The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BOOK 8

point of view, there is no ending it. We have traced the growth of mental life and seen how this arises from general material processes. Gradually the personality is gathered together out of its material sources and gradually it becomes detachable. At last it is supposed to float off from its material associations altogether; they have been merely its matrix and substratum and in the end they may be destroyed ; this destruction liberating rather than injuring it.

In a summary of the Science of Life we are bound to consider how far this widely diffused and time-honoured theory of the possible disintegration of the individual into a material perishable part and a more refractory and enduring, if much less palpable, “ spiritual” part is sustained by the body of biological knowledge we now possess.

§ 2 Dream Anticipation and Telepathy

But before we come to issues in which this theory is involved, there are others leading to it and associated with it that can nevertheless be dealt with to a certain extent in a preliminary study. No one with anything beyond the most elementary knowledge of biological fact will imagine that in any direction our knowledge can be regarded as complete and final, and there is much to be said for the view that considerable regions of mental and physiological activity remain to be properly explored, and that their exploration may yield facts differing in quality and implication from any facts at present established. Facts may become incontrovertible that will modify even our fundamental conceptions of life. For example, orthodox science knows no way in which the experiences of to-morrow may cast their shadow on our thoughts to-day. Yet Mr. J. W. Dunne in An Experiment with Time has made very curious and suggestive observations upon his own dreams and the dreams of others that point to the possibility that sucha foreshadowing occurs. And there is a copious—a terribly copious—literature recording facts that seem to show that the mental states of one person may produce impressions upon the mind of another without the use of any means of communication at present known to the biologist.

Mr. Dunne’s observations, reinforced by the observations of various friends who have adopted his methods, are made at the moment of waking from sleep. The observer trains himself to write down, at the moment

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of awaking, all that he can recall of the content of the dream, if any, through which he passes from complete slumber to the waking state. This—in the case of the more conscientious workers—is typed and put on record. In quite a large number of instances, it would seem, subsequent experiences occur very strongly reminiscent of these dream expressions. A considerable part of our dreaming, Mr. Dunne notes, seems to be based on experiences in the immediate past ; much of it is the misinterpretation of bodily states ; the chill of an exposed limb, for example, suggesting bathing in cold water; much, as we have noted in our account of psycho-analysis, is ascribable to repressed complexes ; but also, he believes, a considerable residue anticipates experiences of the near future. His statements and those of his associates are certainly striking enough to justify further experiment in this field.

Science has nothing to offer upon this matter. Here may be something to modify our idea of the relationship of consciousness to time, or Mr. Dunne may be the victim of coincidence and his remarkable facts may become attenuated by further inquiry. He has not attempted to filter out the anticipatory element of his dreaming for any practical purpose, but he has written some very engaging speculations upon the relationship of consciousness to the timedimension in space-time. It is to be noted that there are well-authenticated cases of dreams charged with foreboding, which nothing occurred to justify. They have to be weighed in the balance against dreamanticipations. The possible action of one mind upon another, so that a more or less exact parallel to a mental process in the one is induced in the other, is called telepathy. It is, to use a very clumsy parallel, a sort of mental wireless telegraphy. As exemplified by Professor Gilbert Murray and his daughter, for example, one observer concentrates his attention on a book or picture, while the other, out of normal sight and hearing in another room, waits with a vacant mind to record whatever impression is received. Results have been got by these two, of a quality and exactitude difficult to explain by any other hypothesis than that of a direct thought-transmission. Fairly complex drawings have been rudely reproduced, and scenes read by the one have been described by the other. Sir Oliver Lodge, among others, has produced very remarkable results with drawings. Nevertheless it remains quite impossible to formulate any explana-