Cases should be excluded which can possibly be explained by the delirium of fever. In Case 214, the percipient first told of the apparition after four months of severe illness, with constant delirium or unconsciousness. It is not at all unlikely that the whole story is the product of a delirious imagination.
14th. No case should be admitted which can be attributed to the effect of imagination. In Case 195, the percipient herself is inclined so to explain her vision.
15th. All cases ought to be excluded in which the percipient did not tell of having seen the vision until after the news of the death had been received. Otherwise, all sorts of exaggerations would creep in. There might even be cases of downright lying, besides cases in which the well-known sensation of having undergone a present experience on some previous occasion might have given rise to the idea of an apparition which was really not experienced. This would be a rare case, but we are dealing with rare cases. This objection applies to Cases 172,173,174,184, and 214.
16th. No case can be admitted which rests largely on the testimony of a loose or inaccurate witness. Inaccuracies of more or less importance can be detected in Cases 27, 170, 182, 197, and 199. For example, in Case 182, a young lady on shipboard, going from London to the Cape of Good Hope, saw one night, a good while after the lights were out, an apparition of a young girl, a friend or acquaintance of hers who, as she knew, was out of health, and who had the consumption. She is positive that this vision took place at half past ten; and, as no bell is rung at that time, this positive precision is already suspicious. She also testifies positively that she mentioned the occurrence the next morning to four persons, who all severally took written notes of it; but the only two of these persons who can be reached now profess to know nothing whatever of the matter. She gives May 4th as the date of the vision, but the death occurred on May 2nd. She says, however, that she is sure she wrote to her father from the Cape, giving the date of the vision, before she heard of the death. Her father, on the other hand, is certain he wrote to his daughter the news of the death by the very next mail after it occurred. Now, since taking this testimony, the letter which she wrote to her father has been found by him. The whole passage about the apparition is not given, as it should be; but it is stated that the letter gives the date of May 4th. Now the date of the letter is June 5th; and it only takes three weeks or less for news to go from London to the Cape of Good Hope, so that she must have already heard of the death, if her father’s statement is accurate. But why is the passage of this letter withheld?
In Case 197, the percipient is a lady. She was at Interlaken at the time of the vision, and the death took place in Colorado. She testifies positively that written notes were taken at the time of the occurrence, both by herself and another; but she is unable now to give the date, and the other witness has not been called upon. Now Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore request us to accept this as a positively proved case of coincidence, because this one witness avers, with all the solemnity the matter calls for, that, when the news of the death did arrive, it was found to be absolutely simultaneous with the vision, after making the necessary allowance for difference of longitude. But the lady remembers the time of day at which the vision occurred, namely, it was before breakfast when she was lying on her bed. The time of day of the death is also known; and the best supposition that can be made with regard to the date of the vision will make it eight hours from the time of death. We are asked, in the face of this demonstrated inaccuracy, to accept a coincidence of date as beyond question, because this witness testifies that it was a coincidence exact to the minute.
17th. No case can be admitted where there is only a meagre story told in outline, and we are not furnished with any means of judging of the reliability of the witnesses, or where questions might have been asked which would have brought the matter to a test, and have not been asked. Thus, in Case 231 the date is quite doubtful; but it could have been verified by means of the letter which the percipient wrote that day to a newspaper. In Case 236, whatever the story possesses is due to the statements of a second witness, who does not seem to have been cross-examined at all. In Cases 237, 240, 298, 300, 355, 695, and an unnumbered case, the story is so excessively meagre as to be worthless.
18th. After all, the reader, who cannot cross-examine the witnesses, and search out new testimony, must necessarily rely upon Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore having on the whole performed this task well; and we cannot accept any case at all at their hands, unless, as far as we can see, they have proved themselves cautious men, shrewd observers, and severe logicians.
Although there is not a single one of the thirty-one cases considered which can be accepted for the purpose of the argument, yet some of them may be genuine for all that. It can only be guess-work to say how many; but in my opinion not more than two or three.
Let us now glance at the other numerical data used in the argument. The ratio of frequency of hallucinations without coincidences has been ascertained by inquiries addressed to a large number of persons, going back for twelve years. The authors have thus assumed that a hallucination with coincidence of the death of the person represented is no more likely to be remembered for a period of twelve years than one which is unaccompanied by such a coincidence. Yet there are numerous cases in their book in which, the death not having been heard of, the vision had been totally forgotten after the lapse of a few months, and was only brought to mind again by the news of the death. I think it would be fair to assume that, in considering so long a period as twelve years, a coincidental apparition would be four times as likely to be remembered as one without coincidence. I also strongly dissent from the authors’ estimate that their coincidences have been drawn from a population of only 300,000. I should reckon the matter, for my part, in this way: every case of an apparition simultaneous with the death of the person represented, or nearly so, becomes known to a circle of 200 to 300 persons, on the average. If any one of this circle of persons, some of whom have had an interest in apparitions excited by the story, learn and are interested in the advertisement of Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, these gentlemen would learn of the case. Now, I suppose that the advertisement, being of a very peculiar and sensational character, interests one person for every hundred copies of the newspaper printed. On this assumption, since a million and a half is given as the circulation of the newspapers, the instances obtained would really have been drawn from a population of three to four millions. Adopting these figures, they ought to have heard, on the doctrine of chances, of three or four purely fortuitous cases of visual hallucination with coincidence of death. In view of the utter uncertainty of all the data, it would be very rash to draw any conclusion at all. But the evidence so far as it goes, seems to be rather unfavorable to the telepathic character of the phenomena. The argument might, certainly, have been constructed more skillfully; but I do not think that there is much prospect of establishing any scientific fact on the basis of such a collection as that of the Phantasms of the Living.
Remarks on Professor Peirce’s Paper
| December 1887 | Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research |
BY EDMUND GURNEY
The foregoing review has been to me a source of genuine pleasure and profit; not so much in respect of the special points which the writer raises,—though my pleasure is not diminished by the sense that on most of these his objections can be fairly met,—as on account of the business-like and thorough spirit in which he has gone to work. Criticism, as my colleagues and I should allow, and even insist, is what the exponents of every new doctrine must expect; and in the case of a doctrine so new to science as telepathy, the criticism cannot be too searching. But, on this subject, searching criticism is as rare as loose and hasty comment is the reverse. The world is roughly divided into two parties,—those who will not so much as look seriously at any of the alleged facts, and those who swallow them all wholesale. Thus the evidence is either wholly neglected, or is admitted without due warrant, and discredited by being mixed up with all sorts of baseless rumors and uncritical fancies. One person recognizes no difference between