§ 10. The parallelism between telepathic and purely subjective hallucinations has now been traced out in the most essential particulars. To the five heads of resemblance enumerated in the last chapter (p. 322), the present chapter has added the various modes of gradual development, and of original or fantastic embodiment; the special point with respect to luminosity (p. 359); and the general but not invariable limitation of the percept to a single human figure (p. 356). I may note further the interesting negative characteristic that (with very rare exceptions) neither subjective disturbances nor transferred impressions seem to produce visual hallucinations representing a person who is actually present with the percipient at the time.1 One fails at first sight to see why this should be. If preoccupation of the percipient's mind with the person seen is to go for anything in the subjective cases, is not the mind often completely preoccupied with a person who is present? and if rapport is to go for anything in the telepathic cases, is not rapport often at its maximum of strength with a person who is present? I suppose the explanation must be analogous to the reason why the stars are not visible by day; and that vision of friends who are absent depends on a vague sense of remoteness and abstraction in relation to them, the possibility of which is swamped by their presence.

The possibility seems, indeed, to be to some extent affected by the presence of any companion - a large majority of hallucinations, alike of purely subjective and of telepathic origin, taking place when the percipient is alone.

Various other points of frequent or occasional resemblance between the two classes remain, which have been noted or will be noted as they occur in the examples, and need here only be briefly summarised. Such are the various degrees of externalisation, and of apparent solidity or tenuity;2 rudimentary appearances;3 fragmentary appearances;4 rapid repetitions;5 movement in the figures seen;6 gradual disappearance;7 special modes of disappearance;8 disappearance on sudden speech or gesture;9 response of the phantasmal voice to words of the hallucinated person; l the fact that the hallucination is unshared by other persons who may be in the hallucinated person's company or vicinity; 2 and the fact that every now and then the liability to either type of hallucination seems hereditary.-

1 I have encountered only seven instances of the kind, two of which are described later (p. 425, note, and p. 494). The negative fact is worth pointing out; but positive instances (unless perchance "collective," like case 333) would, of course, be more naturally interpreted as purely subjective, on the analogy of after-images (p. 326), than as telepathic.

2 Pp. 305-9, 312, 394-7.

3 Chap. xiv., § 4.

4 Pp. 325; 393, note; and see cases 161, 240.

5 P. 261.

6 This feature is so common, in both classes, that I need hardly call special attention to it where it occurs. In this chapter alone, for instance, we have encountered it in cases - Nos. 199, 202, 215.

7 See above, p. 338, and p. 432.

8 See p. 272, note.

9 See p. 427, second note.

Of still greater importance are the contrasts that exist between the phenomena of the two classes; e.g., the great superiority in number of visual over auditory cases in the telepathic class, which is the reverse of what obtains in the purely subjective;4 and the large proportion, in the purely subjective class, of unrecognised phantasms, which are decidedly exceptional in the telepathic. But these points of contrast are chiefly interesting as bearing on a larger question which I can now no longer defer - the question whether the cases presented as telepathic can reasonably be regarded as more than merely accidental coincidences; and they will find their appropriate place in the next chapter.

1 P. 302. [The instances of this in telepathic hallucinations referred to by Gurney are all in the Supplement - here omitted. - Ed].

2 e.g., eases 28, 34, 242, 274, 307, 329, 355. The cases where the experience affects more than one person will be discussed in Chap. xviii., and may perhaps be found to supply a fresh point of resemblance between hallucinations of subjective and of telepathic origin.

3 [As pointed out by Gurney, possible instances of family susceptibility to telepathic influence are eases 14 and 15; and several of the collective eases. Instances of separate experiences by different members of families appeared in the original edition, but are not reproduced here. Gurney adds: - ] My collection of casual subjective hallucinations of the sane includes 4 cases where a parent and child have been affected at different times. In one of these cases (received from Mrs. Freese, of Granite Lodge, Chislehurst) the son's vision nearly reproduced the one which his mother had experienced years before.

4 [This preponderance of auditory over visual hallucinations, was not found in the more extensive "census of hallucinations" subsequently made, and reported on in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. x. I have therefore, for the sake of brevity, omitted from the next chapter Gurney's discussion of its bearing on the theory of chance-coincidence. - Ed].