§ 14. We see, then, that cases where the alleged correspondence of facts and coincidence of dates are sufficiently close to afford a prima facie presumption of telepathic action may present very various degrees of strength and weakness; and it may be convenient to summarise the evidential conditions according to their value, in the following tabular form. (The words "the news" mean always the news of what has befallen the supposed agent).

1[In a footnote Gurney describes eight. - Ed].

A. Where the event which befell the agent, with its date, is recorded in printed notices, or contemporary documents which we have examined,* or is reported to us by the agent himself independently, or by some independent witnesses or witness; and where -

(1) The percipient (a) made a written record of his experience, with its date, at the time of its occurrence, which record we have either seen or otherwise ascertained to be still in existence; or (b before the arrival of the news, mentioned his experience to one or more persons, by whom the fact that he so mentioned it is corroborated; or (c) immediately adopted a special course of action on the strength of his experience, as is proved by external evidence, documentary or personal.

(2) The documentary evidence mentioned in (1a) and (1b) is alleged to have existed, but has not been accessible to our inspection; or the experience is alleged to have been mentioned as in (1b), or the action taken on the strength of it to have been remarked as in (1c), but owing to death or other causes, the person or persons to whom the experience was mentioned, or by whom the action was remarked, can no longer corroborate the fact.

This second class of cases is placed here for convenience, but should probably rank below the next class. At the same time the fact that the percipient's experience was noted in writing by him, or was communicated to another person, or was acted on, before the arrival of the news, is not one which is at all specially likely to be unconsciously invented by him afterwards.

(3) The percipient did not (a) make any written record, nor (b) make any verbal mention of his experience until after the arrival of the news, but then did one or both; of which fact we have confirmation.

This class is of course, as a rule, decidedly inferior to the first class. At the same time, cases occur under it in which the news was so immediate that the fact of the coincidence could only be impugned by representing the whole story as an invention.1

(4) The immediate record or mention on the arrival of the news is alleged to have been made, but owing to loss of papers, death of friends, or other causes, cannot be confirmed.

(5) The percipient alleges that he remarked the coincidence when he heard the news; but no record or mention of the circumstance was made until some time afterwards.

Such cases, of course, rapidly lose any value they may have as the time increases which separates the account from the incident. Still, sometimes we have been able to obtain the independent evidence of some one who heard an account previous to the present report to us; or we have ourselves obtained two reports separated by a considerable interval. And where a comparison of accounts given at different times shows that they do not vary, this is to some extent an indication of accuracy.

1 See, for instance, case 17, pp. 132-3.

B. Where the percipient is our sole authority for the nature and date of the event which he alleges to have befallen the agent.

In many of these cases, the percipient is also our sole authority for his own experience; and the evidence under this head will then be weaker than in any of the above classes. But where we have independent testimony of the percipient's mention of the two events, and of their coincidence, soon after their occurrence - he having been at the time in such circumstances that he would naturally know the nature and date of what had befallen the agent - the case may rank as higher in value than some of those of Class A (5).

§ 15. The evidence which I have so far analysed is first-hand evidence - in the sense that the main account comes to us direct from the percipient. The present collection, however [i.e. that in the original edition], includes (in the Supplement) a certain number of second-hand narratives; and it will be well, therefore, to consider briefly what are the best sorts of second-hand evidence, and what kinds of inaccuracy are most to be apprehended in the transmission of telepathic history from mouth to mouth.

There is one, and only one, sort of second-hand evidence which can on the whole be placed on a par with first-hand; namely, the evidence of a person who has been informed of the experience of the percipient while the latter was still unaware of the corresponding event; and who has had equal opportunities with the percipient for learning the truth of that event, and confirming the coincidence. The second-hand witness's testimony in such a case is quite as likely to be accurate as the percipient's; for though his impression of the actual details will no doubt be less vivid, yet on the other hand he will not be under the same temptation to exaggerate the force or strangeness of the impression in subsequent retrospection. Specimens of this class have therefore been admitted to the body of the work, as well as to the Supplement. Putting this exceptional class aside, the value of second-hand evidence chiefly depends on the relation of the first narrator to the second. A second-hand account from a person only slightly acquainted with the original narrator is of very little value; not only because it is probably the report of a story which has been only once heard, and that, perhaps, in a hurried or casual way; but also because the less the reporter's sense of responsibility to his informant, the less also will be his sense of responsibility to the facts, and the greater the temptation to improve on the original.

But we cannot so lightly dismiss the testimony of near relatives and close friends to a matter which they have heard the first-hand witness narrate more than once, or narrate in such a manner as convinced them that the alleged facts were to him realities, and had made a lasting impression on his mind. Here we at any rate have a chance of forming a judgment as to the character of the original authority; we can make tolerably certain that what we hear was never the mere anecdote of a raconteur; and we have grounds for assuming in our own informants a certain instinct of fidelity which may at any rate preserve their report from the errors of wilful carelessness and exaggeration. It not infrequently happens, too, that we can obtain several independent versions from several second-hand witnesses which may mutually confirm one another; and contemporary documentary evidence may give further support to the case.

[The author proceeds to discuss and illustrate at some length the risks of error in transmitted evidence. The discussion, though both instructive and interesting, is omitted here for the sake of brevity. - Ed].

It would, however, not be fair to leave this list of causes which diminish the amount of presentable second-hand evidence, without adding that of the more reliable sort of second-hand (no less than of first-hand) cases. A considerable number are withheld from publication from motives with which it is hard altogether to sympathise. Persons who have a really accurate knowledge of some incident in which a deceased relative has been concerned, and who - seeing that the incident did no dishonour to any one's head or heart - have no scruple in publishing it at casual dinner-parties, become sometimes almost morbidly scrupulous when there is a question of making it available, even in an anonymous form, for a scientific purpose.