ABSTRACT
Usage of the term ‘Telepathy’. I think that the word ‘telepathy’ would not be felt to be appropriate unless two or more conscious beings are concerned. We should not talk of ‘telepathy’ within a single individual, except possibly on the assumption that one and the same living organism may simultaneously be the body of two or more persons. (Cf., e.g., certain cases of multiple personality, in which one of the persons claims to be co-conscious with another of them.) Even in such cases, and taking the claim at its face-value, the use of the word ‘telepathy’ would be felt to be slightly paradoxical and to stand in need of some explanation and defence. I propose, therefore, in the immediate sequel to assume that the two or more conscious beings concerned do not share a common living organism as their body. The most obvious case is where each has a distinct physical body, as with two contemporary human beings living on earth. But I prefer to put the matter in the more negative way which I have adopted, for the following reason. On the one hand, I do not want to exclude the very possibility of talking of ‘telepathy’ between two persons who may have survived bodily death, or between one such person and another still alive in the physical body. On the other hand, I do not wish to assume that, if a person should survive the death of his physical body, he must necessarily have a body of some kind or other.
