Does this mean that every risk of telepathy is done away with? It
would perhaps be rash to make a categorical assertion. The power
and extent of telepathy are as yet, we cannot too often repeat,
indefinite, indiscernible, untraceable and unlimited. We have but
quite lately discovered it, we know only that its existence can
no longer be denied; but, as for all the rest, we are at much the
same stage as that whereat Galvani was when he gave life to the
muscles of his dead frogs with two little plates of metal which
roused the jeers of the scientists of his time, but contained the
germ of all the wonders, of electricity.
Nevertheless, as regards telepathy in the sense in which we
understand and know it to-day, my mind is made up. I am persuaded
that it is not in this direction that we must seek for an
explanation of the phenomenon; or, if we are determined to find
it there, the explanation becomes complicated with so many
subsidiary mysteries that it is better to accept the prodigy as
it stands, in its original obscurity and simplicity. When, for
instance, I was copying out one of the grisly problems which I
have mentioned, it is quite certain that my conscious
intelligence could make neither head nor tail of it. I did not so
much as know what it meant or whether the exponent 3. 4. 5 called
for a multiplication, a division or some other mathematical
operation which I did not even try to imagine; and, rack MY
memory as I may, I cannot remember any moment in my life when I
knew more about it than I do now. We should therefore have to
admit that MY subliminal self is a born mathematician, quick,
infallible and endowed with boundless learning. It is possible
and I feel a certain pride at the thought. But the theory simply
shifts the miracle by making it pass from the horse's soul to
mine; and the miracle becomes no clearer by the transfer, which,
for that matter, does not sound probable. I need hardly add that,
a fortiori, Dr. Hamel's experiments and many others which I have
not here the space to describe finally dispose of the theory.
17
Let us see how those who have interested themselves in these
extraordinary manifestations have attempted to explain them.
As we go along, we will just shear through the feeble undergrowth
of childish theories. I shall not, therefore, linger over the
suggestions of cheating, of manifest signs addressed to the eye
or ear, of electrical installations that are supposed to control
the answers, nor other idle tales of an excessively clumsy
character. To realize their inexcusable inanity we have but to
spend a few minutes in the honest Elberfeld stable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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