Collier's New Encyclopedia

A complete general encyclopedia of 1921 — the world as it was understood just after the Great War, from Aachen to Zwingli, across twelve volumes and six thousand pages.

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Telepathy

the power of communication between one mind and another by means unknown to the ordinary sense organs, and usually called thought transference. Members of the Society for Psychical Research believe that they have established the fact that such power exists in the material universe and have attempted to turn the assumption to account in the explanation of certain unexplained natural phenomena. Telepathy is not clairvoyance, for it has been demonstrated by many experiments care- TELEPATHY TELEPHONE fully made by competent persons that be heard. This is the true mechanical sensations, ideas, information and men- telephone. The term is more commonly applied to the electrical telephonic apr. Such apparatus generally belongs to one of the principle is precisely similar . apparatus generally belongs to one of two main classes. tal pictures can be transferred from one mind to the other without the aid of speech, sight, hearing, touch or any of the ordinary methods by communicating such impressions or information. Some persons can voluntarily project the mind or some independent mental activity a distance of 100 or 1,000 miles so that it can make itself known and recognized, perform acts and even carry on a conversation with the person to whom it is sent.

Scientific work on thought transference began systematically in England in 1882, when the Society for Psychical Research was founded under the presidency of Professor Sidgwick of Cambridge.

Professor Crookes has outlined a theory according to which thought transference is effected by inconceivably minute and rapid ether waves. After pointing out that vibrations of ether of a certain rapidity produce light, he says that there are higher rates of vibrations which are utterly imperceptible to our senses and it is not inconceivable that intense thought, concentrated toward a sensitive being with whom the thinker is in close sympathy, may induce a telepathic chain along which brain waves can go straight to their goal without loss of energy due to distance.

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