§ 1. We now come to the actual evidence for spontaneous telepathy. As has been explained, the proof is cumulative, and its strength can only be truly estimated by a patient study of a very large mass of testimony. But to wade through a number of the cases is far from an attractive task. They are very unexciting - monotonous amid all their variety - as different from the Mysteries of Udolpho as from the dignified reports of a learned society, and far more likely to provoke slumber in the course of perusal than to banish it afterwards. And for the convenience of those who desire neither to toil nor to sleep, it will be well to disregard logical arrangements and to present at once a few preliminary samples. This chapter, therefore, will include a small batch of narratives which may serve as types of the different classes of telepathic phenomena, while further illustrating various important evidential points. At the present stage it will, no doubt, be open to anyone who accepts the facts in these cases as essentially correct to regard every one of the coincidences as accidental. The reasoning that will prevent this conclusion must still be taken on trust; it could not be given now without delaying the concrete illustrations till the reader would be weary of waiting for them.

Nor would it be profitable at this place to enter fully into the principles of the classification, which can only be made clear in connection with the evidence. I will therefore sketch here the main headings, without comment, trusting to the further development of the work to justify the arrangement adopted.

We find our most distinct line of classification in the nature of the percipient's impression. This at once divides the cases into two great families - those (A) where the impression is sensory and externalised, and those (B) where it is not sensory or externalised. In the first division the experience is a percept or quasi-percept - something which the person seems to see, hear, or feel, and which he instinctively refers to the outer world. In the second division, the impression is of an inward or ideal kind - either a mental image, or an emotion, or a mere blind impulse towards some sort of action. There is also a small group of cases (C which it is not easy to assign to either division - those, namely, where the experience of the percipient is sensory, without being an external-seeming affection of sight, hearing, or touch - for instance, a physical feeling of illness or malaise. This small group will be most conveniently treated with the emotional division, into which it shades. Further, each of these divisions is represented in sleeping as well as in waking life, so that dreams form a comprehensive class (D) of their own; and the externalised division is also strongly represented in a region of experience which is on the borderland (E) between complete sleep and complete normal wakefulness.

Lastly, there are two peculiarities attaching to certain cases in all or nearly all the above divisions, which arc of sufficient importance to form the basis of two separate classes. The first of these is the reciprocal class (F), where each of the persons concerned seems to exercise a telepathic influence on the other; and the second is the collective class (G), where more percipients than one take part in a single telepathic incident.