The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular PhilosophyJames, William
Religion
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
James, William
Belief and doubt; Essays; Philosophy
It is now time to cast a brief look upon the actual contents of these
Proceedings. The first two years were largely taken up with
experiments in thought-transference. The earliest lot of these were
made with the daughters of a clergyman named Creery, and convinced
Messrs. Balfour Stewart, Barrett, Myers, and Gurney that the girls had
an inexplicable power of guessing names and objects thought of by other
persons. Two years later, Mrs. Sidgwick and Mr. Gurney, recommencing
experiments with the same girls, detected them signalling to each
other. It is true that for the most part the conditions of the earlier
series had excluded signalling, and it is also possible that the
cheating may have grafted itself on what was originally a genuine
phenomenon. Yet Gurney was wise in abandoning the entire series to the
scepticism of the reader. Many critics of the S. P. R. seem out of all
{309} its labors to have heard only of this case. But there are
experiments recorded with upwards of thirty other subjects. Three were
experimented upon at great length during the first two years: one was
Mr. G. A. Smith; the other two were young ladies in Liverpool in the
employment of Mr. Malcolm Guthrie.
It is the opinion of all who took part in these latter experiments that
sources of conscious and unconscious deception were sufficiently
excluded, and that the large percentage of correct reproductions by the
subjects of words, diagrams, and sensations occupying other persons'
consciousness were entirely inexplicable as results of chance. The
witnesses of these performances were in fact all so satisfied of the
genuineness of the phenomena, that 'telepathy' has figured freely in
the papers of the Proceedings and in Gurney's book on Phantasms as a
_vera causa_ on which additional hypotheses might be built. No mere
reader can be blamed, however, if he demand, for so revolutionary a
belief, a more overwhelming bulk of testimony than has yet been
supplied. Any day, of course, may bring in fresh experiments in
successful picture-guessing. But meanwhile, and lacking that, we can
only point out that the present data are strengthened in the flank, so
to speak, by all observations that tend to corroborate the possibility
of other kindred phenomena, such as telepathic impression,
clairvoyance, or what is called 'test-mediumship.' The wider genus
will naturally cover the narrower species with its credit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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