Part 12

Again a certain amount of intensity of activity, at a 'sensory centre' in the brain, will start a 'percept'. Activity of the necessary force at the right place, may be normally caused by the organ of sense, say the eye, when fixed on a real object, say a candlestick. (1) Or the necessary activity at the sensory centre may be produced, abnormally, by irritation of the eye, or along the line of nerve from the eye to the 'sensory centre'. (2) Or thirdly, there may be a morbid, but spontaneous activity in the sensory centre itself. (3) In case one, we have a natural sensation converted into a perception of a real object. In case two, we have an abnormal origin of a perception of something unreal, a hallucination, begotten from without, that is by a vice in an external organ, the eye. In case three, we have the origin of an abnormal perception of something unreal, a hallucination, begotten by a vicious activity within, in the sensory centre. But, while all these three sets of stimuli set the machinery in motion, it is the 'highest parts of the brain' that, in response to the stimuli, create the full perception, real or hallucinatory.

But there remains a fourth way of setting the machinery in motion. The first way, in normal sensation and perception, was the natural action of the organ of sense, stimulated by a material object. The second way was by the stimulus of a vice in the organ of sense. The third way was a vicious activity in a sensory centre. All three stimuli reach the 'central terminus' of the brain, and are there created into perceptions, the first real and normal, the second a hallucination from an organ of sense, from without, the third a hallucination from a sensory centre, from within. The fourth way is illustrated when the machinery is set a-going from the 'central terminus' itself, 'from the higher parts of the brain, from the seats of ideation and memory'. Now, as long as these parts only produce and retain ideas or memories in the usual way, we think, or we remember, but we have no hallucination. But when the activity starting from the central terminus 'escapes downwards,' in sufficient force, it reaches the 'lower centre' and the organ of sense, and then the idea, or memory, stands visibly before us as a hallucination.

This, omitting many technical details, and much that is matter of more dispute than common, is a statement, rough, and as popular as possible, of the ideas expressed in Mr. Gurney's remarkable essay on hallucinations. {186} Here, then, we have a rude working notion of various ways in which hallucinations may be produced. But there are many degrees in being hallucinated, or enphantosme, as the old French has it. If we are interested in the most popular kind of hallucinations, ghosts and wraiths, we first discard like Le Loyer, the evidence of many kinds of witnesses, diversely but undeniably hallucinated. A man whose eyes are so vicious as habitually to give him false information is not accepted as a witness, nor a man whose brain is drugged with alcohol, nor a man whose 'central terminus' is abandoned to religious excitement, to remorse, to grief, to anxiety, to an apprehension of secret enemies, nor even to a habit of being hallucinated, though, like Nicolai, he knows that his visionary friends are unreal. Thus we would not listen credulously to a ghost story out of his own experience from a man whose eyes were untrustworthy, nor from a short-sighted man who had recognised a dead or dying friend on the street, nor from a drunkard. A tale of a vision of a religious character from Pascal, or from a Red Indian boy during his Medicine Fast, or even from a colonel of dragoons who fell at Prestonpans, might be interesting, but would not be evidence for our special purpose. The ghosts beheld by conscience-stricken murderers, by sorrowing widowers, by spiritualists in dark rooms, haunted by humbugs, or those seen by lunatics, or by children, or by timid people in lonely old houses, or by people who, though sane at the time, go mad twenty years later, or by sane people habitually visionary, these and many other ghosts, we must begin, like Le Loyer, by rejecting. These witnesses have too much cerebral activity at the wrong time and place. They start their hallucinations from the external terminus, the unhealthy organ of sense; from the morbid central terminus; or from some dilapidated cerebral station along the line. But, when we have, in a sane man's experience, say one hallucination whether that hallucination does, or does not coincide with a crisis in the life, or perhaps with the death of the person who seems to be seen, what are we to think? Or again, when several witnesses simultaneously have the same hallucination,--not to be explained as a common misinterpretation of a real object,--what are we to think? This is the true question of ghosts and wraiths. That apparitions, so named by the world, do appear, is certain, just as it is certain that visionary rats appear to drunkards in delirium tremens. But, as we are only to take the evidence of sane and healthy witnesses, who were neither in anxiety, grief, or other excitement, when they perceived their one hallucination, there seems to be a difference between their hallucinations and those of alcoholism, fanaticism, sorrow, or anxiety. Now the common mistakes in dealing with this topic have been to make too much, or to make too little, of the coincidences between the hallucinatory appearance of an absent person, and his death, or some other grave crisis affecting him. Too little is made of such coincidences by Dr. Hibbert, in his Philosophy of Apparitions (p. 231). He 'attempts a physical explanation of many ghost stories which may be considered most authentic'. So he says, but he only touches on three, the apparition of Claverhouse, on the night of Killiecrankie, to Lord Balcarres, in an Edinburgh prison; the apparition of her dead mother to Miss Lee, in 1662; and the apparition of his wife, who had born a dead child on that day in England, to Dr. Donne in Paris, early in the seventeenth century.

Dr. Hibbert dedicated his book, in 1825, to Sir Walter Scott, of Abbotsford, Bart., President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Sir Walter, at heart as great a ghost-hunter as ever lived, was conceived to have a scientific interest in the 'mental principles to which certain popular illusions may be referred'. Thus Dr. Hibbert's business, if he would satisfy the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, was to 'provide a physical explanation of many ghost stories which may be considered most authentic'. In our prosaic age, he would have begun with those most recent, such as the tall man in brown, viewed by Sir Walter on the moor near Ashestiel, and other still remembered contemporary hallucinations. Far from that, Dr. Hibbert deliberately goes back two centuries for all the three stories which represent the 'many' of his promise. The Wynyard ghost was near him, Mrs Ricketts's haunted house was near him, plenty of other cases were lying ready to his hand. {189} But he went back two centuries, and then,--complained of lack of evidence about 'interesting particulars'! Dr. Hibbert represents the science and common-sense of seventy years ago, and his criticism probably represents the contemporary ideas about evidence.

The Balcarres tale, as told by him, is that the Earl was 'in prison, in Edinburgh Castle, on the suspicion of Jacobitism'. 'Suspicion' is good; he was the King's agent for civil, as Dundee was for military affairs in Scotland. He and Dundee, and Ailesbury, stood by the King in London, to the last. Lord Balcarres himself, in his memoirs, tells James II. how he was confined, 'in close prison,' in Edinburgh, till the castle was surrendered to the Prince of Orange. In Dr. Hibbert's tale, the spectre of Dundee enters Balcarres's room at night, 'draws his curtain,' looks at him for some time, and walks out of the room, Lord Balcarres believing it to be Dundee himself.

Dr. Hibbert never even asks for the authority on which this legend reposes, certainly Balcarres does not tell the tale in his own report, or memoirs, for James II. (Bannatyne Club, 1841). The doctor then grumbles that he does not know 'a syllable of the state of Lord Balcarres's health at the time'. The friend of Bayle and of Marlborough, an honourable politician, a man at once loyal and plain-spoken in dealings with his master, Lord Balcarres's word would go for much, if he gave it. {190} But Dr. Hibbert asks for no authority, cites none. He only argues that, 'agreeably to the well- known doctrine of chances,' Balcarres might as well have this hallucination at the time of Dundee's death as at any other (p. 232). Now, that is a question which we cannot settle, without knowing whether Lord Balcarres was subject to hallucinations. If he was, cadit quaestio, if he was not, then the case is different. It is, manifestly, a problem in statistics, and only by statistics of wide scope, can it be solved. {191} But Dr. Hibbert was content to produce his easy solution, without working out the problem.

His second case is of 1662, and was taken down, he says, by the Bishop of Gloucester, from the lips of the father of Miss Lee. This young lady, in bed, saw a light, then a hallucination which called itself her mother. The figure prophesied the daughter's death at noon next day and at noon next day the daughter died. A physician, when she announced her vision, attended her, bled her, and could find nothing wrong in her health. Dr. Hibbert conjectures that her medical attendant did not know his business. 'The coincidence was a fortunate one,' that is all his criticism. Where there is no coincidence, the stories, he says, are forgotten. For that very reason, he should have collected contemporary stories, capable of being investigated, but that did not occur to Dr. Hibbert. His last case is the apparition of Mrs. Donne, with a dead child, to Dr. Donne, in Paris, as recorded by Walton. As Donne was a poet, very fond of his wife, and very anxious about her health, this case is not evidential, and may be dismissed for 'a fortuitous coincidence' (p. 332).

Certainly Dr. Hibbert could come to no conclusion, save his own, on the evidence he adduces. But it was by his own fault that he chose only evidence very remote, incapable of being cross-examined, and scanty, while we know that plenty of contemporary evidence was within his reach. Possibly the possessors of these experiences would not have put them at his disposal, but, if he could get no materials, he was in no position to form a theory. All this would have been recognised in any other matter, but in this obscure branch of psychology, beset, as it is, by superstition, science was content to be casual.

The error which lies at the opposite pole from Dr. Hibbert's mistake in not collecting instances, is the error of collecting only affirmative instances. We hear constantly about 'hallucinations of sight, sound, or touch, which suggest the presence of an absent person, and which occur simultaneously with some exceptional crisis in that person's life, or, most frequently of all, with his death'. {192} Now Mr. Gurney himself was much too fair a reasoner to avoid the collection of instantiae contradictoraes, examples in which the hallucination occurs, but does not coincide with any crisis whatever in the life of the absent person who seems to be present. Of these cases, Dr. Hibbert could find only one on record, in the Mercure Gallant, January, 1690. The writer tells us how he dreamed that a dead relation of his came to his bedside, and announced that he must die that day. Unlike Miss Lee, he went on living. Yet the dream impressed him so much that he noted it down in writing as soon as he awoke. Dr. Johnson also mentions an instantia contradictoria. A friend of Boswell's, near Kilmarnock, heard his brother's voice call him by name: now his brother was dead, or dying, in America. Johnson capped this by his tale of having, when at Oxford, heard his name pronounced by his mother. She was then at Lichfield, but nothing ensued. In Dr. Hibbert's opinion, this proves that coincidences, when they do occur, are purely matters of chance. {193a} There are many hallucinations, a death may correspond with one of them, that case is noted, the others are forgotten. Yet the coincidences are so many, or so striking, that when a Maori woman has a hallucination representing her absent husband, she may marry without giving him recognised ground for resentment, if he happens to be alive. This curious fact proves that the coincidence between death and hallucinatory presence has been marked enough to suggest a belief which can modify savage jealousy. {193b}

By comparing coincidental with non-coincidental hallucinations known to him, Mr. Gurney is said to have decided that the chances against a death coinciding with a hallucination, were forty to one,--long odds. {194a} But it is clear that only a very large collection of facts would give us any materials for a decision. Suppose that some 20,000 people answer such questions as:--

1. Have you ever had any hallucination?

2. Was there any coincidence between the hallucination and facts at the time unknown to you?

The majority of sane people will be able to answer the first question in the negative.

Of those who answer both questions in the affirmative, several things are to be said. First, we must allow for jokes, then for illusions of memory. Corroborative contemporary evidence must be produced. Again, of the 20,000, many are likely to be selected instances. The inquirer is tempted to go to a person who, as he or she already knows, has a story to tell. Again, the inquirers are likely to be persons who take an interest in the subject on the affirmative side, and their acquaintances may have been partly chosen because they were of the same intellectual complexion. {194b}

All these drawbacks are acknowledged to exist, and are allowed for, and, as far as possible, provided against, by the very fair-minded people who have conducted this inquisition. Thus Mr. Henry Sidgwick, in 1889, said, 'I do not think we can be satisfied with less than 50,000 answers'. {195} But these 50,000 answers have not been received. When we reflect that, to our knowledge, out of twenty-five questions asked among our acquaintances in one place, none would be answered in the affirmative: while, by selecting, we could get twenty-five affirmative replies, the delicacy and difficulty of the inquisition becomes painfully evident. Mr. Sidgwick, after making deductions on all sides of the most sportsmanlike character, still holds that the coincidences are more numerous by far than the Calculus of Probabilities admits. This is a question for the advanced mathematician. M. Richet once made some experiments which illustrate the problem. One man in a room thought of a series of names which, ex hypothesi, he kept to himself. Three persons sat at a table, which, as tables will do, 'tilted,' and each tilt rang an electric bell. Two other persons, concealed from the view of the table tilters, ran through an alphabet with a pencil, marking each letter at which the bell rang. These letters were compared with the names secretly thought of by the person at neither table.

He thought of The answers were

1. Jean Racine 1. Igard

2. Legros 2. Neghn

3. Esther 3. Foqdem

4. Henrietta 4. Higiegmsd

5. Cheuvreux 5. Dievoreq

6. Doremond 6. Epjerod

7. Chevalon 7. Cheval

8. Allouand 8. Iko

Here the non-mathematical reader will exclaim: 'Total failure, except in case 7!' And, about that case, he will have his private doubts. But, arguing mathematically, M. Richet proves that the table was right, beyond the limits of mere chance, by fourteen to two. He concludes, on the whole of his experiments, that, probably, intellectual force in one brain may be echoed in another brain. But MM. Binet and Fere, who report this, decide that 'the calculation of chances is, for the most part, incapable of affording a peremptory proof; it produces uncertainty, disquietude, and doubt'. {196} 'Yet something is gained by substituting doubt for systematic denial. Richet has obtained this important result, that henceforth the possibility of mental suggestion cannot be met with contemptuous rejection.'

Mental suggestion on this limited scale, is a phenomenon much less startling to belief than the reality, and causal nature, of coincidental hallucinations, of wraiths. But it is plain that, as far as general opinion goes, the doctrine of chances, applied to such statistics of hallucinations as have been collected, can at most, only 'produce uncertainty, disquietude, and doubt'. Yet if even these are produced, a step has been made beyond the blank negation of Hibbert.

The general reader, even if credulously inclined, is more staggered by a few examples of non-coincidental hallucinations, than confirmed by a pile of coincidental examples. Now it seems to be a defect in the method of the friends of wraiths, that they do not publish, with full and impressive details, as many examples of non-coincidental as of coincidental hallucinations. It is the story that takes the public: if we are to be fair we must give the non-coincidental story in all its features, as is done in the matter of wraiths with a kind of message or meaning.

Let us set a good example, by adducing wraiths which, in slang phrase, were 'sells'. Those which we have at first hand are marked '(A),' those at second-hand '(B)'. But the world will accept the story of a ghost that failed on very poor evidence indeed.