The Arena | Page 6

them before any observer, at any moment. At present they are proved by the same kind of evidence as certain rare pathological phenomena (I do not of course mean that telepathy is itself in any way a morbid product)--phenomena such as those surprising rises and falls of the human temperature which are unpredictable, sporadic, and transitory, and must rest for their evidence on the good faith and accuracy of comparatively few observers.
Yet these telepathic experiments have a very hopeful side. Experience has already shown that the phenomena may be developed at any moment, between quite normal persons, and with no bad effects of any sort whatever. Only we cannot tell except by actual trial, and trial of a patient and careful kind, between which persons, out of all mankind, these telepathic messages can be made to run.
What we desire, then, what we ask of all who sympathize with our efforts, is neither premature praise nor equally premature theorizing, but active co-operation in our endeavor to improve and extend our experiments in thought-transference. We want to get our telepathic transmissions distant, definite, and reproducible.
It is desirable to get them at long distances,--not because it is really more marvellous that thought should thus travel a million miles than that it should travel a millimetre,--but for the merely practical reason that at long distances it is easy to avoid two main sources of error, namely, hyper?sthesia, which may be quite unconscious, and fraudulent codes, which may be hard to detect. Most, nay, probably all, of the so-called experiments in thought-transference which have been offered by "thought-readers," etc., from the public platform, have really had nothing at all to do with thought-transference, have depended either on abnormal delicacy of tactile and other sensory perception, or on the adroit use of preconcerted signals. It is only when the observer has complete control of the conditions (which he never has in any public exhibition), that it is worth while to conduct experiments between two persons in the same room.
And even in cases where the good faith--the conscious good faith--of everyone concerned is above suspicion, it must be remembered that there are both unconscious actions and unconscious perceptions which may wholly vitiate an experiment. The rule should be so to arrange the experiment that the percipient cannot profit by unconscious indications; that he cannot (for example) see the expression of the agent's face, or hear the sound of his pencil as he writes down a number to be guessed. Such precautions should be a matter of course; and when they are taken, these experiments near at hand are certainly the easiest and best for private experimenters to begin with, although the desirability of gradually increasing the distance between the persons concerned should always be kept in view.
Let A and P begin their trial, then, in quiet and calm of mind; let A, the agent, sit behind P, the percipient, and not in contact. Let A be provided with a full pack of cards, in which he replaces the card drawn, after each trial, or with a bag of known numbers--say from ten to one hundred--a range convenient for computation--in which bag he replaces and shuffles up the number drawn, after each trial. Let him draw a card (to take cards as our example) say, "Now!" and gaze fixedly at it. Let P keep his mind as blank as possible, and make his guess only when some kind of image of color, suit, or pips, in some way floats into his mind. His first guess only must be counted, and must be received in silence. Let A continue this process for some prearranged number of times, say ten times, and record accurately all the experiments made. Let him renew the process, with intervals of hours or days between each batch of trials, until he has some hundreds of results to analyze. Then let him send his results, with description of the conditions under which the trials were made, to Dr. Richard Hodgson, 5 Boylston Place, Boston, Mass. Dr. Hodgson will tell him if it is worth his while to go on, and will advise as to modifications in the form of experiment.
These hints must here suffice as to experiments made close at hand. But experiment, or observation verging into experiment, is often possible at long distances as well. It often happens that some one tells me that he (or she) has so peculiar a sympathy with some given friend that what one of the pair is actually feeling or thinking at a distance is reproduced by the sensation or thought of the other. To such communications my invariable reply is, "Keep a 'psychical' diary. Put down therein at once every incident which you intend to count, if it turns out (so to say) a telepathic success, and no