§ 1. In Chapter XII (The Development Of Telepathic Hallucinations), a good many specimens of telepathic phantasms were quoted, in illustration of certain special points; and particularly as showing what part in the phenomena we may attribute to the obscure action of the agent's and of the percipient's mind respectively, and how the original impulse may become modified in transitu. A still larger number of cases remain, of which only a few present specially noticeable characteristics of dress, or development, or phantasmal imagery; but which have their share with the others in the cumulative proof of telepathy, and include, moreover, several fresh features and types. The present chapter will be devoted to visual examples.

In the "General Sketch of Hallucinations" (pp. 305-8 and 312), I mentioned the various degrees of externalisation that the phenomena may present; beginning with the ideal picture which is not a sensory hallucination at all - which is realised as a purely internal impression, as seen by the "mind's eye"; and ending with the actual percept, which, though equally the product of the percipient's mind, seems to take its place in the external world on a par with all the other objects within his range of vision. Now between these first and last stages there seems a wide gap; and if our review of telepathic incidents had to pass at one step from the vivid pictures flashed from mind to mind, to the phantasmal figure "out in the room," there might be a certain difficulty in conceiving two such different-seeming phenomena as having a similar origin. It is satisfactory, then, to be able to point to several intermediate stages. That such stages are found in the telepathic, as well as in the purely subjective or pathological, class of phantasms, is only a fresh indication that telepathic phantasms, in spite of their peculiar origin, are worked (so to speak) by the ordinary mechanism of hallucination.

The percipient may himself [in looking back] be doubtful as to the degree of externality that the phantasmal appearance had, but I should regard this indistinctness of memory as a tolerably sure sign that the impression was not of the truly sensory (that is, of the most unique and startling) sort, but rather a vivid mental picture of the type noticed in p. 151, and further exemplified in the 6th chapter. [Case 218, illustrating this, is here omitted.] In the stage next above this, the observer may still find it hard to say whether what impresses him is purely ideal, or whether his sense-organs are partly concerned - there being a sense of externality, but not exactly a projection into the surrounding world.

Case 66 [in Chapter VI (Transference Of Ideas And Of Mental Pictures), not here quoted] was really an example in point - the scene having apparently been something more than a vivid mental picture but not confounded with the objective world, or located in the actual place where the percipient was at the time. Very similar is an experience which befell a master at a large public school, in the summer of 1874 or 1875. Having been detained at home while a party of boys, accompanied by some masters and ladies, made a steamer excursion, he was, he says:

(219) "Standing vacantly at the door of his house, doubtless thinking of the absentees and conjecturing how they were then employed. Suddenly he seemed to see a boy slip, when crossing the landing stage from the quay to the vessel, and fall into the water, wounding his mouth as he fell. There the vision ended. Mr. A. [the narrator] returned to his work, in which he was absorbed, until the return of Mrs. A.; but so vivid was the impression on his mind of the reality of the occurrence that he had looked at his watch and noted the time exactly.

"On his wife's return Mr. A. at once said to her, ' Did you get that boy out of the water? '

"Oh, yes; there was no harm done beyond the fright. But how should you know anything about it? I am the first to arrive; they are walking. I drove'.

. " ' Well, how about his lip? Was it badly cut? '

"' It was not hurt at all; you know X. has a harelip'.

"Mr. A. has no explanation to offer: these are the facts".

[Mr. A. was under the impression that the coincidence was precise. But the time of the vision was about 7 p.m.; and we learn from the wife of the head-master, who was present, that the accident occurred before luncheon; therefore, if telepathic, the case was one of the deferred class. This lady remembers that some of the party were afraid that the boy had cut his face, till the fact of the harelip was recalled. If we suppose the agent to have been Mrs. A., then the impression of the scene would seem to have been transferred, so to speak, ready-made - and to have received no development from the percipient].

The following case, though undoubtedly sensory, seems still to belong to a somewhat indescribable stage of visualisation. If interpreted as telepathic, it is further of interest as illustrating that rarer type where the phantasm is not merely representative of the agent, but visibly reproduces some actual percept or idea which is prominently present at the time to the agent's consciousness (see Chapter XII (The Development Of Telepathic Hallucinations), beginning of § 5). The account is from Mr. F. Gottschalk, of 20, Adamson Road, Belsize Park, N.W., and is dated February 12th, 1886.

(220) Mr. Gottschalk begins by describing a friendship which he formed with Mr. Courtenay Thorpe, at the rooms of Dr. Sylvain Mayer, on the evening of February 20th, 1885. On February 24th, being anxious to hear a particular recitation which Mr. Thorpe was shortly going to give, Mr. Gottschalk wrote to him, at the Prince's Theatre, to ask what the hour of the recitation was to be. "In the evening I was going out to see some friends, when on the road there seemed suddenly to develop itself before me a disc of light, which appeared to be on a different plane to everything else in view. It was not possible for me to fix the distance at which it seemed to be from me.1Examining the illumined space, I found that two hands were visible. They were engaged in drawing a letter from an envelope which I instinctively felt to be mine and, in consequence, thought immediately that the hands were those of Mr. Thorpe. I had not previously been thinking of him, but at the moment the conviction came to me with such intensity that it was irresistible. Not being in any way awe-struck by the extraordinary nature and novelty of this incident, but in a perfectly calm frame of mind, I examined the picture, and found that the hands were very white, and bared up to some distance above the wrist.