Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/413

400 E. GUKNEY : much as the attempt to exercise the distant influence is deliberately and consciously made by the ' agent ' ; and the idea of him which reaches the ' subject's ' mind, sometimes above and sometimes below the threshold of consciousness as we understand it, does not in either case emerge into sensory form. I may add that cases are on record where yet further links or gradations appear ; for instance, a per- son noted for his mesmeric powers succeeded in producing a strong impression of his presence, which nevertheless contained no sensory element, to two friends at a distance, who were not in any degree hypnotised by the impression. 1 One further point remains, in which a comparison of the phenomena of hypnotisation at a distance with those of non-hypnotic telepathy seems to throw light on both. In Phantasms of the Living I have drawn attention to the impul- sive quality which seems often to characterise a telepathic impression; and which seems to be shown equally in the forms of experiment where a motor-impulse is produced, as, e.g., in the palmary instance of Mr. and Mrs. Newnham referred to in my last paper ; in one or two spontaneous cases where the impulse similarly was to write, and the transferred idea appeared in the writing; and in other spontaneous cases where a definite and peculiar impulse to movement or action was conveyed ; but also more generally, I venture to think, in that very fact of the frequent externali- sation of the impression as a sensory percept, which has been mentioned in the preceding paragraph. 2 Ordinarily, of course, our ideas of our friends, when they occur to us, do not project themselves outwards as hallucinations represent- ing the friend's forms or voices ; how is it that telepathic ideas so constantly do so? The fact cannot, I think, be disputed by anyone who accepts the telepathic evidence, unless 011 the hypothesis not likely to be entertained by readers of MIND that what is perceived is a material body, capable of emitting or reflecting light and of setting sound- waves in motion. I at any rate see no escape from the alternative that it affects the percipient's senses either by 1 Phantasms of the Living, i. 99. It should be noted that it is by no means invariable, in the spontaneous cases, for the idea of the ' agent ' to be externalised in the senses. Sometimes the simple idea of his death is conveyed (e.g., in the cases numbered 45, 87, 401) ; but inasmuch as that idea may reasonably be supposed to have been present in his mind during the approach of death, such cases may as fitly be referred to the class where the ' agent's ' idea is literally reproduced as to the class where the idea of him, rather than his idea, is the subject of transfer. 2 See Phantasms of the Living, i. 537-8.