less improbable than it would otherwise have seemed that telepathy may take effect first on the 'unconscious' part of the mind.[133] And in the third place, the period of supposed latency has in a good many instances been a period when the person affected was in activity, and when his mind and senses were being solicited by other things; and in such cases it is specially easy to suppose that the telepathic impression did not get the right conditions for rising into consciousness until a season of silence and _recueillement_ arrived.[134] But though the theory of latency has thus a good deal to be said for it, my colleagues and I are most anxious not to be supposed to be putting forward as a dogma what must be regarded at present merely as a working hypothesis. Psychical research is of all subjects the one where it is most important to avoid this error, and to keep the mind open for new interpretations of the facts. And in the present instance there are certain definite objections which may fairly be made to the hypothesis that a telepathic impression derived from a dying person may emerge after hours of latency. The experimental cases to which I have referred as analogous are few and uncertain, and, moreover, in them the period of latency has been measured by seconds or minutes, not by hours. And though, as I have said, some of the instances of apparent delay among the death-cases might be accounted for by the fact that the percipient's mind or senses needed to be withdrawn from other occupations before the manifestation could take place, there are other instances where this is not so, and where no ground at all appears for connecting the delay with the percipient's condition. On the whole, then, the alternative hypothesis--that the condition of the phenomenon on the 'agent's' side (be it psychical or be it physical) is one which only comes into existence at a distinct interval after death, and that the percipient really is impressed at the moment, and not before the moment, when he is conscious of the impression--is one which must be steadily kept in view.