X. EPILOGUE…

X. EPILOGUE

[Greek: Edokei tis moi gynê proselthousa kale kai eueidês, leuka imatia echousa, kalesei me kai eipein, Hô Sôkrates, hêmati ken tretatô Phthiên erivôlon ikoio.--Platônos Kritôn.]

The task which I proposed to myself at the beginning of this work is now, after a fashion, accomplished. Following the successive steps of my programme, I have presented,--not indeed all the evidence which I possess, and which I would willingly present,--but enough at least to illustrate a continuous exposition, and as much as can be compressed into two volumes, with any hope that these volumes will be read at all.[211] I have indicated also the principal inferences which that evidence immediately suggests. Such wider generalisations as I may now add must needs be dangerously speculative; they must run the risk of alienating still further from this research many of the scientific minds which I am most anxious to influence.

This risk, nevertheless, I feel bound to face. For two reasons,--or, I should perhaps say, for one main reason seen under two aspects,--I cannot leave this obscure and unfamiliar mass of observation and experiment without some words of wider generalisation, some epilogue which may place these new discoveries in clearer relation to the existing schemes of civilised thought and belief.

In the first place, I feel that some such attempt at synthesis is needful for the practical purpose of enlisting help in our long inquiry. As has been hinted more than once, the real drag upon its progress has been not opposition but indifference. Or if indifference be too strong a word, at any rate the interest evoked has not been such as to inspire to steady independent work anything like the number of coadjutors who would have responded to a new departure in one of the sciences which all men have learnt to respect. The inquiry falls between the two stools of religion and science; it cannot claim support either from the "religious world" or from the Royal Society. Yet even apart from the instinct of pure scientific curiosity (which surely has seldom seen such a field opening before it), the mighty issues depending on these phenomena ought, I think, to constitute in themselves a strong, an exceptional appeal. I desire in this book to emphasise that appeal;--not only to produce conviction, but also to attract co-operation. And actual converse with many persons has led me to believe that in order to attract such help, even from scientific men, some general view of the moral upshot of all the phenomena is needed;--speculative and uncertain though such a general view must be.

Again,--and here the practical reason already given expands into a wider scope,--it would be unfair to the evidence itself were I to close this work without touching more directly than hitherto on some of the deepest faiths of men. The influence of the evidence set forth in this book should not be limited to the conclusions, however weighty, which that evidence may be thought to establish. Rather these discoveries should prompt, as nothing else could have prompted, towards the ultimate achievement of that programme of scientific dominance which the Instauratio Magna proclaimed for mankind. Bacon foresaw the gradual victory of observation and experiment--the triumph of actual analysed fact--in every department of human study;--in every department save one. The realm of "Divine things" he left to Authority and Faith. I here urge that that great exemption need be no longer made. I claim that there now exists an incipient method of getting at this Divine knowledge also, with the same certainty, the same calm assurance, with which we make our steady progress in the knowledge of terrene things. The authority of creeds and Churches will thus be replaced by the authority of observation and experiment. The impulse of faith will resolve itself into a reasoned and resolute imagination, bent upon raising even higher than now the highest ideals of man.

Most readers of the preceding pages will have been prepared for the point of view thus frankly avowed. Yet to few readers can that point of view at first present itself otherwise than as alien and repellent. Philosophy and orthodoxy will alike resent it as presumptuous; nor will science readily accept the unauthorised transfer to herself of regions of which she has long been wont either to deny the existence, or at any rate to disclaim the rule. Nevertheless, I think that it will appear on reflection that some such change of standpoint as this was urgently needed,--nay, was ultimately inevitable.

I need not here describe at length the deep disquiet of our time. Never, perhaps, did man's spiritual satisfaction bear a smaller proportion to his needs. The old-world sustenance, however earnestly administered, is too unsubstantial for the modern cravings. And thus through our civilised societies two conflicting currents run. On the one hand health, intelligence, morality,--all such boons as the steady progress of planetary evolution can win for man,--are being achieved in increasing measure. On the other hand this very sanity, this very prosperity, do but bring out in stronger relief the underlying Welt-Schmers, the decline of any real belief in the dignity, the meaning, the endlessness of life.

There are many, of course, who readily accept this limitation of view; who are willing to let earthly activities and pleasures gradually dissipate and obscure the larger hope. But others cannot thus be easily satisfied. They rather resemble children who are growing too old for their games;--whose amusement sinks into an indifference and discontent for which the fitting remedy is an initiation into the serious work of men.

A similar crisis has passed over Europe once before. There came a time when the joyful naïveté, the unquestioning impulse of the early world had passed away; when the worship of Greeks no more was beauty, nor the religion of Romans Rome. Alexandrian decadence, Byzantine despair, found utterance in many an epigram which might have been written to-day. Then came a great uprush or incursion from the spiritual world, and with new races and new ideals Europe regained its youth.

The unique effect of that great Christian impulse begins, perhaps, to wear away. But more grace may yet be attainable from the region whence that grace came. Our age's restlessness, as I believe, is the restlessness not of senility but of adolescence; it resembles the approach of puberty rather than the approach of death.

What the age needs is not an abandonment of effort, but an increase; the time is ripe for a study of unseen things as strenuous and sincere as that which Science has made familiar for the problems of earth. For now the scientific instinct,--so newly developed in mankind,--seems likely to spread until it becomes as dominant as was in time past the religious; and if there be even the narrowest chink through which man can look forth from his planetary cage, our descendants will not leave that chink neglected or unwidened. The scheme of knowledge which can commend itself to such seekers must be a scheme which, while it transcends our present knowledge, steadily continues it;--a scheme not catastrophic, but evolutionary; not promulgated and closed in a moment, but gradually unfolding itself to progressive inquiry.

Must there not also be a continuous change, an unending advance in the human ideal itself? so that Faith must shift her standpoint from the brief Past to the endless Future, not so much caring to supply the lacunæ of tradition as to intensify the conviction that there is still a higher life to work for, a holiness which may be some day reached by grace and effort as yet unknown.

It may be that for some generations to come the truest faith will lie in the patient attempt to unravel from confused phenomena some trace of the supernal world;--to find thus at last "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I confess, indeed, that I have often felt as though this present age were even unduly favoured;--as though no future revelation and calm could equal the joy of this great struggle from doubt into certainty;--from the materialism or agnosticism which accompany the first advance of Science into the deeper scientific conviction that there is a deathless soul in man. I can imagine no other crisis of such deep delight. But after all this is but like the starving child's inability to imagine anything sweeter than his first bite at the crust. Give him but that, and he can hardly care for the moment whether he is fated to be Prime Minister or ploughboy.

Equally transitory, equally dependent on our special place in the story of man's upward effort, is another shade of feeling which many men have known. They have felt that uncertainty gave scope to faith and courage in a way which scientific assurance could never do. There has been a stern delight in the choice of virtue,--even though virtue might bring no reward. This joy, like the joy of Columbus sailing westward from Hierro, can hardly recur in precisely the same form. But neither (to descend to a humbler comparison) can we grown men again give ourselves up to learning in the same spirit of pure faith, without prefigurement of result, as when we learnt the alphabet at our mother's knees. Have we therefore relaxed since then our intellectual effort? Have we felt that there was no longer need to struggle against idleness when once we knew that knowledge brought a sure reward?

Endless are the varieties of lofty joy. In the age of Thales, Greece knew the delight of the first dim notion of cosmic unity and law. In the age of Christ, Europe felt the first high authentic message from a world beyond our own. In our own age we reach the perception that such messages may become continuous and progressive;--that between seen and unseen there is a channel and fairway which future generations may learn to widen and to clarify. Our own age may seem the best to us; so will their mightier ages seem to them.

"'Talia saecla' suis dixerunt 'currite' fusis Concordes stabili Fatorum numine Parcae."

Spiritual evolution:--that, then, is our destiny, in this and other worlds;--an evolution gradual with many gradations, and rising to no assignable close. And the passion for Life is no selfish weakness, it is a factor in the universal energy. It should keep its strength unbroken even when our weariness longs to fold the hands in endless slumber; it should outlast and annihilate the "pangs that conquer trust." If to the Greeks it seemed a [Greek: lipotaxía]--a desertion of one's post in battle--to quit by suicide the life of earth, how much more craven were the desire to desert the Cosmos,--the despair, not of this planet only, but of the Sum of Things!

Nay, in the infinite Universe man may now feel, for the first time, at home. The worst fear is over; the true security is won. The worst fear was the fear of spiritual extinction or spiritual solitude; the true security is in the telepathic law.

Let me draw out my meaning at somewhat greater length.

As we have dwelt successively on various aspects of telepathy, we have gradually felt the conception enlarge and deepen under our study. It began as a quasi-mechanical transference of ideas and images from one to another brain. Presently we found it assuming a more varied and potent form, as though it were the veritable ingruence or invasion of a distant mind. Again, its action was traced across a gulf greater than any space of earth or ocean, and it bridged the interval between spirits incarnate and discarnate, between the visible and the invisible world. There seemed no limit to the distance of its operation, or to the intimacy of its appeal.

[Greek: hen thhêrsin hen brotohisin hen theohis hanô.]

This Love, then, which (as Sophocles has it) rules "beasts and men and gods" with equal sway, is no matter of carnal impulse or of emotional caprice. Rather it is now possible to define Love (as we have already defined Genius) in terms which convey for us some new meaning in connection with phenomena described in this work. Genius, as has been already said, is a kind of exalted but undeveloped clairvoyance. The subliminal uprush which inspires the poet or the musician presents to him a deep, but vague perception of that world unseen, through which the seer or the sensitive projects a narrower but an exacter gaze. Somewhat similarly, Love is a kind of exalted but unspecialised telepathy;--the simplest and most universal expression of that mutual gravitation or kinship of spirits which is the foundation of the telepathic law.

This is the answer to the ancient fear; the fear lest man's fellowships be the outward and his solitude the inward thing; the fear lest all close linking with our fellows be the mere product of the struggle for existence,--of the tribal need of strength and cohesion;--the fear that if love and virtue thus arose, love and virtue may thus likewise perish. It is an answer to the dread that separate centres of conscious life must be always strangers, and often foes; their leagues and fellowships interested and illusory; their love the truce of a moment amid infinite inevitable war.

Such fears, I say, vanish when we learn that it is the soul in man which links him with other souls; the body which dissevers even while it seems to unite; so that "no man liveth to himself nor dieth to himself," but in a sense which goes deeper than metaphor, "We are every one members one of another." Like atoms, like suns, like galaxies, our spirits are systems of forces which vibrate continually to each other's attractive power.

All this as yet is dimly adumbrated; it is a first hint of a scheme of thought which it may well take centuries to develop. But can we suppose that, when once this conception of the bond between all souls has taken root, men will turn back from it to the old exclusiveness, the old controversy? Will they not see that this world-widening knowledge is both old and new, that die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen? that always have such revelations been given, but develop now into a mightier meaning,--with the growth of wisdom in those who send them, and in us who receive?

Surely we have here a conception, at once wider and exacter than ever before, of that "religious education of the world" on which theologians have been fain to dwell. We need assume no "supernatural interference" no "plan of redemption." We need suppose only that the same process which we observe to-day has been operating for ages between this world and the next.

Let us suppose that whilst incarnate men have risen from savagery into intelligence, discarnate men have made on their part a like advance. Let us suppose that they have become more eager and more able to use, for communication with earth, the standing laws of relation between the spiritual and the material Universe.

At first, on such a hypothesis, certain automatic phenomena will occur, but will not be purposely modified by spirit power. Already and always there must have been points of contact where unseen things impinged upon the seen. Always there would be "clairvoyant wanderings," where the spirit of shaman or of medicine-man discerned things distant upon earth by the spirit's excursive power. Always there would be apparitions at death,--conscious or unconscious effects of the shock which separated soul from body; and always "hauntings,"--where the spirit, already discarnate, revisited, as in a dream perceptible by others, the scenes which once he knew.

From this groundwork of phenomena developed (to take civilised Europe alone) the oracular religion first, the Christian later. The golden gifts of Croesus to Delphi attested the clairvoyance of the Pythia as strongly, perhaps, as can be expected of any tradition which comes to us from the morning of history.

And furthermore, do we not better understand at once the uniqueness and the reality of the Christian revelation itself, when we regard it as a culmination rather than an exception,--as destined not to destroy the cosmic law, but to fulfil it? Then first in human history came from the unseen a message such as the whole heart desired;--a message adequate in its response to fundamental emotional needs not in that age only, but in all ages that should follow. Intellectually adequate for all coming ages that revelation could not be;--given the laws of mind, incarnate alike and discarnate,--the evolution, on either side of the gulf of death, of knowledge and power.

No one at the date of that revelation suspected that uniformity, that continuity of the Universe which long experience has now made for us almost axiomatic. No one foresaw the day when the demand for miracle would be merged in the demand for higher law.

This newer scientific temper is not confined, as I believe, to the denizens of this earth alone. The spiritual world meets it, as I think our evidence has shown, with eager and strenuous response. But that response is made, and must be made, along the lines of our normal evolution. It must rest upon the education, the disentanglement, of that within us mortals which exists in the Invisible, a partaker of the undying world. And on our side and on theirs alike, the process must be steady and continuous. We have no longer to deal with some isolated series of events in the past,--interpretable this way or that, but in no way renewable,--but rather with a world-wide and actual condition of things, recognisable every year in greater clearness, and changing in directions which we can better and better foresee. This new aspect of things needs something of new generalisation, of new forecast,--it points to a provisional synthesis of religious belief which may fitly conclude the present work.

PROVISIONAL SKETCH OF A RELIGIOUS SYNTHESIS

[Greek: holbios hostis idôn ekeina koilan eisin upd chêdna oiden men bion keinos teleutdn, oiden de dibodoton drchdn.]

--PINDAR.

I see ground for hoping that we are within sight of a religious synthesis, which, although as yet provisional and rudimentary, may in the end meet more adequately than any previous synthesis the reasonable needs of men. Such a synthesis cannot, I think, be reached by a mere predominance of any one existing creed, nor by any eclectic or syncretic process. Its prerequisite is the actual acquisition of new knowledge whether by discovery or by revelation--knowledge discerned from without the veil or from within--yet so realised that the main forms of religious thought, by harmonious expansion and development, shall find place severally as elements in a more comprehensive whole. And enough of such knowledge has, I think, been now attained to make it desirable to submit to my readers the religious results which seem likely to follow.

With such a purpose, our conception of religion should be both profound and comprehensive. I will use here the definition already adopted of religion as the sane and normal response of the human spirit to all that we know of cosmic law; that is, to the known phenomena of the universe, regarded as an intelligible whole. For on the one hand I cannot confine the term to any single definite view or tradition of things unseen. On the other hand, I am not content to define religion as "morality tinged with emotion," lest morality per se should seem to hang in air, so that we should be merely gilding the tortoise which supports the earth. Yet my definition needs some further guarding if it is to correspond with our habitual use of language. Most men's subjective response to their environment falls below the level of true religious thought. It is scattered into cravings, or embittered by resentment, or distorted by superstitious fear. But of such men I do not speak; rather of men in whom the great pageant has inspired at least some vague out-reaching toward the Source of All; men for whom knowledge has ripened into meditation, and has prompted high desire. I would have Science first sublimed into Philosophy, and then kindled by Religion into a burning flame. For, from my point of view, man cannot be too religious. I desire that the environing, the interpenetrating universe,--its energy, its life, its love,--should illume in us, in our low degree, that which we ascribe to the World-Soul, saying, "God is Love," "God is Light." The World-Soul's infinite energy of omniscient benevolence should become in us an enthusiasm of adoring co-operation,--an eager obedience to whatsoever with our best pains we can discern as the justly ruling principle--[Greek: to hêgemonikon]--without us and within.

Yet if we form so high an ideal of religion,--raising it so far above any blind obedience or self-seeking fear that its submission is wholly willing, and its demand is for spiritual response alone,--we are bound to ask ourselves whether it is right and reasonable to be religious, to regard with this full devotion a universe apparently imperfect and irresponsive, and a Ruling Principle which so many men have doubted or ignored.

The pessimist holds the view that sentient existence has been a deplorable blunder in the scheme of things. The egotist at least acts upon the view that the universe has no moral coherence, and that "each for himself" is the only indisputable law. I am sanguine enough to think that the answer to the pessimist and the egotist has by our new knowledge been made complete. There remains, indeed, a difficulty of subtler type, but instinctive in generous souls. "The world," such an one may say, "is a mixed place, and I am plainly bound to do my best to improve it. But am I bound to feel--can any bribe of personal happiness justify me in feeling--religious enthusiasm for a universe in which even one being may have been summoned into a sentiency destined to inescapable pain?"

The answer to this ethical scruple must be a matter largely of faith. If indeed we knew that this earthly life was all, or (far worse) that it was followed for any one soul by endless pain, we could not without some moral jugglery ascribe perfection of both power and goodness to a personal or impersonal First Cause of such a doom. But if we believe that endless life exists for all, with infinite possibilities of human redress and of divine justification, then it seems right to assume that the universe is either already (in some inscrutable fashion) wholly good, or is at least in course of becoming so; since it may be becoming so in part through the very ardour of our own faith and hope.

I do but mention these initial difficulties; I shall not dwell on them here. I speak to men who have determined, whether at the bidding of instinct or of reason, that it is well to be religious; well to approach in self-devoted reverence an infinite Power and Love. Our desire is simply to find the least unworthy way of thinking of matters which inevitably transcend and baffle our finite thought.

And here, for the broad purpose of our present survey, we may divide the best religious emotion of the world in triple fashion; tracing three main streams of thought,--streams which on the whole run parallel, and which all rise, as I believe, from some source in the reality of things.

First, then, I place that obscure consensus of independent thinkers in many ages and countries which, to avoid any disputable title, I will here call simply the Religion of the Ancient Sage. Under that title (though Lao Tz[)u] is hardly more than a name) it has been set forth to us in brief summary by the great sage and poet of our own time; and such words as Natural Religion, Pantheism, Platonism, Mysticism, do but express or intensify varying aspects of its main underlying conception. That conception is the coexistence and interpenetration of a real or spiritual with this material or phenomenal world; a belief driven home to many minds by experiences both more weighty and more concordant than the percipients themselves have always known. More weighty, I say, for they have implied the veritable nascency and operation of a "last and largest sense"; a faculty for apprehending, not God, indeed (for what finite faculty can apprehend the Infinite?), but at least some dim and scattered tokens and prefigurements of a true world of Life and Love. More concordant also; and this for a reason which till recently would have seemed a paradox. For the mutual corroboration of these signs and messages lies not only in their fundamental agreement up to a certain point, but in their inevitable divergence beyond it;--as they pass from things felt into things imagined; from actual experience into dogmatic creed.

The Religion of the Ancient Sage is of unknown antiquity. Of unknown antiquity also are various Oriental types of religion, culminating in historical times in the Religion of Buddha. For Buddhism all interpenetrating universes make the steps upon man's upward way; until deliverance from illusion leaves the spirit merged ineffably in the impersonal All. But the teaching of Buddha has lost touch with reality; it rests on no basis of observed or of reproducible fact.

On a basis of observed facts, on the other hand, Christianity, the youngest of the great types of religion, does assuredly rest. Assuredly those facts, so far as tradition has made them known to us, do tend to prove the superhuman character of its Founder, and His triumph over death; and thus the existence and influence of a spiritual world, where men's true citizenship lies. These ideas, by common consent, lay at the origin of the Faith. Since those first days, however, Christianity has been elaborated into codes of ethic and ritual adapted to Western civilisation;--has gained (some think) as a rule of life what it has lost as a simplicity of spirit.

From the unfettered standpoint of the Ancient Sage the deep concordance of these and other schemes of religious thought may well outweigh their formal oppositions. And yet I repeat that it is not from any mere welding of these schemes together, nor from any choice of the best points in existing syntheses, that the new synthesis for which I hope must be born. It must be born from new-dawning knowledge; and in that new knowledge I believe that each great form of religious thought will find its indispensable--I may almost say its predicted--development. Our race from its very infancy has stumbled along a guarded way; and now the first lessons of its early childhood reveal the root in reality of much that it has instinctively believed.

What I think I know, therefore, I am bound to tell; I must give the religious upshot of observation and experiment in such brief announcement as an audience like this[212] has a right to hear, even before our discoveries can be laid in full before the courts of science for definite approval.

The religious upshot, I repeat:--for I cannot here reproduce the mass of evidence which has been published in full elsewhere. Its general character is by this time widely known. Observation, experiment, inference, have led many inquirers, of whom I am one, to a belief in direct or telepathic intercommunication, not only between the minds of men still on earth, but between minds or spirits still on earth and spirits departed. Such a discovery opens the door also to revelation. By discovery and by revelation--by observation from without the veil, and by utterance from within--certain theses have been provisionally established with regard to such departed souls as we have been able to encounter. First and chiefly, I at least see ground to believe that their state is one of endless evolution in wisdom and in love. Their loves of earth persist; and most of all those highest loves which seek their outlet in adoration and worship. We do not find, indeed, that support is given by souls in bliss to any special scheme of terrene theology. Thereon they know less than we mortal men have often fancied that we knew. Yet from their step of vantage-ground in the Universe, at least, they see that it is good. I do not mean that they know either of an end or of an explanation of evil. Yet evil to them seems less a terrible than a slavish thing. It is embodied in no mighty Potentate; rather it forms an isolating madness from which higher spirits strive to free the distorted soul. There needs no chastisement of fire; self-knowledge is man's punishment and his reward; self-knowledge, and the nearness or the aloofness of companion souls. For in that world love is actually self-preservation; the Communion of Saints not only adorns but constitutes the Life Everlasting. Nay, from the law of telepathy it follows that that communion is valid for us here and now. Even now the love of souls departed makes answer to our invocations. Even now our loving memory--love is itself a prayer--supports and strengthens those delivered spirits upon their upward way. No wonder; since we are to them but as fellow-travellers shrouded in a mist; "neither death, nor life, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," can bar us from the hearth-fire of the universe, or hide for more than a moment the inconceivable oneness of souls.

And is not this a fresh instalment, or a precursory adumbration, of that Truth into which the Paraclete should lead? Has any world-scheme yet been suggested so profoundly corroborative of the very core of the Christian revelation? Jesus Christ "brought life and immortality to light." By His appearance after bodily death He proved the deathlessness of the spirit. By His character and His teaching He testified to the Fatherhood of God. So far, then, as His unique message admitted of evidential support, it is here supported. So far as He promised things unprovable, that promise is here renewed.

I venture now on a bold saying; for I predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the Resurrection of Christ, whereas, in default of the new evidence, no reasonable men, a century hence, would have believed it. The ground of this forecast is plain enough. Our ever-growing recognition of the continuity, the uniformity of cosmic law has gradually made of the alleged uniqueness of any incident its almost inevitable refutation. Ever more clearly must our age of science realise that any relation between a material and a spiritual world cannot be an ethical or emotional relation alone; that it must needs be a great structural fact of the Universe, involving laws at least as persistent, as identical from age to age, as our known laws of Energy or of Motion. And especially as to that central claim, of the soul's life manifested after the body's death, it is plain that this can less and less be supported by remote tradition alone; that it must more and more be tested by modern experience and inquiry. Suppose, for instance, that we collect many such histories, recorded on first-hand evidence in our critical age; and suppose that all these narratives break down on analysis; that they can all be traced to hallucination, misdescription, and other persistent sources of error;--can we then expect reasonable men to believe that this marvellous phenomenon, always vanishing into nothingness when closely scrutinised in a modern English scene, must yet compel adoring credence when alleged to have occurred in an Oriental country, and in a remote and superstitious age? Had the results (in short) of "psychical research" been purely negative, would not Christian evidence--I do not say Christian emotion, but Christian evidence--have received an overwhelming blow?

As a matter of fact,--or, if you prefer the phrase, in my own personal opinion,--our research has led us to results of a quite different type. They have not been negative only, but largely positive. We have shown that amid much deception and self-deception, fraud and illusion, veritable manifestations do reach us from beyond the grave. The central claim of Christianity is thus confirmed, as never before. If our own friends, men like ourselves, can sometimes return to tell us of love and hope, a mightier Spirit may well have used the eternal laws with a more commanding power. There is nothing to hinder the reverent faith that, though we be all "the Children of the Most Highest," He came nearer than we, by some space by us immeasurable, to That which is infinitely far. There is nothing to hinder the devout conviction that He of His own act "took upon Him the form of a servant," and was made flesh for our salvation, foreseeing the earthly travail and the eternal crown. "Surely before this descent into generation," says Plotinus,[213] "we existed in the intelligible world; being other men than now we are, and some of us Gods; clear souls, and minds unmixed with all existence; parts of the Intelligible, nor severed thence; nor are we severed even now."

It is not thus to less of reverence that man is summoned, but to more. Let him keep hold of early sanctities; but let him remember also that once again "a great sheet has been let down out of heaven"; and lo! neither Buddha nor Plato is found common or unclean.

Nay, as to our own soul's future, when that first shock of death is past, it is in Buddhism that we find the more inspiring, the truer view. That Western conception of an instant and unchangeable bliss or woe--a bliss or woe determined largely by a man's beliefs, in this earthly ignorance, on matters which "the angels desire to look into"--is the bequest of a pre-Copernican era of speculative thought. In its Mahomedan travesty, we see the same scheme with outlines coarsened into grotesqueness;--we see it degrade the cosmic march and profluence into a manner of children's play.

Meantime the immemorial musings of unnumbered men have dreamt of a consummation so far removed that he who gazed has scarcely known whether it were Nothingness or Deity. With profoundest fantasy, the East has pondered on the vastness of the world that now is, of the worlds that are to be. What rest or pasture for the mind in the seven days of Creation, the four rivers of Paradise, the stars "made also"? The farther East has reached blindly forth towards astronomical epochs, sidereal spaces, galactic congregations of inconceivable Being. Pressed by the incumbency of ancestral gods (as the Chinese legend tells us), it has "created by one sweep of the imagination a thousand Universes, to be the Buddha's realm."

The sacred tale of Buddha, developed from its earlier simplicity by the shaping stress of many generations, opens to us the whole range and majesty of human fate. "The destined Buddha has desired to be a Buddha through an almost unimaginable series of worlds." No soul need ever be without that hope. "The spirit-worlds are even now announcing the advent of future Buddhas, in epochs too remote for the computation of men." No obstacles without us can arrest our way. "The rocks that were thrown at Buddha were changed into flowers." Not our own worst misdoings need beget despair. "Buddha, too, had often been to hell for his sins." The vast complexity of the Sum of Things need not appal us. "Beneath the bottomless whirlpool of existences, behind the illusion of Form and Name," we, too, like Buddha, may discover and reveal "the perfection of the Eternal Law." Us, too, like Buddha, the cosmic welcome may await; as when "Earth itself and the laws of all worlds" trembled with joy "as Buddha attained the Supreme Intelligence, and entered into the Endless Calm."

I believe that some of those who once were near to us are already mounting swiftly upon this heavenly way. And when from that cloud encompassing of unforgetful souls some voice is heard,--as long ago,--there needs no heroism, no sanctity, to inspire the apostle's [Greek: epithumia eis to analuoai], the desire to lift our anchor, and to sail out beyond the bar. What fitter summons for man than the wish to live in the memory of the highest soul that he has known, now risen higher;--to lift into an immortal security the yearning passion of his love? "As the soul hasteneth," says Plotinus,[214] "to the things that are above, she will ever forget the more; unless all her life on earth leave a memory of things done well. For even here may man do well, if he stand clear of the cares of earth. And he must stand clear of their memories too; so that one may rightly speak of a noble soul as forgetting those things that are behind. And the shade of Hêraklês, indeed, may talk of his own valour to the shades, but the true Hêraklês in the true world will deem all that of little worth; being transported into a more sacred place, and strenuously engaging, even above his strength, in those battles in which the wise engage." Can we men now on earth claim more of sustainment than lies in the incipient communion with those enfranchised souls? What day of hope, of exaltation, has dawned like this, since the message of Pentecost?

Yet a durable religious synthesis should do more than satisfy man's immediate aspiration. It should be in itself progressive and evolutionary; it should bear a promise of ever deeper holiness, to answer to the long ages of heightening wisdom during which our race may be destined to inhabit the earth. This condition has never yet been met. No scheme, indeed, could meet it which was not based upon recurrent and developing facts. To such facts we now appeal. We look, not backward to fading tradition, but onward to dawning experience. We hope that the intercourse, now at last consciously begun--although as through the mouth of babes and sucklings, and in confused and stammering speech--between discarnate and incarnate souls, may through long effort clarify into a director communion, so that they shall teach us all they will.

Science, then, need be no longer fettered by the limitations of this planetary standpoint; nor ethics by the narrow experience of a single life. Evolution will no longer appear as a truncated process, an ever-arrested movement upon an unknown goal. Rather we may gain a glimpse of an ultimate incandescence where science and religion fuse in one; a cosmic evolution of Energy into Life, and of Life into Love, which is Joy. Love, which is Joy at once and Wisdom;--we can do no more than ring the changes on terms like these, whether we imagine the transfigurement and apotheosis of conquering souls, or the lower, but still sacred, destiny which may be some day possible for souls still tarrying here. We picture the perfected soul as the Buddha, the Saviour, the aurai simplicis ignem, dwelling on one or other aspect of that trinal conception of Wisdom, Love, and Joy. For souls not yet perfected but still held on earth I have foretold a growth in holiness. By this I mean no unreal opposition or forced divorcement of sacred and secular, of flesh and spirit. Rather I define holiness as the joy too high as yet for our enjoyment; the wisdom just beyond our learning; the rapture of love which we still strive to attain. Inevitably, as our link with other spirits strengthens, as the life of the organism pours more fully through the individual cell, we shall feel love more ardent, wider wisdom, higher joy; perceiving that this organic unity of Soul, which forms the inward aspect of the telepathic law, is in itself the Order of the Cosmos, the Summation of Things. And such devotion may find its flower in no vain self-martyrdom, no cloistered resignation, but rather in such pervading ecstasy as already the elect have known; the Vision which dissolves for a moment the corporeal prison-house; "the flight of the One to the One."

"So let the soul that is not unworthy of that vision contemplate the Great Soul; freed from deceit and every witchery, and collected into calm. Calmed be the body for her in that hour, and the tumult of the flesh; ay, all that is about her, calm; calm be the earth, the sea, the air, and let Heaven itself be still. Then let her feel how into that silent heaven the Great Soul floweth in.... And so may man's soul be sure of Vision, when suddenly she is filled with light; for this light is from Him and is He; and then surely shall one know His presence when, like a god of old time, He entered into the house of one that calleth Him, and maketh it full of light." "And how," concludes Plotinus, "may this thing be for us? Let all else go."[215]

These heights, I confess, are above the stature of my spirit. Yet for each of us is a fit ingress into the Unseen; and for some lesser man the memory of one vanished soul may be beatific as of old for Plotinus the flooding immensity of Heaven. And albeit no historical religion can persist as a logical halting-place upon the endless mounting way--that way which leads unbroken from the first germ of love in the heart to an inconceivable union with the Divine--yet many a creed in turn may well be close inwrought and inwoven with our eternal hope. What wonder, if in the soul's long battle, some Captain of our Salvation shall sometimes seem to tower unrivalled and alone?--[Greek: oios gar erueto Ilion Hektôr]. And yet in no single act or passion can that salvation stand; far hence, beyond Orion and Andromeda, the cosmic process works and shall work for ever through unbegotten souls. And even as it was not in truth the great ghost of Hector only, but the whole nascent race of Rome, which bore from the Trojan altar the hallowing fire, so is it not one Saviour only, but the whole nascent race of man--nay, all the immeasurable progeny and population of the heavens--which issues continually from behind the veil of Being, and forth from the Sanctuary of the Universe carries the ever-burning flame: A eternumque adytis effert penetralibus ignem.

APPENDICES

TO

Chapter II

II. A. It is well known that a great variety of slight causes--hunger, fatigue, slight poisoning by impure air, a small degree of fever, etc.--are sometimes enough to produce a transient perturbation of personality of the most violent kind. I give as an instance the following account of a feverish experience, sent to me by the late Robert Louis Stevenson, from Samoa, in 1892 (and published in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 9). In Stevenson's paper on his own dreams, alluded to in Chapter III, we have one of the most striking examples known to me of that helpful and productive subliminal uprush which I have characterised as the mechanism of genius. It is therefore, interesting to observe how, under morbid conditions, this temperament of genius--this ready permeability of the psychical diaphragm--transforms what might in others be a mere vague and massive discomfort into a vivid though incoherent message from the subliminal storm and fire. The result is a kind of supraliminal duality, the perception at the same time of two personalities--the one rational and moral, the other belonging to the stratum of dreams and nightmare.

VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOHO, SAMOAN ISLANDS, July 14th, 1892.

DEAR MR. MYERS,--I am tempted to communicate to you some experiences of mine which seem to me (ignorant as I am) of a high psychological interest.

I had infamous bad health when I was a child and suffered much from night fears; but from the age of about thirteen until I was past thirty I did not know what it was to have a high fever or to wander in my mind. So that these experiences, when they were renewed, came upon me with entire freshness; and either I am a peculiar subject, or I was thus enabled to observe them with unusual closeness.

Experience A. During an illness at Nice I lay awake a whole night in extreme pain. From the beginning of the evening one part of my mind became possessed of a notion so grotesque and shapeless that it may best be described as a form of words. I thought the pain was, or was connected with, a wisp or coil of some sort; I knew not of what it consisted nor yet where it was, and cared not; only I thought, if the two ends were brought together, the pain would cease. Now all the time, with another part of my mind, which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired sanity, and was engaged with my other self in a perpetual conflict. Myself had nothing more at heart than to keep from my wife, who was nursing me, any hint of this ridiculous hallucination; the other was bound that she should be told of it and ordered to effect the cure. I believe it must have been well on in the morning before the fever (or the other fellow) triumphed, and I called my wife to my bedside, seized her savagely by the wrist, and looking on her with a face of fury, cried: "Why do you not put the two ends together and put me out of pain?"

Experience B. The other day in Sydney I was seized on a Saturday with a high fever. Early in the afternoon I began to repeat mechanically the sound usually written "mhn," caught myself in the act, instantly stopped it, and explained to my mother, who was in the room, my reasons for so doing. "That is the beginning of the mind to wander," I said, "and has to be resisted at the outset." I fell asleep and woke, and for the rest of the night repeated to myself mentally a nonsense word which I could not recall next morning. I had been reading the day before the life of Swift, and all night long one part of my mind (the other fellow) kept informing me that I was not repeating the word myself, but was only reading in a book that Swift had so repeated it in his last sickness. The temptation to communicate this nonsense was again strongly felt by myself, but was on this occasion triumphantly resisted, and my watcher heard from me all night nothing of Dean Swift or the word, nothing but what was rational and to the point. So much for the two consciousnesses when I can disentangle them; but there is a part of my thoughts that I have more difficulty in attributing. One part of my mind continually bid me remark the transrational felicity of the word, examined all the syllables, showed me that not one was in itself significant, and yet the whole expressed to a nicety the voluminous distress of one in a high fever and his annoyance at and recoil from the attentions of his nurses. It was probably the same part (and for a guess the other fellow) who bid me compare it with the nonsense words of Lewis Carroll as the invention of a lunatic with those of a sane man. But surely it was myself (and myself in a perfectly clear-headed state) that kept me trying all night to get the word by heart, on the ground that it would afterwards be useful in literature if I wanted to deal with mad folk. It must have been myself, I say, because the other fellow believed (or pretended to believe) he was reading the passage in a book where it could always be found again when wanted.

Experience C. The next night the other fellow had an explanation ready for my sufferings, of which I can only say that it had something to do with the navy, that it was sheer undiluted nonsense, had neither end nor beginning, and was insusceptible of being expressed in words. Myself knew this; yet I gave way, and my watcher was favoured with some references to the navy. Nor only that; the other fellow was annoyed--or I was annoyed--on two inconsistent accounts: first, because he had failed to make his meaning comprehensible; and second, because the nurse displayed no interest. The other fellow would have liked to explain further; but myself was much hurt at having been got into this false position, and would be led no further.

In cases A and C the illusion was amorphous. I knew it to be so, and yet succumbed to the temptation of trying to communicate it. In case B the idea was coherent, and I managed to hold my peace. Both consciousnesses, in other words, were less affected in case B, and both more affected in cases A and C. It is perhaps not always so: the illusion might be coherent, even practical, and the rational authority of the mind quite in abeyance. Would not that be lunacy?

In case A I had an absolute knowledge that I was out of my mind, and that there was no meaning in my words; these were the very facts that I was anxious to conceal; and yet when I succumbed to the temptation of speaking my face was convulsed with anger, and I wrung my watcher's wrist with cruelty. Here is action, unnatural and uncharacteristic action, flowing from an idea in which I had no belief, and which I had been concealing for hours as a plain mark of aberration. Is it not so with lunatics?

I have called the one person myself, and the other the other fellow. It was myself who spoke and acted; the other fellow seemed to have no control of the body or the tongue; he could only act through myself, on whom he brought to bear a heavy strain, resisted in one case, triumphant in the two others. Yet I am tempted to think that I know the other fellow; I am tempted to think he is the dreamer described in my Chapter on Dreams to which you refer. Here at least is a dream belonging to the same period, but this time a pure dream, an illusion, I mean, that disappeared with the return of the sense of sight, not one that persevered during waking moments, and while I was able to speak and take my medicine. It occurred the day after case B and before case C.

Case D. In the afternoon there sprang up a storm of wind with monstrous clouds of dust; my room looked on a steep hill of trees whose boughs were all blowing in the same direction; the world seemed to pass by my windows like a mill-race. By this turmoil and movement I was confused, but not distressed, and surprised not to be distressed; for even in good health a high wind has often a painful influence on my nerves. In the midst of this I dozed off asleep. I had just been reading Scott's "Life of Dryden," and been struck with the fact that Dryden had translated some of the Latin hymns, and had wondered that I had never remarked them in his works. As soon as I was asleep I dreamed a reason why the sound of the wind and the sight of the flying dust had not distressed me. There was no wind, it seemed, no dust; it was only Dryden singing his translated hymns in one direction, and all those who had blamed and attacked him after the Revolution singing them in another. This point of the two directions is very singular and insane. In part it meant that Dryden was continuously flying past yet never passing my window in the direction of the wind and dust, and all his detractors similarly flying past yet not passing towards the other side. But it applied, besides this, both to the words and to the music in a manner wholly insusceptible of expression.

That was a dream; and yet how exactly it reproduces the method of my other fellow while I was awake. Here is an explanation for a state of mind or body sought, and found, in a tissue of rabid, complicated, and inexpressible folly.--Yours very sincerely.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

II. B. A good example of the application of true scientific method to problems which doctors of the old school did not think worth their science is Dr. Janet's treatment of a singular problem which the mistakes of brutal ignorance turned in old times into a veritable scourge of our race. I speak of demoniacal possession, in which affliction Dr. Janet has shown himself a better than ecclesiastical exorcist.

I give here a typical case of pseudo-possession from Névroses et Idées fixes (vol. i. pp. 377-389): Achille, as Professor Janet calls him, was a timid and rather morbid young man, but he was married to a good wife, and nothing went specially wrong with him until his return from a business journey in 1890. He then became sombre and taciturn--sometimes even seemed unable to speak--then took to his bed and lay murmuring incomprehensible words, and at last said farewell to his wife and children, and stretched himself out motionless for a couple of days, while his family waited for his last breath.

"Suddenly one morning, after two days of apparent death, Achille sat up in bed with his eyes wide open, and burst into a terrible laugh. It was a convulsive laugh which shook all his limbs; an exaggerated laugh which twisted his mouth; a lugubrious, satanic laugh which went on for more than two hours.

"From this moment everything was changed. Achille leapt from his bed and refused all attentions. To every question he answered, 'There's nothing to be done! let's have some champagne; it's the end of the world!' Then he uttered piercing cries, 'They are burning me--they are cutting me to pieces!'"

After an agitated sleep, Achille woke up with the conviction that he was possessed with a devil. And in fact his mouth now uttered blasphemies, his limbs were contorted, and he repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts at suicide. Ultimately he was taken to the Salpêtrière, and placed under Professor Janet, who recognised at once the classic signs of possession. The poor man kept protesting against the odious outrages on religion, which he attributed to a devil inside him, moving his tongue against his will. "Achille could say, like a celebrated victim of possession, Père Surin, 'It is as though I had two souls; one of which has been dispossessed of its body and the use of its organs, and is frantic at the sight of the other soul which has crept in.'"

It was by no means easy to get either at Achille or at his possessing devil. Attempts to hypnotise him failed, and any remonstrance was met with insult. But the wily psychologist was accustomed to such difficulties, and had resort to a plan too insidious for a common devil to suspect. He gently moved the hand of Achille in such a way as to suggest the act of writing, and having thus succeeded in starting automatic script, he got the devil thus to answer questions quietly put while the raving was going on as usual. "I will not believe in your power," said Professor Janet to the malignant intruder, "unless you give me a proof." "What proof?" "Raise the poor man's left arm without his knowing it." This was done--to the astonishment of poor Achille--and a series of suggestions followed, all of which the demon triumphantly and unsuspectingly carried out, to show his power. Then came the suggestion to which Professor Janet had been leading up. It was like getting the djinn into the bottle. "You cannot put Achille soundly to sleep in that arm-chair!" "Yes, I can!" No sooner said than done, and no sooner done than Achille was delivered from his tormentor--from his own tormenting self.

For there in that hypnotic sleep he was gently led on to tell all his story; and such stories, when told to a skilled and kindly auditor, are apt to come to an end in the very act of being told.

Achille had been living in a day-dream; it was a day-dream which had swollen to these nightmare proportions, and had, as it were, ousted his rational being; and in the deeper self-knowledge which the somnambulic state brings with it the dream and the interpretation thereof became present to his bewildered mind.

The fact was that on that fateful journey when Achille's troubles began he had committed an act of unfaithfulness to his wife. A gloomy anxiety to conceal this action prompted him to an increasing taciturnity, and morbid fancies as to his health grew on him until at last his day-dream led him to imagine himself as actually dead. "His two days' lethargy was but an episode, a chapter in the long dream."

What then was the natural next stage of the dream's development? "He dreamt that, now that he was dead indeed, the devil rose from the abyss and came to take him. The poor man, as in his somnambulic state he retraced the series of his dreams, remembered the precise instant when this lamentable event took place. It was about 11 A.M.: a dog barked in the court at the moment, incommoded, no doubt, by the smell of brimstone; flames filled the room; numbers of little fiends scourged the unhappy man, or drove nails into his eyes, and through the wounds in his body Satan entered in to take possession of head and heart."

From this point the pseudo-possession may be said to have begun. The fixed idea developed itself into sensory and motor automatisms--visions of devils, uncontrollable utterances, automatic script--ascribed by the automatist to the possessing devil within.

And now came the moment when the veracity, the utility, of this new type of psychological analysis was to be submitted to yet another test. From the point of view of the ordinary physician Achille's condition was almost hopeless. Physical treatment had failed, and death from exhaustion and misery seemed near at hand. Nor could any appeal have been effective which did not go to the hidden root of the evil, which did not lighten the load of morbid remorse from which the whole series of troubles had developed. Fortunately for Achille, he was in the hands of an unsurpassed minister to minds thus diseased. Professor Janet adopted his usual tactics--what he terms the dissociation and the gradual substitution of ideas. The incidents of the miserable memory were modified, were explained away, were slowly dissolved from the brooding brain, and the hallucinatory image of the offended wife was presented to the sufferer at what novelists call the psychological moment, with pardon in her eyes. "Such stuff as dreams are made of!"--but even by such means was Achille restored to physical and moral health; he leads now the life of normal man; he no longer "walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."

II. C. I give here the case of Dr. Azam's often quoted patient, Félida X.[216] In this case the somnambulic life finally became the normal life; as the "second state," which appeared at first only in short, dreamlike accesses, gradually replaced the "first state," which finally recurred but for a few hours at long intervals. But the point on which I wish to dwell is this: that Félida's second state was altogether superior to the first--physically superior, since the nervous pains which had troubled her from childhood disappeared: and mentally superior, inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition was exchanged for a cheerful activity which enabled her to attend to her children and her shop much more effectively than when she was in the "état bête," as she called what was once the only personality that she knew. In this case, then, which at the time Dr. Azam wrote--1887--was of nearly thirty years' standing, the spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities--the second state, no memory of which remained in the first state--resulted in an improvement profounder than could have been anticipated from any moral or medical treatment that we know. The case shows us how often the word "normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For Félida's normal state was in fact her morbid state: and the new condition, which seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, brought her at last to a life of bodily and mental sanity which made her fully the equal of average women of her class.

A very complete account of the case, reproducing in full almost the whole of Dr. Azam's report, is given in Dr. A. Binet's Altérations de la Personnalité (pp. 6-20), and I briefly summarise this here:--

Félida was born at Bordeaux, in 1843, of healthy parents. Towards the age of thirteen years she began to exhibit symptoms of hysteria. When about fourteen and a half she used suddenly to feel a pain in her forehead, and then to fall into a profound sleep for some ten minutes, after which she woke spontaneously in her secondary condition. This lasted an hour or two; then the sleep came on again, and she awoke in her normal state. The change at first occurred every five or six days. As the hysterical symptoms increased, Dr. Azam was called in to attend her in 1858.

His report of that time states that in the primary state she appears very intelligent and fairly well educated; of a melancholy disposition, talking little, very industrious; constantly thinking of her maladies and suffering acute pains in various parts of the body, especially the head--the clou hystérique being very marked; all her actions, ideas, and words perfectly rational. Almost every day what she calls her crise comes on spontaneously--often while she is sitting at her needlework--preceded by a brief interval of the profound sleep, from which no external stimulus can rouse her. On waking into the secondary state, she appears like an entirely different person, smiling and gay; she continues her work cheerfully or walks about briskly, no longer feeling all the pains she has just before been complaining of. She looks after her ordinary domestic duties, goes out, walks about the town, and pays calls; behaves in every way like an ordinary healthy girl.

In this condition she remembers perfectly all that has happened on previous occasions when she was in the same state, and also all the events of her normal life; whereas during her normal life she forgets absolutely the occurrences of the secondary state. She declares constantly that whatever state she is in at the moment is the normal one--her raison--while the other one is always her crise.

The change of character in the secondary state is strongly marked; she becomes gay and vivacious--almost noisy; instead of being indifferent to everything, her sensibilities--both imaginative and emotional--become excessive. All her faculties appear more developed and more complete. The condition, in fact, is much superior to her ordinary one, as shown by the disappearance of her physical pains, and especially by the state of her memory.

She married early, and her crises became more frequent, though there were occasionally long intervals when they never came at all. But the secondary state, which in 1858 and 1859 only occupied about a tenth part of her life, gradually encroached more and more on the primary state, till the latter began to appear only at intervals and for a brief space of time.

In 1875 Dr. Azam, having for long lost sight of her, found her a mother of a family, keeping a shop. Now and then, but more and more rarely, occurred what she called her crises--really relapses into her primary condition. These were excessively inconvenient, since she forgot in them all the events of what was now her ordinary life, all the arrangements of her business, etc.; for instance, in going to a funeral, she had a crise, and consequently found it impossible to remember who the deceased person was. She had a great dread of these occurrences, though, by long practice, she had become very skilful at concealing them from every one but her husband; and the transition periods in passing from one state to another, during which she was completely unconscious, were now so short as to escape general notice. A peculiar feeling of pressure in the head warned her that the crise was coming, and she would then, for fear of making mistakes in her business, hastily write down whatever facts she most needed to keep in mind.

While the primary state lasted, she relapsed into the extreme melancholy and depression that characterised her early life, these being, in fact, now aggravated by her troublesome amnesia. She also lost her affection for her husband and children, and suffered from many hysterical pains and other symptoms which were much less acute in the secondary state. By 1887, however, the primary state only occurred every month or two, lasting only for a few hours at a time.

APPENDICES

TO

Chapter IV

IV. A. From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 389; related by Mr. Herbert J. Lewis, 19 Park Place, Cardiff.

In September 1880, I lost the landing order of a large steamer containing a cargo of iron ore, which had arrived in the port of Cardiff. She had to commence discharging at six o'clock the next morning. I received the landing order at four o'clock in the afternoon, and when I arrived at the office at six I found that I had lost it. During all the evening I was doing my utmost to find the officials of the Custom House to get a permit, as the loss was of the greatest importance, preventing the ship from discharging. I came home in a great degree of trouble about the matter, as I feared that I should lose my situation in consequence.

That night I dreamed that I saw the lost landing order lying in a crack in the wall under a desk in the Long Room of the Custom House.

At five the next morning I went down to the Custom House and got the keeper to get up and open it. I went to the spot of which I had dreamed, and found the paper in the very place. The ship was not ready to discharge at her proper time, and I went on board at seven and delivered the landing order, saving her from all delay.

HERBERT J. LEWIS.

I can certify to the truth of the above statement.

THOMAS LEWIS

(Herbert Lewis's father),

H. WALLIS.

July 14th, 1884.

[Mr. E. J. Newell, of the George and Abbotsford Hotel, Melrose, adds the following corroborative note:--]

August 14th, 1884.

I made some inquiries about Mr. Herbert Lewis's dream before I left Cardiff. He had been searching throughout the room in which the order was found. His theory as to how the order got in the place in which it was found, is that it was probably put there by some one (perhaps with malicious intent), as he does not see how it could have fallen so.

The fact that Mr. H. Lewis is exceedingly short-sighted adds to the probability of the thing which you suggest, that the dream was simply an unconscious act of memory in sleep. On the other hand he does not believe it was there when he searched.

E. J. NEWELL.

Can there have been a momentary unnoticed spasm of the ciliary muscle, with the result of extending the range of vision? It may suffice here to quote--that my suggestion may not seem too fantastic--a few lines from a personal observation of a somnambule by Dr. Dufay.[217]

"It is eight o'clock: several workwomen are busy around a table, on which a lamp is placed. Mdlle. R. L. directs and shares in the work, chatting cheerfully meantime. Suddenly a noise is heard; it is her head which has fallen sharply on the edge of the table. This is the beginning of the access. She picks herself up in a few seconds, pulls off her spectacles with disgust, and continues the work which she had begun;--having no further need of the concave glasses which a pronounced myopia renders needful to her in ordinary life;--and even placing herself so that her work is less exposed to the light of the lamp." Similarly, and yet differently, Miss Goodrich-Freer has had an experience where the title of a book quite unknown to her, which she had vainly endeavoured to read where it lay at some distance from her, presented itself in the crystal. In such a case we can hardly suppose any such spasmodic alteration in ocular conditions as may perhaps occur in trance.

IV. B. This case was recorded by Professor W. Romaine Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania, in a paper entitled "Subconscious Reasoning," in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xii. pp. 11-20.

I give the following extracts:--

For [these] cases I am indebted to another friend and colleague, Dr. Herman V. Hilprecht, Professor of Assyrian in the University of Pennsylvania. Both occurred in his own experience, and I write the account of the first from notes made by me upon his narrative.

During the winter, 1882-1883, he was working with Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, and was preparing to publish, as his dissertation, a text, transliteration, and translation of a stone of Nebuchadnezzar I. with notes. He accepted at that time the explanation given by Professor Delitzsch of the name Nebuchadnezzar--"Nabû-kudûrru-usur," "Nebo protect my mason's pad, or mortar board," i.e., "my work as a builder." One night, after working late, he went to bed about two o'clock in the morning. After a somewhat restless sleep, he awoke with his mind full of the thought that the name should be translated "Nebo protect my boundary." He had a dim consciousness of having been working at his table in a dream, but could never recall the details of the process by which he arrived at this conclusion. Reflecting upon it when awake, however, he at once saw that kudûrru, "boundary," could be derived from the verb kadâru, to enclose. Shortly afterwards he published this translation in his dissertation, and it has since been universally adopted.

I quote this experience, in itself of a familiar type, on account of its interest when viewed in connection with the more curious dream next to be related. I was told of the latter shortly after it happened, and here translate an account written in German by Professor Hilprecht, August 8th, 1893, before the more complete confirmation was received.

"One Saturday evening, about the middle of March, 1893, I had been wearying myself, as I had done so often in the weeks preceding, in the vain attempt to decipher two small fragments of agate which were supposed to belong to the finger-rings of some Babylonian. The labour was much increased by the fact that the fragments presented remnants only of characters and lines, that dozens of similar small fragments had been found in the ruins of the temple of Bel at Nippur with which nothing could be done, that in this case furthermore I had never had the originals before me, but only a hasty sketch made by one of the members of the expedition sent by the University of Pennsylvania to Babylonia. I could not say more than that the fragments, taking into consideration the place in which they were found and the peculiar characteristics of the cuneiform characters preserved upon them, sprang from the Cassite period of Babylonian history (circa 1700-1140 B.C.); moreover, as the first character of the third line of the first fragment seemed to be KU, I ascribed this fragment, with an interrogation point, to King Kurigalzu, while I placed the other fragment, as unclassifiable, with other Cassite fragments upon a page of my book where I published the unclassifiable fragments. The proofs already lay before me, but I was far from satisfied. The whole problem passed yet again through my mind that March evening before I placed my mark of approval under the last correction in the book. Even then I had come to no conclusion. About midnight, weary and exhausted, I went to bed and was soon in deep sleep. Then I dreamed the following remarkable dream. A tall, thin priest of the old pre-Christian Nippur, about forty years of age and clad in a simple abba, led me to the treasure chamber of the temple, on its south-east side. He went with me into a small, low-ceiled room without windows, in which there was a large wooden chest, while scraps of agate and lapis-lazuli lay scattered on the floor. Here he addressed me as follows: 'The two fragments which you have published separately upon pages 22 and 26, belong together, are not finger-rings, and their history is as follows. King Kurigalzu (circa 1300 B.C.) once sent to the temple of Bel, among other articles of agate and lapis lazuli, an inscribed votive cylinder of agate. Then we priests suddenly received the command to make for the statue of the god Ninib a pair of earrings of agate. We were in great dismay, since there was no agate as raw material at hand. In order to execute the command there was nothing for us to do but cut the votive cylinder into three parts, thus making three rings, each of which contained a portion of the original inscription. The first two rings served as earrings for the statue of the god; the two fragments which have given you so much trouble are portions of them. If you will put the two together you will have confirmation of my words. But the third ring you have not yet found in the course of your excavations, and you never will find it.' With this, the priest disappeared. I awoke at once and immediately told my wife the dream that I might not forget it. Next morning--Sunday--I examined the fragments once more in the light of these disclosures, and to my astonishment found all the details of the dream precisely verified in so far as the means of verification were in my hands. The original inscription on the votive cylinder read: 'To the god Ninib, son of Bel, his lord, has Kurigalzu, pontifex of Bel, presented this.'

"The problem was thus at last solved. I stated in the preface that I had unfortunately discovered too late that the two fragments belonged together, made the corresponding changes in the Table of Contents, pp. 50 and 52, and, it being not possible to transpose the fragments, as the plates were already made, I put in each plate a brief reference to the other. (Cf. Hilprecht, 'The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,' Series A, Cuneiform Texts, Vol. I., Part I, 'Old Babylonian Inscriptions, chiefly from Nippur.')

"H. V. HILPRECHT."

Upon the priest's statement that the fragments were those of a votive cylinder, Professor Hilprecht makes the following comment:--

"There are not many of these votive cylinders. I had seen, all told, up to that evening, not more than two. They very much resemble the so-called seal cylinders, but usually have no pictorial representations upon them, and the inscription is not reversed, not being intended for use in sealing, but is written as it is read."

The following transliteration of the inscription, in the Sumerian language, will serve to give those of us who are unlearned in cuneiform languages an idea of the material which suggested the dream. The straight vertical lines represent the cuts by which the stone-cutter divided the original cylinder into three sections. The bracketed words are entirely lost, and have been supplied by analogy from the many similar inscriptions.

Line 1. Dingir N inib du (mu) To the god Ninib, child " 2. dingir En- (lil) of the god Bel " 3. luga l-a-ni (ir) his lord " 4. Ku-r (i- galzu) Kurigalzu " 5. pa- (tesi dingir Enlil) pontifex of the god Bel " 6. (in- na- ba) has presented it.

I translate also the following statement which Mrs. Hilprecht kindly made at my request.

"I was awakened from sleep by a sigh, immediately thereafter heard a spring from the bed, and at the same moment saw Professor Hilprecht hurrying into his study. Thence came the cry, 'It is so, it is so.' Grasping the situation, I followed him and satisfied myself in the midnight hour as to the outcome of his most interesting dream.[218]

"J. C. HILPRECHT."

At the time Professor Hilprecht told me of this curious dream, which was a few weeks after its occurrence, there remained a serious difficulty which he was not able to explain. According to the memoranda in our possession, the fragments were of different colours, and therefore could have scarcely belonged to the same object. The original fragments were in Constantinople, and it was with no little interest that I awaited Professor Hilprecht's return from the trip which he made thither in the summer of 1893. I translate again his own account of what he then ascertained.

"November 10th, 1895.

"In August 1893, I was sent by the Committee on the Babylonian Expedition to Constantinople, to catalogue and study the objects got from Nippur and preserved there in the Imperial Museum. It was to me a matter of the greatest interest to see for myself the objects which, according to my dream, belonged together, in order to satisfy myself that they had both originally been parts of the same votive cylinder. Halil Bey, the director of the museum, to whom I told my dream, and of whom I asked permission to see the objects, was so interested in the matter, that he at once opened all the cases of the Babylonian section, and requested me to search. Father Scheil, an Assyriologist from Paris, who had examined and arranged the articles excavated by us before me, had not recognised the fact that these fragments belonged together, and consequently I found one fragment in one case, and the other in a case far away from it. As soon as I found the fragments and put them together, the truth of the dream was demonstrated ad oculos--they had, in fact, once belonged to one and the same votive cylinder. As it had been originally of finely veined agate, the stone-cutter's saw had accidentally divided the object in such a way that the whitish vein of the stone appeared only upon the one fragment and the larger grey surface upon the other. Thus I was able to explain Dr. Peters's discordant description of the two fragments."

Professor Hilprecht is unable to say what language the old priest used in addressing him. He is quite certain that it was not Assyrian, and thinks it was either English or German.

There are two especial points of interest in this case, the character of the information conveyed, and the dramatic form in which it was put. The apparently novel points of information given were:--

1. That the fragments belonged together. 2. That they were fragments of a votive cylinder. 3. That the cylinder was presented by King Kurigalzu. 4. That it was dedicated to Ninib. 5. That it had been made into a pair of earrings.

6. That the "treasure chamber" was located upon the south-east side of the temple.

A careful analysis reveals the fact that not one of these items was beyond the reach of the processes of associative reasoning which Professor Hilprecht daily employs. Among the possible associative consequents of the writing upon the one fragment, some of the associative consequents of the writing on the other were sub-consciously involved; the attraction of these identical elements brings the separate pieces into mental juxtaposition, precisely as the pieces of a "dissected map" find one another in thought. In waking life the dissimilarity of colour inhibited any tendency on the part of the associative processes to bring them together, but in sleep this difference of colour seems to have been forgotten--there being no mention made of it--and the assimilation took place. The second point is more curious, but is not inexplicable. For as soon as the fragments were brought into juxtaposition mentally, enough of the inscription became legible to suggest the original character of the object. This is true also of the third and fourth points. The source of the fifth is not so clear. Upon examining the originals, Professor Hilprecht felt convinced from the size of the hole still to be seen through the fragments that they could not have been used as finger-rings, and that they had been used as earrings, but the written description which he had before him at the time of his dream did not bring these points to view. Still, such earrings are by no means uncommon objects. Such a supposition might well have occurred to Professor Hilprecht in his waking state and, in view of the lack of positive confirmation, it would be rash to ascribe it to any supernormal power. The last point is most interesting. When he told me this story, Professor Hilprecht remembered that he had heard from Dr. John P. Peters, before he had the dream, of the discovery of a room in which were remnants of a wooden box, while the floor was strewn with fragments of agate and lapis-lazuli. The walls, of course, and ceiling have long since perished. The location, however, of the room he did not know, and suggested I should write to Dr. Peters and find out whether it was correctly given in his dream, and whether Dr. Peters had told him of it. Dr. Peters replied that the location given was correct, but, he adds, he told Professor Hilprecht all these facts as long ago as 1891, and thinks he provided him with a drawing of the room's relation to the temple. Of this Professor Hilprecht has no recollection. He thinks it probable that Dr. Peters told him orally of the location of the room, but feels sure that if any such plan was given him it would now be found among his papers. This is a point of no importance, however. We certainly cannot regard the location as ascertained by supernormal means.

IV. C. From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xi. p. 505.

From Mr. Alfred Cooper, of 9 Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square, W.

[This account was orally confirmed by him to Mr. E. Gurney, June 6th, 1888. It is written by Mr. Cooper, but attested also by the Duchess of Hamilton.]

* * * * *

A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L----, in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see him professionally. After I had finished seeing him we went into the drawing-room, where the Duchess was, and the Duke said to me, "Oh, Cooper; how is the Earl?"

The Duchess said, "What Earl?" and on my answering, "Lord L----," she replied, "That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I went to bed, but after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were Lord L----, in a chair, as if in a fit, with a man standing over him with a red beard. He was by the side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was distinctly shown."

I then said, "I am attending Lord L---- at present; there is very little the matter with him; he is not going to die; he will be all right very soon."

Well, he got better for a week and was nearly well, but at the end of six or seven days after this I was called to see him suddenly. He had inflammation of both lungs.

I called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead man. There were two male nurses attending on him; one had been taken ill. But when I saw the other the dream of the Duchess was exactly represented. He was standing near a bath over the Earl and, strange to say, his beard was red. There was the bath with the red lamp over it. It is rather rare to find a bath with a red lamp over it, and this brought the story to my mind.

The vision seen by the Duchess was told two weeks before the death of Lord L----. It is a most remarkable thing.

This account, written in 1888, has been revised by the [late] Duke of Manchester, father of the Duchess of Hamilton, who heard the vision from his daughter on the morning after she had seen it.

(Signed) MARY HAMILTON. ALFRED COOPER.

Her Grace had been reading and had just blown out the candle. Her Grace has had many dreams which have come true years after.

ALFRED COOPER.

[The Duchess only knew Lord L---- by sight, and had not heard that he was ill. She knew she was not asleep, for she opened her eyes to get rid of the vision and, shutting them, saw the same thing again.]

An independent and concordant account has been given to me (F. W. H. M.) orally by a gentleman to whom the Duchess related the dream on the morning after its occurrence.

IV. D. From Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 383. The following account, which first appeared in a letter in the Religio-Philosophical Journal, is from Dr. Bruce, of Micanopy, Fla., U.S.A. The case might be called "collective," but for the fact that one of the dreams, though vivid and alarming, was probably not so distinctive as was afterwards imagined, and, moreover, was possibly dreamt on the night preceding that on which the tragic event took place.

February 17th, 1884.

On Thursday, the 27th of December last, I returned from Gainesville (twelve miles from here) to my orange grove, near Micanopy. I have only a small plank house of three rooms at my grove, where I spend most of my time when the grove is being cultivated. There was no one in the house but myself at the time, and being somewhat fatigued with my ride, I retired to my bed very early, probably 6 o'clock; and, as I am frequently in the habit of doing, I lit my lamp on a stand by the bed for the purpose of reading. After reading a short time, I began to feel a little drowsy, put out the light, and soon fell asleep. Quite early in the night I was awakened. I could not have been asleep very long, I am sure. I felt as if I had been aroused intentionally, and at first thought some one was breaking into the house. I looked from where I lay into the other two rooms (the doors of both being open), and at once recognised where I was, and that there was no ground for the burglar theory; there being nothing in the house to make it worth a burglar's time to come after.

I then turned on my side to go to sleep again, and immediately felt a consciousness of a presence in the room, and, singular to state, it was not the consciousness of a live person, but of a spiritual presence. This may provoke a smile, but I can only tell you the facts as they occurred to me. I do not know how to better describe my sensations than by simply stating that I felt a consciousness of a spiritual presence. This may have been a part of the dream, for I felt as if I were dozing off again to sleep; but it was unlike any dream I ever had. I felt also at the same time a strong feeling of superstitious dread, as if something strange and fearful were about to happen. I was soon asleep again, or unconscious, at any rate, to my surroundings. Then I saw two men engaged in a slight scuffle: one fell fatally wounded--the other immediately disappeared. I did not see the gash in the wounded man's throat, but knew that his throat was cut. I did not recognise him, either, as my brother-in-law. I saw him lying with his hands under him, his head turned slightly to the left, his feet close together. I could, from the position in which I stood, see but a small portion of his face; his coat, collar, hair, or something partly obscured it. I looked at him the second time a little closer to see it I could make out who it was. I was aware it was some one I knew, but still could not recognise him. I turned, and then saw my wife sitting not far from him. She told me she could not leave until he was attended to. (I had got a letter a few days previously from my wife, telling me she would leave in a day or two, and was expecting every day a letter or telegram telling me when to meet her at the depôt.) My attention was struck by the surroundings of the dead man. He appeared to be lying on an elevated platform of some kind, surrounded by chairs, benches, and desks, reminding me somewhat of a schoolroom. Outside of the room in which he was lying was a crowd of people, mostly females, some of whom I thought I knew. Here my dream terminated. I awoke again about midnight; got up and went to the door to see if there were any prospect of rain; returned to my bed again, and lay there until nearly daylight before falling asleep again. I thought of my dream, and was strongly impressed by it. All strange, superstitious feelings had passed off.

It was not until a week or ten days after this that I got a letter from my wife, giving me an account of her brother's death. Her letter, which was written the day after his death, was mis-sent. The account she gave me of his death tallies most remarkably with my dream. Her brother was with a wedding party at the depôt at Markham station, Fauquier Co., Va. He went into a store near by to see a young man who kept a bar-room near the depôt, and with whom he had some words. He turned and left the man, and walked out of the store. The bar-room keeper followed him out, and without further words deliberately cut his throat. It was a most brutal and unprovoked murder. My brother-in-law had on his overcoat, with the collar turned up. The knife went through the collar and clear to the bone. He was carried into the store and laid on the counter, near a desk and show case. He swooned from loss of blood soon after being cut. The cutting occurred early Thursday night, December 27th. He did not die, however, until almost daylight, Saturday morning.

I have not had a complete account of my sister-in-law's dream. She was visiting a young lady, a cousin, in Kentucky. They slept together Friday night, I think, the night of her brother's death. She dreamed of seeing a man with his throat cut, and awoke very much alarmed. She awoke her cousin, and they got up and lighted the lamp and sat up until daylight. That day she received a telegram announcing her brother's death.

I cannot give you any certain explanation of these dreams. I do not believe that they are due to ordinary causes, but to causes of which science does not at present take cognisance.

WALTER BRUCE.

In reply to inquiries, Dr. Bruce says:--

July 9th, 1884.

I have never had another dream similar to the one related in the letter. I have at times had dreams that were vivid, or from some cause impressed themselves upon my mind for a time, such as any one would be likely to have. I cannot call to mind, though, any of special importance, or with any bearing upon the dream in question.

I did not mention the dream to any one before receiving the letter confirming it. I live in rather a retired place in the country, and if I saw any one during that time to whom I would care to relate the dream, it did not occur to me to do so.

You ask me how my wife knew of the circumstances of her brother's death. She was visiting her relatives in Va. at the time, and was present when her brother died.

The following account is from Dr. Bruce's sister-in-law, Mrs. Stubbing:--

March 28th, 1885.

Whilst in Kentucky on a visit in the year 1883, I had a dream, in which I saw two persons--one with his throat cut. I could not tell who it was, though I knew it was somebody that I knew, and as soon as I heard of my brother's death, I said at once that I knew it was he that I had seen murdered in my dream; and though I did not hear how my brother died, I told my cousin, whom I was staying with, that I knew he had been murdered. This dream took place on Thursday or Friday night, I do not remember which. I saw the exact spot where he was murdered, and just as it happened.

ANNIE S. STUBBING.

The Thursday and Friday night mentioned in this account are December 26th and 27th [27th and 28th], 1883. It was upon the Thursday night my dream occurred.

WALTER BRUCE.

In reply to questions, Mrs. Stubbing says:--

Yes, I saw one man cut the other. The wound was told to me to be just like what I had seen in my dream. I received a telegram announcing the death of my brother on Saturday morning. No, I never had any such dream as that before.

IV. E. I quote the following case from Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 425. The account was written by Mrs. T---- in 1883.

On November 18th, 1863, I was living near Adelaide, and not long recovered from a severe illness at the birth of an infant, who was then five months old. My husband had also suffered from neuralgia, and had gone to stay with friends at the seaside for the benefit of bathing. One night during his absence the child woke me about midnight; having hushed him off to sleep, I said, "Now, sir, I hope you will let me rest!" I lay down, and instantly became conscious of two figures standing at the door of my room. One, M. N. (these are not the real initials), whom I recognised at once, was that of a former lover, whose misconduct and neglect had compelled me to renounce him. Of this I am sure, that if ever I saw him in my life, it was then. I was not in the least frightened; but said to myself, as it were, "You never used to wear that kind of waistcoat." The door close to which he stood was in a deep recess close to the fireplace, for there was no grate; we burnt logs only. In that recess stood a man in a tweed suit. I saw the whole figure distinctly, but not the face, and for this reason: on the edge of the mantelshelf always stood a morocco leather medicine chest, which concealed the face from me. (On this being stated to our friends, the Singletons, they asked to go into the room and judge for themselves. They expressed themselves satisfied that would be the case to any one on the bed where I was.) I had an impression that this other was a cousin of M. N.'s, who had been the means of leading him astray while in the North of England. I never saw him in my life; he died in India.

M. N. was in deep mourning; he had a look of unutterable sorrow upon his face, and was deadly pale. He never opened his lips, but I read his heart as if it were an open book, and it said, "My father is dead, and I have come into his property." I answered, "How much you have grown like your father!" Then in a moment, without appearing to walk, he stood at the foot of the child's cot, and I saw distinctly the blueness of his eyes as he gazed on my boy, and then raised them to Heaven as if in prayer.

All vanished. I looked round and remarked a trivial circumstance, viz., that the brass handles of my chest of drawers had been rubbed very bright. Not till then was I conscious of having seen a spirit, but a feeling of awe (not fear) came over me, and I prayed to be kept from harm, although there was no reason to dread it. I slept tranquilly, and in the morning I went across to the parsonage and told the clergyman's wife what I had seen. She, of course, thought it was merely a dream. But no--if it were a dream should I not have seen him as I had known him, a young man of twenty-two, without beard or whiskers? But there was all the difference that sixteen years would make in a man's aspect.

On Saturday my husband returned, and my brother having ridden out to see us on Sunday afternoon, I told them both my vision as we sat together on the verandah. They treated it so lightly that I determined to write it down in my diary and see if the news were verified. And from that diary I am now quoting. Also I mentioned it to at least twelve or fourteen other people, and bid them await the result.

And surely enough, at the end of several weeks, my sister-in-law wrote that M. N.'s father died at C---- Common on November 18th, 1863, which exactly tallied with the date of the vision. He left £45,000 to be divided between his son and daughter, but the son has never been found.

Many people in Adelaide heard the story before the confirmation came, and I wrote and told M. N.'s mother. She was much distressed about it, fearing he was unhappy. She is now dead. My husband was profoundly struck when he saw my diary corresponding exactly to the news in the letter I had that moment received in his presence.

Gurney adds the following note:--

Mr. T. has confirmed to us the accuracy of this narrative, and Mrs. T. has shown to one of us a memorandum of the appearance of two figures, under date November 18th, in her diary of the year 1863, and a newspaper obituary confirms this as the date of the death. We learn from a gentleman who is a near relative of M. N.'s, that M. N., though long lost sight of, was afterwards heard of, and outlived his father.

I should not now take it for granted (as we did at the time when Phantasms of the Living was compiled) that the agent here "can apparently only have been the dying man." I think it possible, in the light of our now somewhat fuller knowledge, that M. N.'s spirit was aware of his father's death,--even though possibly M. N.'s supraliminal self may not have heard of it;--so that the invading presence in this case may have been the discarded lover himself,--dreaming on his own account at a distance from Mrs. T. The second figure I regard as having been an object in M. N.'s dream;--symbolical of his own alienation from Mrs. T. All this sounds fanciful; but I may remark here (as often elsewhere), that I think that we gain little by attempting to enforce our own ideas of simplicity upon narratives of this bizarre type.

IV. F. From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 341.

Communicated by Fräulein Schneller, sister-in-law of the percipient, and known to F. W. H. M., January 1890.

DOBER UND PAUSE, SCHLESIEN, December 12th, 1889.

About a year ago there died in a neighbouring village a brewer called Wünscher, with whom I stood in friendly relations. His death ensued after a short illness, and as I seldom had an opportunity of visiting him, I knew nothing of his illness nor of his death. On the day of his death I went to bed at nine o'clock, tired with the labours which my calling as a farmer demands of me. Here I must observe that my diet is of a frugal kind; beer and wine are rare things in my house, and water, as usual, had been my drink that night. Being of a very healthy constitution, I fell asleep as soon as I lay down. In my dream I heard the deceased call out with a loud voice, "Boy, make haste and give me my boots." This awoke me, and I noticed that, for the sake of our child, my wife had left the light burning. I pondered with pleasure over my dream, thinking in my mind how Wünscher, who was a good-natured, humorous man, would laugh when I told him of this dream. Still thinking on it, I hear Wünscher's voice scolding outside, just under my window. I sit up in my bed at once and listen, but cannot understand his words. What can the brewer want? I thought, and I know for certain that I was much vexed with him, that he should make a disturbance in the night, as I felt convinced that his affairs might surely have waited till the morrow. Suddenly he comes into the room from behind the linen press, steps with long strides past the bed of my wife and the child's bed; wildly gesticulating with his arms all the time, as his habit was, he called out, "What do you say to this, Herr Oberamtmann? This afternoon at five o'clock I have died." Startled by this information, I exclaim, "Oh, that is not true!" He replied: "Truly, as I tell you; and, what do you think? They want to bury me already on Tuesday afternoon at two o'clock," accentuating his assertions all the while by his gesticulations. During this long speech of my visitor I examined myself as to whether I was really awake and not dreaming.

I asked myself: Is this a hallucination? Is my mind in full possession of its faculties? Yes, there is the light, there the jug, this is the mirror, and this the brewer; and I came to the conclusion: I am awake. Then the thought occurred to me, What will my wife think if she awakes and sees the brewer in our bedroom? In this fear of her waking up I turn round to my wife, and to my great relief I see from her face, which is turned towards me, that she is still asleep; but she looks very pale. I say to the brewer, "Herr Wünscher, we will speak softly, so that my wife may not wake up, it would be very disagreeable to her to find you here." To which Wünscher answered in a lower and calmer tone: "Don't be afraid, I will do no harm to your wife." Things do happen indeed for which we find no explanation--I thought to myself, and said to Wünscher: "If this be true, that you have died, I am sincerely sorry for it; I will look after your children." Wünscher stepped towards me, stretched out his arms and moved his lips as though he would embrace me; therefore I said in a threatening tone, and looking steadfastly at him with a frowning brow: "Don't come so near, it is disagreeable to me," and lifted my right arm to ward him off, but before my arm reached him the apparition had vanished. My first look was to my wife to see if she were still asleep. She was. I got up and looked at my watch, it was seven minutes past twelve. My wife woke up and asked me: "To whom did you speak so loud just now?" "Have you understood anything?" I said. "No," she answered, and went to sleep again.

I impart this experience to the Society for Psychical Research, in the belief that it may serve as a new proof for the real existence of telepathy. I must further remark that the brewer had died that afternoon at five o'clock, and was buried on the following Tuesday at two.--With great respect,

KARL DIGNOWTTY (Landed Proprietor).

The usual time for burial in Germany, adds Fräulein Schneller, is three days after death. This time may be prolonged, however, on application. There are no special hours fixed.

In conversation Fräulein S. described her brother-in-law as a man of strong practical sense and of extremely active habits.

We have received the "Sterbeurkunde" from the "Standesbeamte" Siegismund, Kreis Sagan, certifying that Karl Wünscher died Saturday, September 15th, 1888, at 4.30 P.M., and was buried Tuesday, September 18th, 1888, at 2 P.M.

* * * * *

Herr Dignowity writes again, January 18th, 1890:--

Frau Wünscher told me that the time of the burial was settled in the death-room immediately after Wünscher's death, because relations at a distance had to be summoned by telegram. Wünscher had suffered from inflammation of the lungs, which ended in spasm of the heart. During his illness his thoughts had been much occupied with me, and he often wondered what I should say if I knew how ill he was.

Finally, Frau Dignowity (born Schneller) writes from Pause, January 18th, 1890:--

I confirm that my husband told me on the morning of September 16th, 1888, that the brewer Wünscher had given him intimation of his death.

APPENDICES

TO

Chapter V

V.A.[219] The principal inorganic objects alleged to have elicited novel sensations are running water, metals, crystals and magnets;--including under this last heading the magnetism of the earth, as claimed to be felt differently by sleepers according as they lie in the north-south or in the east-west positions.

(1) The faculty of finding running water has the interest of being the first subliminal faculty which has been so habitually utilised for public ends as to form for its possessors a recognised and lucrative occupation.

An exhaustive and impartial survey of the existing evidence for the faculty of "dowsing" is given in Professor W. F. Barrett's two articles "On the so-called Divining Rod" in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 2-282, and vol. xv. pp. 130-383.

From this it seems clear that this power of discovery is genuine, and is not dependent on the dowser's conscious knowledge or observation. It forms a subliminal uprush; but whether it is akin to genius, as being a subconscious manipulation of facts accessible through normal sensory channels, or to heteræsthesia (as resting on a specific sensibility to the proximity of running water), is a question which will be variously decided in each special case. The dowser, I should add, is not hypnotised before he finds the water. But (as Professor Barrett has shown) he is often thrown, presumably by self-suggestion, into a state much resembling light hypnotic trance. The perceptivity (we may say) of central organs, in an unfamiliar direction, is stimulated by concentrated attention, involving a certain disturbance or abeyance of perceptivity in other directions.

(2) I next take the case of metallæsthesia,--that alleged reaction to special metals which has often been asserted both in hypnotic and in hysterical cases. As a definite instance I will take the statement made by certain physicians attending Louis Vivé,[220] that while they supported him during a hysterical attack a gold ring on the finger of one of them touched him for some time and left a red mark, as of a burn, of whose origin the patient knew nothing. It is further alleged--and this is a quite separate point, although often confused with the first--that gold is distinguished by some subjects under conditions where no degree of sensitiveness to weight or temperature could have shown them that gold was near.

Now, as to the first point, e.g. the Louis Vivé incident, I can readily believe that the touch of gold, unknown to the subject's supraliminal consciousness, may produce a redness, subsequent pain, etc. All that is needed for this is a capricious self-suggestion, like any other hysterical idea. This self-suggestion might remain completely unknown to the waking self, which might be puzzled as to the cause of the redness and pain. The second claim, however, involves much more than this. If gold is recognised through a covering, for instance, or heated to the same point as other metals, so that no sensation of weight or temperature can help observation, this might possibly be by virtue of some sensibility more resembling the attraction of low organisms to specific substances whose chemical action on them we cannot determine, or to particular rays in the spectrum. I am not convinced that this has yet been proved; but I should not regard it as a priori impossible.

Medicamentous substances have also been claimed by many different hypnotists as exerting from a little distance, or when in sealed tubes, specific influences on patients. The phenomenon is of the same nature as the alleged specific influences of metals,--all being very possibly explicable as the mere freak of self-suggestion.

(3) Considering in the next place the alleged sensibility of certain persons to crystals and magnets,--known to be absolutely inert in relation to ordinary men,--we should note the alleged connection between the perception of magnets and that of running water.

Some experiments intended to test the reality of the "magnetic sense," and especially of the so-called "magnetic light"--luminous appearances described by Baron Reichenbach as being seen by his sensitives in the neighbourhood of magnets--were carried out by a Committee of the S.P.R., in 1883. After careful and repeated trials with forty-five "subjects" of both sexes and of ages between sixteen and sixty, only three of these professed to see luminous appearances.

The value of these experiments as evidence of a magnetic sense of course depends primarily on whether the subjects had any means, direct or indirect, of knowing when the current was made or broken. The precautions taken to avoid this and the other conditions of the experiments are described in detail in the report of them in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. i. pp. 230-37. See also a further note by the Chairman of the Committee, Professor W. F. Barrett, vol. ii. pp. 56-60.

(4) And next as to the heteræsthesiæ alleged to be evoked by dead organic substances, or by living organisms. We may begin by observing that some of our senses, at any rate, form the subjective expression of certain chemical reactions. But many kinds of chemical reactions go on in us besides those which, for example, form the basis of our sense of taste. And some persons are much more affected than others by certain special reactions, which from a purely chemical point of view may or may not be precisely the same for all. Some persons have a specific sensibility to certain foods, or to certain drugs;--the presence of which their stomach detects, and to which it responds with extraordinary delicacy. Now, if it were an important object to discover the presence of a certain drug, such a sensibility would be regarded as a precious gift, and the discovery might be quite as valuable when made by the stomach as it would have been if made by the nose. These are nascent heteræsthesiæ, which, however, are not fostered either by natural selection or by human care.

Of similar type are the specific sensibilities to the presence of certain plants or animals,--familiar in certain cases of "rose-asthma," "horse-asthma," and discomfort felt if a cat is in the room. These feelings have many causes. At one end there is ordinary mechanical irritation by solid particles. At the other end of the scale there is, of course, mere self-suggestion. But between the two there seems to be a kind of sensibility which is not purely self-suggestive, and not exactly olfactory, but resembles rather the instincts by which insects or other animals discern each other's neighbourhood.

(5) It is perhaps through some such power of discrimination that effects are produced on sensitive subjects by "mesmerised objects,"--assuming, of course, that sufficient care has been taken to avoid their discovering by ordinary means that the objects have been specially manipulated in any way. See some experiments recorded in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. i. pp. 260-262, and a description of Esdaile's experiments with mesmerised water in vol. iii. p. 409; also cases in the Zoist, e.g. vol. v. p. 129, and vol. v. p. 99.

(6) And now I pass on to medical clairvoyance, or the power of diagnosing the present or past state of a living organism either from actual contact or even in the absence of the invalid, and from contact with some object which he has himself touched.

The early mesmerists, e.g. Puységur, Pététin, Despine, and Teste, all had the utmost faith in the faculty of their subjects to see their own disease and prescribe the right remedy. The same attitude of mind can be traced all through the Zoist. Fahnestock was perhaps the first to point out the ambiguity of this alleged introvision. "It is well known to me," he says, "that when a resolution is taken, a belief cherished, or a determination formed by persons while in the somnambulic state, that, when they awake, although they may know nothing about it or relative to it, they always do what has been so resolved or determined upon at the time appointed or specified" (Statuvolism, p. 203), and he quotes experiments to prove his point. With the knowledge we now possess of the extraordinary power of self-suggestion in producing all kinds of bodily symptoms, it is obvious that these cases cannot be adduced as evidence of anything more. A typical instance of one of these early observations is to be found in the Zoist, vol. x. p. 347. See also Puységur, Recherches sur l'Homme dans le Somnambulisme (Paris, 1811), pp. 140 et seq. and 214 et seq.; Pététin, Electricité Animale (Paris, 1808); Despine, Observations de Médecine Pratique (1838)--"Estelle nous a indiqué tous les soirs, dans sa crise, ce qu'il y avait à faire pour le lendemain, tant pour le régime alimentaire que pour les moyens médicamentaires" (p. 38).

V. B. Some of the most striking cases of moral reforms produced by hypnotic suggestion are those recorded by Dr. Auguste Voisin. For instance:--

In the summer of 1884, there was at the Salpêtrière a young woman of a deplorable type.[221] Jeanne Sch---- was a criminal lunatic, filthy in habits, violent in demeanour, and with a lifelong history, of impurity and theft. M. Voisin, who was one of the physicians on the staff, undertook to hypnotise her on May 31st, at a time when she could only be kept quiet by the strait jacket and bonnet d'irrigation, or perpetual cold douche to the head. She would not--indeed, she could not--look steadily at the operator, but raved and spat at him. M. Voisin kept his face close to hers, and followed her eyes wherever she moved them. In about ten minutes a stertorous sleep ensued, and in five minutes more she passed into a sleep-waking state, and began to talk incoherently. The process was repeated on many days, and gradually she became sane when in the trance, though she still raved when awake. Gradually, too, she became able to obey in waking hours commands impressed on her in the trance--first trivial orders (to sweep the room and so forth), then orders involving a marked change of behaviour. Nay more; in the hypnotic state she voluntarily expressed repentance for her past life, made a confession which involved more evil than the police were cognisant of (though it agreed with facts otherwise known), and finally of her own impulse made good resolves for the future. Two years later, M. Voisin wrote to me (July 31st, 1886) that she was then a nurse in a Paris hospital, and that her conduct was irreproachable. It appeared, then, that this poor woman, whose history since the age of thirteen had been one of reckless folly and vice, had become capable of the steady, self-controlled work of a nurse at a hospital, the reformed character having first manifested itself in the hypnotic state, partly in obedience to suggestion, and partly as the natural result of the tranquillisation of morbid passions.

M. Dufour, the medical head of another asylum,[222] has adopted hypnotic suggestion as a regular element in his treatment. "Dès à présent," he says, "notre opinion est faite: sans crainte de nous tromper, nous affirmons que l'hypnotisme peut rendre service dans le traitement des maladies mentales." As was to be expected, he finds that only a small proportion of lunatics are hypnotisable; but the effect produced on these, whether by entrancement or suggestion, is uniformly good. His best subject is a depraved young man, who after many convictions for crimes (including attempted murder) has become a violent lunatic. "T.," says Dr. Dufour, "a été un assez mauvais sujet. Nous n'avons plus à parler au présent, tellement ses sentiments moraux ont été améliorés par l'hypnotisme." This change and amelioration of character (over and above the simple recovery of sanity) has been a marked feature in some of Dr. Voisin's cases as well.

See also a case given by Dr. Voisin in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme, vol. iii., 1889, p. 130.

V. C. The subject of these experiments in telepathic hypnotisation was Professor Pierre Janet's well-known subject, Madame B. The experiments were carried out with her at Havre, by Professer Janet and Dr. Gibert, a leading physician there, and described in the Bulletins de la Société de Psychologie Physiologique, Tome I., p. 24, and in the Revue Philosophique, August 1886.

I give the following extract from my own notes of experiments, April 20th to 24th, 1886, taken at the time in conjunction with Dr. A. T. Myers, and forming the bulk of a paper presented to the Société de Psychologie Physiologique on May 24th (also published in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. iv. pp. 131-37.)

In the evening (22nd) we all dined at M. Gibert's, and in the evening M. Gibert made another attempt to put her to sleep at a distance from his house in the Rue Séry--she being at the Pavillon, Rue de la Ferme--and to bring her to his house by an effort of will. At 8.55 he retired to his study, and MM. Ochorowicz, Marillier, Janet, and A. T. Myers went to the Pavilion, and waited outside in the street, out of sight of the house. At 9.22 Dr. Myers observed Madame B. coming half-way out of the garden-gate, and again retreating. Those who saw her more closely observed that she was plainly in the somnambulic state, and was wandering about and muttering. At 9.25 she came out (with eyes persistently closed, so far as could be seen), walked quickly past MM. Janet and Marillier, without noticing them, and made for M. Gibert's house, though not by the usual or shortest route. (It appeared afterwards that the bonne had seen her go into the salon at 8.45, and issue thence asleep at 9.15; had not looked in between those times.[223]) She avoided lamp-posts, vehicles, etc., but crossed and recrossed the street repeatedly. No one went in front of her or spoke to her. After eight or ten minutes she grew much more uncertain in gait, and paused as though she would fall. Dr. Myers noted the moment in the Rue Faure; it was 9.35. At about 9.40 she grew bolder, and at 9.45 reached the street in front of M. Gibert's house. There she met him, but did not notice him, and walked into his house, where she rushed hurriedly from room to room on the ground-floor. M. Gibert had to take her hand before she recognised him. She then grew calm.

M. Gibert said that from 8.55 to 9.20 he thought intently about her, from 9.20 to 9.35 he thought more feebly; at 9.35 he gave the experiment up, and began to play billiards; but in a few minutes began to will her again. It appeared that his visit to the billiard-room had coincided with her hesitation and stumbling in the street. But this coincidence may of course have been accidental....

Out of a series of twenty-five similar experiments nineteen were successful. The experiments were made at different times in the day and at varying intervals, in order to avoid the effects of expectancy in the subject.

APPENDICES

TO

Chapter VI

VI. A. This case is taken from Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 94, having been contributed by Colonel Bigge, of 2 Morpeth Terrace, S.W., who took the account out of a sealed envelope, in Gurney's presence, for the first time since it was written on the day of the occurrence.

An account of a circumstance which occurred to me when quartered at Templemore, Co. Tipperary, on 20th February 1847.

This afternoon, about 3 o'clock P.M., I was walking from my quarters towards the mess-room to put some letters into the letter-box, when I distinctly saw Lieut.-Colonel Reed, 70th Regiment, walking from the corner of the range of buildings occupied by the officers towards the mess-room door; and I saw him go into the passage. He was dressed in a brown shooting-jacket, with grey summer regulation tweed trousers, and had a fishing-rod and a landing-net in his hand. Although at the time I saw him he was about 15 or 20 yards from me, and although anxious to speak to him at the moment, I did not do so, but followed him into the passage and turned into the ante-room on the left-hand side, where I expected to find him. On opening the door, to my great surprise, he was not there; the only person in the room was Quartermaster Nolan, 70th Regiment, and I immediately asked him if he had seen the colonel, and he replied he had not; upon which I said, "I suppose he has gone upstairs," and I immediately left the room. Thinking he might have gone upstairs to one of the officers' rooms, I listened at the bottom of the stairs and then went up to the first landing-place; but not hearing anything I went downstairs again and tried to open the bedroom door, which is opposite to the ante-room, thinking he might have gone there; but I found the door locked, as it usually is in the middle of the day. I was very much surprised at not finding the colonel, and I walked into the barrack-yard and joined Lieutenant Caulfield, 66th Regiment, who was walking there; and I told the story to him, and particularly described the dress in which I had seen the colonel. We walked up and down the barrack-yard talking about it for about ten minutes, when, to my great surprise, never having kept my eye from the door leading to the mess-room (there is only one outlet from it), I saw the colonel walk into the barracks through the gate--which is in the opposite direction--accompanied by Ensign Willington, 70th Regiment, in precisely the same dress in which I had seen him, and with a fishing-rod and a landing-net in his hand. Lieutenant Caulfield and I immediately walked to them, and we were joined by Lieut.-Colonel Goldie, 66th Regiment, and Captain Hartford, and I asked Colonel Reed if he had not gone into the mess-room about ten minutes before. He replied that he certainly had not, for that he had been out fishing for more than two hours at some ponds about a mile from the barracks, and that he had not been near the mess-room at all since the morning.

At the time I saw Colonel Reed going into the mess-room I was not aware that he had gone out fishing--a very unusual thing to do at this time of the year; neither had I seen him before in the dress I have described during that day. I had seen him in uniform in the morning at parade, but not afterwards at all until 3 o'clock--having been engaged in my room writing letters, and upon other business. My eyesight being very good, and the colonel's figure and general appearance somewhat remarkable, it is morally impossible that I could have mistaken any other person in the world for him. That I did see him I shall continue to believe until the last day of my existence.

WILLIAM MATTHEW BIGGE, Major, 70th Regiment.

[On July 17th, 1885, after Colonel Bigge had described the occurrence but before the account was taken from the envelope and read, he dictated the following remarks to Gurney:--]

When Colonel R. got off the car about a couple of hours afterwards, Colonel Goldie and other officers said to me, "Why, that's the very dress you described." They had not known where he was or how he was engaged. The month, February, was a most unlikely one to be fishing in. Colonel Reed was much alarmed when told what I had seen.

The quartermaster, sitting at the window, would have been bound to see a real figure; he denied having seen anything.

I have never had the slightest hallucination of the senses on any other occasion.

[It will be seen that these recent remarks exhibit two slips of memory. It is quite unimportant whether Colonel Reed was seen walking in at the gate or getting off a car. But in making the interval between the vision and the return two hours instead of ten minutes, the later account unduly diminishes the force of the case. If there is any justification at all for the provisional hypothesis that the sense of impending arrival is a condition favourable for the emission of a telepathic influence, it is of importance that, at the time when the phantasmal form was seen, Colonel Reed was not busy with his fishing, but was rapidly approaching his destination; for thus the incident, at any rate, gets the benefit of analogy with other cases.]

VI. B. From the Journal S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 129. The case is recorded by the Misses H. M. and L. Bourne.

Additional evidence of the hallucinatory character of the figure seen is afforded by the details having been more clearly discernible than those of a real figure at the same distance would have been, and also by the second appearance, where the percipient had the impression of being transported to a different scene.

Miss L. Bourne writes:--

On February 5th, 1887, my father, sister, and I went out hunting. About the middle of the day my sister and I decided to return home with the coachman, while my father went on. Somebody came and spoke to us, and delayed us for a few moments. As we were turning to go home, we distinctly saw my father, waving his hat to us and signing us to follow him. He was on the side of a small hill, and there was a dip between him and us. My sister, the coachman, and myself all recognised my father, and also the horse. The horse looked so dirty and shaken that the coachman remarked he thought there had been a nasty accident. As my father waved his hat I clearly saw the Lincoln and Bennett mark inside, though from the distance we were apart it ought to have been utterly impossible for me to have seen it. At the time I mentioned seeing the mark in the hat, though the strangeness of seeing it did not strike me till afterwards.

Fearing an accident, we hurried down the hill. From the nature of the ground we had to lose sight of my father, but it took us very few seconds to reach the place where we had seen him. When we got there, there was no sign of him anywhere, nor could we see anyone in sight at all. We rode about for some time looking for him, but could not see or hear anything of him. We all reached home within a quarter of an hour of each other. My father then told us he had never been in the field, nor near the field, in which we thought we saw him, the whole of that day. He had never waved to us, and had met with no accident.

My father was riding the only white horse that was out that day.

LOUISA BOURNE. H. M. Bourne.

The second signature was added later, with the words: "This was written by my sister and me together."

Miss H. M. Bourne enclosed the above in the following letter to Mrs. Dent, to whom we are indebted for the case:--

WESTON SUBEDGE, BROADWAY, WORCESTERSHIRE, May 21st, 1891.

MY DEAR MRS. DENT,--Louisa has asked me send you the enclosed account of the impression she, the coachman, and I had of seeing papa on Paddy in the hunting-field. It was on the 5th February 1887 it happened, and in March the same year, when I was out walking alone, I thought I saw papa and Paddy stop at a little plantation of his close to, and look at the wall, which had fallen in [in] one part. He then appeared to ride a few yards towards me, but afterwards turned round and went back past the plantation and out of sight. When I went in I asked him if he had not seen me, and why he turned back, when it transpired he had not been past that plantation all day, but had ridden home another way. He said it must have been some one else on a white horse, and asked where I was when I saw him, and then, not before, it dawned on me that it was utterly impossible to see either plantation or wall from where I was. Since then I have often been along the same road, and stood, and looked, and wondered how it was I so distinctly saw the broken wall and papa on the white horse; a turn in the road makes my having really done so quite impossible. I am sorry I cannot give you the exact date of this: I know it was in March 1887, but cannot remember the day, except that it was not on the 5th. The other "experience" is, I always think, far more interesting, as having been seen by three, and also from the fact that Paddy was the only white or grey horse in the hunting-field that day; so that unbelievers could not say it was some one else on a white horse that we had mistaken....

NINA M. BOURNE.

Mrs. Sidgwick writes:--

February 25th, 1892.

I saw Miss H. Bourne and her father this afternoon. Miss Bourne told me the stories of her seeing her father, first with her sister, and later by herself, and signed the account which she and her sister had, she says, made out together about it. The groom who saw the figure at the same time has since been dismissed, and cannot be asked for his evidence. Canon Bourne remembers hearing of the matter the day it happened. The groom rode up to the ladies as they were looking, and said: "The Canon is beckoning, Miss, and I think you had better go to him; his horse looks as if he had had a fall" (that is, muddy). The figure was beckoning to them with their father's usual (and peculiar) gesture. He is a heavy man, and his white horse, adapted to carry weight, was quite unlike any other horse in the neighbourhood. Every one agrees as to the impossibility of mistaking the horse. The horses of the neighbourhood were well known to the neighbourhood in general and to the Miss Bournes in particular, as they were at that time constantly out with the hounds. The incident seems quite unaccountable.

VI. C. From Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 214. We received the first account of this case--the percipient's evidence--through the kindness of Mrs. Martin, of Ham Court, Upton-on-Severn, Worcester.

ANTONY, TORPOINT, December 14th, 1882.

Helen Alexander (maid to Lady Waldegrave) was lying here very ill with typhoid fever, and was attended by me. I was standing at the table by her bedside, pouring out her medicine, at about 4 o'clock in the morning of the 4th October 1880. I heard the call-bell ring (this had been heard twice before during the night in that same week), and was attracted by the door of the room opening, and by seeing a person entering the room whom I instantly felt to be the mother of the sick woman. She had a brass candlestick in her hand, a red shawl over her shoulders, and a flannel petticoat on which had a hole in the front. I looked at her as much as to say, "I am glad you have come," but the woman looked at me sternly, as much as to say, "Why wasn't I sent for before?" I gave the medicine to Helen Alexander, and then turned round to speak to the vision, but no one was there. She had gone. She was a short, dark person, and very stout. At about 6 o'clock that morning Helen Alexander died. Two days after her parents and a sister came to Antony, and arrived between 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning; I and another maid let them in, and it gave me a great turn when I saw the living likeness of the vision I had seen two nights before. I told the sister about the vision, and she said that the description of the dress exactly answered to her mother's, and that they had brass candlesticks at home exactly like the one described. There was not the slightest resemblance between the mother and daughter.

FRANCES REDDELL.

This at first sight might be taken for a mere delusion of an excitable or over-tired servant, modified and exaggerated by the subsequent sight of the real mother. If such a case is to have evidential force, we must ascertain beyond doubt that the description of the experience was given in detail before any knowledge of the reality can have affected the percipient's memory or imagination. This necessary corroboration has been kindly supplied by Mrs. Pole-Carew, of Antony, Torpoint, Devonport.

December 31st, 1883.

In October, 1880, Lord and Lady Waldegrave came with their Scotch maid, Helen Alexander, to stay with us. [The account then describes how Helen was discovered to have caught typhoid fever.] She did not seem to be very ill in spite of it, and as there seemed no fear of danger, and Lord and Lady Waldegrave had to go a long journey the following day (Thursday), they decided to leave her, as they were advised to do, under their friend's care.

The illness ran its usual course, and she seemed to be going on perfectly well till the Sunday week following, when the doctor told me that the fever had left her, but the state of weakness which had supervened was such as to make him extremely anxious. I immediately engaged a regular nurse, greatly against the wish of Reddell, my maid, who had been her chief nurse all through the illness, and who was quite devoted to her. However, as the nurse could not conveniently come till the following day, I allowed Reddell to sit up with Helen again that night, to give her the medicine and food, which were to be taken constantly.

At about 4.30 that night, or rather Monday morning, Reddell looked at her watch, poured out the medicine, and was bending over the bed to give it to Helen, when the call-bell in the passage rang. She said to herself, "There's that tiresome bell with the wire caught again." (It seems it did occasionally ring of itself in this manner.) At that moment, however, she heard the door open and, looking round, saw a very stout old woman walk in. She was dressed in a night-gown and red flannel petticoat, and carried an old-fashioned brass candlestick in her hand. The petticoat had a hole rubbed in it. She walked into the room, and appeared to be going towards the dressing-table to put her candle down. She was a perfect stranger to Reddell, who, however, merely thought, "This is her mother come to see after her," and she felt quite glad it was so, accepting the idea without reasoning upon it, as one would in a dream. She thought the mother looked annoyed, possibly at not having been sent for before. She then gave Helen the medicine, and turning round, found that the apparition had disappeared, and that the door was shut. A great change, meanwhile, had taken place in Helen, and Reddell fetched me, who sent off for the doctor, and meanwhile applied hot poultices, etc., but Helen died a little before the doctor came. She was quite conscious up to about half an hour before she died, when she seemed to be going to sleep.

During the early days of her illness, Helen had written to a sister, mentioning her being unwell, but making nothing of it, and as she never mentioned any one but this sister, it was supposed by the household, to whom she was a perfect stranger, that she had no other relation alive. Reddell was always offering to write for her, but she always declined, saying there was no need, she would write herself in a day or two. No one at home, therefore, knew anything of her being so ill, and it is, therefore, remarkable, that her mother, a far from nervous person, should have said that evening going up to bed, "I am sure Helen is very ill."

Reddell told me and my daughter of the apparition, about an hour after Helen's death, prefacing with, "I am not superstitious, or nervous, and I wasn't the least frightened, but her mother came last night," and she then told the story, giving a careful description of the figure she had seen. The relations were asked to come to the funeral, and the father, mother, and sister came, and in the mother Reddell recognised the apparition, as I did also, for Reddell's description had been most accurate, even to the expression, which she had ascribed to annoyance, but which was due to deafness. It was judged best not to speak about it to the mother, but Reddell told the sister, who said the description of the figure corresponded exactly with the probable appearance of her mother if roused in the night; that they had exactly such a candlestick at home, and that there was a hole in her mother's petticoat produced by the way she always wore it. It seems curious that neither Helen nor her mother appeared to be aware of the visit. Neither of them, at any rate, ever spoke of having seen the other, nor even of having dreamt of having done so.

F. A. POLE-CAREW.

[Frances Reddell states that she has never had any hallucination, or any odd experience of any kind, except on this one occasion. The Hon. Mrs. Lyttelton, formerly of Selwyn College, Cambridge, who knows her, tells us that "she appears to be a most matter-of-fact person, and was apparently most impressed by the fact that she saw a hole in the mother's flannel petticoat, made by the busk of her stays, reproduced in the apparition."]

Now what I imagine to have happened here is this. The mother, anxious about her daughter, paid her a psychical visit during the sleep of both. In so doing she actually modified a certain portion of space, not materially nor optically, but in such a manner that persons perceptive in a certain fashion would discern in that part of space an image approximately corresponding to the conception of her own aspect latent in the invading mother's mind. A person thus susceptible happened to be in the room, and thus, as a bystander, witnessed a psychical invasion whose memory the invader apparently did not retain, while the invaded person--the due percipient--may or may not have perceived it in a dream, but died and left no sign of having done so.

VI. D. From the "Report on the Census of Hallucinations," Proceedings S.P.R., vol. x. p. 332. The account is given by Mrs. McAlpine.

GARSCADDEN, BEARDSDEN, GLASGOW, April 20th, 1892.

I remember in the June of 1889, I drove to Castleblaney, a little town in the county Monaghan, to meet my sister, who was coming by train from Longford. I expected her at three o'clock, but as she did not come with that train, I got the horse put up, and went for a walk in the demesne. The day was very warm and bright, and I wandered on under the shade of the trees to the side of a lake, which is in the demesne. Being at length tired, I sat down to rest upon a rock, at the edge of the water. My attention was quite taken up with the extreme beauty of the scene before me. There was not a sound or movement, except the soft ripple of the water on the sand at my feet. Presently I felt a cold chill creep through me, and a curious stiffness of my limbs, as if I could not move, though wishing to do so. I felt frightened, yet chained to the spot, and as if impelled to stare at the water straight in front of me. Gradually a black cloud seemed to rise, and in the midst of it I saw a tall man, in a suit of tweed, jump into the water and sink.

In a moment the darkness was gone, and I again became sensible of the heat and sunshine, but I was awed and felt "eerie"--it was then about four o'clock or so--I cannot remember either the exact time or date. On my sister's arrival I told her of the occurrence; she was surprised, but inclined to laugh at it. When we got home I told my brother; he treated the subject much in the same manner. However, about a week afterwards, Mr. Espie, a bank clerk (unknown to me), committed suicide by drowning in that very spot. He left a letter for his wife, indicating that he had for some time contemplated his death. My sister's memory of the event is the only evidence I can give. I did not see the account of the inquest at the time, and did not mention my strange experience to any one, saving my sister and brother.

F. C. MCALPINE.

Mrs. McAlpine's sister writes:--

ROXBORO', February 15th, 1892.

I remember perfectly you meeting me in Castleblaney, on my way home from Longford, and telling me of the strange thing which happened in the demesne. You know you were always hearing or seeing something and I paid little attention; but I remember it distinctly--your troubled expression more than the story. You said a tall gentleman, dressed in tweed, walked past you, and went into a little inlet or creek. I think, but am not sure, that you said he had a beard. You were troubled about it, or looked so; and I talked of other things. You told me while we were driving home. I think, but I am not sure, that it was about the 25th or 27th of June 1889 that I left Longford. I am sure of that being the day, but cannot remember the date. It was in June, and on the 3rd of July, 1889, a Mr. Espie, a bank clerk, drowned himself in the lake in the demesne in 'Blaney. I have no doubt that the day I came home you saw Mr. Espie's "fetch."

The following account is taken from a local paper, the Northern Standard, Saturday, July 6th, 1889:--

Sad Case of Suicide.--The town of Castleblaney was put into a fearful state of excitement when it became known on Wednesday last that Mr. Espy had committed suicide by drowning himself in the lake in the demesne. Latterly, he was noticed to be rather dull and low in spirits, but no serious notice was taken of his conduct, nor had any one the most remote idea that he contemplated suicide. On Wednesday morning he seemed in his usual health, and, as was customary with him, walked down to get his newspaper on the arrival of the 9.45 train from Dublin. He met Mr. Fox (in whose office he has been for years) at the station, and having procured his paper walked up to the office, wrote a note in which he stated what he was going to do, and indicating where his body would be found. This seemed to concern him a good deal, for he seemed very anxious that his body should be recovered without any delay. He had fishing-tackle in his pocket, and having tied one end of a pike-line to a tree, and the other end round one of his legs, he threw himself into about three feet deep of water, where he was found shortly afterwards quite dead, and before the note that he had left in the office had been opened.

It would be possible, no doubt, to explain this appearance as simply precognitive--as a picture from the future impressed in some unknown way upon the percipient's inner vision. There are certain cases which strongly suggest this extreme hypothesis. But it seems here simpler to assume that the unhappy man was already imagining his plunge into the lake when Mrs. McAlpine visited the shore, and that his intense thought effected a self-projection, conscious or unconscious, of some element of his being.

VI. E. From Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 239. Mrs. Elgee, of 18 Woburn Road, Bedford, gave the following account:--

March 1st, 1885.

In the month of November 1864, being detained in Cairo, on my way out to India, the following curious circumstance occurred to me:--

Owing to an unusual influx of travellers, I, with the young lady under my charge (whom we will call D.) and some other passengers of the outward-bound mail to India, had to take up our abode in a somewhat unfrequented hotel. The room shared by Miss D. and myself was large, lofty, and gloomy; the furniture of the scantiest, consisting of two small beds, placed nearly in the middle of the room and not touching the walls at all, two or three rush-bottomed chairs, a very small washing stand, and a large old-fashioned sofa of the settee sort, which was placed against one half of the large folding doors which gave entrance to the room. This settee was far too heavy to be removed, unless by two or three people. The other half of the door was used for entrance, and faced the two beds. Feeling rather desolate and strange, and Miss D. being a nervous person, I locked the door, and, taking out the key, put it under my pillow; but on Miss D. remarking that there might be a duplicate which could open the door from outside, I put a chair against the door, with my travelling bag on it, so arranged that, on any pressure outside, one or both must fall on the bare floor, and make noise enough to rouse me. We then proceeded to retire to bed, the one I had chosen being near the only window in the room, which opened with two glazed doors, almost to the floor. These doors, on account of the heat, I left open, first assuring myself that no communication from the outside could be obtained. The window led on to a small balcony, which was isolated, and was three stories above the ground.

I suddenly woke from a sound sleep with the impression that somebody had called me, and, sitting up in bed, to my unbounded astonishment, by the clear light of early dawn coming in through the large window before mentioned, I beheld the figure of an old and very valued friend whom I knew to be in England. He appeared as if most eager to speak to me, and I addressed him with, "Good gracious! how did you come here?" So clear was the figure, that I noted every detail of his dress, even to three onyx shirt-studs which he always wore. He seemed to come a step nearer to me, when he suddenly pointed across the room, and on my looking round, I saw Miss D. sitting up in her bed, gazing at the figure with every expression of terror. On looking back, my friend seemed to shake his head, and retreated step by step, slowly, till he seemed to sink through that portion of the door where the settee stood. I never knew what happened to me after this; but my next remembrance is of bright sunshine pouring through the window. Gradually the remembrance of what had happened came back to me, and the question arose in my mind, had I been dreaming, or had I seen a visitant from another world?--the bodily presence of my friend being utterly impossible. Remembering that Miss D. had seemed aware of the figure as well as myself, I determined to allow the test of my dream or vision to be whatever she said to me upon the subject, I intending to say nothing to her unless she spoke to me. As she seemed still asleep, I got out of bed, examined the door carefully, and found the chair and my bag untouched, and the key under my pillow; the settee had not been touched nor had that portion of the door against which it was placed any appearance of being opened for years.

Presently, on Miss D. waking up, she looked about the room, and, noticing the chair and bag, made some remark as to their not having been much use. I said, "What do you mean?" and then she said, "Why, that man who was in the room this morning must have got in somehow." She then proceeded to describe to me exactly what I myself had seen. Without giving any satisfactory answer as to what I had seen, I made her rather angry by affecting to treat the matter as a fancy on her part, and showed her the key still under my pillow, and the chair and bag untouched. I then asked her, if she was so sure that she had seen somebody in the room, did not she know who it was? "No," said she, "I have never seen him before, nor any one like him." I said, "Have you ever seen a photograph of him?" She said, "No." This lady never was told what I saw, and yet described exactly to a third person what we both had seen.

Of course, I was under the impression my friend was dead. Such, however, was not the case; and I met him some four years later, when, without telling him anything of my experience in Cairo, I asked him, in a joking way, could he remember what he was doing on a certain night in November 1864. "Well," he said, "you require me to have a good memory;" but after a little reflection he replied, "Why, that was the time I was so harassed with trying to decide for or against the appointment which was offered me, and I so much wished you could have been with me to talk the matter over. I sat over the fire quite late, trying to think what you would have advised me to do." A little cross-questioning and comparing of dates brought out the curious fact that, allowing for the difference of time between England and Cairo, his meditations over the fire and my experience were simultaneous. Having told him the circumstances above narrated, I asked him had he been aware of any peculiar or unusual sensation. He said none, only that he had wanted to see me very much.

E. H. ELGEE.

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Elgee says:--

I fear it is quite impossible to get any information from Miss D. She married soon after we reached India, and I never met her since, nor do I know where she is, if alive. I quite understand the value of her corroboration; and at the time she told the whole circumstance to a fellow-traveller, who repeated it to me, and her story and mine agreed in every particular, save that to her the visitant was a complete stranger; and her tale was quite unbiassed by mine, as I always treated hers as a fancy, and never acknowledged I had been aware of anything unusual having taken place in our room at Cairo. I never have seen, or fancied I saw, any one before or since.

My visitant, also, is dead, or he would, I know, have added his testimony, small as it was, to mine. He was a very calm, quiet, clever, scientific man, not given to vain fancies on any subject, and certainly was not aware of any desire of appearing to me.

The publication of Phantasms of the Living led fortunately to our obtaining the testimony of the second percipient, now Mrs. Ramsay, of Clevelands, Bassett, Southampton, whose account follows:--

July 1891.

I have been asked by a leading member of the Psychical Society to write down what I can remember of a strange experience that occurred no less than twenty-seven years ago. I now do so as simply as I can, and to the best of my recollection.

In October 1864, I was travelling to India, going to rejoin my parents, from whom I had been separated twelve years, a kind friend--a Mrs. E.--having undertaken to chaperon me as far as Calcutta. She was going out to join her husband, Major E., of the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers. We started by a P. & O steamer--the Ceylon--from Southampton, and travelled by the overland route, via Alexandria and Cairo, to Suez.

We landed at Alexandria, and went by rail across the desert to Cairo. There all passengers had to sleep the night before proceeding on to Suez. Shepherd's Hotel was the best hotel then, and there was consequently a great rush to try and get rooms in it; but Mrs. E. and I, finding we could get no corner, decided, with two or three other passengers, to get accommodation in the Hôtel de l'Europe. We felt somewhat nervous at the swarthy visages of the Arabs all round us, and for this reason selected our quarters on the very highest storey, thinking we should be more out of reach of robbers and thieves than if we were on the ground floor. This is an important point to remember, as no one could have effected an entrance into our room from outside. It was a bright moonlight night when we went to bed, and I can recollect as if it were yesterday this fact, that the shadow of a "pepul" tree was reflected on the wall opposite our beds--the leaves of the tree were trembling and shaking, as the leaves of a "pepul" always do, making the shadows dance about the wall.

Before we finally retired to rest we made the grandest arrangements for personal security! The window looking out on to the street below was much too high up to be at all unsafe. So we left that open (I think) but we closed our door very firmly indeed! It was a large folding door, and opened inwards. We locked it carefully, leaving the key in the lock; pushed an arm-chair against the middle of the door; and, to crown all, we balanced a hand-bag on one of the arms, with a bunch of keys in the lock thereof! so that if any intruder should venture to open that door, we should know of it at any rate!! (But no one did venture, and we found everything in the morning exactly as we had left it.) I remember that Mrs. E. was very careful about tucking her mosquito curtains all round, but I disliked the feeling of suffocation they gave, and put mine up; not realising, of course, in my inexperience, what the consequences would be for myself; for these small plagues of Egypt (!) soon descended upon me, nearly eating me up, and absolutely prevented sleep. This is another important fact to remember, for had I slept I might have dreamed, but, as it happened, I was wide awake. I was looking at the shadows of the tree shaking on the wall when gradually they seemed to merge into a form, which form took the shape of a man, not of an Arab, but of an English gentleman. Then this form glided into the room, advancing towards my chaperon, stretching out his hands as if in blessing, turned round, looked at me, sadly and sorrowfully (so I thought), and then vanished again into the shadows as it came. I do not remember feeling terrified, only awed--the face was so kind and human, only the moonlight made it look very white. I did not wake Mrs. E., as she appeared to me to be asleep. I felt sure I had seen a vision, and something that had to do with her.

The next morning, while we were dressing, she remarked how odd I looked, and quite apart from the mosquito bites, I know I did. We had a good laugh over my comical appearance, for I had not scrupled to scratch the bites, until my forehead and face resembled a plum bun! I believe I then told her it was not strange that I should look odd, for I "had seen a ghost." She started violently, and asked me to tell her what I saw. I described it as best I could, and she said she had seen "it" too, and that she knew it to be the form and face of a valued friend. She was much disturbed about it--as, indeed, so was I, for I had never indulged in "hallucinations" and was not given to seeing visions.

We proceeded next day to join our ship at Suez, and when on board, it was a great relief to us to be able to tell it to a kind fellow-passenger. He was an absolute sceptic in all matters relating to the invisible world, but he was obliged to admit that it was the most extraordinary thing he had ever heard.... I should like to add that I have never, before or since, had any kind of vision.

Our experience at Cairo had this sequel, that Mrs. E.'s spirit-friend happened to be, at that very time, in great perplexity of mind--most anxious about some very important event in his life. He was sitting in his room one night in the month of October 1864, and a most intense yearning came over him for her advice and assistance--so great was it, that he felt as if an invisible power had drawn him into some spirit-state, in which he could and did see her.[224]

For a somewhat similar case, that of the apparition of General Frémont (too lengthy to quote here), I may refer the reader to the Journal S.P.R., vol. v. p. 54. The crisis there is the removal of long and wearing anxiety; the self-projection into the home-scene which now at last the General felt assured of being able to reach alive.

VI. F. From Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 104-109. The following case was especially remarkable in that there were two percipients. The narrative was copied by Gurney from a MS. book of Mr. S. H. B.'s, to which he transferred it from an almanac diary, since lost.

On a certain Sunday evening in November 1881, having been reading of the great power which the human will is capable of exercising, I determined with the whole force of my being, that I would be present in spirit in the front bed-room on the second floor of a house situated at 22 Hogarth Road, Kensington, in which room slept two ladies of my acquaintance, viz., Miss L. S. V. and Miss E. C. V., aged respectively 25 and 11 years. I was living at this time at 23 Kildare Gardens, a distance of about three miles from Hogarth Road, and I had not mentioned in any way my intention of trying this experiment to either of the above ladies, for the simple reason that it was only on retiring to rest upon this Sunday night that I made up my mind to do so. The time at which I determined I would be there was 1 o'clock in the morning, and I also had a strong intention of making my presence perceptible.

On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and in the course of conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part) the elder one told me, that on the previous Sunday night she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister, who saw me also.

I asked her if she was awake at the time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative, and upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence, she replied, about 1 o'clock in the morning.

This lady, at my request, wrote down a statement of the event and signed it.

This was the first occasion upon which I tried an experiment of this kind, and its complete success startled me very much.

Besides exercising my power of volition very strongly, I put forth an effort which I cannot find words to describe. I was conscious of a mysterious influence of some sort permeating in my body, and had a distinct impression that I was exercising some force with which I had been hitherto unacquainted, but which I can now at certain times set in motion at will.

S. H. B.

Of the original entry in the almanac diary, Mr. B. says: "I recollect having made it within a week or so of the occurrence of the experiment, and whilst it was perfectly fresh in my memory."

* * * * *

Miss Verity's account is as follows:--

January 18th, 1883.

On a certain Sunday evening, about twelve months since, at our house in Hogarth Road, Kensington, I distinctly saw Mr. B. in my room, about 1 o'clock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself. Three days after, when I saw Mr. B., I told him what had happened, but it was some time before I could recover from the shock I had received; and the remembrance is too vivid to be ever erased from my memory.

L. S. VERITY.

In answer to inquiries, Miss Verity adds: "I had never had any hallucination of the senses of any sort whatever."

* * * * *

Miss E. C. Verity says:--

I remember the occurrence of the event described by my sister in the annexed paragraph, and her description is quite correct. I saw the apparition which she saw, at the same time and under the same circumstances.

E. C. VERITY.

Miss A. S. Verity says:--

I remember quite clearly the evening my eldest sister awoke me by calling to me from an adjoining room; and upon my going to her bedside, where she slept with my youngest sister, they both told me they had seen S. H. B. standing in the room. The time was about 1 o'clock. S. H. B. was in evening dress, they told me.

A. S. VERITY.

Mr. B. does not remember how he was dressed on the night of the occurrence.

Miss E. C. Verity was asleep when her sister caught sight of the figure, and was awoke by her sister's exclaiming, "There is S." The name had therefore met her ear before she herself saw the figure; and the hallucination on her part might thus be attributed to suggestion. But it is against this view that she has never had any other hallucination, and cannot therefore be considered as predisposed to such experiences. The sisters are both equally certain that the figure was in evening dress, and that it stood in one particular spot in the room. The gas was burning low, and the phantasmal figure was seen with far more clearness than a real figure would have been.

"The witnesses" (says Gurney) "have been very carefully cross-examined by the present writer. There is not the slightest doubt that their mention of the occurrence to S. H. B. was spontaneous. They had not at first intended to mention it; but when they saw him, their sense of its oddness overcame their resolution. Miss Verity is a perfectly sober-minded and sensible witness, with no love of marvels, and with a considerable dread and dislike of this particular form of marvel."

[I omit here for want of space the next case, in which Mr. S. H. B. attempted to appear in Miss Verity's house at two different hours on the same evening, and was seen there, at both the times fixed, by a married sister who was visiting in the house.]

Gurney requested Mr. B. to send him a note on the night that he intended to make his next experiment of the kind, and received the following note by the first post on Monday, March 24th, 1884.

March 22nd, 1884.

DEAR MR. GURNEY,--I am going to try the experiment to-night of making my presence perceptible at 44 Norland Square, at 12 P.M. I will let you know the result in a few days.--Yours very sincerely,

S. H. B.

The next letter was received in the course of the following week:--

April 3rd, 1884.

DEAR MR. GURNEY,--I have a strange statement to show you, respecting my experiment, which was tried at your suggestion, and under the test conditions which you imposed.

Having quite forgotten which night it was on which I attempted the projection, I cannot say whether the result is a brilliant success, or only a slight one, until I see the letter which I posted you on the evening of the experiment.

Having sent you that letter, I did not deem it necessary to make a note in my diary, and consequently have let the exact date slip my memory.

If the dates correspond, the success is complete in every detail, and I have an account signed and witnessed to show you.

I saw the lady (who was the subject) for the first time last night, since the experiment, and she made a voluntary statement to me, which I wrote down at her dictation, and to which she has attached her signature. The date and time of the apparition are specified in this statement, and it will be for you to decide whether they are identical with those given in my letter to you. I have completely forgotten, but yet I fancy that they are the same.

S. H. B.

This is the statement:--

44 NORLAND SQUARE, W.

On Saturday night, March 22nd, 1884, at about midnight, I had a distinct impression that Mr. S. H. B. was present in my room, and I distinctly saw him whilst I was quite widely awake. He came towards me, and stroked my hair. I voluntarily gave him this information, when he called to see me on Wednesday, April 2nd, telling him the time and the circumstances of the apparition, without any suggestion on his part. The appearance in my room was most vivid, and quite unmistakable.

L. S. VERITY.

Miss A. S. Verity corroborates as follows:--

I remember my sister telling me that she had seen S. H. B., and that he had touched her hair, before he came to see us on April 2nd.

A. S. V.

Mr. B.'s own account is as follows:--

On Saturday, March 22nd, I determined to make my presence perceptible to Miss V., at 44 Norland Square, Notting Hill, at 12 midnight, and as I had previously arranged with Mr. Gurney that I should post him a letter on the evening on which I tried my next experiment (stating the time and other particulars), I sent a note to acquaint him with the above facts.

About ten days afterwards I called upon Miss V., and she voluntarily told me, that on March 22nd, at 12 o'clock midnight, she had seen me so vividly in her room (whilst widely awake) that her nerves had been much shaken, and she had been obliged to send for a doctor in the morning.

S. H. B.

Unfortunately Mr. B.'s intention to produce the impression of touching the percipient's hair is not included in his written account. On August 21st, 1885, he wrote to Gurney, "I remember that I had this intention"; and Gurney remembered that, very soon after the occurrence, he mentioned this as one of the points which made the success "complete in every detail"; and that he recommended him in any future trial to endeavour instead to produce the impression of some spoken phrase.

On this case, Gurney observes:--

It will be observed that in all these instances the conditions were the same--the agent concentrating his thoughts on the object in view before going to sleep. Mr. B. has never succeeded in producing a similar effect when he has been awake. And this restriction as to time has made it difficult to devise a plan by which the phenomenon could be tested by independent observers, one of whom might arrange to be in the company of the agent at a given time, and the other in that of the percipient. Nor is it easy to press for repetitions of the experiment, which is not an agreeable one to the percipient, and is followed by a considerable amount of nervous prostration. Moreover, if trials were frequently made with the same percipient, the value of success would diminish; for any latent expectation on the percipient's part might be argued to be itself productive of the delusion, and the coincidence with the agent's resolve might be explained as accidental. We have, of course, requested Mr. B. to try to produce the effect on ourselves; but though he has more than once made the attempt, it has not succeeded.

APPENDICES

TO