656. I add another "arrival-case" in 656 A. But before leaving the subject I must remind the reader that among telæsthetic cases we have already encountered some where a percipient seemed to have become aware of the contents of a letter when it had reached his vicinity (see the cases of Sir L. Jones and Professor Alexander in 421 H and J), and another instance of this, related by Dr. O. W. Holmes, is quoted in 656 B.

It is of course possible that in the same way the percipient may become aware of the contents of another mind when it comes into its vicinity; so that the intimations of nearness above discussed may sometimes have been gathered by the percipient spirit alone. In either case the link of spatial nearness still persists. That link indeed seems more directly operative in cases of telæsthesia than in cases of telepathy. When a telepathic message is transmitted from one person to his neighbour in space, one may say, as Edmund Gurney did, that two minds looking on the same scene have much of their content in common: so that a psychical bond is thus established. But if the contents of a letter become known when it is close at hand, then, unless we assume that the writer is thinking of its arrival (which would in several of our cases be a very farfetched supposition), it seems that the clairvoyant perception must have been prompted or facilitated by the mere contiguity. This is of course by no means the same thing as to suppose that there is any "law of distances" governing the telepathic message.

It is more like a difference in facility of reception than in facility of action - as though trifles attracted the clairvoyant's notice more readily when they happened to be close at hand.

657. The cases which I have lately been recounting can be called telæsthetic only by courtesy. There has been a psychical excursion, with its possibilities of clairvoyance; but the excursive element has not brought home any assignable knowledge to the supraliminal personality. I go on now to cases where such knowledge has thus been garnered. But here there is need of some further pause, to consider a little in how many ways we can imagine that knowledge to be reached.

Firstly, the distant knowledge may, it would seem, be reached through hyperæsthesia, - an extended power of the ordinary senses. Secondly, it sometimes seems to come through crystal-gazing or its correlative shell-hearing, - artifices which seem to utilise the ordinary senses in a new way. And besides these two avenues to distant knowledge there is a third, the telepathic avenue, which, as we have already surmised, sometimes shades off into the purely telæsthetic; when no distant mind, but only the distant scene, seems to be attracting the excursive spirit. And in the fourth place we must remember that it is mainly in the form of dream or vision that the most striking instances of telæsthesia which I have as yet recorded have come. Can we in any way harmonise these various modes of perception? Can we discover any condition of the percipient which is common to all?

To a certain limited extent such co-ordination is possible. In each approach to telæsthesia in turn we find a tendency to something like a dream-excursion. Hyperæsthesia, in the first place, although it exists sometimes in persons wide awake, is characteristically an attribute of sleep-waking states.

We have seen in discussing hypnotic experiments that it is sometimes possible to extend the subject's perceptive faculty by gradual suggestion, so far as to transform a hyperesthesia which can still be referred to the action of the sense-organs into a telæsthesia which cannot be so referred. It is observable that percipients in such cases sometimes describe their sensation as that of receiving an impression, or seeing a picture placed before them; sometimes as that of travelling and visiting the distant scene or person. Or the feeling may oscillate between these two sensations, just as the sense of time-relation in the picture shown may oscillate between past, present, and future.

To all these complex sensations the phenomena of crystal-gazing offer close analogies. I have already remarked on the curious fact that the simple artifice of gazing into a speculum should prove the avenue to phenomena of such various types. There may be very different origins even for pictures which in the crystal present very similar aspects; and certain sensations do also accompany these pictures; sensations not merely of gazing but sometimes (though rarely) of partial trance; and oftener of bilocation; - of psychical presence among the scenes which the crystal has indeed initiated, but no longer seems to limit or to contain.

658. The idea of psychical excursion thus suggested must, however, be somehow reconciled with the frequently symbolic character of these visions. The features of a crystal-vision seem often to be no mere transcription of material facts, but an abbreviated selection from such facts, or even a bold modification of such facts with a view of telling some story more quickly and clearly. We are familiar with the same kind of succession of symbolical scenes in dream, or in waking reverie. And of course if an intelligence outside the crystal-gazer's mind is endeavouring to impress him, this might well be the chosen way.

And moreover through all telæsthetic vision some element of similar character is wont to run - some indication that mind has been at work upon the picture - that the scene has not been presented, so to say, in crude objectivity, but that there has been some choice as to the details discerned; and some symbolism in the way in which they are presented.

Let us consider how these characteristics affect different theories of the mechanism of clairvoyance. Let us suppose first that there is some kind of transition from hyperæsthesia to telæsthesia, so that when peripheral sensation is no longer possible, central perception may be still operating across obstacles otherwise insurmountable.

If this be the case, it seems likely that central perception will shape itself on the types of perception to which the central tracts of the brain are accustomed; and that the connaissance supérieure, the telæsthetic knowledge, however it may really be acquired, will present itself mainly as clairvoyance or clairaudience - as some form of sight or sound. Yet these telæsthetic sights and sounds may be expected to show some trace of their unusual origin. They may, for instance, be imperfectly co-ordinated with sights and sounds arriving through external channels; and, since they must in some way be a translation of supernormal impressions into sensory terms, they are likely to show something symbolic in character.

I take as an illustration certain experiments - carefully made in their day - which were reported in the Zoist, and some of which are quoted in 573 E. Mottoes printed on folded scraps of paper, inside nuts bought by the experimenters, were read by the mesmerised clairvoyant. But she saw these folded slips of paper as though stretched out straight; and once or twice she gave the general purport of the motto, not the exact words. There was want of co-ordination with optical sight, and there was symbolism - a retranslation of thoughts into words - certain words being reported to the supraliminal self which were not identical, but synonymous with the actual words on the slip.