One of the most deplorable attitudes towards the borderland phenomena
of which mental telegraphy or telepathy forms a type, is that which
insists upon an exact and detailed explanation of concrete personal
experiences, and regards these as so essentially peculiar that it
refuses to consider them in connection with the many other instances
of the same class, without reference to which a rational explanation
is unattainable. This tendency, to insist that the laws of science
shall be precisely and in detail applicable to individual experiences
possessing a personal interest for us, has wrought much havoc; it has
contributed to superstition, fostered pseudo-science, and encouraged
charlatanism. To antagonize this tendency it is necessary to insist
upon the statistical nature of the inquiry. We should certainly be
familiar in this statistic-filled age with the law-abiding character
of individual happenings when considered in large groups. So many
types of facts depending upon individual and heterogeneous motives
shoot together and form curves of surprising regularity; the number
of marriages or of misdirected letters, the falsification of ages or
the distribution of heights of individuals, and countless other items
that in individual cases seem accidental, or capricious, or due to
a host of minute and unaccountable factors, none the less present
a striking statistical regularity. The owners of a gaming-table,
counting upon the statistical regularity of the accidental, are
assured of a steady income; they are interested long enough to obtain
an extensive view of the fluctuations, and to see the law that guides
the whole. Not so the individual player; he is interested only in
that particular portion of the game in which his money is at stake.
He detects mysterious laws of fortune and freaks of luck; sees in a
series of coincidences or momentary successes the proofs of his pet
schemes, and dismisses the general doctrine of chances with disdain,
because it is not obviously applicable to his case. This influences
the losers as well as the winners; both are absorbed in their own
minute portions of the game, and forget that the law makes distinct
provision for temporary losses and gains, great and small, but is
as indifferent to the times and order of such occurrences as to the
personality of those affected.
The distinction between the individual and the statistical aspect of
a problem may be further illustrated in the much-discussed question
of the differences in brain characteristics of men and women.
When the claimants for woman's equality point to the acknowledged
inability of an anatomist to determine whether a particular brain
belonged to a man or a woman as conclusive evidence of their
contention, they unconsciously assume that the problem is capable
of determination in the individual specimen. A sounder logic would
insure greater caution. The differences in question may be certainly
established and typical, and yet depend upon statistical, not upon
individual data. Give the anatomist a goodly number of fairly
selected brains and tell him that all the women's brains are in
one group, and all the men's brains in another, and he will tell
you which group is feminine, which masculine; and this more than
offsets his failure in the former test. It establishes a statistical
regularity. Individually we may argue that many women of our
acquaintance have larger heads than the men; that the English, are
not taller than the French, because the Frenchmen we have chanced to
meet have been quite as tall as the Englishmen of our acquaintance;
that the laws of chance do not apply to the gaming-table, because
on that basis we should have come out even and not as losers; and
that coincidences cannot explain our strange mental experiences,
because they are altogether too peculiar and too frequent. It is only
in the most complete stages and in the more definite realms that
knowledge becomes applicable accurately and definitely to individual
cases. For the present it is well if, with such abstruse or rather
indefinite material, we can glimpse the statistical regularity of
the entire group of phenomena, trace here and there the possible or
probable application of general principles, and refuse to allow our
opinions to be disarranged by rather startling individual cases. The
explanation of these, however interesting they may be to ourselves
or entertaining to others, is not the test of our knowledge of the
subject.
I pick up a stone, and with a peculiar turn of the hand throw it from
me; probably no student of mechanics can exactly calculate the course
of that projectile,--nor is it worth while. What he can do is to show
what laws are obeyed by ideal projectiles, ideally thrown under ideal
conditions, and how far the more important practical cases tend to
agree with or diverge from these conditions. It is unfair to test his
science by its minute applicability to our special experiences.
When the problems involved in mental telegraphy come to be generally
viewed under the guidance of a sound logic, the outlook will be
hopeful that the whole domain will gradually acquire definite order;
and that its devotees, after appreciating the statistical regularity
of the phenomena, will come to the conclusion that much of the
energy and ability now expended in a search for the explanation of
complex and necessarily indefinite individual cases, is on the whole
unprofitable. With an infinite time and an infinite capacity it might
be profitable to study all things; but, at present, sanity consists
in the maintenance of a proper perspective of the relative importance
of the affairs of the intellectual and the practical life. It may
be that the man who puzzles day and night over some trivial mystery
expends as much brain energy as a great intellectual benefactor of
mankind; but the world does not equally cherish the two.