Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore
evidence for them is not strong enough to support any definite conclusion
§ 3. The evidence for telepathy in the present work presents a complete contrast to that which has supported the belief in magical occurrences. It comes for the most part from educated persons, who were not predisposed to admit the reality of the phenomena; while the phenomena themselves are not strongly associated with any prevalent beliefs or habits of thought, differing in this respect, e.g., from alleged apparitions of the dead. Still we must not, on such grounds as these, assume that the evidence is trustworthy
§ 4. The errors which may affect it are of various sorts. Error of observation may result in a mistake of identity. Thus a stranger in the street may be mistaken for a friend, who turns out to have died at that time, and whose phantasm is therefore asserted to have appeared. But it is only to a very small minority of the cases which follow that such a hypothesis could possibly be applied
Error of inference is not a prominent danger; as what concerns the telepathic evidence is simply what the percipient seemed to himself to see or hear, not what he inferred therefrom
§ 5. Of more importance are errors of narration, due to the tendency to make an account edifying, or graphic, or startling. In first-hand testimony this tendency may be to some extent counterbalanced by the desire to be believed; which has less influence in cases where the narrator is not personally responsible, as, e.g., in the spurious and sensational anecdotes of anonymous newspaper paragraphs, or of dinner-tame gossip
§ 6. Errors of memory are more insidious. If the witness regards the facts in a particular speculative or emotional light, facts will be apt, in memory, to accommodate themselves to this view, and details will get introduced or dropped out in such a manner as to aid the harmonious effect. Even apart from any special bias, the mere effort to make definite what has become dim may fill in the picture with wrong detail; or the tendency to lighten the burden of retention may invest the whole occurrence with a spurious trenchancy and simplicity of form
§ 7. We have to consider how these various sources of error may affect the evidence for a case of spontaneous telepathy. Such a case presents a coincidence of a particular kind, with four main points to look to:—(1) A particular state of the agent, e.g., the crisis of death; (2) a particular experience of the percipient, e.g., the impression of seeing the agent before him in visible form; (3) the date of (1); (4) the date of (2)
§ 8. The risk of mistake as to the state of the agent is seldom appreciable: his death, for instance, if that is what has befallen him, can usually be proved beyond dispute
For the experience of the percipient, on the other hand, we have generally nothing but his own word to depend on. But for what is required, his word is often sufficient. For the evidential point is simply his statement that hø has had an impression or sensation of a peculiar kind, which, if he had it, he knew that he had; and this point is quite independent of his interpretation of his experience, which may easily be erroneous, e.g., if he attributes objective reality to what was really a hallucination
The risk of misrepresentation is smallest if his description of his experience, or a distinct course of action due to his experience, has preceded his knowledge of what has happened to the agent
§ 9. Where his description of his experience dates from a time subsequent to his knowledge of what has happened to the agent, there is a possibility that this knowledge may have made the experience seem more striking and distinctive than it really was. Still, we have not detected definite instances of this sort of inaccuracy. Nor would the fact (often expressly stated by the witness) that the experience did not at the time of its occurrence suggest the agent, by any means destroy—though it would of course weaken—the presumption that it was telepathic
§ 10. As regards the interval of time which may separate the two events or experiences on the agent’s and the percipient’s side respectively, an arbitrary limit of 12 hours has been adopted—the coincidence in most cases being very much closer than this; but no case will be presented as telepathic where the percipient’s experience preceded, by however short a time, some grave event occurring to the agent, if at the time of the percipient’s experience the state of the agent was normal
§ 11. It is in the matter of the dates that the risk of mis-statement is greatest. The instinct towards simplification and dramatic completeness naturally tends to make the coincidence more exact than the facts warrant
§ 12. The date of the event that has befallen the agent is often included in the news of that event; which news, in these days of posts and telegraphs, often follows close enough on the percipient’s experience for the date of that experience to be then safely re-called
§ 13. But if a longer interval elapse, the percipient may assume too readily that his own experience fell on the critical day; and as time goes on, his certainty is likely to increase rather than diminish. Still, if the coincidence was then and there noted, and if the attention of others was called to it, it may be possible to present a tolerably strong case for its reality, even after the lapse of a considerable time
§ 14. These various evidential conditions may be arranged in a graduated scheme
§ 15. Second-hand evidence (except of one special type) is excluded from the body of the work; but the Supplement contains a certain number of second-hand cases, received from persons who were well acquainted with the original witnesses, and who had had the opportunity of becoming thoroughly acquainted with their statement of the facts
In transmitted evidence all the risks of error are greatly intensified, there being no deeply-graven sense of reality to act as a check on exaggeration or invention. Some instances are given of the breakingdown of alleged evidence under critical examination
A frequent sort of inaccuracy in transmitted evidence is the shortening of the chain of transmission—second or third-hand information being represented as first-hand; and the alleged coincidence is almost always suspiciously exact
§ 16. A certain separation of cases according to their evidential value has been attempted, the body of the work being reserved for those where the primâ facie probability that the essential facts are correctly stated is tolerably strong. But even where the facts are correctly reported, their force in the argument for telepathy will differ according to the class to which they belong; purely emotional impressions, for instance, and dreams, are very weak classes
The value of the several items of evidence is also largely affected by the mental qualities and training of the witnesses. Every case must be judged on its own merits, by reference to a variety of points; and those who study the records will have an equal opportunity of forming a judgment with those who have collected them—except in the matter of personal acquaintance with the witnesses, the effect of which it is impossible to communicate
§ 17. An all-important point is the number of the coincidences adduced. A few might be accounted accidental; but it will be inpossible to apply that hypothesis throughout. Nor can the evidence be swept out of court by a mere general appeal to the untrustworthiness of human testimony. If it is to be explained away, it must be met (as we have ourselves endeavoured to meet it) in detail; and this necessitates the confronting of the single cause, telepathy, (whose à priori improbability is fully admitted,) with a multitude of causes, more or less improbable, and in cumulation incredible
§ 18. With all their differences, the cases recorded bear strong signs of belonging to a true natural group; and their harmony, alike in what they do and in what they do not present, is very unlikely to be the accidental result of a multitude of disconnected mistakes. And it is noteworthy that certain sensational and suspicious details, here conspicuous by their absence, which often make their way into remote or badly-evidenced cases, are precisely those which the telepathic hypothesis would not cover
§ 19. But though some may regard the cumulative argument here put forward for spontaneous telepathy as amounting to a proof, the