This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII SPONTANEOUS INCIDENTS THE only spontaneous incidents which can serve as evidence of survival are apparitions. And among these the penchant for telepathy as an explanation of so many types of coincidences requires us to select only phantasms of the dead. As we have already seen, phantasms ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII SPONTANEOUS INCIDENTS THE only spontaneous incidents which can serve as evidence of survival are apparitions. And among these the penchant for telepathy as an explanation of so many types of coincidences requires us to select only phantasms of the dead. As we have already seen, phantasms of the living and the dying cannot be quoted as evidence, at least as evidence free from the suspicion of telepathy. We are therefore obliged to select apparitions which cannot so easily be referred to that process. Some of them at least, if not all of them, may be exposed to simpler objections than is telepathy; but I am sure that, if telepathy has supplanted chance coincidence and subjective casual hallucination as an explanation for phantasms of the living and of the dying, these latter explanations will not any more easily apply to certain phantasms of the dead. We shall suppose here that chance coincidences and subjective hallucinations have been excluded from the collection with sufficient care; the remaining experiences are impressive collectively, and, so far as they go, are suggestively evidential. We resort to experiment for more conclusive testimony. In taking up apparitions, however, as preliminary evidence for survival, I shall first select from a special type that are perhaps more impressive than the others and that have more or less corroborative support. I refer to visions of the dying. They are peculiarly free from the ordinary objections to apparitions, though they may have to contend with other difficulties in the way of proof. They have the advantage of being identified by the dying person at the outset, and are not exposed to the suspicion of being ordinary illusions caused by some casual stimulus. Chance coincidence may...
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