on of waves through space; these waves should
decrease with distance; the contrary is absolutely inconceivable. Now
this does not happen; if the fact exists only in the consciousness of a
person who is at the time at the far ends of the earth, it makes no
difference in the precision of the details. If an analogy should be made
between telepathy--as we must conceive it, to explain the phenomena--and
wireless telegraphy, Mrs Piper entranced must be regarded as a mere
coherer of the telepathic waves. But this analogy is non-existent;
wireless telegraphy is far from being unaffected by distance, and
besides, when the coherer functions, it is because another instrument is
emitting particular waves. When a fact known only to a distant person is
reported, as in Mrs Piper's phenomena, it rarely happens that the
distant person was actively thinking of the fact, which was lying
unnoticed in the lowest strata of his consciousness. When the
experimenter makes his inquiries at the conclusion of the sitting, it is
often found that a definite effort on the part of the absent person is
required before the fact is recalled to memory.

It would be well to reflect before we grant to telepathy a power of
omniscience, independent of all known laws.

Another well-observed fact, opposed to the telepathic theory, is the
selection made amongst incidents by the communicator. If we were dealing
with telepathy, the secondary personalities of the medium would
sometimes be mistaken, make blunders, record facts which the so-called
communicator could never have known, but which the sitter alone knows
well. Now this never happens. The reported facts are always common to at
least two consciousnesses, that of the communicator and that of the
sitter, or that of the communicator and that of a distant person. The
inaccuracies prove nothing against this argument; if they are wilful
falsehoods they simply prove that the communicator is a liar, and not
that he is a secondary personality of Mrs Piper. If the reported facts
are unverifiable, this does not prove that they are inexact.

If the telepathic theory expresses the truth, we must grant an almost
infinite power to telepathy. This supposition is indispensable to
account for the facts. Then how shall we understand the errors and
confusions of the communicators? How can an infinite power seem at times
so limited, so finite, when the conditions remain unchanged? On the
other hand, the lapses of memory and c