IV

I turn to another point, in some respects the most important of all;

I refer to the readiness with which we interpret as the remarkable

frequency of coincidences what is due to a strong interest in a given

direction. Inasmuch as we observe what interests us, a recently

acquired interest will lead to new observations--that is, new to

us, however familiar they may be to others. Take up the study of

almost any topic that appeals to human curiosity, and it takes no

prophet to predict that within a short time some portion of your

reading or your conversation, or some accidental information,

will unexpectedly reveal a bearing on the precise subject of your

study, often supplying a gap which it would have been most difficult

otherwise to fill; but surely this does not mean that all the world

has become telepathically aware of your needs and proceeded to attend

to them. Some years ago I became interested in cases of extreme

longevity, particularly of centenarianism, and for some months

every conversation seemed to lead to this topic, and every magazine

and newspaper offered some new item about old people. Nowadays

my interest is transferred to other themes; but the paragrapher

continues quite creditably to meet my present wants, and the

centenarians have vanished. When I am writing about coincidences, I

become keen to observe them; such for example as this: I was reading

for the second time an article on "Mental Telegraphy" (by Mark Twain

in "Harper's Monthly Magazine," December, 1891); I was occupied with

what is there described as a most wonderful coincidence, the nearly

simultaneous origination by the author and by Mr. William H. Wright

of a similar literary venture,--when I happened to take my eyes from

the page and saw on my desk a visiting-card bearing the name, "W. H.

Wright." It was not the same W. H. Wright, but a gentleman whom I had

met for the first time a few hours before, and have not seen since.

Had I not been especially interested in this article and its subject,

the identity of the names would certainly have escaped my attention,

and there would have been no coincidence to record. Quite apropos

both of coincidences and of their dependence upon personal interest,

I find recorded in a current magazine the experience of one who

became enthusiastically interested in thoroughbred cats: "Strangely

enough--for it is a thing which is recurrently strange--I, who had

rarely seen any printed matter relating to cats, now found the word

in every newspaper. Adopting a new interest is like starting a

snowball; as long as it moves, it gathers other particles to itself."

It is only necessary to become deeply interested in coincidences,

to look about with eyes open and eager to detect them, in order to

discover them on all sides; resolve to record all that come to hand,

and they seem to multiply until you can regard yourself and your

friends as providentially favored in this direction. If your calling

develops a taste for matters of this kind,--for example, if you are a

writer, with a keen sense for the literary possibilities and dramatic

effects of such coincidences, or if you are of an imaginative turn

of mind with a pronounced or a vague yearning for the interesting or

the unusual; if you have a more generous or more persistent endowment

of the day-dreaming, fantastic, self-dramatization of adolescence,

that is half unreal and yet half externalized in the vividness of

youthful fancy,--is it strange that you should meet with more of

these "psychic experiences" than your prosaic neighbor whose thoughts

and aspirations are turned to quite other channels, and to whom

an account of your experiences might even prove tiresome? If you

cultivate the habit of having presentiments, and of regarding them

as significant, is it strange that they should become more and more

frequent, and that among the many, some should be vaguely suggestive,

or even directly corroborative of actual occurrences?

The frequent coincidences, which form so influential a factor in

disseminating an inclination towards such an hypothesis as telepathy,

are doubtless largely the result of an interest in these experiences.

This interest is very natural and proper, and when estimated at its

true value is certainly harmless; it may indeed contribute material

worthy of record for the student of mental phenomena,--or it may

give spice to the matter-of-fact incidents of a workaday existence.

To many minds, however, the temptation to magnify this interest

into a significant portion of one's mental life, to invest it with

a serious power to shape belief and to guide conduct, is unusually

strong, in some cases almost irresistible. It is this tendency

that is essentially antagonistic to a logical view and therefore

to a scientific study of these irregular mental incidents; it is

this tendency that is responsible for much of the spurious and the

unwholesome interest in the problems of mental telegraphy.

It would naturally be expected that the nature and subject-matter of

the more frequent types of coincidences and presentiments would throw

some light upon their origin, and would in some measure reinforce the

general position above taken. We should expect that such coincidences

would relate to persons and affairs that are frequently in our

thoughts, and that similarities of thought and presentiments based

upon them should occur among persons intimately acquainted with one

another's thought-habits, at least in regard to that line of thought

to which the coincidence relates; these expectations are fairly

well borne out by the facts. It is a commonplace observation that

presentiments and unusual psychic experiences most frequently relate

to those who are dear to us, or in whom we have a momentarily strong

interest; that they deal with events which we have anxiously dreaded

or desired, or with matters over which we have puzzled or worried;

and again, that they occur under conditions of emotional strain,

excitement, or anxiety. In brief, they deal with what is frequently

in our minds or what more or less unconsciously furnishes the general

emotional and intellectual background which gives character to our

mood and to our associations of ideas. I need hardly add that it is

the more successful and striking coincidences that we remember and

record, and the others that are quickly forgotten. Moreover, so large

a share of mental operations of the type in question takes place in

the region of the subconscious, that our recollection of what has

occupied our thoughts is by no means a final authority. Occasionally

we detect these subconscious similarities of mental operations,

when after a silence the same question or thought shapes itself on

the lips of two speakers at the same time; and here again, are not

many of those who give utterance to the same thoughts, or finish one

another's sentences, intimate companions in the walks of life? Is it

strange that in the daily intercourse with a congenial spirit, they

should have absorbed enough of one another's mental processes to

anticipate, now and then, a step in their association of ideas?

Still another factor that figures somewhat in coincidences

relates to events which are sooner or later very likely or quite

certain to occur, and in which the coincidence is confined to

the close simultaneity of the action on the part of two or more

persons concerned. The crossing of letters is easily the best

illustration of this type of occurrence which has the semblance

of thought-communication. It is so easy to fall into the habit of

delaying all delayable matters as long as possible that it must

frequently happen that your own sense of duty is aroused and your

correspondent's patience is exhausted at nearly the same time. If A

is to hear from B, or B from A, within a period not very definite

but still reasonably limited, every day's delay makes it more and

more probable that their letters will cross. The same consideration

applies to other affairs of daily life; we delay a matter of business

and are just about to attend to it when the other party concerned

comes to us, or we delay offering some social attention until just as

we are about to do so it is asked of us; and so on. In brief, we find

not only in sickness and death, in family ties and friendships, in

travel and adventure, but also in the special and in the complicated

interests of our civilized life an abundant opportunity for

coincidences; and we find that their frequency is clearly related to

the commonness of the event, and to its familiarity and closeness of

relation to our habits of thought.

V

Reviewing the arguments which have been presented, we find a tendency

to underestimate the possibilities of expression and communication

through the normal channels of the senses and the subtle inferences

based upon them, and also an insufficient appreciation of the

unrecognized but by no means supernormal capabilities, which

special and unusual susceptibility or training of these same powers

of interpretation and thought-revelation may bring about; we find,

further, a prevalent underestimation of the generic and at times the

specific similarity of the products of our several diverse and yet

homogeneous mental equipments, and with it a lack of consideration

of the greatly increased facilities for such mental community

afforded by modern conditions of rapid transit and rapid sharing

of the common benefits of civilization. We find a misconception of

the nature of the application of the doctrine of chances to mental

coincidences, which brings about an apparent recognition but an

intrinsic belittling of the rôle which chance really plays in the

evidence advanced for telepathy; we find that this error is probably

due to an unfortunate, intensely individual view of the problem,

which insists upon an explanation of personal experiences, and

disregards the essentially impersonal and statistical nature of the

inquiry. This unfair attitude (which is equally unfair if applied

to other and more exact data) renders difficult, if not impossible,

a just appreciation of the theoretical aspect of the problem and

of the application of theory to practice. We find, furthermore,

that the recorded data are likely to involve an unusual degree of

unreliability owing to such natural psychological tendencies as

defective observation, exaggeration, preconception, and the ordinary

limitations and failings of humanity; nor is any serious amount of

such neglect needed to bridge the gap between intelligible fact and

unintelligible mystery. Finally, it is not sufficiently borne in mind

that the data are in large part created by the subjective attitude of

expectation and interest in such experiences, and that the nature

of the more frequent coincidences furnishes satisfactory evidence

of their natural relations to dominant interests and occupations.

The concordant suggestion from these various considerations is that

a very large part of the experiences offered in evidence of mental

telegraphy, finds a much more natural and more consistent explanation

when viewed as the complex and irregular results of types of mental

processes included within the legitimate and recognized domain of

psychology. There is no desire to overlook the loose and distant

connection that often pertains between the general considerations

and the particular phenomena here relevant; on the contrary, this

lack of explicit and intimate connection is a logical characteristic

of the relation of theory to practice in dealing with such complex

and irregular material, and is likely for a long time to remain so.

A more properly cultivated logical sense will bring about a more

satisfactory appreciation of and a greater intellectual content with

this aspect of the problem; it will be recognized that it is wiser to

make the best of actual though admittedly unsatisfactory conditions

than to fly to evils that we know not of.