Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/128

108 making liberal allowance for this unconscious exaggeration, and for another disturbing cause—the possible influence of selection on the results, —the probable number of death coincidences is reduced to 30.

We have then these 30 coincidences with death in 1300 apparitions. But the death rate for the last completed decade (1881–1890) of the period under review was 19.15—i. e., the probability that any person taken at random would die within any given 24 hours was 19.15 in 365,000 = about 1 in 19,000. If there is no causal connection between the hallucination and the death, we should find but I coincidence in 19,000—we actually find 1 in 43.

We may dismiss, then, the suggestion of explanation by chance coincidence. But it need hardly be said that we are not, therefore, entitled to claim that we have found an irrefragable proof of telepathy. The coincidences, it is true, did not occur by chance, if the facts have been correctly reported. But on the one hand, the frequency of