Research source

Accumulated within the last five or six years; and this material is itself the carefully-sifted residuum of a…

Date of account: Published 1894
Source: Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy
Reference: Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy · selected passage 128
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

accumulated within the last five or six years; and this material is itself the carefully-sifted residuum of a much larger mass of testimony, inferior, if at all, by slight and various degrees

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

accumulated within the last five or six years; and this material is itself the carefully-sifted residuum of a much larger mass of testimony, inferior, if at all, by slight and various degrees. But notwithstanding this great accumulation, it cannot be contended that the proof of telepathy derived from a consideration of dream coincidences is at all comparable in cogency with that furnished by impressions received during waking life. That some at least of the dreams quoted below owed their origin to ideas transmitted to the sleeper from another mind will no doubt be admitted as probable, but the probability depends perhaps not more on their intrinsic value than on the analogy of similar testimony from waking percipients. When (as in some of the cases to be given later, in Chapters X.-XIII.) a witness of integrity asserts that he saw in broad daylight a figure where no such figure was, resembling a friend, and coincident with that friend's death, we are justified in attaching great weight to the coincidence. But if the same witness had dreamt of the figure, instead of seeing it, the coincidence would deserve far less consideration. And yet the cerebral mechanism involved in both processes is no doubt very similar.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

The passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.

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