The Census, in fact, does contain a chapter on ’Mental and Nervous Conditions in connection with Hallucinations,’ such as anxiety, grief, and overwork.  Do these produce, or probably produce, many empty hallucinations not coincident with death or any great crisis?  If they do, then all cases in which a coincidental hallucination occurred to a person in anxiety, or overstrained, will seem to be, probably, fortuitous coincidences like the others.  All percipients, of all sorts of hallucinations, hits or misses, were asked if they were in grief or anxiety.  Now, out of 1,622 cases of hallucination of all known kinds (coincidental or not), mental strain was reported in 220 instances; of which 131 were cases of grief about known deaths or anxiety.  These mental conditions, therefore, occur only in twelve per cent. of the instances.  On the whole, it does not seem fair to argue that anxiety produces so much hallucination that it will account by itself for those which we have analysed as coincidental.

The impression left on my own mind by the Census does pretty closely agree with that of its authors.  Fairly well persuaded of the possibility of telepathy, on other grounds, and even inclined to believe that it does produce coincidental hallucinations, the evidence of the Census, by itself, would not convince me nor its authors.  We want better records; we want documentary evidence recording cases before the arrival of news of the coincidence.  Memories are very adaptive.  The authors, however, made a gallant effort, at the cost of much labour, and largely allowed for all conceivable drawbacks.

I am, personally, illogical enough to agree with Kant, and to be more convinced by the cumulative weight of the hundreds of cases in ’Phantasms of the Living,’ in other sources, in my own circle of acquaintance, and even by the coincident traditions of European and savage peoples, than by the statistics of the Census.  The whole mass, Census and all, is of very considerable weight, and there exist individual cases which one feels unable to dispute.  Thus while I would never regard the hallucinatory figure of a friend, perceived by myself, as proof of his death, I would entertain some slight anxiety till I heard of his well-being.

On this topic I will offer, in a Kantian spirit, an anecdote of the kind which, occurring in great quantities, disposes the mind to a sort of belief.  It is not given as evidence to go to a jury, for I only received it from the lips of a very gallant and distinguished officer and V.C., whose own part in the affair will be described.