Telepathy Part 6

Mr. Zancig said, "What more?" His wife placed the sign of + correctly, but she rubbed it out several times as if in doubt. Finally she put down the sign of + and a capital X, so that her drawing appeared like this:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I have had many other experiments with this gifted couple, but have not yet obtained the crucial test of getting Mr. Zancig to be in a distant room with closed doors, while his wife was in another room. The possibility of their using a sound code at one time and a visual code at another is therefore not entirely precluded.

Although I have been quite unable to discover the methods by which they can possibly communicate when a visual and a sound code are not detected, yet I will reserve my ultimate opinion until I obtain tests under the crucial conditions that I have named.

Not only did I personally meet with difficulties in endeavouring to explain the performances of Mr. and Madame Zancig, but also the members of the unofficial Committee that I have referred to. I now give an extract from our unofficial report.

"... It must be remembered that the antecedent probabilities in favour of a code to explain all performances of this kind are enormous.

"While we are of opinion that the records of experiments in telepathy made by the Society for Psychical Research and others raise a presumption for the existence of such a faculty at least strong enough to ent.i.tle it to serious scientific attention, the most hopeful results. .h.i.therto obtained have not been in any way comparable as regards accuracy and precision with those produced by Mr. and Madame Zancig. Further, there is, so far as we are aware, no case of any public performers (including certain recent examples) where the use of a code or apparatus has not been more or less readily discoverable or clearly to be inferred. In considering, therefore, the claim of Mr. and Madame Zancig to the possession of a genuine telepathic faculty, one is faced by the initial difficulty that such a faculty must be regarded as unique in quality, and Mr. and Madame Zancig themselves as unique in kind, a difficulty on the force of which it is not necessary to insist. On the other hand, the difficulty of suggesting by what method, if not by telepathy, they communicate is considerable. Those who have only witnessed the public theatre performances, clever and perplexing as these are, will not appreciate how hard it is to offer any plausible explanation of their _modus operandi_."

In conclusion, I would wish to point out that the establishment of the fact that telepathy is a scientific truth would have bearings of the greatest importance.

It would show that the transmission of thought could occasionally be effected otherwise than by the ordinary sense channels.

It would change the materialistic conception that thought only acts within the limits of the brain.

It would modify the materialistic scientific view of the relation of mind to matter.

I trust that what I have written will act as an incentive to some of my readers to try experiments in this branch of psychical research.[2] It is not enough that a few individuals by patient inquiry and experiment should have been convinced of the reality of telepathy. What is wanted is that scientific men generally, by the record of an overwhelming number of experiments under the strictest test conditions, should be convinced of its truth. Once let them be so, then public conviction will in due time follow.

Meanwhile I feel bound to state that, in spite of initial improbability, the experiences which I myself have had, as partly narrated in this book, especially those briefly summarized in Part I, have convinced me that the telepathic faculty does exist, and that its detection is a genuine extension of scientific knowledge; though much more will have to be done before the bare fact receives its explanation and is permanently incorporated in a coherent system of Science.

[Footnote 2: Information relating to cases of genuine telepathy may be sent to the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, 20 Hanover Square, London, who will be pleased to investigate them.]