Each case must be judged on its merits, by reference to a considerable number of points; and, as far as written testimony goes, the reader will have the same opportunities as we have had for forming an opinion. We have done our best to obtain corroborative evidence of all sorts, whether from private sources, from public notices, or from official records. We have often failed; and these failures, and other evidential flaws, have been brought into (I fear) wearisome prominence. In quotations, care has, of course, been taken to give the exact words of witnesses. The only exceptions are that (1) we have occasionally omitted reflections and other matter which formed no part of the evidence; and (2) we have corrected a few obvious slips of writing, and introduced an occasional word for the sake of grammatical coherence, where the narrative has come to us piecemeal, or where the above-named omissions have been made. But in no case have we made the slightest alteration of meaning, or omitted anything that could by any possibility be held to modify the account given. A few cases have been summarised, in whole or in part; but here the form of the sentences will show that they are not quotations.

Any word or phrase interpolated for other than grammatical reasons is clearly distinguished by being placed within square brackets.

1There are, however, a few first-hand cases in the Supplement which would have found a place in the main body of the work (in substitution probably for some which now appear there), had they been received earlier.

One advantage, however, which we ourselves have had, cannot be communicated to our readers - namely, the increased power of judgment which a personal interview with the narrator gives. The effect of these interviews on our own minds has been on the whole distinctly favourable. They have greatly added to our confidence that what we are here pre-senting is the testimony of trustworthy and intelligent witnesses. And if the collection be taken as a whole, this seems to be a sufficient guarantee. It follows from the very nature of telepathic cases (as distinguished, say, from the alleged phenomena of "ghost-seeing" or of "Spiritualism") that the evidence often in great measure, so to speak, makes itself - the agent's side in the matter being beyond dispute. Thus a valid case, as has been shown above, might perfectly well rest on the testimony of a person whose own interpretation of it was totally erroneous, and whose intelligence and memory were only adequate to reporting truthfully that he thought he saw so-and-so in his room yesterday or the day before. But we have naturally preferred to be on the safe side.

We have, therefore, excluded all narratives where, on personal acquaintance with the witnesses, we felt that we should be uneasy in confronting them with a critical cross-examiner; and we have frequently thought it right to exclude cases, otherwise satisfactory, that depended on the reports of uneducated persons. Nor, I think, will the reader find much to suggest perversion of facts through superstitious a priori fancies. The greater part of our witnesses, as already stated, have had no special belief in the phenomena, except so far as they have themselves come in contact with them; and even where their interest has been awakened, it has seldom been of a more intense kind than might naturally be excited by a remarkable passage of personal or family experience. They have not, for instance, been at all in the attitude towards the subject which is now ours, and which it is hoped that the reader may come to share. Thus even on this score, their common sense, in the ordinary straightforward meaning of the term, could hardly be impugned. Perhaps even so general a testimony to character as this is somewhat of an impertinence; to give it precision in particular cases would, as a rule, be out of the question.

But however little weight such an expression of opinion may have, the mere statement that we are, in the large majority of cases, personally acquainted with our witnesses, has a distinct bearing on the evidence; for it practically implies that they gave us their account in such a way that their good faith is pledged to it.

§ 17. But there is quantity as well as quality to consider: the basis of our demonstration needs to be broad as well as strong. We might have a few correspondences perfect in every detail, a few coincidences precise to the moment, established by evidence which was irresistible; and pure accident might still be the true explanation of them. Later, however, it will be proved, as I think, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that that line cannot be taken in respect of the several hundreds of coincidences included in these volumes. And the majority of persons who regard the book from an evidential point of view, and who start with the legitimate d priori prejudice against the whole class of phenomena, will certainly take other ground. They will take exception to the evidence as it stands, They will not be concerned to deny that there would be an enormously strong case for the reality of telepathy, supposing the correspondences and coincidences to have occurred exactly as stated; but they will take the ground that they did not so occur; and will frame various hypotheses, according to which it should be possible that the evidence should be thus, and the facts otherwise.

Now not only is the endeavour to frame such hypotheses legitimate: it has been throughout an indispensable part of our own work. Even improbable hypotheses ought to be carefully considered; for we have no desire to underrate the d priori improbability of our own hypotheses of telepathy. It is extremely difficult to compare the improbability of any particular combination of known conditions with the improbability of the existence of a hitherto unknown condition. But the point on which we desire to lay stress is the number of improbable hypotheses that will have to be propounded if the telepathic explanation is rejected. Of course, this point may be evaded by including all the hypotheses needed in a single sweeping assumption, as to the general untrustworthiness of human testimony. This mode of argument would be perfectly legitimate if we were presenting a collection of unsifted second and third hand stories; but it will scarcely seem equally so in application to what we do present. The evidence (or at any rate a very large amount of it) is of a sort which merits attention, even from those who most fully share the views that I have endeavoured to express as to the chances of error in the records of unusual occurrences.

It cannot be summarily dismissed; if it is to be got rid of, it must be explained away in detail. And it is the continued process of attempts to explain away which may, we think, produce on others the same cumulative effect as it has produced on ourselves. The attempts have been made on the lines already sketched; and so far as any reader agrees that the risks and vulnerable points have been carefully considered in the abstract, he may be willing provisionally to accept an assurance that a similar careful and rationally sceptical mode of examination has been applied to the concrete instances. The work is, no doubt, wearisome; but there is no avoiding it, for anyone who wishes to form a fair independent opinion as to what the strength of the case for telepathy really is. The narratives are very various, and their force is derived from very various characteristics; the endeavour to account for them without resorting to telepathy must, therefore, be carried through a considerable number of groups, before it produces its legitimate effect on the mind. That effect arises from the number and variety of the improbable suppositions, now violent, now vague - contradictory of our experience of all sorts of human acts and human relations - that have to be made at every turn.