Now at first sight this seems strange, inasmuch as many percipients have been in quite as intimate connection with other persons as with the "agent" of their one phantasmal visitation; and some of these persons have died or have passed through a crisis similar to that to which we trace the visitation in the one instance; why then has it never been repeated? The only answer would seem to be that hallucinations, even when telepathic in origin, depend further on some exceptional condition of the percipient himself. And this answer can now be supported by the analogy of the non-telepathic class; where the conditions, unnoticed and innocuous to health as they so often are, are yet so exceptional that they may occur only once in a lifetime.

1The compatibility of sensory hallucinations, even of a very pronounced sort, with sound bodily and mental health is illustrated in the passage from Abercrombie referred to in note 4, p. 304.

The same observation will further tend, I think, to remove a certain vague prejudice which the telepathic evidence encounters in the minds of persons who have never met with an instance of hallucination of any sort. Such persons can often hardly bring themselves to conceive that a sane, healthy, waking mind can really get momentarily off the rails, and can feign voices where there is silence, and figures where there is vacancy, though ear and eye are both alert and discharging their normal functions. Even supposing transferred impressions possible, they will say, why under their influence should sound and sober senses exhibit a perfectly isolated piece of eccentricity, and just for a minute, once in a lifetime, fall victims to delusions such as we commonly associate with sick-beds and madhouses? This vague a priori objection will disappear when the statistics of transient hallucinations are better known; seeing that the isolated piece of eccentricity does undoubtedly occur - how or why we cannot say - in numbers of instances with which telepathy has nothing whatever to do.1

1This difficulty in believing that isolated cases of distinct sensory hallucination may occur to persons who are in sound bodily and mental health, was shown in some of the comments which followed Dr. Jessopp's account of his own experience ("An Antiquary's Ghost-story," in the Athenaeum for Jan. 10th, 1880); for it seemed to be thought that his narrative, as it stood, was incredible, and that he must have been dreaming. I could parallel that case with scores of others, but select the two following as of special interest. The first is from a distinguished Indian officer.

"I had been taking luncheon with some friends, and after it was over, my best proposed that I and my fellow-guest should accompany him to see some alterations he was making in his grounds. After we had been out some little time, looking at these changes, a native servant approached me with a message from my hostess, asking me to go into the house to speak to her. I at once left my friends, and accompanied the man back to the house, following him through the verandah into the room where the luncheon had been laid. There he left me, and I waited for my hostess to come, but no one appeared; so after a few minutes, I called her by name, thinking that she might not be aware that I had come in. Receiving no answer, after once again repeating her name, I walked back into the verandah, where, on entering, I.

§ 3. These characteristics, then - (1) the general absence of any obvious predisposing cause, of any assignable abnormality of mind or body, in the person affected, (2) the comparatively small number of persons affected, and (3) the very frequent uniqueness of the affection in the respective experiences of these persons - may be reckoned as distinct grounds of resemblance between the purely subjective and the telepathic classes. Another marked characteristic that they have in common is (4) the usually very brief duration of the phantasm: both sorts of affection are emphatically transient hallucinations of the sane - the majority of cases being almost momentary, and very few probably extending to half a minute. And again (5) the disproportionate number of "borderland" experiences in both classes is a fifth important common point. These five heads of resemblance are those which a broad view of the phenomena at once reveals. Our next step would naturally be to see if more detailed resemblances exist between special groups of cases in the two classes; and every common feature that we find will of course go to strengthen the conclusion that the telepathic phantasms are indeed hallucinations, and not (as some have held) quasi-material appearances.

At this point, however, we find ourselves confronted by a problem of considerable difficulty as well as interest, which requires to be carefully considered.

The difficulty is this. If the characteristics of the two classes of hallucination are to be discussed and compared, it is obviously assumed that we know on inspection which cases ought to be referred to the one class, and which to the other. Now, though the elements of a telepathic case have been made tolerably plain, and in the main the grounds of distinction may be clear enough, the attempt actually to draw a dividing line will very soon show us that at present no such line can be drawn. With the discovery that one person's senses can be affected by something that is happening to had observed a durzee (or tailor) at work, and asked him where the man was who came in with me. The durzee replied, ' Your Excellency, no one came with you.' 'But,' I said, 'the man lifted the chik' (the outside verandah blind) 'for me.' 'No, your Excellency, you lifted it yourself,' the durzee answered. Much puzzled, I returned to my friends in the grounds, exclaiming,' Here's a good joke'; and then, telling them what had happened, and what the durzee had said, I asked them if they had not seen the servant who called for me shortly before.