It is found by experiment that ideas can be communicated from mind to
mind through channels other than the known sensory ones. Professor
Gilbert Murray of Oxford, probably the most famous Greek scholar in this
country, recently carried out some interesting experiments of this kind
in his own family. He would go into another room, leaving his wife and
daughter to decide on something which they would try to communicate to
him on his return. They chose the most absurd and unlikely things, but
in a large number of cases Professor Murray, by making his mind as
passive as possible and saying the first thing that came into his head,
was able to reproduce with startling accuracy the idea they had in mind.
For instance, they thought of Savonarola at Florence and the people
burning their clothes and pictures and valuables. Says Professor Murray:
"I first felt 'This is Italy', then, 'this is not modern'; and then
hesitated, when accidentally a small tarry bit of coal tumbled out of
the fire. I smelt oil or paint burning and so got the whole scene. It
seems as though here some subconscious impression, struggling up towards
consciousness, caught hold of the burning coal as a means of getting
through".[3] On another occasion they thought of "Grandfather at the
Harrow and Winchester cricket match, dropping hot cigar-ash on Miss
Thompson's parasol." Professor Murray's guess, reported verbatim, was:
"Why, this is grandfather! He's at a cricket match--why it's absurd:
he seems to be dropping ashes on a lady's parasol." Another time they
thought of a scene in a book of Strindberg's which Professor Murray had
not read: a poor, old, cross, disappointed schoolmaster eating crabs for
lunch at a restaurant, and insisting on having female crabs. Professor
Murray says: "I got the atmosphere, the man, the lunch in the restaurant
on crabs, and thought I had finished, when my daughter asked: 'What kind
of crabs?' I felt rather impatient and said: 'Oh, Lord, I don't know:
female crabs.' That is, the response to the question came automatically,
with no preparation, while I thought I could not give it. I may add that
I had never before heard of there being any inequality between the sexes
among crabs, regarded as food."
[3] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. 29,
p. 59. (For brevity's sake I shall hereinafter use the recognised
initials "S.P.R." for the Society.)
This kind of evidence is not the best, because the thoughts of
members of one family run more or less in similar grooves; though the
experimenters recognised this and chose unlikely things purposely. Other
investigators have sometimes used cards, drawing one at random from a
shuffled pack, looking at it, and the percipient then trying to say what
it is. The chance of success is of course one in fifty-two, and the
amount of success which we might expect by chance in any series can
be mathematically determined. In one series of successful experiments
conducted by Sir Oliver Lodge the odds against an explanation by chance
alone were about ten millions to one. In ordinary matters this would be
regarded as proof.
Other experiments of the same general character have been carried out by
Sir William Barrett, Professor Sidgwick, and others, and details may be
found in the S.P.R. _Proceedings_. In most cases the idea comes into the
mind as an impression, but if the percipient is a good visualiser it is
sometimes seen almost externalised as a hallucination. This leads us to
the next step.
If it is possible to convey to another mind--sometimes so vividly that
the thing is almost seen as if out there in space--an image of scenes
thought about, may it not be possible to convey an image of oneself?
This idea occurred to a gentleman referred to by Myers as Mr S. H. B.
in his book _Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death_. Mr
S. H. B., whom I know by correspondence and whose brother I have known
personally for many years, decided that he would try to make himself
visible to two young ladies whom he knew, and he concentrated his mind
on the effort just before going to bed. He willed to show himself in
their room at one o'clock in the morning. The distance from his house to
theirs was three miles. Next time he saw them, a few days later, they
told him they had had a great fright: the elder sister had seen Mr B.'s
apparition, had screamed and awakened her little sister, who also saw
him. The time was one o'clock in the morning. They told him this before
he said anything about his experiment, and they had no reason to expect
that he would try anything of the kind. Both Mr B. and his brother
are keen and successful business men; Mr S. H. B. is now retired, his
brother is still the head of a large firm. I mention this because some
critics seem to have a notion that psychical researchers are a crowd of
long-haired poets or semi-lunatic cranks.