The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1908-09-06

Mr.. Kearne then made q note of the tina
and within an hour his friends returned.
One of them, named Bent. came up say
ing. Come and see Alfred. what q
state he is in.' Kearne found him In
the bathroom with his collar and shirt
torn D the front Of the latter with
blood upon 1t, and bathing a wound
under his jaw. which was bleeding. 1t
turned out that after reaching London
he had tainted on the sidewalk and fell
forward, striking his jaw on the edge
of the curb. The exact time at which
he tainted was not OF oourse noted, but
II one may Judge by the average time a
cab woull take to do the distance the
date Of the accident would correspond
within three minutes to tho time when
the apparition appeared'to Mr.. Kearne.
Mr.. Podmore thinks that a partial
d~issociation Of consciousness may be
presumed TO have existed in the case Of
Prince Duleep Singh and in that Of Mr..
Percy Kearne. In other words, these ap-
partitions we're after all of the nature OF
dreams and the critical faculties Of the
percipient may have been altogether
In allowance at the moment. however
he may have been Immediately
before and after the experience. In
our authors opinion. however. there
are two important distinctions between
waking ~hallucinations and those haDacina-
tons Of sleep which We call dteams.
In the first place the waking vtston 10
much rarer occurrence and much more
impressive. In the second place the
experience is likely to be more 40
c~urately remembered. not only because Of
It's rarity and impreesiveness but because
Il has q fixed place In time and generally
In space also. Whatever the actual state
Of the percipient's CONSEQUENCES at thsmo-
the vision at any rate forms q link
In the chain of waking experiences.
In an endeavor to explain these phenom-
ena scientifically Mr.. Podmore recalls tho
fact that the arrangement Of some OF the
nerve cells In the brain bears a superficial
10 the arrangement OF the
particles in the .ooherer' used for the
reception of q message in wireless teleg-
raphy. he quotes the statement Of Sir
william Crookes that sthe action Of
thought is accompanied by certain molec-
ular movements In the brain. and here
have physical vibrations capable from
their extreme minuteness Of acting directly
on individual molecules, while their
rapidity approaches that Of the internal
and external movements Of the atoms
No such connection be-
thinking brains has been proved;
but here we have a mechanism appar-
entiy sufficient for the purpose. Nor does
the fact that only certain persons appar-
entity are affected by the telepathic i'm
pulse present any serious difficulty. For
the brain Of both agent and percipient
may conceivably. on the analogy of wire
less t~elegraphy. be set to transmit and
only vibrations Of q certain ampli-
tude. A more formidable objection 10
presented In the action Of the supposed
force at a distance. Sir w.
Crookes suggests. however, that intense
thought concentrated toward a sensitive
with whom the thinker is in close SYM
patty may induce a telepathic chain
Of brain waves along which the message
Of thought can go straight to its goal
without loss of energy due to distance
It is Of this hypothesis that Du Maurier
such effective use in one Of his
stories.