The next case was one of collective percipience; but its best place is in the present chapter. The full names of the persons concerned may be mentioned, but not printed. Mrs. S., one of the percipients, writes: -

"April, 1883.

(308) "A and B2 are two villages in Norfolk, distant about five miles from each other. At the time of the occurrence about to be related, the clergymen of these parishes both bore the same name, though there was no relationship between them; at the same time there was a great friendship between the two families. On the 20th February, 1870, a daughter, Constance, about 14 years old, of the clergyman of A, was staying with the other family - a daughter, Margaret, in that family, being her great friend. Edward W., the eldest son of the Rector of A, was at that time lying dangerously ill at home with inflammation of the lungs, and was frequently delirious. On the day mentioned, at about noon, Margaret and Constance were in the garden of B Rectory, running down a path which was separated by a hedge from an orchard adjoining; they distinctly heard themselves called twice, apparently from the orchard, thus:'Connie, Margaret - Connie, Margaret.' They stopped, but could see no one, and so went to the house, a distance of about 40 yards, concluding that one of Margaret's brothers had called them from there.

But to their surprise they found that this was not the case; and Mrs. W., Margaret's mother, assured the girls no one had called them from the house, and they therefore concluded they must have been mistaken in supposing they had heard their names repeated. This appeared to be the only explanation of the matter, and nothing more was thought of it.

1I should further conjecture one of the conditions of Mrs. Parker's percipience to have been the fact that she was actually contemplating the scene in which Mr. S. seemed to find himself (see pp. 514-16).

2These letters are substituted for those actually given for the sake of clearness. The names of the villages were not suppressed in the accounts that follow; but as they were suppressed in this first one, it has been thought right to suppress them throughout.

"That evening Constance returned to her home at A. On the following day, Mrs. W. drove over to inquire for the sick boy Edward. In the course of conversation, his mother said that the day before he had been delirious, and had spoken of Constance and Margaret, that he had called to them in his delirium, and had then said, ' Now I see them running along the hedge, but directly I call them they run towards the house.' Mrs. W., of B, at once called to mind the mystery of the previous day, and asked, ' Do you know at what time that happened? ' Edward's mother replied that it was at a few minutes past 12, for she had just given the invalid his medicine, 12 being his hour for taking it. So these words were spoken by Edward at the same time at which the two girls had heard themselves called, and thus only could the voice from the orchard be accounted for. "M. K. S".

(The "Margaret" of the narrative).

The following statement is from Mrs. R., the "Constance" of the narrative.

"Sept. 1884.

"Margaret and I were walking in some fields at B, away from the road, but not very far from the house. Here I heard a voice call' Connie and Margaret' clearly and distinctly. I should not have identified it with Ted's voice [i.e., her brother's at A], for we thought it was one of the B brothers at the time, till we found no one had called us. I remember that it was before early dinner, and that I was expecting to be fetched home that same morning, because of Ted's illness; and that Mrs. W. thought of asking mother if Ted had mentioned our names in any way, before she told her of what had passed at B. I ought to add that an explanation of the story might be found in the conduct of some B plough-boy, playing a trick upon us. The situation was such that he might easily have kept out of sight behind a hedge. "C. E. R".

Mr. Podmore says: -

"November 26th, 1883.

"I saw Mrs. R. yesterday. She told me that they recognised the voice vaguely as a well-known one at the time. She thinks that the coincidence in time was quite exact, because Mrs. W. of B made a note of the circumstance immediately. Her brother - an old school-fellow of mine - cannot recollect the incident at all".

[If a written note was made, the girls' experience must have seemed odder than the "nothing more was thought of it" in Mrs. S.'s account would imply].

Mrs. W. of A says: -

"My son was about 17 years old. He had had fever and inflammation, and was weakened by illness. It was about 12 o'clock. I was sitting with him, after his washing and dressing, and he seemed quiet and sleepy, but not asleep. He suddenly sprang forward, pointed his finger, with arms outstretched, and called out in a voice the loudness of which astonished me, 'Connie and Margaret!' with a stress on each name, 'near the hedge,' looked wildly at them, and then sank down, tired. I thought it odd at the time, but, considering it a sort of dream, did not allude to it. The next day, Mrs. W. called with Connie and Margaret, and said the girls had heard their names called; had run home; were walking by a hedge in their field, had found no one had called them from B Rectory. The voice sounded familiar, but as far as I can remember - my daughter will say - it was not distinctly thought to be Edward's. I at once told my story, as it was too striking not to be named. They said it was about 12 o'clock. Though he was constantly delirious in the evening, when the pulse rose, he was never so in the middle of the day, and there was no appearance of his being so at the time this occurred. "M. A. W".

Mrs. W. of B says: -

"August, 1884.

"Connie was staying with us on account of the' illness of her brother Edward, and had - with Margaret - been reading with me one morning. At about 11.30 they went into the garden to play (they were girls of about 13 and 14), and in half an hour came up to the window to know what I wanted. I said 'Nothing,' and that I had not called them, though they had heard both their names called repeatedly, I asked them where they were when they heard it, and they said in the next walk - which, you will remember, is formed on one side by the orchard hedge. Margaret said directly, ' There, Connie; I said it was not mother's, but a boy's voice.' Then I turned to look at the clock - for we had some boys as pupils then - and I said, 'It would not be one of the boys, for they are not out of the study; it is now 12 o'clock, and I hear them coming out'.

"I was to take Connie home that afternoon,1 and, on arriving, of course my first question was, 'How was Edward? ' Mrs. W. told me that he had not been so well, and had been very delirious. She said that morning he had been calling, 'Margaret! Connie! Margaret! Connie! Oh, they are running by a hedge, and won't listen to me.' I did not say what had happened at home, but asked if she knew at what time this had so distressed him. She said 'Yes'; for she had looked at the clock, hoping it was nearly time to give him his medicine, which always quieted him, and was thankful to find it was just 12 o'clock".

Here we seem to have, on the part of the two girls, a telepathic hallucination, reproducing the exact words that were in the mouth and ear of the sick boy; and, on his part, a vision reflected from their minds, and once more illustrating how what might be described as clairvoyance may be a true variety of thought-transference. The suggestion at the end of Mrs. R.'s account must not be overlooked; but I should be glad to know of precedents for hidden plough-boys calling out the Christian names of clergymen's daughters and their friends. Nor do I quite see how such a freak could merit the designation of a "trick"; it would surely be a mere piece of aimless and pointless rudeness - unless, indeed, the plough-boy was enjoying a telepathic chuckle at the idea that his cry might be confounded with another, which was being simultaneously uttered five miles off.

1 The other accounts make it probable that it was not till next day that Mrs. W. of B went to A.

It will be seen that the number of these reciprocal cases (even with the addition of those in the Supplement) is small - so small that the genuineness of the type might fairly enough be called in question. There is some danger that our view of the rarer telepathic phenomena may be unduly affected by the sense of certainty that gradually and reasonably forms with regard to the broad fact of telepathy itself. The argument for the reality of telepathy, we must remember, depends on a mass of narratives so large as to make a universal error in the essential point of all or nearly all of them exceedingly improbable; and is not available in respect of peculiar features, which are present in only a very small proportion of the alleged cases. For these, the various possibilities of error so fully discussed in the general sketch of the evidence (Chapter IV (General Criticism Of The Evidence For Spontaneous Telepathy)) may seem quite sufficient to account; and the greater the theoretic interest of the peculiarities, the more jealously must their individual claims be scrutinised. As to reciprocality, the reader will form his own opinion. That the examples should be few, as compared with those of the simpler telepathic types, cannot at this stage of our inquiry seem unnatural.

For if, amid all the apparent opportunities that human lives present, the unknown and probably transient conditions of telepathic percipience and of telepathic agency only occasionally chance to coincide, so as to produce a telepathic phenomenon at all (pp. 419-20); and if, of the two, the conditions of percipience are the rarer, as experimental thought-transference would lead us to suppose; then the complete conditions of a reciprocal case must be rare among the rare. Still, if they have occurred, they will occur again. If my colleagues and I are right in supposing the type to be a genuine one, we ought to obtain, as time goes on, some more well-attested specimens of it; and to this we look forward with considerable confidence.