Appendices

APPENDIX A

OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE

The most elaborate reply to the arguments for telepathy, based on The Report of the Census of Hallucinations, is that of Herr Parish, in his 'Hallucinations and Illusions.'[1]

Herr Parish is, at present, opposed to the theory that the Census establishes a telepathic cause in the so-called 'coincidental' stories, 'put forward,' as he says, 'with due reserve, and based on an astonishing mass of materials, to some extent critically handled.'

He first demurs to an allowance of twelve hours for the coincidence of hallucination and death; but, if we reflect that twelve hours is little even in a year, coincidences within twelve hours, it may be admitted, donnent à penser, even if we reject the theory that, granted a real telepathic impact, it may need time and quiet for its development into a complete hallucination. We need not linger over the very queer cases from Munich, as these are not in the selected thirty of the Report. Herr Parish then dwells on that hallucination of memory, in which we feel as if everything that is going on had happened before. It may have occurred to most of us to be reminded by some association of ideas during the day, of some dream of the previous night, which we had forgotten. For instance, looking at a brook from a bridge, and thinking of how I would fish it, I remembered that I had dreamed, on the previous night, of casting a fly for practice, on a lawn. Nobody would think of disputing the fact that I really had such a dream, forgot it and remembered it when reminded of it by association of ideas. But if the forgotten dream had been 'fulfilled,' and been recalled to memory only in the moment of fulfilment, science would deny that I ever had such a dream at all. The alleged dream would be described as an 'hallucination of memory.' Something occurring, it would be said, I had the not very unusual sensation, 'This has occurred to me before,' and the sensation would become a false memory that it had occurred--in a dream. This theory will be advanced, I think, not when an ordinary dream is recalled by a waking experience, but only when the dream coincides with and foreruns that experience, which is a thing that dreams have no business to do. Such coincidental dreams are necessarily 'false memories,' scientifically speaking. Now, how does this theory of false memory bear on coincidental hallucinations?

The insane, it seems, are apt to have the false memory 'This occurred before,' and then to say that the event was revealed to them in a vision.[2] The insane may be recommended to make a note of the vision, and have it properly attested, before the event. The same remark applies to the 'presentiments' of the sane. But it does not apply if Jones tells me 'I saw my great aunt last night,' and if news comes after this remark that Jones's aunt died, on that night, in Timbuctoo. Yet Herr Parish (p. 282) seems to think that the argument of