Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

 Hypnotism Home
 Hypnotism Links
 Table of Contents
 Hypnosis School

longitude. On the day in question, my father had completed a large business transaction for a capitalist, and the latter had passed the bottle freely, making my father drink more wine than he wanted to." The man who told me this thought his father had never been drunk on any other occasion. He did not think the coincidence accidental. In spite of this detailed communication—I have received others of a similar nature—I must add that in this case, particularly, the fourth of the sources of error mentioned by Parish is not excluded. At all events, any one who does not wish to be lost in a maze of miracles, must carefully consider these sources of error when dealing with such statements as are occasionally made.
As we see, the cases of thought-transference that have been observed fall into two groups—the spontaneous, which I have just noticed, and the experimental, which I mentioned first of all. Those produced experimentally do not call for any serious criticism. All that Du Prel, Mensi, Welsch, and many others have published on this hardly requires even moderate criticism. Among those who vouch for the reality of telepathy I mention Charles Richet, Ochorowicz, Pierre Janet, Gibert, F. Myers, A. Myers, Gurney, Lombroso, Birchall, Guthrie, Eeden, Glardon, Schrenck-Notzing. I had an opportunity of being present at Mrs. Sidgwick's very neat experiments at Brighton. Two persons were in the hypnotic condition, and one had to


OCCULTISM. 515

indicate a number thought of by the other. The proportion of correct answers was extremely large. As, however, the two persons experimented on, though separated by a folding screen, were somewhat near together, the experiments were not conclusive. Mrs. Sidgwick admitted the justice of this criticism. Also the experiments made by the other persons I have mentioned do not stand serious criticism. My own experiments, especially those I made some years ago in conjunction with Max Dessoir, only gave negative results when the necessary precautions were taken. Still, I agree with Lcewenfeld that we cannot deny the possibility of there being such a thing as telepathy, or at least the possibility of their being ways of influencing others about which we know nothing in the present day. But up to the present no proof of this has been forthcoming.
I intend, in conclusion, to give all the sources of error to which occultism is liable, in a connected form, but here I will just mention a principal source

More cool stuff from www.hypnosisschool.org:

© 2012