In two other cases (A) ladies, in their usual health, saw their
husbands in their rooms, when, in fact, they were in the drawing-
room or study. Here then are eight cases of non-coincidental
hallucination, some of people awake, some of people probably on the
verge of sleep, which are wholly without 'coincidence,' wholly
unveridical. None of the 'percipients' was addicted to seeing
'visions about.' {199}
On the other side, though the writer knows several people who have
'seen ghosts' in haunted houses, and other odd phenomena, he knows
nobody, at first hand, who has seen a 'veridical hallucination,' or
rather, knows only one, a very young one indeed. Thus, between
these personally collected statistics of spectral 'sells' on one
part, and the world-wide diffusion of belief in 'coincidental'
hallucination on the other, the human mind is left in a balance
which mathematics, and the Calculus of Probabilities (especially if
one does not understand it) fail to affect.
Meanwhile, we still do not know what causes these solitary
hallucinations of the sane. They can hardly come from diseased
organs of sense, for these would not confine themselves to a single
mistaken message of great vivacity. And why should either the
'sensory centre' or the 'central terminus' just once in a lifetime
develop this uncanny activity, and represent to us a person to whom
we may be wholly indifferent? The explanation is less difficult
when the person represented is a husband or child, but even then,
why does the activity occur once, and only once, and _not_ in a
moment of anxiety?
The coincidental hallucinations are laid to the door of 'telepathy,'
to 'a telepathic impact from the mind of an absent agent,' who is
dying, or in some other state of rare or exciting experience,
perhaps being married, as in Col. Meadows Taylor's case. This is a
theory as old as Lavaterus, and was proclaimed by Mayo in the middle
of the century; while, substituting 'angels' for human agents,
Frazer of Tiree used it, in 1700, to explain second sight. Nay, it
is the Norse theory of a 'sending' by a sorcerer, as we read in the
Icelandic sagas. But, admitting that telepathy may be a cause of
hallucinations, we often find the effect where the cause is not
alleged to exist. Nobody, perhaps, will explain our nine empty
hallucinations by 'telepathy,' yet, from the supposed effects of
telepathy they were indistinguishable. Are all such cases of casual
hallucination in the sane to be explained by telepathy, by an impact
of force from a distant brain on the central terminus of our own
brains? At all events, a casual hallucination of the presence of an
absent friend need obviously cause us very little anxiety. We need
not adopt the hypothesis of the Maoris.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account