§ 2. Now the logical starting-point for the following inquiry will naturally be found in the cases which present most analogy to the results of experimental thought-transference. All those results, it will be remembered, were of the non-externalised type. I shall therefore start with inward impressions, ideal and emotional, and shall advance, through dreams - where each of us has, so to speak, an outer as well as an inner world of his own - to the "borderland" and waking impressions which seem to fall on the senses in an objective way from the outer world that is common to us all.

But though the impressions received by the percipient in the experimental cases had no external quality, a good many of them were distinctly sensory - one important branch being transference of pains. And if the parallel between experimental and spontaneous effects be a just one, we might fairly expect to find cases where a localised pain has been similarly transferred from one person to another at a distance. I will open this preliminary batch of narratives with just such a case, the simplest possible specimen of group C, and as pure an instance of transference of sensation, unattended by any idea or image, as can well be conceived. The parties concerned are Mr. Arthur Severn, the distinguished landscape-painter, and his wife; and the narrative was obtained through the kindness of Mr. Ruskin. Mrs. Severn says: -

"Brantwood, Coniston.

"October 27th, 1883.

(17) "I woke up with a start, feeling I had had a hard blow on my mouth, and with a distinct sense that I had been cut, and was bleeding under my upper lip, and seized my pocket-handkerchief, and held it (in a little pushed lump) to the part, as I sat up in bed, and after a few seconds, when I removed it, I was astonished not to see any blood, and only then realised it was impossible anything could have struck me there, as I lay fast asleep in bed, and so I thought it was only a dream! - but I looked at my watch, and saw it was seven, and finding Arthur (my husband) was not in the room, I concluded (rightly) that he must have gone out on the lake for an early sail, as it was so fine.

"I then fell asleep. At breakfast (half-past nine), Arthur came in rather late, and I noticed he rather purposely sat farther away from me than usual, and every now and then put his pocket-handkerchief furtively up to his lip, in the very way I had done. I said, ' Arthur, why are you doing that? ' and added a little anxiously, ' I know you have hurt yourself! but I'll tell you why afterwards.' He said, ' Well, when I was sailing a sudden squall came, throwing the tiller suddenly round, and it struck me a bad blow in the mouth, under the upper lip, and it has been bleeding a good deal and won't stop.' I then said, 'Have you any idea what o'clock it was when it happened? ' and he answered, ' It must have been about seven'.

"I then told what had happened to me, much to his surprise, and all who were with us at breakfast.

"It happened here about three years ago at Brantwood, to me.

"Joan R. Severn." In reply to inquiries Mrs. Severn writes: -

"There was no doubt about my starting up in bed wide awake, as I stuffed my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, and held it pressed under my upper lip for some time before removing it to ' see the blood,' - and was much surprised that there was none. Some little time afterwards I fell asleep again. I believe that when I got up, an hour afterwards, the impression was still vividly in my mind, and that as I was dressing I did look under my lip to see if there was any mark".

Mr. Severn's account, dated November 15th, 1883, is as follows: -

"Early one summer morning, I got up intending to go and sail on the lake; whether my wife heard me going out of the room I don't know; she probably did, and in a half-dreamy state knew where I was going.

" When I got down to the water I found it calm, like a mirror, and remember thinking it quite a shame to disturb the wonderful reflections of the opposite shore. However, I soon got afloat, and as there was no wind, contented myself with pulling up my sails to dry, and putting my boat in order. Soon some slight air came, and I was able to sail about a mile below Brantwood, then the wind dropped, and I was left becalmed for half an hour or so, when, on looking up to the head of the lake, I saw a dark blue line on the water. At first I couldn't make it out, but soon saw that it must be small waves caused by a strong wind coming. I got my boat as ready as I could, in the short time, to receive this gust, but somehow or other she was taken aback, and seemed to spin round when the wind struck her, and in getting out of the way of the boom I got my head in the way of the tiller, which also swung round and gave me a nasty blow in the mouth, cutting my lip rather badly, and having become loose in the rudder it came out and went overboard.

With my mouth bleeding, the mainsheet more or less round my neck, and the tiller gone, and the boat in confusion, I could not help smiling to think how suddenly I had been humbled almost to a wreck, just when I thought I was going to be so clever! However, I soon managed to get my tiller, and, with plenty of wind, tacked back to Brantwood, and, making my boat snug in the harbour, walked up to the house, anxious of course to hide as much as possible what had happened to my mouth, and, getting another handkerchief, walked into the breakfast-room, and managed to say something about having been out early. In an instant my wife said, 'You don't mean to say you have hurt your mouth?' or words to that effect. I then explained what had happened, and was surprised to see some extra interest on her face, and still more surprised when she told me she had started out of her sleep thinking she had received a blow in the mouth! and that it was a few minutes past seven o'clock, and wondered if my accident had happened at the same time; but as I had no watch with me I couldn't tell, though on comparing notes, it certainly looked as if it had been about the same time. "Arthur Severn".

Considering what a vivid thing pain often is, it might seem likely that this form of telepathy, if it exists, would be comparatively common, in comparison with the more ideal or intellectual forms which are connected with the higher senses. This, however, is not so. It is conceivable, of course, that instances occur which go unnoticed. For, apart from injury, even a sharp pain is soon forgotten; and unless the copy reproduced the original with excruciating fidelity, a sudden pang might be referred to some ordinary cause, and the coincidence would never be noted. We, however, can only go by what is noted. I mentioned that even in experimental trials the phenomenon has been little observed except with hypnotised "subjects "; and on the evidence we must allow its spontaneous appearance to be even rarer. The stock instance is that of the brothers, Louis and Charles Blanc, the latter of whom professed to have experienced a strong physical shock at the time that his brother was felled in the streets of Paris by (as was supposed) some Bonapartist bully. But this is a third-hand story at best; and the above is our only first-hand instance where the pain was of an unusual kind, and was very exactly localised.

It is specially for cases of this sort - most interesting to science, but with neither pathos nor dignity to keep them alive - that the chance of preservation will, we trust, be improved by the existence of a classified collection, where they may at once find their proper place.

What has been said of pains applies, mutatis mutandis, to all affections of the lower senses. In the first place, it is the exception and not the rule for the spontaneous transferences to reproduce in the percipient the exact sensation of the agent (p. 92); and, in the second place, such reproduction (or at any rate the evidence for it) seems almost wholly confined to the higher senses of sight and hearing. Thus, though we found that transference of tastes had been a very successful branch of the experimental work, we have no precisely analogous record in the spontaneous class. The nearest approach is a case which concerned the sense of smell, but where there was no direct transference of sensation as such. The case is, however, worth quoting here on another ground, as illustrating one of the evidential points of the last chapter - namely, that the strength of any evidence, in the sense of the assurance which it produces that the facts are correctly reported, is a very different thing from its strength as a contribution to the proof of telepathy.

Thus, no one probably will care to dispute the facts in the following narrative; but the coincidence recorded is little, if at all, more striking than most of us occasionally encounter; and recourse to the telepathic explanation can only be justified by our knowledge that the two persons concerned have, on other occasions, given very much more conclusive signs of their power of supersensuous communication.1 The Rev. P. H. Newnham, of Maker Vicarage, Devonport, writes to us: -

"January 26th, 1885.