Even minor points may detract from the businesslike look of the work. Informants whose evidence is otherwise satisfactory sometimes feel it a sort of mysterious duty to throw a veil over something - if it is only to put C - for Clapham. A dash is the last refuge of the occult. We must not be held to be blind to these blots because we have printed the evidence in which they occur. But the case, as it stands, seemed worth presenting, and the time for presenting it seemed to have arrived. Even if it be weaker than we think it, there is the future as well as the past to think of. By far the greater part of the telepathic evidence, even of the last twenty years, has undoubtedly perished, for all scientific purposes; we want the account for the next twenty years to be different. But it is only by a decided change in the attitude of the public mind towards the subject that the passing phenomena can be caught and fixed; and it is only by a wider knowledge of what there already is to know that this change can come about. Thus our best chance of a more satisfactory harvest hereafter is to exhibit our sheaf of gleanings now.

If telepathy is a reality, examples of it may be trusted to go on occurring; and with the increase of intelligent interest in psychical research we may hope that the collection and verification of good first-hand evidence will gradually become easier, and that the necessity of careful contemporary records, and of complete attestation, will be more widely perceived.

1The suppressed names have in all cases [with seven exceptions in the Supplement as explained in Gurney's Additions and Corrections - Ed.] been given to us in confidence; and in some instances with permission to mention them to any persona who have any bond fide interest in the subject. Purely anonymous cases can of course have no weight at all.

§ 20. Meanwhile it may be just worth while to forestall an objection - which, as it has been made before, may be made again - to the argument from numbers. It has been urged that no accumulation of instances can make up a solid case, if no individual instance can be absolutely certified as free from flaw. But the different items of inductive proof are, of course, not like the links of a deductive chain. The true metaphor is the sticks and the faggot; and our right to treat any particular case as a stick depends, not on its being so flawlessly strong, as evidence for our hypothesis, that no other hypothesis can possibly be entertained with regard to it, but the much humbler fact that any other hypothesis involves the assumption of something in itself improbable. Third-hand ghost-stories, and the ordinary examples of popular superstitions, have no claim to be regarded as sticks at all, since the rejection of the popular explanation of them involves no improbable assumptions of any kind; at best they are dry reeds, and no multiplication of their number could ever make a respectable faggot.

But in every one of the examples on which we rest the telepathic hypothesis, the rejection of that hypothesis does, as I have pointed out, involve the assumption of something in itself improbable; and every such example adds to the cumulative force of the argument for telepathy. The multiplication of such examples, therefore, makes a faggot of ever-increasing solidity.

When made explicit, this seems too plain to be denied; but an extreme case may perhaps make the point even clearer. If, since the world began, nobody had ever died without a phantasm of him appearing to one or more of his friends, the joint occurrence of the two events would have been a piece of universally recognised knowledge; of the cause of which we should to this day possibly not know more, and could not possibly know less, than we know of the cause of gravitation. Nor, if the attestation had been forthcoming in the case of only half the deaths, would its significance have been much more likely to be disputed; nor if it had been forthcoming in the case of a quarter, or a tenth, or even a hundredth of the number. But those who admit this, practically admit that there is a conceivable number of well-attested cases which they would regard as conclusive evidence of telepathy. We may ask them, then, to name their number; and if they do so, we may not unreasonably proceed to inquire the grounds of their selection. A writer on the subject lately named 5000 as the mark; but can he make his reasons explicit for considering 5000 as conclusive, and 4000, or even 1000, as inconclusive? In course of time we hope that his minimum may be reached; but any limit must be to a great extent arbitrary.

We shall be content if impartial readers, who do not feel convinced that an adequate inductive proof has been attained, are yet brought to see that our object and method are scientifically defensible; while we, on our side, fully admit that the adequacy of the present collection does not admit of demonstration, and are perfectly willing that it should be regarded as only a first imperfect instalment of what is needed.

§ 21. Perhaps, after all, the differences of instinct as to what really is needed may be considerably less than at first sight appears. For we have not been able to regard the alleged phenomena in the completely detached fashion which most of those who consider them naturally adopt. We are unable to determine how far the impression on our own minds of the evidence for spontaneous telepathy has been dependent on our conviction of the genuineness of cognate experimental cases. These latter being for the most part trivial, recent, and little known, it is not surprising that comparatively few persons should have considered them, and that still fewer should have grasped their bearing on the spontaneous cases. But to anyone who accepts the experimental results, the a priori presumption against other forms of supersensuous communication can hardly retain its former aspect. The presumption is diminished - the hospitality of the mind to such phenomena is increased - in a degree which is none the less important that it does not admit of calculation. A further step of about equal importance is made when we advance to the better-evidenced of the transitional cases; though here again the effect on our own minds, due to our knowledge of the persons concerned, cannot be imparted to others.

Attention has been duly drawn to the difficulty of embracing these several classes in a common physical conception; but on psychological ground we cannot doubt that we are justified (provisionally at any rate) in regarding them as continuous. Remembering the existence of the transitional class, we may regard the extremes as not more remote from one another than the electrical phenomena of the cat's coat from those of the firmament. Electricity, indeed, affords in this way a singularly close parallel to telepathy. "The spontaneous apparitions of the dying" (I quote Mr. Myers' words) "may stand for the lightning; while the ancient observations on the attraction of amber for straw may fairly be paralleled by our modest experiments with cards and diagrams. The spontaneous phenomena, on the one hand, have been observed in every age, but observed with mere terror and bewilderment. And, on the other hand, candid friends have expressed surprise at our taking a serious interest in getting a rude picture from one person's mind into another, or proving that ginger may be hot in the mouth by the effect of unconscious sympathy alone.

Yet we hold that these trivial cases of community of sensation are the germinal indications of a far-reaching force, whose higher manifestations may outshine these as the lightning outshines the sparks on Puss's back. We hold that the lowest telepathic manifestations may be used to explain and corroborate the highest." Their conditions differ widely; so widely, indeed, as to supply indirectly an argument for the genuineness of the facts, since totally distinct and independent hypotheses - that of collusion in the one case, and of forget fulness or exaggeration in the other - would be needed to refute them. Yet, with all this difference of conditions, when we compare the facts of either class with any facts which the accepted psychology includes, we cannot help recognising the great common characteristic - a supersensuous influence of mind on mind - as a true generic bond. Where that characteristic is found, there we have a natural group of phenomena which differ far more fundamentally from all other known phenomena than they can possibly differ among themselves. Their unity is found in contrast.

Till more is known of their causes, it may be impossible for science to establish their inner relationships, just as it is impossible to establish the degrees of affinity between casually selected members of a single human community. But they draw together, so to speak, on the field of science, even as men of one race draw together when cast among an alien population.