642 A. General Criticism Of The Evidence For Telepathy

Various possible sources of error and the general canons of evidence in the case of spontaneous telepathy were discussed fully by Gurney in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. chap, iv., of which the following is a brief abstract.

The most general objection to the evidence is that all manner of false beliefs have in their day been able to muster in their support a considerable amount of evidence, - even educated evidence, - much of which was certainly not consciously fraudulent; the belief in witchcraft is a favourite instance. But an enormous proportion of the witch evidence1 consisted in confessions extracted by torture or intimidation; in many other cases, actual occurrences were attributed, on no grounds whatever, to any suspicious persons who happened to be in the neighbourhood. In the remaining cases (1) the testimony on which the alleged facts were believed came exclusively from the uneducated classes; and (2) the easy acceptance of this evidence by better-educated persons was due to the then almost universal ignorance of the phenomena of hallucination, hysteria, trance, and hypnotism. As a result of this ignorance, it was thought that there were only two alternative interpretations of the evidence: (a) that the facts happened as alleged, or (b) that the witnesses were practising deliberate fraud. There was, of course, some fraud, but the fact that many of them gained nothing but suffering for their statements showed that the testimony was on the whole honestly given.

Fraud being thus excluded, the facts were believed genuine.

The phenomena of witchcraft which were then put down to "possession " can now be explained by hallucination, since we know that subjective hallucinations may appear absolutely real to the percipient, that they may easily be produced by hypnotic suggestion (which was probably often used by witches), and that they are also frequent in spontaneous trance and hysteria, both which conditions are contagious and no doubt were often present. With regard to such marvels as aerial rides and transformations into animals, there is absolutely no first-hand evidence - even from uneducated peasants - that these were actually witnessed. The evidence relied on for transformations was usually that the accused person proved to have some bodily hurt on the day the animal associated with her had been wounded.

There are, however, a few cases recorded on really good authority of the apparent possession of telepathic powers by the witches or their subjects. No stress can, of course, be laid on this, but it is noteworthy that the only cases of supposed magic with which persons of sense and education seem at the time to have come into close quarters were similar in character to cases for which persons of sense and education are still found to offer their personal testimony.

1 See "Note on Witchcraft" in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 172, for an account, with numerous references, of the historical evidence for witchcraft.

But in whatever light these residual cases are regarded, the general conclusion remains the same, - that the phenomena which were characteristic of witchcraft and which are an accepted type of exploded superstitions never rested on the first-hand testimony of educated and intelligent persons; and the sweeping assertion which is often made that such persons were, in their days, witnesses to the truth of these absurdities needs, therefore, to be carefully guarded. What the educated and intelligent believers did was to accept from others, as evidence of objective facts, statements which were really only evidence of subjective facts, the necessary means of correction not being within their reach. Those who were in any direct sense witnesses to the facts were invariably persons inclined to such beliefs to begin with, - who had been brought up in them and had accepted them as a matter of course.

When we come to compare the evidence for witchcraft with the modern evidence for telepathy, it will be seen that a very large number of our first-hand witnesses are educated and intelligent persons, by no means generally inclined beforehand to admit the reality of the phenomenon, nor even interested in it afterwards. The facts alleged are not connected with any special form of received belief; for while apparitions of the dead have been believed in widely from the earliest ages, the idea of apparitions at the time of death or of serious crises in life has no established vogue, though sporadic instances have often been reported.

There are, notwithstanding, several sources of error which may affect the testimony of honest and educated persons to events that are both unusual and of a sort unrecognised by contemporary science.

First, as to errors of observation these can only relate to real objects, seen and misinterpreted, e.g. a real figure seen out of doors and at some distance may be wrongly recognised, and the person supposed to have been seen may happen to have died on that day.

In most cases, however, the experience is clearly hallucinatory, and the next class of errors - those of inference - are therefore unimportant. The only question is, - not, how did the witness interpret his impression, but, what did he seem to himself at the time to perceive?

Errors of narration and of memory may be more serious. As to the former, there is the tendency to exaggerate, - to make the account graphic and picturesque; but this would vitiate oral rather than written accounts, and - as might be expected from general experience - affects especially second-hand accounts.