§ 8. Telepathic impressions of the sense of touch are naturally hard to establish, unless some other sense is also affected. In the cases in our collection, at all events, a mere impression of touch has rarely, if ever, been sufficiently remarkable or distinctive for purposes of evidence. The case, therefore, which I select to illustrate tactile impression is one where the sense of hearing was also concerned. And the example, as it happens, will serve a double purpose; for it will also illustrate the phenomenon of reciprocality, which, as I have said, we make the basis of a separate class (F). The narrator is again the Rev. P. H. Newnham, of whose telepathic rapport with his wife we have had such striking experimental proof, and who describes himself as "an utter sceptic, in the true sense of the word".

1 See Chap, xi., § 4.

(35) "In March, 1854, I was up at Oxford, keeping my last term, in lodgings. I was subject to violent neuralgic headaches, which always culminated in sleep. One evening, about 8 p.m., I had an unusually violent one; when it became unendurable, about 9 p.m., I went into my bedroom, and flung myself, without undressing, on the bed, and soon fell asleep.

"I then had a singularly clear and vivid dream, all the incidents of which are still as clear to my memory as ever. I dreamed that I was stopping with the family of the lady who subsequently became my wife. All the younger ones had gone to bed, and I stopped chatting to the father and mother, standing up by the fire-place. Presently I bade them goodnight, took my candle, and went off to bed. On arriving in the hall, I perceived that my fiancee had been detained downstairs, and was only then near the top of the staircase. I rushed upstairs, overtook her on the top step, and passed my two arms round her waist, under her arms, from behind. Although I was carrying my candle in my left hand, when I ran upstairs, this did not, in my dream, interfere with this gesture.

"On this I woke, and a clock in the house struck 10 almost immediately afterwards.

"So strong was the impression of the dream that I wrote a detailed account of it next morning to my fiancee.

"Crossing my letter, not in answer to it, I received a letter from the lady in question: ' Were you thinking about me, very specially, last night, just about 10 o'clock? For, as I was going upstairs to bed, I distinctly heard your footsteps on the stairs, and felt you put your arms round my waist,'

The letters in question are now destroyed, but we verified the statement made therein some years later, when we read over our old letters, previous to their destruction, and we found that our personal recollections had not varied in the least degree therefrom. The above narratives may, therefore, be accepted as absolutely accurate. "P. h. Newnham".

Asked if his wife has ever had any other hallucinations, Mr. Newnham replied, "No, Mrs. N. never had any fancy of either myself or any one else being present on any other occasion".

The following is Mrs. Newnham's account: -

"June 9th, 1884.

"I remember distinctly the circumstance which my husband has described as corresponding with his dream. I was on my way up to bed, as usual, about 10 o'clock, and on reaching the first landing I heard distinctly the footsteps of the gentleman to whom I was engaged, quickly mounting the stairs after me, and then I as plainly felt him put his arms round my waist. So strong an impression did this make upon me that I wrote the very next morning to the gentleman, asking if he had been particularly thinking of me at 10 o'clock the night before, and to my astonishment I received (at the same time that my letter would reach him) a letter from him describing his dream, in almost the same words that I had used in describing my impression of his presence.

"M. Newnham".

[It is unfortunate that the actual letters cannot be put in evidence. But Mr. Newnham's distinct statement that the letters were examined, and the coincidence verified, some years after the occurrence, strongly confirms his own and his wife's recollections of the original incident].

In this case it would, no doubt, be possible to suppose that Mr. Newn-ham was the sole agent, and that his normal dream was the source of his fiancee's abnormal hallucination. But it is at least equally natural to suppose a certain amount of reciprocal percipience - a mutual influence of the two parties on one another. We shall meet with more conclusive examples of the mutual effect further on; and it need in no way disturb our conception of telepathy. For if once the startling fact that A's mind can affect B's at a distance be admitted, there seems no a priori reason for either affirming or denying that the conditions of this affection are favourable to a reverse telepathic communication from B's mind to A's. Indeed, if in our ignorance of the nature of these conditions any sort of surmise were legitimate, it might perhaps rather lean to the probability of the reciprocal influence; and the natural question might seem to be, not why this feature is present, but why it is so generally absent.

Meanwhile it is enough to note the type, and observe that the telepathic theory, as so far evolved, will sufficiently cover it.