one is struck, the other sounds,” argues Walton. Two minds may be as harmoniously attuned and communicate each with each. Of course, in the case of the lutes there are actual vibrations, physical facts. But we know nothing of vibrations in the brain which can traverse space to another brain.
Many experiments have been made in consciously transferring thoughts or emotions from one mind to another. These are very liable to be vitiated by bad observation, collusion and other causes. Meanwhile, intercommunication between mind and mind without the aid of the recognised senses – a supposed process of “telepathy” – is a current explanation of the dreams in which knowledge is obtained that exists in the mind of another person, and of the delusion by virtue of which one person sees another who is perhaps dying, or in some other crisis, at a distance. The idea is popular. A poor Highland woman wrote to her son in Glasgow: “Don’t be thinking too much of us, or I shall be seeing you some evening in the byre”. This is a simple expression of the hypothesis of “telepathy” or “mental telegraphy”.
17
Perhaps among such papers as the
18
To Joseph himself she bequeathed the ruby tortoise given to her by his brother. Probably the diamonds were not Rizzio’s gift.
19
Boismont was a distinguished physician and “Mad Doctor,” or “Alienist”. He was also a Christian, and opposed a tendency, not uncommon in his time, as in ours, to regard all “hallucinations” as a proof of mental disease in the “hallucinated”.
20
21
22
23
24
Signed by Mr. Cooper and the Duchess of Hamilton.
25
See Galton,
26
27
The case was reported in the
28
Told by the nobleman in question to the author.
29
The author knows some eight cases among his friends of a solitary meaningless hallucination like this.
30
As to the fact of such visions, I have so often seen crystal gazing, and heard the pictures described by persons whose word I could not doubt, men and women of unblemished character, free from superstition, that I am obliged to believe in the fact as a real though hallucinatory experience. Mr. Clodd attributes it to disorder of the liver. If no more were needed I could “scry” famously!
31
Facts attested and signed by Mr. Baillie and Miss Preston.
32
Story told to me by both my friends and the secretary.
33
34
Readers curious in crystal-gazing will find an interesting sketch of the history of the practice, with many modern instances, in
“It remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there”.
35
A set of scientific men, as Lélut and Lombroso, seem to think that a hallucination stamps a man as
36
A crowd of phantom coaches will be found in Messrs. Myers and Gurney’s
37
See
38
