§ 1. An issue has now to be seriously considered which I have several times referred to as a fundamental one, but which could not be treated without a preliminary study of the subject of sensory hallucinations. That, as I have tried to show, is the order of natural phenomena to which "phantasms of the living" in general belong; they are to be regarded as projections of the percipient's brain by which his senses are deceived. We have further found that in a certain number of cases - which may be taken as representing the still larger number to be cited in the following chapters - a phantasm of this kind is alleged to have coincided very closely in time with the death, or some serious crisis in the life, of the person whose presence it suggested. The question for us now is whether these coincidences can, or cannot, be explained as accidental. If they can, then the theory of telepathy - so far as applied to apparitions - falls to the ground. If they cannot, then the existence of telepathy as a fact in Nature is proved on the evidence; and the proof could only be resisted by the assumption that the evidence, or a very large part of it, is in its main features untrustworthy.

It is very necessary to distinguish these two questions - whether the evidence may be trusted; and if trusted, tvhat it proves. It is the latter question that is now before us. The character of the evidence was discussed at some length in the fourth chapter, and is to be judged of by the narratives quoted throughout the book [original edition]. In the present chapter it is assumed that these narratives are in the main trustworthy; that in a large proportion of them the essential features of the case - i.e., two marked experiences and a time-relation between them - are correctly recorded.

Here, then, is the issue. A certain number of coincidences of a particular sort have occurred: did they or did they not occur by chance? Now there are doubtless some who do not perceive that this question demands a reasoned examination at all. They settle it a priori. " One is constantly coming across very startling coincidences," they observe, "which no one thinks of ascribing to anything but chance; why should not these, which are no more startling than many others, be of the number? "This idea need hardly detain us: the point in our case is, of course, not that the coincidence is startling1 - that alone would be insignificant - but that the same sort of startling coincidence is again and again repeated. That is clearly a fact which demands treatment by a particular method, often vaguely appealed to as "the doctrine of chances." The actual application of that doctrine, however, even to simple cases, seems to require more care than is always bestowed upon it.

1 It is, however, something to get even the startling character of the coincidence admitted. For there are writers of repute who seem to think that the whole occurrence receives a sufficient rationalistic explanation when some plausible subjective cause for the hallucination has been suggested. The Abbe de St. Pierre, after telling the well-known story of Desfentaines' appearance to his friend Bezuel, at the time of the.

Especially is care required in the simple preliminary matter of deciding, before one begins to calculate, what the subject-matter of the calculation is to be - what precise class of phenomena it is to which the doctrine of chances is to be applied. I need only recall Lord Brougham's treatment of his own case (pp. 256-7). His attempted explanation, as we saw, entirely depended on his miscalling his experience, and referring it to the class of dreams - a class numerous enough, as he rightly perceived, to afford scope for numbers of startling coincidences. And his remarks illustrate what is really a very common outside view of psychical research. Dreams, and hallucinations, and impressions, and warnings, and presentiments - it is held - are the "psychical" stock-in-trade; and these phenomena are all much on a par, and may all be shown by the same arguments to be undeserving of serious attention. There has been the more excuse for this view, in that those who have claimed objective validity for what others dismiss as purely subjective experiences have often themselves been equally undiscriminating.

Even this book might lead a critic who confined his perusal to the headings of the chapters to imagine that dreams form a corner-stone of the argument; and in admitting that topic at all, we have so far laid ourselves open to misunderstanding. Thus a distinguished foreign critic of our efforts thought the subjective nature of what we regard as telepathic incidents sufficiently proved by the suggestion that "any physician will consider it quite within the bounds of probability that one per cent of the population of the country are subject to remarkably vivid dreams, illusions, visions, etc.," and that each of these persons is "subject to a dream or vision once a week." 1 It is obvious enough that in circles whose members have former's death by drowning, and while the latter was apparently in a swoon, opines that the swoon was the cause of the apparition; and Ferriar, who agrees with the Abbe in this, and adds, "I know from my own experience that the approach of syncope is sometimes attended with a spectral appearance," agrees with him also in leaving the little detail of the drowning wholly out of account. So with respect to the story told by Baronius, of the appearance of Ficino, at the time of his death, to Michael Mercato, who was studying philosophy.

Ferriar (instead of making inquiry into the evidence of dates, which would show the story to be spurious) explains that Mercato's study of philosophy may have revived the idea of his friend in a vivid manner. It would certainly be a very vivid manner that could kill the friend at a distance.

1 Another trap lies in the word hallucination (see pp. 286-7); which in this book is strictly limited to sensory affections, but which common usage often applies to purely mental errors. But for this equivoque, an eminent physiologist would perhaps hardly have thought he made a point against us in the remark - a rather rash one from any point of view - that our evidence is manifestly derived for the most part "from a class of persons given to hallucination, especially clergymen and women, who are naturally inclined to believe marvels." (Deutsche Rundschau for Jan., 1886, p. 45.) Among 509 informants from whom I have received accounts of apparently subjective hallucinations of sight and hearing, I find the proportion of females to males almost exactly 3 to 2, and clergymen most sparsely represented. Of the 527 percipients concerned in the hallucinations of sight and hearing which are included "spectral illusions" of their friends as often as once a week, the approximate coincidence of one of these experiences with the death of the corresponding person will be an insignificant accident.

But we have not ourselves met with any specimen of this class; and the present collection [i.e. in the original edition] comprises first-hand accounts of recognised apparitions, closely coinciding with the death of the original, from 109 percipients, of whom only a small minority can recall having experienced even a single other visual hallucination than the apparition in question.1 Once again, then, let me repeat that, though this work connects the sleeping and the waking phenomena in their theoretic and psychological aspects, it carefully and expressly separates them in their demonstrational aspect. The extent to which either class demonstrates the reality of telepathy can only be known through the application of the doctrine of chances; but the application must be made to them separately, not together; we must not, like Lord Brougham, argue to one class from the data of the other. I have already applied the doctrine to a particular class of dreams, with results which, though numerically striking, left room for doubt, owing to the peculiar untrustworthiness of memory in dream-matters. It remains to apply it to the waking phantasms; and here I think that the results may fairly be held to be decisive.