One further criticism may be made as to the mental condition of those who were in any direct sense witnesses to the facts. They were invariably persons inclined to such beliefs to begin with - who had been brought up in them and had accepted them as a matter of course. We have no record of anyone who had all his life declined to admit the reality of the alleged phenomena, and who was suddenly convinced of his mistake by coming into personal contact with them.

1 Of the early records the best known is the evidence of the Pere Surin and others in respect of the hysterical epidemic in the Ursuline convent at Loudun, in 1633. But perhaps the most carefully observed case is the older one given in the Most Strange and Admirable Discovery of the Three Witches of Warboys (London, 1593), of which Sir W. Scott's account (Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 238) gives a very imperfect idea. Another example of much the same kind is given in G. More's True Discourse against S. Harsnet (London, 1600). The cases where the victim showed uneasiness when the absent witch was at large,,and relief when she was bolted, though quite inconclusive, seem occasionally to have been rationally tested. (Witchcraft further Displayed, London, 1712, p. 21; History of the Witches of Renfrewshire, Paisley, 1809, p. 134; Sadducismus Debellatus, London, 1698, p. 47.) The assertions that "possessed persons" were able to read secrets present sometimes this sign of sobriety, that the revelations are said to have concerned only past and present, not future, things (see, e.g., Lercheimer, Ein Christlich Bedenken und Erinnerung von Zauberei, Heidelberg, 1585; and Majolus, Dies Caniculares, Mainz, 1614, p. 593); but as such a power finds no parallel in the telepathy of our day, it is satisfactory rather than otherwise to find that it is supported by hardly anything that can be called evidence.

The strongest item is perhaps the testimony of Poncet to the powers of some of the convulsionnaires of St. M6dard (see Bertrand, Du Magndtisme-Animal, Paris, 1826, p. 435). Nor do the "thought-reading " stories about Somers (e.g., in Darrell's Brief Apologie and Detection, London, 1599 and 1600), and about Escot de Parme (De 1'Ancre, L'Incredulite et Mescreance du Sortilege, Paris, 1622) reach even the lowest evidential grade. It would be useless to multiply indecisive instances. If the least wretchedly-attested cases, even in the most wretched collections of witch-anecdotes, turn out to be those which admit of a telepathic explanation, yet much stronger cases might well be damned by such company. And though some of the less credulous authors, who have a real notion of natural causes and of what constitutes proof, seem to have felt the evidence for supersenuous communications to be too strong to resist (e.g., Cotta in The Infallible, True and Assured Witch, London, 1625) their general position is too wavering for their authority to have any weight.

One rises from their works feeling that this was the side of the subject which had produced on them the strongest impression of reality; and that is all that can be said.

2I am speaking - it must be remembered - of the attitude of educated and intelligent persons towards assertions which might (however loosely) be described as evidence. That such persons often showed themselves credulous and uninquiring in attaching value to mere legends and local gossip is of course true enough, but does not concern the present argument. For a justification of the above remarks, see the Note on Witchcraft at the end of this chapter. [Considerations of space have led to the omission in this edition of this very important Note, which is of considerable length. An abstract of it is retained in the Synopsis. - Ed].

§ 3. We are now in a position to perceive, by comparison, how the case stands with the evidence for telepathy which awaits examination. It would almost be sufficient to say that the comparison is an absolute contrast in respect of every point which has been mentioned. A very large number of our first-hand witnesses are educated and intelligent persons, whose sobriety of judgment has never been called in question. For the most part, moreover, they have been in no way inclined to admit the reality of the phenomena, prior to themselves encountering them. By many of them even what they themselves narrate has not been regarded with special interest; while others, who have been unable to get behind their own experience, have expressed scepticism as to the existence of the phenomena as a class.1 The facts themselves have no special affinity with any particular form of faith; they are not facts in a belief of which any one is specially brought up. And here we may contrast telepathy, not only with the comparatively modern superstition of witchcraft, but with phenomena of much older and wider acceptance - the alleged apparitions of the dead.

The continued existence of departed friends and relatives has been one of the most constant elements of religious beliefs; and that myths should grow up respecting their appearances to survivors is what might have naturally been looked for. But even in respect of the most striking sort of phenomena with which we shall here be concerned - apparitions at the time of death - we do not find in men's prevalent habits of thought, at any state of culture, elements which would be particularly likely to produce a myth on the subject. And as a matter of fact, if we go to the classes of persons whose beliefs have no special relation to evidence, we do actually find the one myth prevalent, and not the other. The idea of apparitions after death has a wide and strong hold on the popular mind; the idea of apparitions at the time either of death, or of serious crises in life, has no established vogue. Instances are, no doubt, to be met with in books of history, biography, and travel; and the range which such notices cover is itself important, as showing that the idea, though so far from universally prevalent, is for all that not in any sense a speciality of particular times or localities.