutes since I lay down. I said to myself what I thought I had read, began my chapter again, and in 10 minutes had reached the same point.”

      In saying that “it is difficult to admit any case where the percipient was in bed,” Mr. Peirce has apparently not observed that similar non-coincidental cases, where the hallucinated person was in bed, but awake, have been reckoned on the other side of the account. (See Vol. II, p. 12, second note.) It is not less legitimate, and decidedly more instructive, to admit such cases on both sides than to reject them on both sides. It is worth adding—what Mr. Peirce has not perceived—that for purposes of comparison with the census-cases, the question is not whether people were awake, but whether they believed they were awake.

      7^th. Case 170. I have myself drawn attention to the peculiarity of this experience, as regards recognition. The case, however, is one which I am inclined to drop from the list, for a reason which will appear later.

      Case 201. Mr. Peirce has misquoted the account. He makes the percipient say, “I could not say who it was.” Her words are, “I knew the face quite well, but could not say whose it was, but the suit of clothes impressed me strongly as being exactly like one which my husband had given to a servant named Ramsay the previous year.” She suggests what seems a very reasonable explanation of the fact that the face, though familiar, did not at once suggest its owner.

      Case 236. I cannot think on what Mr. Peirce founds his assertion—which is contrary to the fact—that the percipient had been shown the testimony of a second witness. She states clearly that the apparition reminded her of her brother; and this is independently confirmed by another person to whom she described her experience immediately after it occurred.

      Case 249. The important point is surely not how much of a figure is seen, but whether it is unmistakably recognized.

      Case 697. Mr. Peirce’s remark is again contrary to the facts. The percipient had not heard of Z.’s death when she announced that it was his face that she had seen. Most readers would, I think, infer this from the printed account, which I had not perceived to be ambiguous.

      8^th. Case 26. I am obliged to differ from Mr. Peirce in respect both of what he thinks unlikely, and of what he thinks likely. He thinks it unlikely that the percipient should have told his friends of his experience on one day, Friday, and have searched the local paper on the next day, Saturday. But he did both things on the earliest opportunity, the local paper not being published till Saturday. Mr. Peirce thinks it likely, on the other hand, that when he said “About 2 o’clock on the morning of October 21,” which was a Friday, he meant “the night of Friday at 2 A.M.,” i.e., 2 o’clock on the morning of Saturday. Now, had he made the statement which Mr. Peirce incorrectly attributes to him, “The vision occurred on Friday, at 2 A.M.,” there might be some ground for this view; for “Friday at 2 A.M.” is a phrase which one could imagine to be laxly used for 2 A.M. on the night of Friday-Saturday. But the use of the precise phrase “on the morning of,” which Mr. Peirce suppresses, and the giving of the day of the month, not of the week, surely makes a veiy distinct difference. On what ground can it be held that a person is likely to say “2 o’clock on the morning of October 21,” when he means “2 o’clock on the morning of October 22”?

      Case 170. I agree that the degree of exactitude in the coincidence is here doubtful, and I would drop the case from the list in consequence.

      Case 182. I do not think that there is much doubt here, as the date of the percipient’s experience was particularly remarked at the time, and might well be remembered for a month.

      Case 197. I have myself pointed out that it is possible that the limit was exceeded by some hours. But two or three such cases may, I think, fairly be included in the estimate, considering what the object and upshot of the estimate is. The reader may of course be trusted to perceive that had the arbitrary limit been fixed at twenty-four hours instead of twelve, the overwhelming character of the odds against chance would remain. The precise figures would differ, according as a limit of six, twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four hours was selected; but considering that any selection, with the calculation based on it, would lead us to the same conclusion, I see nothing misleading in the inclusion of a case where the interval may have exceeded the actually selected lower limit, provided that it is equally likely not to have done so, and provided due warning is given. These remarks apply equally to Cases 201 and 231.

      Case 195. It ought to have been СКАЧАТЬ