This is true, not only for ordinary sensations, but even for such as would ordinarily be presumed to be so insistent in their call that they could not be neglected. The concentration of mind necessary for this is not common to all mankind; it is possessed only by a few individuals whose intellect represents the larger portion of their personality. Certain of the great investigating scientific geniuses have had the faculty of so concentrating their attention upon the questions with which their intellects were engaged, that even the call of appetite did not make itself felt. Newton was one of these. Over and over again, he was known to neglect to take his meals, even though they were brought to him, and, occasionally, he would entirely forget whether he had taken a meal or not. But Newton is not an extreme exception. Most of the great mathematicians have had experiences of this kind and, indeed, mathematics seems to be that special branch of intellectual work which most readily brings about a preoccupation of mind sufficient to completely shut out the outer world for the time being. Archimedes, the great ancient mathematician, lost his life because of preoccupation with mathematical problems that kept him from telling the Roman soldiers, who had strict orders to spare him, who he was.
Complete absorption of mind to the exclusion of all external sensations is not, however, confined to the mathematicians. Mommsen, the historian, was famous for his fits of mental abstraction. Once he patted a school-boy on the head and asked whose boy he was, to be told rather startlingly, "Yours." Lombroso, the criminal psychologist, was subject to abstraction in almost as great a degree. Men have become so preoccupied in study as not to appreciate the significance of warnings, indicating that a serious accident was about to happen, such as a fire or the fall of some object that they should have avoided, or some other danger to themselves. The tendency to such abstraction is responsible for many accidents on busy city streets. When so preoccupied, painters walk off scaffolds, and such preoccupation of mind is extremely dangerous, not only for the man himself, but for those who are working with him.
Everyone knows that a slight headache frequently disappears in pleasant company. There is sometimes the suspicion, though it is quite unjustified, that because a person has a headache which can be cured by engaging in a favorite occupation, the headache is more imaginary than real. The common experience with toothache shows the falsity of this opinion. There is no imagination in regard to toothache, yet it, too, except in very severe cases, will be so modified as to be quite negligible if the victim has some mental occupation that is very absorbing. Pains of other kinds that are just as real, may be modified in the same way. I have known a boy to suffer enough from the presence of an unsuspected kidney stone to give up play and come into the house, yet he could be made entirely to forget his discomfort by a game of checkers. On account of the ease with which the pain was thus dispelled, the suspicion was harbored that his ache was more imaginary than real. The ache continued and at the end of about a year there was an acute exacerbation which justified an operation, and the stone was removed.
In all these instances there is evidently a question of the unmaking, or at {131} least imperfect making, of connections between the peripheral and central neurons, because of the existence of connections between different portions of the brain itself which take up the attention. This attention to mental things may become exaggerated, and must be guarded against, but it represents a valuable psychotherapeutic remedy. Whenever the peripheral connections are unmade, external sensation is unfelt. Even though the peripheral neuron may be suffering to some extent, this is true. It is this law of attention that must be taken advantage of for psychotherapeutics. People who are liable to be too much concerned with their sensations, must be taught to occupy themselves with interests that will absorb the attention. Central neurons can, except under very serious circumstances, be made to connect with one another so intimately as to bring about the neglect of many bothersome external sensations.
FIG. 20.—COMPLEXITY OF CELL OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM. A Golgi cell after Andriezen. (Barker.)
On the other hand, when the connections with the periphery are well made, external sensations flow in on us to the exclusion of thought and then even simple sensations may be exaggerated so as to become painful. Anything that attracts our attention so much that we cannot think quietly about it, is likely to be a disturbance rather than a pleasure. Music is distinctly pleasant, yet very loud music becomes painful. The reason is that the peripheral neuron is so much disturbed that these excessive vibrations are communicated to other neurons connected with it and they are unable to occupy themselves with anything except this over-strenuous sensation. A very bright light has something of the same effect, and the same thing is true for all the other senses. A pleasant odor, if over strong, becomes disgusting. A very sweet taste is cloying. This over excitation of neurons may come from without, or may come from within. If the central neuron is so much occupied with itself, and the sensation that is flowing into it, that it is prevented from making such connections as would communicate and distribute the sensations properly, then the sensory phenomenon becomes painful, though it may not be exaggerated in the peripheral neuron.
In all of these phenomena there is something more than brain cells at work. Brain cells are guided, co-ordinated, controlled, and even overseen, in their labors. The same conclusion becomes inevitable with regard to the action of the cells of the body generally. A generation or two ago it was the custom to attempt to explain all the processes in the body by chemical and physical principles. Respiration, for instance, and absorption of gases into the blood in the lungs and the expiration of gases that have been generated within the body during vital processes, were supposed to be entirely explicable on the principle of the diffusion of gases. The absorption of various substances into the body proper from the intestinal tract, and the excretion {132} of various substances from within the body into the excretory organs, as well as the process of secretion, were supposed to be nothing more than varying phenomena of osmosis and exosmosis. There has since been a general recognition of the fact that these principles do not explain many of the incidents within the body in its relations to its surroundings, and that vital processes are something much more than merely manifestations of physics and chemistry.
The lungs are not mere laboratories in which refinements of the laws of the diffusion of gases may be studied, for under varying pressures from without that would vitiate the ordinary laws of diffusion, inspiration and expiration continues. Fishes live at depths where the pressure is so great that expiration would seem to be impossible, yet they succeed in eliminating harmful gaseous material. Prof. Haldane of Cambridge has called attention to many of these processes. Animal stomachs are not test-tubes. Animal excretion, and above all, secretion, is carried on sometimes in accordance with but, almost more often, in defiance of chemical and physical principles. The individual, even in the lower animals, counts for much more than the chemical constituents of the tissues and the physical principles involved.
Besides, all the parts of the organism are co-ordinated, and there are wonderful checks and counterchecks which show that animals are much more than colonies of cells fortuitously growing together and habituated to such common life by many generations of heredity and environment and training. In a word, the old vitalistic principle has become popular once more and even great physiologists have insisted that there is a principle of life which guides and controls and co-ordinates the different portions of the body. Especially does this seem to be true of the brain. We have here an intensely complex machine, composed literally of billions of parts which work together, and in doing so accomplish wonderful results. Of the existence of this machine, much more of the great intricacy of its parts and mechanism, we are quite unconscious. We learn to use it in very early years with an assurance and a perfection that is amazing, considering how complex it is. The less we think about it and its workings, the better does it work and the less disturbance of function is there in its accomplishment.
Fig. 21.—SECTION THROUGH THE CORTEX OF THE GYRUS OCCIPITALIS SUPERIOR. (Hammarberg. Barker.)
If a vitalistic principle were needed to enable us to understand the workings of the ordinary body cells, how much more is it required for the workings of brain cells. There is something behind that guides and rules the brain, and through which it accomplishes its work. It is this that brings about an unconscious cerebration accomplishing intellectual results for us even when the brain machine itself is at rest as when asleep, or fails, for some reason, to be in readiness to take up the work that we demand of it. It is this vital principle that coordinates the movements of brain cells which represent {133} the physical processes underlying memory and the nervous elements of the sensitive and motor phenomena of the organism. Reflection on the physical mechanism underlying mental operations of various kinds, demands the vitalistic explanation much more than the physiological phenomena which have converted physiologists to the old way of thinking in our time. Our individuality is probably largely due to the physical basis of our mentality, but there is something more than that required for any theory of mental operations that would satisfy all the questions that come to us. There is, then, actual proof of the existence of a force that is part of us, that constitutes a bit of the essence of our personalities, yet is capable of accomplishing results that we cannot understand, and of managing a machine that transcends any physical powers that we can think of.
FIG. 22—MOTOR CELL OF VENTRAL HORN OF SPINAL CORD FROM THE HUMAN FETUS, THIRTY CENTIMETERS LONG (method of Golgi; after von Lenhossek. Barker.)
This vital force behind the nervous system contains stores of energy that can be called on for therapeutic purposes. It is the directing, co-ordinating and energizing force which controls the central nervous system, and enables it to accomplish its purposes. It is the disappearance of this force at death which leaves the body without vital activity, though no physical difference between the dead and the living body can be demonstrated. Changes in the body follow death; they are not simultaneous. This vital force supplies the energy that we call the will, and underlies the process called "living on the will" which so often serves to maintain existence when there is every reason to think that a fatal termination is due. The amount of energy thus available is limited, {134} but is much more powerful than has been thought. It is of the greatest possible service in preserving health and eliminating disease. Its existence, demonstrated by the complex nervous system which we employ with such confidence, though we know nothing of it, furnishes the best possible basis for confident attempts at rousing the patient to use the vital energy he possesses for the strengthening of weakness, the correction of deficiency and the control of evil tendencies.
Many of the exhausting neurotic and psycho-neurotic affections so common in recent years are largely due to the failure of patients to secure such mental relaxation as will permit complete repair of nervous waste. We are proud of being a generation of specialists. Some men never get completely away from the set of thoughts with which they are occupied in their particular specialty. Waking or sleeping these thoughts are with them. It is almost impossible, then, for cells of the central nervous system to secure such rest as they need. Cells must be put at absolute rest so that nutritional processes may go on entirely undisturbed, and every portion of the cell be renewed in vigor. Re-creation, in its original meaning, is exactly what must be provided for nerve cells.
The trouble is not alone that men occupy a very narrow set of brain cells with their special interest, and make all their energy pass through that set, but among men who are lacking in a certain insulation in the nervous system, this particular set of cells continues to be active, even at times when they think they are resting or diverting themselves. Unconscious cerebration (the occupation of the mind with subjects when we are not deliberately giving our attention to them) is a common phenomenon in human psychology. With the rise of extreme specialization, it has become even more dangerous than before. In the past unconscious cerebration might mean any occupation, with any one of a number of interests. At the present it is likely to mean concentration of thought on a particular subject with which the brain is prone to be occupied more than is good for it, even during the hours of ordinary labor. It seems worth while to discuss at some length, then, the subject of unconscious cerebration, because it constitutes the pathological physiology of many nervous states that we see in modern life.
Frequency of Unconscious Cerebration.—The mind, having been set to work over a given thought, continues at it sub-consciously, even while apparently completely occupied with something else. Most people who devote themselves to the intellectual life have experienced phenomena more striking and going much farther in unconscious cerebration than this. Most writers have a common experience: if they arrange their thoughts on a given subject and then turn aside to something else, they find, when they go over the same subject next day, much more material than came the day before. The thoughts for an article will often gradually accumulate by unconscious cerebration after the process has been consciously started.
At intervals during the next few days succeeding the determination to write a certain article (at moments when no conscious thought is being given to it), ideas crop up that help to fill out the original scheme of thought, and if these are jotted down, a good deal of intellectual work is accomplished without the necessity for that labor over a desk that most of us scheme to avoid. The more familiar literary work becomes, the more frequent are these experiences, and one occasionally wakes up with a thought that opens up a new vista and adds valuable material to what has already been accumulated. If the subject is a large one, as for a book, then most writers will probably confess that some of their best thoughts have come in this "hit and miss" fashion rather than at the times when they were seriously applying themselves to elaborating their theme.
Inspiration.—Some of the great literary writers have felt that their brain work was so independent of themselves that the word inspiration properly suited what they were accomplishing. Thackeray destroyed sheet after sheet of manuscript, utterly dissatisfied with it until, as the result of keeping at it, inspiration would come. Then he would be able to fill up rapidly many pages with work so finished that it needed little correction or polish. George Eliot, at times, became so absorbed in her writing that it almost appeared to her that some other personality than her own was wielding the pen. Her imaginary characters became real to her, and it was while under the stimulus of this impression of living in an imaginative world with them that she succeeded in accomplishing her best work. Many other authors were, of course, very different. Some of them ridiculed the idea of waiting for inspiration. Most of them, however, found it difficult to begin their task at certain times, yet if they forced themselves to it, and once got their minds going, the line of thought ran on easily and, at the close of the task, they looked back with pleasure and wonder that they were able to accomplish so much.
Illustrations.—This is true not only of literary work, whose main purpose is the arrangement of details of information of various kinds with personal opinions concerning it, but also of original thought of any kind. Many stories of poets are told illustrating this. They wander round with pencils and jot down thoughts that come here and there at what are called moments of inspiration. The poets dream over their subjects, catch fleeting thoughts that, vague at first, sing themselves into musical expression. Music seems to be on the same plane with poetry, for there is the well-known story of the distinguished German musician who, walking with his wife in the park, found himself without paper at the moment when he had an inspiration. He used his own cuffs to write upon, and then finally impressed those of his wife into the service of carrying home the precious musical motifs that he was afraid might not come again if he allowed the favorable moment to pass without recording them.
There are stories of Tennyson finding some of his most perfect lines in the fields, after hours of seclusion and effort in his study had failed to round them out to his satisfaction, or dreaming them into shape, or waking to find one ready made to be written down. The letters of Wordsworth tell how often such incidents happened in his life.
Any one who has been thinking much for several days about a problem is likely to wake up with the thought that he has dreamed a solution of it, though unfortunately the solution has not remained in his memory. It seems as if a communication has been made to him during sleep. I have discussed dream life with many men engaged in serious work, and practically all of them confess to such experiences. Preoccupation of mind with a subject during the waking hours leads to at least some occupation of mind with the same subject during sleep. This unconscious occupation must often require rather strenuous attention, exhausting nutrition, using up nerve force and hampering the rest that is so important for tired human nature. [Footnote 17]
[Footnote 17: A number of poetic products of dreams are in our literature, some of them interesting for more than their curious origin. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, in his latest volume of poems, "The Comfort of the Hills," made an interesting contribution to the psychology of dreams by publishing two poems which were composed by him while asleep. The little poem, "Which?" has all the curious alliterativeness and frequent rhyme that is so likely to be noted in expressions that come during sleep, or just as we awake. The other is more like a somnambulistic effort. What we might suggest here is that the habit of poetizing during sleep would surely be dangerous to any one less eminently sane than their author. We give them as curious examples that will interest patients who complain that their dreams are too vivid.
For further details on this subject, see the chapter on Dreams.
Art in Dreams.—Many a painter testifies that as he slept interesting details have been added to his scheme for a picture. Mr. Huntington, who was for so long president of the National Academy, once told me that some of the arrangements of his famous picture, "Mercy's Dream" in the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington, had come to him during sleep. Giovanni Dupré, the French sculptor, confessed that the ideas for his beautiful pieta had practically all come to him in a dream. He had been thinking for a long time how he should arrange it, without allowing any of the ideas of sculptors whose treatment of the subject was well known to influence him too much, and had almost felt that it would be impossible to make anything individual. While deeply occupied with it one day he fell asleep, and when he awoke the whole scheme was clear.
Mathematical Dreams.—Such phenomena of unconscious cerebration are not uncommon in the exact sciences. Some of the best examples of these {137} curious phenomena that we have are to be found in the history of them. We all know the stories of mathematicians who, occupied deeply with a problem which they have been unable to solve, have gone to bed still thinking about it, have slept deeply and, as they thought, dreamlessly, and yet they have waked in the morning to find by the bedside the problem all worked out in their own penciling—all accomplished during a somnambulistic state. Missing factors have been found in dreams; mistakes in the working out of problems have been clearly pointed out in dreams, so that, on awaking, the calculator could at once correct his calculations, and even serious errors have been thus corrected.
Agassiz's Experience.—Some examples of these experiences in other sciences are striking. One that is likely to be impressive because it occurred in the experience of Professor Louis Agassiz, seems worth reporting. [Footnote 18]
[Footnote 18: "Louis Agassiz, His Life and Correspondence,"
edited by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1885.]
It is interesting both as psychological fact and as showing how,
sleeping and waking, his work was ever present with him. He had been
for two weeks striving to decipher the somewhat obscure impression
of a fossil fish on the stone slab in which it was preserved. Weary
and perplexed he put his work aside at last, and tried to dismiss it
from his mind. Shortly after, he waked one night persuaded that
while asleep he had seen his fish with all the missing features
perfectly restored. But when he tried to hold and make fast the
image it escaped him. Nevertheless he went early to the Jardin des
Plantes, thinking that on looking anew at the impression he should
see something that would put him on the track of his vision. In
vain—the blurred record was as blank as ever. The next night he saw
the fish again, but with no more satisfactory result. When he woke
it disappeared from his memory as before. Hoping that the same
experience might be repeated, on the third night he placed a pencil
and paper beside his bed before going to sleep. Accordingly toward
morning the fish reappeared in his dream, confusedly at first, but
at last with such distinctness that he had no longer any doubt as to
its zoological characters. Still half dreaming, in perfect darkness,
he traced these characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside. In
the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal sketch features
which he thought it impossible the fossil itself should reveal. He
hastened to the Jardin des Plantes, and, with his drawing as a
guide, succeeded in chiseling away the surface of the stone under
which the portions of the fish proved to be hidden. When wholly
exposed, it corresponded with his drawing, and his dream, and he
succeeded in classifying it with ease. He often spoke of this as a
good illustration of the well-known fact that when the body is at
rest the tired brain will do the work it refused before.
Hilprecht's Sleep Vision.—Quite as surprising a dream was that of Prof. Hilprecht, of the University of Pennsylvania. He had been trying for some time to decipher certain characters on ancient cylinders from the Orient. In spite of much hard mental labor he had been utterly unable to reach definite conclusions. In the midst of work on the subject he dreamt one night that a priest of the olden time appeared to him and read off the inscription that he had in vain been trying to decipher. Immediately after waking he told his wife of his dream and wrote down the interpretation that had thus been given. It was quite different from anything that he himself had obtained any hint of in his previous studies. When he got back to the inscription he found that this interpretation would satisfy the conditions better than any other, and there seemed no doubt that it represented the missing solution.
Somnambulism.—These curiously vivid dreams are occasionally associated with somnambulistic phenomena. Sometimes very definite purposes, requiring careful adaptation of means to ends, are accomplished in the somnambulistic state, and yet the actions are completely forgotten. I have recently been consulted about a case in which a young woman, on a visit to a family, had been shown some pretty though not expensive jewels. Evidently the guest envied their possession, for she got up during sleep and took the jewels and hid them. There seems no reason to doubt her statement that she remembered nothing at all about the incident. The taking was not attributed to her. There had been previous experiences of the same kind with things belonging to this young woman's sister. Somnambulism represents a degree of unconscious cerebration that may have serious results. Combinations of intellectual work with somnambulism are not infrequent, though many of the stories that are told are exaggerated. Some of them are authenticated. Ribot has a typical example of intellectual accomplishment, in a somnambulistic condition, that shows how far this may go:
A clear case of somnambulism was that of a clergyman, whom his wife saw rise from bed in his sleep, go to a writing table, and write rapidly for some minutes. This done he returned to bed, and slept on until morning. On awaking, he told her that in a dream he had worked out an argument for a sermon, of which he now retained no recollection whatever. She led him to the writing table, and showed him the written sheet upon which he found his argument worked out in the most satisfactory manner.
Unconscious cerebration is not, then, a trivial matter, and not an unusual experience. It probably occurs in every individual to a much greater extent than he thinks, unless he is engaged in analyzing his mental processes and their ways rather carefully. This constitutes one of the dangers of the intellectual life, which must also be guarded against in business life or in any absorbing occupation. When the mind has become intensely occupied with a subject, it is not easy to relinquish it. Even when we turn to something else, mental activity in the old groove continues to some extent, and so will prevent the rest that is necessary for the repair of tissue. Under these conditions the re-creation that is so important does not take place quite as well as it should, and even sleep does not relieve us from the burden of mental work. Mental exhaustion will result as a consequence of constant occupation, and so mental relaxation must be secured. Deliberate means and methods must be employed in order that we may not deceive ourselves into thinking we are securing mental recreation, though all the time certain exhausting mental processes continue to be active.
Dual Mental Occupation.—Many are inclined to think that reading, especially the reading of newspapers and magazines, which has become so popular in our time, furnishes an occupation of mind that enables one, for a time at least, to get away from cares and worries. This is probably true when the news is of special interest, or there is some form of excitement, or at the beginning of such reading before one grows accustomed to the usual {139} formula of the magazine stories; but as years go on and cares increase, such reading does not afford an occupation of mind that enables one to throw them off. It helps to pass the time, but the cares and worries keep insistently presenting themselves, and the effort to inhibit them, and at the same time pay some attention to what we are reading, makes a double task. Such reading, then, far from being restful, rather adds to the burden of care and to the labor of the mind, for besides the conscious cerebration, there is the undercurrent of subconscious cerebration disturbing the rest of cells that should be free from labor. The constant renewal of effort to keep one train of thought from interfering with another is itself a waste of nervous energy. This whole matter of reading is coming to occupy a new place in the minds of educators, especially of those who are trying to realize the scientific significance of various phases of education. In his address as the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Winnipeg meeting in 1909, Prof. J. J. Thompson, the British physicist, sums up the value of reading as an intellectual exercise in a way that would not be gratifying to those who, in recent years, have apparently accepted the doctrine that in much reading there is much information and, therefore, much education. He says:
It is possible to read books to pass examinations without the higher qualities of the mind being called into play. Indeed, I doubt if there is any process in which the mind is more quiescent than in reading without interest. I might appeal to the widespread habit of reading in bed as a prevention of insomnia as a proof of this.
Social Duties.—So-called social duties are, in this respect, very like reading. When we meet new people who are interesting, we get diversion of mind in their company. When the people with whom we are, however, already familiar, and perhaps most of them a little tiresome, then what is presumed to be a social diversion becomes merely a bore, all the problems of the day obtrude themselves, of real rest there is none, and re-creation can scarcely be possible. Nearly the same thing is true of the present-day theater, after we have become used to its offerings. A serious play, well constructed and with life's problems touched deeply, may grip us and take us out of ourselves, constituting a complete and magnificent diversion. For a limited number of people music accomplishes this purpose. Unfortunately, the number is very limited, and for those for whom music is the greatest diversion, it sometimes constitutes in itself a poignant source of mental exhaustion. Music may be a very trying thing, especially for women, and for those who have souls extremely sensitive to its manifold effects.
Upon these considerations, the importance of unconscious cerebration is brought home to the physician. It is impossible for a great many people to keep their minds inactive, and this is particularly true of two classes of people: those who have superabundant mental energy and those who lack self-control. To both of these classes of men and women, the physician must point out the dangers of unconscious cerebration—the occupation of mind with some subject, even at times while they imagine they are occupied with something else, or even during sleep. Such continuous occupation with a single subject is dangerous. Physicians must emphasize that many supposed {140} mental occupations are really so superficial that they allow other more exhausting processes to continue below them in the sphere of consciousness. As a consequence, the mind, instead of being relaxed, is really more tense than before, because occupied with two sets of thoughts. Very often it would be better for such people to continue with the more serious problem until its solution came, or until they realized that they must divert themselves.
What is important for mental relaxation, apparently, is not that a man shall try to set his mind at absolute rest, for that seems to be impossible, if a man really has a mind; nor that he shall occupy it with trivial things (because his interest will not be caught by them and will revert to the last serious thing that he was doing), but that he shall have an outlet for mental activity in entirely another direction from that to which he usually devotes himself. In other words, it is important that a man shall have a hobby, and that he shall ride that hobby whenever his ordinary business, whatever that may be, will permit him, and the more interesting the hobby, the better.
The most important general remedy for over-prolonged mental occupation with a single subject, is some outdoor sport or form of exercise that requires all the attention. Horseback exercise is particularly valuable; boating, especially where the man has charge of the boat himself and where he has to have his wits about him, and the various sports. It is particularly important that men should not be alone during the taking of their exercise and diversion of mind. Above all, human interests take a man outside of himself and keep him from disturbing his mental equipoise by too much devotion to a single subject.
There is a very general impression that it is possible, at least under certain circumstances, for one human mind to influence another at a distance without any of the ordinary known means of communication. Many people have had the experience of thinking about a friend whom they have not seen for a long while, and shortly after meeting him. Sometimes it is found that the friend was making up his mind to bring about the meeting just about the time that the thought of him came. Many have had the experience of writing a letter and having it cross in the mails with another from their correspondent, evidently written within a few hours, though there had perhaps been no communication for weeks or months before. There are people who insist that they can, by concentrating the mind and fixing their eyes on the head of a {141} person some distance in front of them in a theater, or a railway car, cause the person to turn around. There are others who say that by thinking strongly of some person in a distant part of a large room, that person can be made to think of them. In general, there are many persons who are quite sure that there is evidence enough to indicate the possibility of distant mental influence, or, as it has come to be called learnedly, telepathy.
Telepathy, from the two Greek words, tele, at a distance, and pathos, feeling, has been much discussed in recent years. Many people who use the word glibly are inclined to think they know much about it. A long word, however, is not an explanation, and, just here, George Eliot's expression "we map out our ignorance in long Greek names" is worth recalling. There are a number of phenomena that seem to require some such theory as that of telepathy, but the phenomena are still under discussion and their significance is by no means clear. As we understand it, telepathy may mean either thought transference or mind reading, that is, either the active process by which we communicate our thought to someone at a distance, or the passive process by which we receive communications from others. These thoughts include the idea of mental influence at a distance; that is, we can by willing influence the wills, or at least the motives to action, of people at a distance and they may, in turn, influence ours. The further thought has come, that since the mind largely influences the body in matters of health, so mental influence from a distance by affecting mind, may either improve or injure health.
Some sensitive people are disturbed by the thought that they may be influenced from a distance by others, or at least that suggestions that come to them, may be due to telepathic influence. Investigation would probably show that there are at least as many persons disturbed by real or supposed telepathic influences as there are of those who have hallucinations. Sometimes it is said that such persons are not quite sane, but the more experience a physician has with them, the more he dismisses the thought of insanity and proceeds to use contrary suggestion and frank discussion, in order to counteract the mental influences. Insane persons think they are being influenced from a distance just as they hear voices and see visions, but such hallucinations may occur to the sane, as apparent telepathic experiences may also.
Witchcraft.—It used to be a common belief that people could be influenced, even at a distance, by the mere evil wishes or intentions of others. After all, the old beliefs in witchcraft that were so common in Europe and in America until well into the eighteenth century represent the conviction of mankind that at least certain people might, from a distance, seriously influence them for evil. Always the fear of malign influence was uppermost in people's minds and literally hundreds of thousands of witches were prosecuted, and many thousands of them put to death, because of this belief in the possibility of their working evil to others at a distance, merely by willing it. Occasionally some such material auxiliary to malign purpose as an image in wax of the one to whom the evil was to be done was used. Into this the ill wisher stuck pins according to the part that he or she would want to be affected in the enemy, but as a rule the will, and nothing more, was used.
Absent Treatment.—In our own time a system of healing, that has attracted many followers, has taken up the idea of beneficent mental influence at a distance. "Absent treatment" has now become a familiar expression. {142} That those who believe in such favorable influence at a distance should also believe in unfavorable influence seems inevitable. As a matter of fact, we know that the founder of this special sect always insisted on the power for evil over herself and her followers of those who want to exert the injurious influence of animal magnetism—malicious animal magnetism as it is called. A very definite attempt was made to bring a case of this kind before the courts, the subject matter of which exactly resembled some of the old witchcraft trials in New England! And in spite of the insistence and emphatic assertion that no such thing is intended, from the principles that are accepted the necessary logical conclusion is a return to the belief in witchcraft.
Malignant Magnetism.—As a number of persons are likely to fear such evil influence of others upon them, the question of the possibility of it must come up for discussion in order that its status may be clear in the physician's mind, for by just as much as he can make certain to the patient that modern psychology refuses to accept distant influence, will he be able to reassure his patient. Of course, the patients who come with such complaints have usually some element of mental trouble. The alienist sees any number of people who are sure that enemies at a distance are working spells upon them, some by electrical, some by magnetic means, and some by telepathic absent treatment, or absent ill-wishing. Such notions are the delusions of the disequilibrated and these persons often cannot be reasoned with. Yet very often a distinct delusion may be reasoned out of even a subrational person, if it is taken seriously, and some striking expression of its irrationality and of its total disagreement with scientific views can be shown to the patient.
Action Without a Medium.—The medieval scholastic philosophers quoted as an absolutely accepted principle the Latin axiom, "actio in distans repugnat." Literally translated this means action at a distance is repugnant to reason. Expressed less technically, the principle declares that any action of one body on another, where there is no medium connecting them, no link that in some way places them in contact with one another, is absurd. The expression in distans means that the two bodies are separated from one another and stand in two places having no connection of any kind. This principle would ordinarily seem to preclude the possibility of one person acting on another, unless there is some mode of communication.
Crookes' Theory.—Sir William Crookes, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science about ten years ago, in discussing telepathy, directed attention to the fact that there exists by scientific hypothesis, generally accepted, a definite medium of communication by which minds at a distance might influence one another. The medium is the ether which, according to physical theories, besides carrying light, also carries heat and electrical waves, and in recent years is recognized as transmitting the impulses of wireless telegraphy. It is possible that when the cells of certain human minds are stimulated to a particular phase of vibration, they may, even at long distances, affect the cells of other individuals that resemble them, or are attuned to them, that is, have the same moment of vibration. This is the principle which underlies wireless telegraphy. Whether the vibrations of living nerve cells can be made thus to radiate out over the ether and arouse in any way other cells, especially to the extent of communicating ideas, is a matter still open for investigation. The possibility of this occurring {143} cannot be denied. We are, however, still in the presence of a condition and not a theory. The question is whether minds are thus influenced at a distance—whether we have data enough to establish the occurrence of telepathy or mental communications of any kind at a distance.
No Practical Thought Transfer.—At the beginning, it is of the greatest importance to recall that, while many people think there must be something in telepathy and presume that the investigations of recent years have shown not only the possibility of the communication of ideas from mind to mind and of the mental influence of one person over another, even at long distances, but also its actual occurrence, yet all our ordinary life is founded on the absolute negation of any such phenomenon. For instance, our courts of law are conducted in direct contradiction of the possibility of anything like telepathy. Juries are summoned of twelve good men and true who, as far as possible, know nothing about the prisoner and as little as may be about the case. They are supposed to get all their information in the court room. We do not believe that any of them by any wonderful process might be able to know what was going on in the prisoner's mind in spite of his plea. Nor do we think for a moment that they can know what is going on, apart from what he communicates in evidence, in the mind of any witness. Neither is there the slightest presumption that the judge or any of our lawyers can know anything about what is in the minds of any of the persons present, except as they reveal it by outward signs.
A lawyer who could employ telepathy with success would be simply invaluable. Before a month had passed, he would have all the business of the criminal courts in his hands.
Mental Retention.—In answer to this it may be said that these represent conditions in which determined effort is made to keep all possible information that may be in the minds of all concerned from passing to others. Everyone concedes the power of such absolute self retention of our thoughts, when we deliberately wish to keep them from being known to others. When people wish to communicate their thoughts to others, then it may be different. In that case the sending and receiving minds are both active and the conditions for interaction, if it were at all possible, would be favorable. Just this condition obtains in the court room every day. An innocent prisoner wants with all his heart and soul to communicate the idea of his innocence to the judge and jury. Of course, he does not succeed by telepathic means in transferring to them any inkling of the truth. On the contrary, his very nervousness and anxiety to set himself right before them will sometimes actually cause prejudice.
The rule that has thus been exemplified in our courts of law holds for all business transactions. The ordinary customs of business presume that the buyer does not know what the seller paid for the particular article that is being exchanged, and it is on the strength of this that profit becomes possible. A few telepathic merchants or customers would work serious havoc in business life.
What thus holds for important affairs in life is just as strikingly exemplified in the trivial round of social existence and in our intercourse with friends. Suppose one woman knew what another woman thought of her!
That charming, old-fashioned institution "courting" would go entirely by {144} the board, if there were any such thing as real telepathy. In general, social life in all its features would become very, very different to what it is.