In the cases which follow, with one exception, the dream impression was of a well-marked visual nature. In the first three narratives the dream had reference to the death of the person represented. The mode of representation, however, it will be seen, differed in each case. In the first, the associated imagery was in part of a fantastic nature, and the dream, though sufficiently exceptional to leave a feeling of fatigue on the following morning, and to induce the percipient to write an account of it to his friends, resembled in other respects the motley crowd which throng through the gate of ivory. In the second case the surroundings of the central figure were such as the waking imagination of the dreamer would naturally have conjured up in picturing the deathbed of his friend.

No. 55.—From MR. J. T.

This case is recorded at some length in the Proceedings of the Am. S.P.R. (pp. 394-397) by Professor Royce. Professor Royce explains that Mr. E., the agent, died after a short illness in New York City, on Tuesday, February 23rd, 1886. Mr. J. T., who, though an acquaintance of Mr. E., had heard nothing of him for some time, and, as indeed appears from the letters quoted, knew of no special cause for anxiety, was on the day of the death, and for some time afterwards, in St. John, New Brunswick. In consequence of severe snowstorms, no mails had been received in St. John from the South for some days, and at the time when the letter, an extract from which we give below, was written, it was not possible for the writer to have known of Mr. E.'s death. The original letter, written by Mr. J. T. to his wife, and dated Wednesday, March 3rd, 1886, on paper headed Hotel Dufferin, St. John, N.B., has been seen by Professor Royce:—

"I have not heard of you for an age. The train that should have been here on Friday last has not arrived yet. I had a very strange dream on Tuesday night. I have never been in Ottawa in my life, and yet I was there, in Mr. E.'s house. Mrs. E., Miss E., and the little girls were in great trouble because Mr. E. was ill. I had to go and tell my brother [Mr. E.'s son-in-law], and, strange to say, he was down a coal-mine.

"When I got down to him I told him that Mr. E. was dead. But in trying to get out we could not do it. We climbed and climbed, but always fell back. I felt tired out when I awoke next morning, and I cannot account for the dream in any way."

Though the letter leaves it doubtful whether the dream actually occurred on the night of the death, or a week later, it appears from further correspondence that the percipient believes the dream to have taken place on the night of the 23rd February, the night of the death, and this is the most natural interpretation of the letter.[90] In any case, the dream preceded the news of the death.

In the next case, again, the dream is of a not uncommon type, but the impression made, it will be seen, was such as to wake the dreamer at the time, and to induce him in the morning to take the unusual course of noting the dream in his diary.

No. 56.—From MR. R. V. BOYLE.

"3 STANHOPE TERRACE, W.,
July 30th, 1884.

"In India, early on the morning of November 2nd, 1868 (which would be about 10 to 11 P.M. of November 1st in England), I had so clear and striking a dream or vision (repeated a second time after a short waking interval) that, on rising as usual between 6 and 7 o'clock, I felt impelled at once to write an entry in my diary, which is now before me.

"At the time referred to my wife and I were in Simla, in the Himalayas, the summer seat of the Governor-General, and my father-in-law and mother-in-law were living in Brighton. We had not heard of or from either of them for weeks, nor had I been recently speaking or thinking of them, for there was no reason for anxiety regarding them. It is right, however, to say that my wife's father had gone to Brighton some months before on account of his health, though he was not more delicate than his elder brother, who is (1884) still living.

"It seemed in my dream that I stood at the open door of a bedroom in a house in Brighton, and that before me, by candle-light, I saw my father-in-law lying pale upon his bed, while my mother-in-law passed silently across the room in attendance on him. The vision soon passed away, and I slept on for some time. On waking, however, the nature of the impression left upon me unmistakably was that my father-in-law was dead. I at once noted down the dream, after which I broke the news of what I felt to be a revelation to my wife, when we thought over again and again all that could bear upon the matter, without being able to assign any reason for my being so strongly and thoroughly impressed. The telegraph from England to Simla had been open for some time, but now there was an interruption, which lasted for about a fortnight longer, and on the 17th (fifteen days after my dream) I was neither unprepared nor surprised to receive a telegram from England, saying that my father-in-law had died in Brighton on November 1st. Subsequent letters showed that the death occurred on the night of the 1st.

"Dreams, as a rule, leave little impression on me, and the one above referred to is the only one I ever thought of making a note of, or of looking expectantly for its fulfilment.
"R. VICARY BOYLE."

Mrs. Boyle writes as follows:—

"6th August 1887.

"I well remember my husband telling me one morning, early in November 1868, when at Simla, in India, that he had had a striking dream (repeated) in which my father, then at Brighton, seemed to be dying. We were both deeply impressed, and then anxiously awaited news from home. A telegram first reached us, in about a fortnight, which was afterwards confirmed by letters telling of my father's death having occurred on the same night when my husband had the dream.
"ELÉONORE A. BOYLE.

Mr. Gurney adds the following notes on the case:—

"The following entries were copied by me from Mr. Boyle's diary:—

"'Nov. 2. Dreamed of E.'s F[ather] early this morning.

"'Written before dressing.

"'Nov. 17. Got telegram from L[ouis] H[ack] this morning of his father's death on 1st Nov. inst.'

"The following notice of the decease of Mr. Boyle's father-in-law occurred in the Times for 4th November 1868:—

"'On 1st Nov., at Brighton, William Hack, late of Dieppe, aged 72.'

"Mr. Boyle informed me that he is a 'particularly sound sleeper, and very rarely dreams.' This dream was a very unique and impressive experience, apart from the coincidence.

"There was a regular correspondence between Mrs. Boyle and her mother, but for several mails the letters had contained no mention of her father, on whose account absolutely no anxiety was felt.
"E. G."

It appears that the death actually occurred at about 2 P.M. in England, which was, allowing for the difference in longitude, about nine hours before the dream.

In the next case the dream is of a more unusual character. The figure of the agent appears to have stood alone, whilst the impression made was such that the percipient is uncertain whether to class his experience as a dream or a vision. Indeed, in the absence of dream-background, and in the life-like appearance of the figure, the dream bears a striking resemblance to a waking hallucination.

No. 57.—From CAPTAIN R. E. W. CAMPBELL
(2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers).

"ARMY AND NAVY CLUB, PALL MALL, S.W.,
February 21st, 1888.

"I have much pleasure in enclosing you an account of a remarkable dream which occurred to me in the year 1886, together with three other accounts of the same, written by officers to whom the facts of the case are known. You are at liberty, in the interests of science, to make such use of them as you please.

"I was stationed at the Depôt Barracks, Armagh, Ireland, on the 30th November 1886, and on the night of the same date, or early in the morning of the 1st December (I cannot tell which, as I did not refer to my watch), I was in bed in my room, when I was awakened by a most vivid and remarkable dream or vision, in which I seemed to see a certain Major Hubbersty, late of my regiment, the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers, looking ghastly pale, and falling forward as if dying. He seemed to be saying something to me, but the words I could not make out, although I tried hard to understand him. The clothes he had on at the time appeared to me to have a thin red thread running through the pattern. I was very deeply impressed by my dream, and so much did I feel that there was something significant in it that on the 1st December, when at luncheon in the mess, I related it to three brother-officers, telling them at the same time that I felt sure we should soon hear something bad about Major Hubbersty. I had almost forgotten all about it when, on taking up the Times newspaper of the following Saturday on the Sunday morning following, the first thing that caught my eyes was the announcement of Major Hubbersty's death at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 30th November, the very date on which I had the remarkable dream concerning him.

"My feelings on seeing such a remarkable fulfilment of my dream can be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say that on the return from church of Messrs. Kaye and Scott I asked them to try and recollect anything peculiar which had happened at luncheon on the 1st December, when, after a few moments' deliberation, they at once recounted to me the whole circumstances of my dream, as they had heard them from my lips on the 1st December 1886. On seeing Mr. Leeper a few days afterwards at his father's house, Loughgall, Co. Armagh, he at once remembered all I had told him about the dream on the 1st December, on my questioning him about it. I, of course, can assign no possible cause for the remarkable facts related, as apart from the difference of our standing in the service, the late Major Hubbersty and I were in no wise particularly friendly to one other, nor had we seen very much of each other. I had not seen him for eighteen months previously. A very curious fact in connection with the dream is that it occurred to me in the very same room in the barracks as Major Hubbersty used to occupy when stationed at Armagh, several years previously."

In answer to an inquiry, Captain Campbell writes, on February 29th, 1888:—

"I do not dream much, as a rule, and cannot recall to my mind ever before having had a dream of a similar nature to that dreamt by me about the late Major Hubbersty."

Mr. A. B. R. Kaye, Lieutenant Third Royal Irish Fusiliers, writes on August 20th, 1887, from 62 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin:—

"I was stationed in the barracks, Armagh Depôt, Royal Irish Fusiliers, in November and December 1886. On the 1st of December at lunch there were present Lieutenant R. E. W. Campbell (2nd R.I.F.), Lieutenant R. W. Leeper (2nd R.I.F.), Lieutenant T. E. Scott (4th R.I.F.), and myself. During our conversation Major Hubbersty's name was mentioned, and Campbell told us that he had a dream about him the night before, how he had seen a vision of Major Hubbersty looking very pale and seeming to be falling forward, and saying something to him which he could not hear; also, he (Campbell) told us he was sure we would hear something about Major Hubbersty very soon.

"On the following Sunday, when Scott and I returned from church and went into the ante-room, Campbell, who was there, asked us both to try and remember anything peculiar that he had told us on the 1st. After a little time, we remembered about the dream, and he (Campbell) then showed us the Times newspaper of the day before, containing the notice of Major Hubbersty's death, at Penzance, on November 30th, 1886, the same date as that on which he had the dream; also, I remember, he (Campbell) told us that in his vision he seemed to see the clothes which Major Hubbersty had on, and that there was a red thread running through the pattern of the trousers."

The two other friends mentioned by Captain Campbell, Messrs. Leeper and Scott, have written letters to the same effect.[91]

From these letters there can be no doubt that the coincidence made a marked impression on each of those to whom the dream was related, and this fact, perhaps even more than Captain Campbell's own narrative, is a striking proof of the exceptional nature of the experience.

There is no reason in this case for supposing that the dream conveyed any other information than the fact of the agent's death. There is no evidence that the manner of death or the clothes worn by Major Hubbersty resembled what was seen in the dream. The clothes in which the figure appeared may have been a reminiscence of clothes which the percipient had actually seen worn on some occasion by the agent. But this explanation will hardly apply to the following case, where the dream included a representation, accurate in more than one particular, of the agent as he actually appeared at the time. It is true that we have to rely upon the percipient's memory after the interval of a fortnight for the details of the dream, but since the dream was sufficiently impressive to cause a note to be taken of it by a person not in the habit of making such notes, it seems not unreasonable to trust the memory to that extent.

No, 58.—From MR. E. W. HAMILTON, C.B.

"PARK LANE CHAMBERS, PARK LANE, W.,
April 6th, 1888.

"On Wednesday morning, March 21st, 1888, I woke up with the impression of a very vivid dream. I had dreamt that my brother, who had long been in Australia, and of whom I had heard nothing for several months, had come home; that after an absence of twelve years and a half he was very little altered in appearance, but that he had something wrong with one of his arms; it looked horribly red near the wrist, his hand being bent back.

"When I got up that morning the dream recurred constantly to my thoughts, and I at last determined to take a note of it, notwithstanding my natural prejudices against attaching any importance to dreams, to which, indeed, I am not much subject. Accordingly, in the course of the day, I made in my little Letts' diary a mark thus: X, with my brother's name after it.

"On the following Monday morning, the 26th March, I received a letter from my brother, which bore the date of the 21st March, and which had been posted at Naples (where the Orient steamers touch), informing me that he was on his way home, and that he hoped to reach London on or about the 30th March, and adding that he was suffering from a very severe attack of gout in the left arm.

"The next day I related to some one this curious incident, and I commented on the extraordinary coincidence of facts with the dream except in one detail, and that was, that the arm which I had seen in my dream did not look as if it were merely affected with gout: the appearance it had presented to me was more like extremely bad eczema.

"My brother duly reached England on the 29th, having disembarked at Plymouth owing to the painful condition of his arm. It turned out that the doctor on board ship had mistaken the case; it was not gout, but a case of blood poisoning, resulting in a very bad carbuncle or abscess over the wrist joint.

"Since my brother's return, I have endeavoured to ascertain from him the exact hour at which he wrote to me on March 21st. He is not certain whether the letter to me was written before noon or after noon of that day. He remembers writing four short letters in the course of that day—two before luncheon and two after luncheon. Had the note addressed to me been written in the forenoon, it might nearly have coincided in time with my dream, if allowance be made for the difference of time between Greenwich and Naples; for, having no recollection of the dream when I woke, according to custom, at an early hour on the morning of the 21st, I presume I must have dreamt it very little before eight o'clock, the hour at which I was called.

"I may add that, notwithstanding an absence of twelve years and a half, my brother has altered very little in appearance; and that I have not to my knowledge ever noted a dream before in my life."

On April 12th, 1888, Mr. Gurney inspected the diary with the entry (X, Clem) under Tuesday, March 20th, 1888, though, as Mr. Hamilton explained, "it was early the next morning that I had the dream, for I generally consider all that appertains to bed relates to the day on which one gets into it".

Mr. Gurney also saw the letter signed Clement E. Hamilton, and dated Naples, March 21st, 1888, which says "am suffering from very severe attack of gout in left arm."

The next case presents several points of interest. In part, at least, it seems to have been a waking experience, possibly the prolongation of a dream. In this respect it resembles Mrs. Harrison's case, already cited (No. 54), and if correctly described, the incident possesses therefore a higher evidential value than a mere dream, however vivid. I have here classed it as a dream, however, because the percipient himself so describes it in his letter written a few days after the experience. The utterance of words by the percipient finds a parallel in the case of Archdeacon Bruce (Chapter VII., No. 51). But in the present case there is the additional feature that the percipient is conscious not only of the sound of his own voice, but of another voice in reply. The incident, it will be seen, though remote, is attested by letters written immediately after the event, and by the percipient's recollection of action taken in consequence of the dream-warning.

No. 59.—From MR. EDWARD A. GOODALL, of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours.

"May, 1888.

"At Midsummer, 1869, I left London for Naples. The heat being excessive, people were leaving for Ischia, and I thought it best to go there myself.

"Crossing by steamer, I slept one night at Casamicciola, on the coast, and walked next morning into the town of Ischia [Mr. Goodall then describes an accident to his hand, which prevented him from sketching.]

"It must have been on my third or fourth night, and about the middle of it, when I awoke, as it seemed, at the sound of my own voice, saying: 'I know I have lost my dearest little May.' Another voice, which I in no way recognised, answered: 'No, not May, but your youngest boy.'

"The distinctness and solemnity of the voice made such a distressing impression upon me that I slept no more. I got up at daybreak, and went out, noticing for the first time telegraph-poles and wires.

"Without delay I communicated with the postmaster at Naples, and by next boat received two letters from home. I opened them according to dates outside. The first told me that my youngest boy was taken suddenly ill; the second, that he was dead.

"Neither on his account nor on that of any of my family had I any cause for uneasiness. All were quite well on my taking leave of them so lately. My impression ever since has been that the time of the death coincided as nearly as we could judge with the time of my accident.

"In writing to Mrs. Goodall, I called the incident of the voice a dream, as less likely perhaps to disturb her than the details which I gave on reaching home, and which I have now repeated.

"My letters happen to have been preserved.

"I have never had any hallucination of any kind, nor am I in the habit of talking in my sleep. I do remember once waking with some words of mere nonsense upon my lips, but the experience of the voice speaking to me was absolutely unique.
"EDWARD A. GOODALL."

Extracts from letters to Mrs. E. A. Goodall from Ischia:—

"WEDNESDAY, August 11th, 1869.

"The postman brought me two letters containing sad news indeed. Poor little Percy! I dreamt some nights since the poor little fellow was taken from us...."

"August 14th.

"I did not tell you, dear, the particulars of my dream about poor little Percy.

"I had been for several days very fidgety and wretched at getting no letters from home, and had gone to bed in worse spirits than usual, and in my dream I fancied I said: 'I have lost my dearest little May.' A strange voice seemed to say: 'No, not May, but your youngest boy,' not mentioning his name."

Mr. Myers adds:—

"Mr. Goodall has given me verbally a concordant account of the affair, and several members of his family, who were present at our interview, recollected the strong impression made on him and them at the time."[92]

In the case which follows the agency is difficult to elucidate. The persons who were spectators of the scene represented in the dream can hardly be supposed to have been acquainted with the dreamer, and assuredly would not willingly have revealed the secret. The dream appears to have been of a clairvoyant character. The account is taken from the Proceedings of the Am. S.P.R., pp. 454 et seq.

No. 60.—From MRS. E. J.

"CAMBRIDGE (U.S.A.), Nov. 30, 1886.

"The dream I will endeavour to relate as clearly as possible.

"It occurred during the month of August, last summer, while we were boarding with Mrs. H., in Lunenburg, where I first met the Misses W. I am a perfectly healthy woman, and have always been sceptical as to hallucinations in any one, always before having felt the cause of the experience might be traced.

"In my dream I arrived unexpectedly at the house of the Misses W., in Cambridge, where I found everything in confusion, drawers emptied and their contents scattered about the floor, bundles unrolled, and dresses taken down from the closets. Then, as I stepped into one room, I saw some boys in bed,—three or four, I cannot distinctly remember. I saw their faces distinctly, as they sat up in bed at my approach, but the recollection of their faces has faded from me now. I could not reach the boys, for they disappeared suddenly, and I could not find them; but I thought, These cannot be the people whom the Misses W. trusted to care for their house in their absence; and I was troubled to know whether it was best to tell them when I should return to Lunenburg. This is all there was in the dream.

"Thinking only to amuse them, I related my dream at the breakfast-table the following morning, and I regretted doing so immediately, for anxiety showed itself in their faces, and the elder Miss W. remarked that she hoped my dream was not a forerunner of bad tidings from home. I laughed at the idea, but that morning the mail brought a letter telling them that their house had been entered, and when they went down they found almost the same confusion of which I had been a witness the night before—with everything strewn about the floor. It was a singular coincidence, surely."

Miss W. writes:—

"7 —— STREET, Dec. 4.

"I am not quite sure whether the incident to which you allude in your note is worthy your attention or not, but I will give you the facts, that you may judge for yourself of its value.

"The burglary, we suppose, took place on the night of the 17th or 18th of August, I being at the time, for the summer, in the town of Lunenburg, Mass.

"Coming down to breakfast on the morning of the 17th, a lady said to me that she had had a strange dream. She thought she went to our house, finding it in the greatest confusion, everything turned upside-down. As she entered one of the sleeping-rooms she saw two boys lying in the bed; but she could not see their faces, for as soon as they saw her they jumped up and ran off. I said, 'I hope that does not mean that we have been visited by burglars.'

"I thought no more about it, till the eleven o'clock mail brought a note from the woman in charge of the house saying that it had been entered,—that everything was in great confusion, many things carried off, and she wished we would come home at once. The policeman who went over the house with her said he had never seen a house more thoroughly ransacked.

"We found that in the upper attic room the bed had evidently been used, and there was, perhaps, more confusion in this room than in any other.

"The lady who had the dream was Mrs. E. J., of Cambridgeport. I was told that she had been suffering for about a year from nervous prostration, and she was evidently in a condition of great nervous excitement.

"I forbore to speak to her of the occurrence, as one of the ladies in the house told me that it had made an unpleasant impression on her mind.

"The whole thing seems rather curious to me, but I do not know that you will find it of any value in your investigations."

A dream presenting similar features is recorded in the Journal of the S.P.R. for June 1890. Mr. William Bass, farm bailiff to Mrs. Palmer, of Turnours Hall, Chigwell, on Good Friday, 1884, "awoke in violent agitation and profuse perspiration" from a dream that something was wrong at the stables. He was at first dissuaded by his wife from paying any attention to the dream, but subsequently, at about 2 A.M., dressed and proceeded to the stables (a third of a mile off) to find that a mare had been stolen. The case has been investigated by Mr. T. Barkworth, of West Hatch, Chigwell, and by Mr. J. B. Surgey, of 22 Holland Street, Kensington. In a dream recorded in Phantasms of the Living (vol. i. p. 369), Miss Busk, of 16 Montagu Street, W., dreamt that in a spot in Kent well known to her she stumbled over "the heads, left protruding, of some ducks buried in the sand, under some firs." The dream was mentioned at breakfast to Miss Busk's sister, Mrs. Pitt Byrne, and an hour later the ladies learnt from their bailiff that some stolen ducks had accidentally been found buried on the spot and in the manner described.

CHAPTER IX.

Before proceeding, in the chapters which follow, to cite instances of hallucinations which purport to have been telepathically originated, it seems needful to glance briefly at sensory hallucination in general. To most persons, no doubt, the word connotes disease. Their ideas of hallucination are probably derived from vague reports of asylum experience and delirium tremens; or at least from the cases of Goethe's butt, Nicolai, the Berlin bookseller, and the Mrs. A. whose experiences are described in Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic, both of whom are known to have been under medical treatment for illness of which the hallucinations were regarded as a symptom. Indeed, until recent years the tendency of even well-instructed opinion has been to regard a sensory hallucination as necessarily implying some physical or mental disorder. This misconception—for it is a misconception—has had some curious consequences. Since it does occasionally happen that a person admittedly sane and healthy reports to have seen the likeness of a human figure in what was apparently empty space, such reports have been by some perforce scouted as unworthy of credence, and by others regarded as necessarily indicating some occult cause—as testifying, in short, to the agency of "ghosts." There was indeed the analogy of dreams to guide us. Few educated persons would regard dreams, on the one hand, as a symptom of ill-health, or on the other as counterparts or revelations of any super-terrestrial world; or, indeed, as anything else than purely subjective mental images. Yet dreams belong to the same order of mental phenomena as hallucinations, and are commonly so classed—such differences as exist being mainly due to the conditions under which the two sets of phenomena respectively occur. In fact, a hallucination is simply a hypertrophied thought—the last member of a series, whose intermediate terms are to be found in the mind's-eye pictures of ordinary life, in the vivid images which some artists can summon at will, and in the Faces in the Dark which many persons see before passing into sleep, with its more familiar and abundant imagery.

Of recent years, however, our knowledge of hallucinations has been largely augmented from two distinct sources. On the one hand, a systematic attempt has been made to study the spontaneous non-recurrent hallucinations occurring amongst normal persons; on the other hand, wider knowledge of hypnotism and the discovery of various processes for inducing hallucinations has afforded facilities for the experimental investigation of their nature, mechanism, and genesis, both in the trance and in waking life. The hallucinations, indeed, of the ordinary hypnotic subject, with which the public has been familiarised by platform demonstrations, are possibly not sensory at all. When a hypnotised lad eats tallow-candle for sponge-cake, drinks ink for champagne, or professes to see a lighted candle at the end of the operator's finger, we may conclude, if the performance is a genuine one, that a false belief has been engendered in his mind; but we have, in most cases, no evidence that this belief includes any sensory element. In many laboratory experiments, however, there can be little question that a complete sensory hallucination is induced, and that what the subject professes to see and hear is as real to him as the furniture or the person of the operator. One or two such cases have been quoted in a previous chapter (Chap. III., p. 68). The nature and reaction of these hypnotic hallucinations have been investigated with much ingenuity by various Continental observers.[93] MM. Binet and Féré, to quote the best-known series of experiments, have found, speaking generally, that the hallucinatory percept behaves under various conditions precisely as if it were a real percept. Thus, if the subject is told to see a picture on a blank card, he will not only see the picture at the time, but he will be able subsequently to pick out the card, recognising it by means of the hallucinatory picture impressed on it, from a number of similar cards. If the card is inverted, he will see the picture upside-down; if a magnifying glass is interposed, he will see the picture enlarged; viewed through a prism, it will appear doubled; it will be reflected in a mirror; and if the hallucinatory image consists of written or printed words, he will see the writing in the mirror inverted. Hallucinatory colours will develop after-images of the complementary colour, precisely as if coloured surfaces were actually present to the eyes of the halluciné; and a mixture of these hallucinatory colours will produce the appropriate third colour. If other proof were needed of the sensory nature of the induced affection, MM. Binet and Féré find it in the observation that with cataleptic subjects who have lost the sensitiveness of the cornea and conjunctiva, this sensitiveness is restored when a visual hallucination is enjoined upon them. M. Pierre Janet, in L'Automatisme Psychologique, has recorded a similar restoration of sensitiveness in a subject's arm by the imposition of a tactile hallucination.

It is right to point out that these experiments, by the authors' admission, succeed only occasionally, and that many of them have not yet been confirmed by other observers. In fact, according to the evidence collected by the S.P.R., the results of applying such optical tests differ with each individual. Thus Mr. Myers succeeded by post-hypnotic suggestion in inducing two young men to see hallucinatory images in the crystal enlarged by the application of a magnifying glass (S.P.R., viii. 462, 463), and Miss X. (id., pp. 485, 486) reports that she sees hallucinatory pictures distorted in a spoon, reversed in a mirror, enlarged by a magnifying glass, and doubly refracted by Iceland spar. She believes herself also to have experienced complementary colours as the result of prolonged looking at a hallucinatory picture. But Mrs. Verrall (id., p. 474) finds the crystal pictures vanish when the magnifying glass is applied; and Miss A. (id., p. 500) finds that the superimposition of a magnifying glass does not affect the picture. In all these cases, it should be noted, the percipients were in their normal condition, and were more or less familiar with the nature of the optical effects following under similar circumstances with real percepts.

MM. Binet and Féré suppose that the appropriate reaction of the hallucinatory picture to the various tests described is due to the hallucination being built up round a fragment of actual percept, such as a mark on a card, which would conform to ordinary optical laws. This imaginary nucleus they name the point de repère. It is not improbable that in some cases this may be the true explanation. But experience leads us to infer that suggestion would be competent to produce all the observed effects in cases where the subject, either from previous knowledge of the instrument or process, from the behaviour of the investigators, or from his own observations at the time, was aware of the nature of the effect to be expected. And it is not clear that MM. Binet and Féré, and other investigators of this school, have been sufficiently on their guard against the abnormal receptivity of the hypnotised subjects with whom they have for the most part experimented. Miss X., it may be remarked, professes herself uncertain whether or not to ascribe the results which she has recorded to self-suggestion. But to choose between these alternative explanations is not important for our present purpose. To whatever cause we may attribute the results observed, there can be no doubt either of the sense of reality conveyed by the false percept, or of its appropriate behaviour under favourable conditions.

An instance may be quoted in detail which illustrates at once the apparent attachment of the hallucination to an external object, and its successful competition with the impressions of waking life. A lady of my acquaintance, Sister L., was put into the hypnotic state by Mr. G. A. Smith in the spring of 1892. Whilst she was entranced, Mr. Smith, at my request, handed to her several blank cards, and told her that one of them (which had been privately marked on the back) bore a portrait of himself, and that she was to look at it ten minutes after waking. A few minutes later, when engaged in conversation and apparently completely awake, Sister L. picked out the card in question from the little heap of similar cards and showed it to me, remarking that it was an excellent likeness. Some half-hour later, when Sister L. was about to take her departure, I handed her the card and said that Mr. Smith would be glad if she would accept the photograph. She looked at the card, expressed her thanks for the gift, and placed it in her pocket. When I met her a few days later I learnt that on her arrival at home she had searched in her pocket for the photograph, and had been much surprised to find there only a blank card. In this instance there can be little doubt that a complete sensory hallucination was induced, and that it persisted, or was capable of being revived, for some 30 minutes or more after the original impression had been established.

This last example, it will be seen, belongs to the important class of post-hypnotic hallucinations—i.e., hallucinations enjoined on the subject in the hypnotic state, but realised only after waking. Special interest attaches to hallucinations of this kind, because the subject is in a condition which, if not fully normal, at least approaches in some cases very nearly to the normal, and is thus able to observe and describe his own sensations with care.[94]

A more striking form of the same experiment, the post-hypnotic production of a completely developed hallucination of the human figure, has been practised by Bernheim,[95] Beaunis,[96] Liegeois,[97] and others. Thus M. Liegeois, on the 12th October 1885, told a hypnotised subject that on the 12th October of the year following he would go to Dr. Liébeault's house, where he would also see M. Liegeois, and would thank them both for the good done to his eyes. He would then see a performing dog and monkey enter the consulting room, where they would perform many amusing tricks; ultimately he would see a gipsy enter with a bear, to reclaim the dog and monkey, and would borrow two sous from M. Liegeois to give to the gipsy. On the 12th October 1886 the subject entered Dr. Liébeault's consulting room and thanked him and M. Liegeois as arranged. He then saw a dog and monkey enter the room, and ultimately a gipsy. The bear he did not see, and the two sous, which were duly borrowed, he handed to the imaginary dog. With these exceptions the hallucinations enjoined a year before were exactly realised. Some experiments of a similar nature are recorded by Mr. Gurney (Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 11-13). The subject was a servant named Zillah, in the service of Mrs. Ellis, of 40 Keppel Street, Russell Square. In the first two experiments Zillah was told in the trance that at a certain hour on the following day she would see Mr. G. A. Smith. In each case the experiment succeeded.

The third and last experiment with this "subject" was made on Wednesday evening, July 13th, 1887. On this occasion S. told her, when hypnotised, that the next afternoon at three o'clock she would see me come into the room to her. She was further told that I would keep my hat on, and would say, "Good afternoon;" that I would further remark, "It is very warm;" and would then turn round and walk out. These hallucinations were suggested in another room, where Zillah was taken for the purpose, and neither Mrs. Ellis nor any other person, except S. and myself, knew their nature. Zillah, as usual, knew nothing about them on waking. On the second day after, the following letter was received from Mrs. Ellis:—

"40 KEPPEL STREET, RUSSELL SQUARE, W.C.,
July 14th.

"DEAR MR. SMITH,—Mr. Gurney did not ask me to write in case there was anything to communicate with respect to Zillah, but as I suppose you gave her a post-hypnotic hallucination, probably you will wish to hear of it. I will give you the story in her own words, as I jotted them down immediately afterwards—saying nothing to her, of course, of my doing so. She said: 'I was in the kitchen washing up, and had just looked at the clock, and was startled to see how late it was—five minutes to three—when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs—rather a quick, light step—and I thought it was Mr. Sleep' (the dentist whose rooms are in the house), 'but as I turned round, with a dish mop in one hand and a plate in the other, I saw some one with a hat on, who had to stoop as he came down the last step, and there was Mr. Gurney! He was dressed just as I saw him last night, black coat and grey trousers, his hat on, and a roll of paper, like manuscript, in his hand, and he said, 'Oh, good afternoon.' And then he glanced all round the kitchen, and he glared at me with an awful look, as if he was going to murder me, and said, 'Warm afternoon, isn't it?' and then, 'Good afternoon' or 'Good day,' I'm not sure which, and turned and went up the stairs again, and after standing thunderstruck a minute, I ran to the foot of the stairs, and saw like a boot just disappearing on the top step.' She said, 'I think I must be going crazy. Why should I always see something at three o'clock each day after the séance? But I am not nearly so frightened as I was at seeing Mr. Smith.' She seemed particularly impressed by the 'awful look' Mr. Gurney gave her. I presume this was the hallucination you gave her.
"AMELIA A. ELLIS."

It is important to note that in cases of this kind there is no discoverable point de repère, at least in the sense in which the phrase is understood by its authors; and the nature of the effect produced—a moving figure, apparently occupying a position in solid space—makes it very difficult to suppose that the hallucination is attached to any external object, which must necessarily be fixed. But the whole discussion about the necessity of external excitation or of points de repère seems beside the mark in such cases as these. For there can be no question that what in the first instance excites the hallucination is not a present sensation, but a memory. Whether for the full development of a sensory hallucination some external stimulus to the sense-organ is necessary is here a question of quite minor importance. The really interesting fact in its bearing on the question of telepathic hallucination is that some hallucinations are shown to be centrally, not peripherally, initiated. It should be further remarked that Zillah's astonishment at seeing the figure is typical, since in the case of post-hypnotic hallucinations in general neither the injunction to see the figure, nor indeed any other incident of his trance life, is remembered by the percipient in the normal state; and he is therefore entirely ignorant of the chain of events which led up to the hallucination, and can only by inquiry and reflection ascertain that the apparition which he has seen is of his own manufacture.

From these experimental cases we may pass to the consideration of spontaneous hallucinations, and amongst them to that class with which we are more directly concerned, the occasional hallucinations of sane and healthy persons. Owing, amongst other causes, to their comparative infrequency, and to the difficulty of obtaining accurate contemporary records (since their occurrence cannot, as in the hallucinations of disease, be foreseen), phenomena of this class have hitherto attracted little attention amongst psychologists.[98] Mr. Edmund Gurney, however, in 1884 and onwards conducted an inquiry, by means of a printed schedule of questions, amongst a circle of some 6000 persons; and during the last four years, at the request of the Congress of Experimental Psychology which met at Paris in 1889, Professor Henry Sidgwick, with the aid of a Committee of members of the S.P.R., has carried on a similar investigation on a larger scale. 17,000 adult persons, for the most part resident in the United Kingdom, have been questioned as to their experience of sensory hallucinations.[99] In the result it appeared that 1684 out of 17,000, or 9.9 per cent.—to wit, 655 out of 8372 men, and 1029 out of 8628 women—had experienced a sensory hallucination at some time in their lives. In about one-third of the cases the percipient had more than one experience of the kind. The phenomenon, therefore, though not so common as dreaming, is less rare than is generally supposed, seeing that about one in every ten educated persons has such an experience in the course of his life. The inquiries of the Committee have revealed no general cause for the greater number of these isolated hallucinations. In a small proportion of the cases there was a slight degree of ill-health, and in a rather greater number there was a certain amount of anxiety or other emotional excitement, to which the hallucinatory experience might with some plausibility be attributed.[100] But in the great majority of the cases there was no obvious antecedent to be discovered either in the condition of the percipient or in the surrounding circumstances, and we are led to the conclusion that an isolated hallucination of this kind is as little incompatible with ordinary health as a blush or a hiccough. At the same time we are entitled to infer, from the relatively large proportion of cases occurring when the percipient is in bed, or alone, that quiescence and freedom from external stimuli are favourable conditions for the genesis of hallucinations.[101] They may, in short, be regarded as unusually vivid dreams, and have for the most part just so much interest and significance. The nature and variety of these casual hallucinations may be gathered from the table on the following page.

If we turn to the mechanism of hallucinations, we shall find that—like dreams—some are apparently originated by the condition of the bodily organs; others again appear to be mere automatic reverberations of recent sensation; whilst yet others cannot be referred to any immediate external stimulus, and suggest the "spontaneous" activity of the higher cerebral centres. With the rudimentary hallucinations—singing in the ears, sparks and flashes of light, etc.—which are caused by transient conditions of the external organs of sense, we are probably all familiar. But experience shows that a small nucleus of actual sensation may enter into more fully developed hallucinations. Thus, to take the simplest case, it is known that "sparks" may develop into "Faces in the Dark," which are themselves on the border-line between mind's-eye pictures and hallucinations. (See St. James's Gazette, "Faces in the Dark," Feb. 10, 1882, and Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii. p. 171.) And in another recorded case (Proc. S.P.R., vol. i. pp. 102, 103) an artist was accustomed to see constantly at his studio the figure of a man, under circumstances which strongly suggest that a point de repère was furnished by those floating motes in the eyeballs which are liable momentarily to cloud the vision when the position is abruptly changed after a period of immobility. And we find cases where the constructive impulse has so amplified and misinterpreted the data of normal sensation that we hardly know whether to class the result as hallucination or illusion. Thus, in a case given in Phantasms (vol. ii. p. 28), a young girl sees the face of a friend growing out of a yellow pansy; and an account of a similar incident has recently been furnished to me by Mr. H. Smith, of the Central Telegraph Office. The reference in the first line of the following narrative is to a rumour of the house being haunted, the remembrance of which possibly gave a definite form to the apparition:—

HALLUCINATIONS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THE SENSE AFFECTED AND ACCORDING TO THE KIND OF PERCEPT.