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 CHAPTER III SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE: MIND'S EYE VISIONS

EFORE attempting to trace the operation of telepathy in a wider field it is necessary to utter a word of warning. The experimental evidence of which a few examples have been cited in the last chapter constitutes, and must continue to constitute, the main justification for the assumption of a new faculty. However calculated to impress the imagination may be the narratives which follow, they are indefinitely inferior in evidential cogency. It was these spontaneous occurrences, with their dramatic setting, which first drew attention to the subject and which, indeed, first suggested the possibility of a new mode of communication between mind and mind. But it is doubtful how far such occurrences could in themselves have justified the belief. The position may be illustrated from another field of research. So long as the exponents of the germ theory could support their position only by arguments derived from the observed distribution of certain diseases, their manner of propagation and development, their periodic character—phenomena which, though sufficiently 47