Part 33 (2/2)

Yet I fear we must mind what they say. At least, we must remember that sleeping dreams are, of all things, most easily forgotten; while a full-bodied hallucination, when we, at least, believe ourselves awake, seems to us on a perfectly different plane of impressiveness, and (_experto crede_) is really very difficult to forget. Herr Parish cannot be allowed, therefore, to use the regular eighteenth-century argument-- 'All dreams!' For the two sorts of dreams, in sleep and in apparent wakefulness, seem, to the subject, to differ in _kind_. And they really do differ in kind. It is the essence of the every night dream that we are unconscious of our actual surroundings and conscious of a fantastic environment. It is the essence of wideawakeness to be conscious of our actual surroundings. In the ordinary dream, nothing actual competes with its visions. When we are conscious of our surroundings, everything actual does compete with any hallucination. Therefore, an hallucination which, when we are conscious of our material environment, does compete with it in reality, is different _in kind_ from an ordinary dream. Science gains nothing by arbitrarily declaring that two experiences so radically different are identical. Anybody would see this if he were not arguing under a dominant idea.

Herr Parish next contends that people who see pictures in crystal b.a.l.l.s, and so on, are not so wide awake as to be in their normal consciousness.

There is 'dissociation' (practically drowsiness), even if only a little. Herr Moll also speaks of crystal-gazing pictures as 'hypnotic phenomena.'[12] Possibly neither of these learned men has ever seen a person attempt crystal-gazing. Herr Parish never a.s.serts any such personal experience as the basis of his opinion about the non-normal state of the gazer. He reaches this conclusion from an anecdote reported, as a not unfamiliar phenomenon, by a friend of Miss X. But the phenomenon occurred when Miss X. was not crystal-gazing at all! She was looking out of a window in a brown study. This is a n.o.ble example of logic. Some one says that Miss X. was not in her normal consciousness on a certain occasion when she was _not_ crystal-gazing, and that this condition is familiar to the observer. Therefore, argues Herr Parish, n.o.body is in his normal consciousness when he is crystal-gazing.

In vain may 'so good an observer as Miss X. think herself fully awake' (as she does think herself) when crystal-gazing, because once, when she happened to have 'her eyes _fixed on the window_,' her expression was '_a.s.sociated_' by a friend 'with _something uncanny_,' and she afterwards spoke '_in a dreamy, far-away tone_' (p. 297). Miss X., though extremely 'wide awake,' may have looked dreamily at a window, and may have seen mountains and marvels. But the point is that she was not voluntarily gazing at a crystal for amus.e.m.e.nt or experiment--perhaps trying to see how a microscope affected the pictures--or to divert a friend.

I appeal to the shades of Aristotle and Bacon against scientific logic in the hands of Herr Parish. Here is his syllogism:

A. is occasionally dreamy when _not_ crystal-gazing.

A. is human.

Therefore every human being, when crystal-gazing, is more or less asleep.

He infers a general affirmative from a single affirmative which happens not to be to the point. It is exactly as if Herr Parish argued:

Mrs. B. spends hours in shopping.

Mrs. B. is human.

Therefore every human being is always late for dinner.

Miss X., I think, uplifted her voice in some review, and maintained that, when crystal-gazing, she was quite in her normal state, _dans son a.s.siette_.

Yet Herr Parish would probably say to any crystal-gazer who argued thus, 'Oh, no; pardon me, you were _not_ wholly awake--you were a-dream. I know better than you.' But, as he has not seen crystal-gazers, while I have, many scores of times, I prefer my own opinion. And so, as this a.s.sertion about the percipient's being 'dissociated,' or asleep, or not awake, is certainly untrue of all crystal-gazers in my considerable experience, I cannot accept it on the authority of Herr Parish, who makes no claim to any personal experience at all.

As to crystal-gazing, when the gazer is talking, laughing, chatting, making experiments in turning the ball, changing the light, using prisms and magnifying-gla.s.ses, dropping matches into the water-jug, and so on, how can we possibly say that 'it is impossible to distinguish between waking hallucinations and those of sleep' (p. 300)? If so, it is impossible to distinguish between sleeping and waking altogether. We are all like the dormouse! Herr Parish is reasoning here _a priori_, without any personal knowledge of the facts; and, above all, he is under the 'dominant idea' of his own theory--that of _dissociation_.

Herr Parish next crushes telepathy by an argument which--like one of the reasons why the bells were not rung for Queen Elizabeth, namely, that there were no bells to ring--might have come first, and alone. We are told (in italics--very impressive to the popular mind): _'No matter how great the number of coincidences, they afford not even the shadow of a proof for telepathy'_ (p. 301). What, not even if all hallucinations, or ninety-nine per cent., coincided with the death of the person seen? In heaven's name, why not? Why, because the 'weightiest' cause of all has been omitted from our calculations, namely, our good old friend, _the a.s.sociation of ideas_ (p. 302). Our side cannot prove the _absence_ (italics) of _the a.s.sociation of ideas_. Certainly we cannot; but ideas in endless millions are being a.s.sociated all day long. A hundred thousand different, unnoticed a.s.sociations may bring Jones to my mind, or Brown.

But I don't therefore see Brown, or Jones, who is not there. Still less do I see Dr. Parish, or Nebuchadnezzar, or a monkey, or a salmon, or a golf ball, or Arthur's Seat (all of which may be brought to my mind by a.s.sociation of ideas), when they are not present.

Suppose, then, that once in my life I see the absent Jones, who dies in that hour (or within twelve hours). I am puzzled. Why did a.s.sociation choose that day, of all days in my life, for her solitary freak? And, if this choice of freaks by a.s.sociation occurs among other people, say two hundred times more often than chance allows, the freak begins to suggest that it may have a cause.

Not even the circ.u.mstance cited by Herr Parish, that a drowsy tailor, 'sewing on in a dream,' poor fellow, saw a client in his shop while the client was dying, solves the problem. The tailor is not said even once to have seen a customer who was _not_ dying; yet he writes, 'I was accustomed to work all night frequently.' The tailor thinks he was asleep, because he had been making irregular st.i.tches, and perhaps he was. But, out of all his vigils and all his customers, a.s.sociation only formed _one_ hallucination, and that was of a dying client whom he supposed to be perfectly well. Why on earth is a.s.sociation so fond of dying people-- granting the statistics, which are 'another story'? The explanation explains nothing. Herr Parish only moves the difficulty back a step, and, as we cannot live without a.s.sociation of ideas, they are taken for granted by our side. a.s.sociation of ideas does not cause hallucinations, as Mrs.

Sidgwick remarks, though it may determine their contents.

The difficult theme of coincidental collective hallucinations, as when two or more people at once have, or profess to have, the same false perception of a person who is really absent and dying, is next disposed of by Herr Parish. The same _points de repere_, the same sound, or flicker of light, or arrangement of shadow, may beget the same or a similar false perception in two or more people at once. Thus two girls, in different rooms, are looking out on different parts of the hall in their house. 'Both heard, at the same time, an [objective?] noise' (p. 313). Then, says Herr Parish, '_the one sister saw her father cross the hall_ after entering; the other saw the dog (the usual companion of his walks) run past her door.' Father and dog had not left the dining-room. Herr Parish decides that the same _point de repere_ (the apparent noise of a key in the lock of the front door) 'acted by way of suggestion on both sisters,' producing, however, different hallucinations, 'in virtue of the difference of the connected a.s.sociations.' One girl a.s.sociated the sound with her honoured sire, the other with his faithful hound; so one saw a dog, and the other saw an elderly gentleman. Now, first, if so, this should _always_ be occurring, for we all have different a.s.sociations of ideas. Thus, we are in a haunted house; there is a noise of a rattling window; I a.s.sociate it with a burglar, Brown with a milkman, Miss Jones with a lady in green, Miss Smith with a knight in armour. That collection of phantasms should then be simultaneously on view, like the dog and old gentleman; all our reports should vary. But this does not occur. Most unluckily for Herr Parish, he ill.u.s.trates his theory by telling a story which happens not to be correctly reported. At first I thought that a fallacy of memory, or an optical delusion, had betrayed him again, as in his legend of the waistcoat. But I am now inclined to believe that what really occurred was this: Herr Parish brought out his book in German, before the Report of the Census of Hallucinations was published. In his German edition he probably quoted a story which precisely suited his theory of the origin of collective hallucinations. This anecdote he had found in Prof. Sidgwick's Presidential Address of July 1890.[13] As stated by Prof. Sidgwick, the case just fitted Herr Parish, who refers to it on p. 190, and again on p. 314. He gives no reference, but his version reads like a traditional variant of Prof. Sidgwick's. Now Prof. Sidgwick's version was erroneous, as is proved by the elaborate account of the case in the Report of the Census, which Herr Parish had before him, but neglected when he prepared his English edition. The story was wrong, alas! in the very point where, for Herr Parish's purpose, it ought to have been right. The hallucination is believed not to have been collective, yet Herr Parish uses it to explain collective hallucinations. Doubtless he overlooked the accurate version in the Report.[14]

The facts, as there reported, were not what he narrates, but as follows:

Miss C.E. was in the breakfast-room, about 6:30 P.M., in January 1883, and supposed her father to be taking a walk with his dog. She heard noises, which may have had any other cause, but which she took to be the sounds of a key in the door lock, a stick tapping the tiles of the hall, and the patter of the dog's feet on the tiles. She then saw the dog pa.s.s the door.

Miss C.E. next entered the hall, where she found n.o.body; but in the pantry she met her sisters--Miss E., Miss H.G.E.--and a working-woman. Miss E.

and the working-woman had been in the hall, and there had heard the sound, which they, like Miss C.E., took for that of a key in the lock. They were breaking a little household rule in the hall, so they 'ran straightway into the pantry, meeting Miss H.G.E. on the way.' Miss C.E. and Miss E.

and the working-woman all heard the noise as of a key in the lock, but n.o.body is said to have 'seen the father cross the hall' (as Herr Parish a.s.serts). 'Miss H.G.E. was of opinion that Miss E. (now dead) saw _nothing_, and Miss C.E. was inclined to agree with her.' Miss E. and the work-woman (now dead) were 'emphatic as to the father having entered the house;' but this the two only _inferred_ from hearing the noise, after which they fled to the pantry. Now, granting that some other noise was mistaken for that of the key in the lock, we have here, _not_ (as Herr Parish declares) a _collective_ yet discrepant hallucination--the discrepancy being caused 'by the difference of connected a.s.sociations'-- but a _solitary_ hallucination. Herr Parish, however, inadvertently converts a solitary into a collective hallucination, and then uses the example to explain collective hallucinations in general. He a.s.serts that Miss E. 'saw her father cross the hall.' Miss E.'s sisters think that she saw no such matter. Now, suppose that Mr. E. had died at the moment, and that the case was claimed on our part as a 'collective coincidental hallucination,' How righteously Herr Parish might exclaim that all the evidence was against its being collective! The sound in the lock, heard by three persons, would be, and probably was, another noise misinterpreted.

And, in any case, there is no evidence for its having produced _two_ hallucinations; the evidence is in exactly the opposite direction.

Here, then, Herr Parish, with the printed story under his eyes, once more ill.u.s.trates want of attention. In one way his errors improve his case. 'If I, a grave man of science, go on telling distorted legends out of my own head, while the facts are plain in print before me,' Herr Parish may reason, 'how much more are the popular tales about coincidental hallucinations likely to be distorted?' It is really a very strong argument, but not exactly the argument which Herr Parish conceives himself to be presenting.[15]

This unlucky inexact.i.tude is chronic, as we have shown, in Herr Parish's work, and is probably to be explained by inattention to facts, by 'expectation' of suitable facts, and by 'anxiety' to prove a theory. He explains the similar or identical reports of witnesses to a collective hallucination by 'the case with which such appearances adapt themselves in recollection' (p. 313), especially, of course, after lapse of time. And then he unconsciously ill.u.s.trates his case by the case with which printed facts under his very eyes adapt themselves, quite erroneously, to his own memory and personal bias as he copies them on to his paper.

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