We cannot conceive why so much fun is poked at
the Society for Psychical Research (14 Dean's Yard, S.W.), for asking these very business-like questions on the subject of hallucinations and dreams :—" 1. Hallucinations.—Have you ever, when in good health and completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing, or being touched by, a human being, or of hearing a voice or sound which suggested a human presence, when no one was there P 2. Dreams.—Can you recall that you have ever, in the course of the last ten years, had a dream of the death of some person known to you (about whom you were not anxious at the time), which dream you marked as an exceptionally vivid one, and of which the distressing impression lasted for as long as an hour after you rose in the morning ?" The object is, of course, to get some light on the question whether or not prophetic dreams of more than usual impressiveness which are afterwards fulfilled, or hallucinations suggesting the presence of distant peo- ple, when they do occur, may properly be explained as coin- cidence, or not. If they can be explained as coincidence, there ought to be a vast number of such impressive dreams and startling hallucinations occurring in common life, as Coleridge- used to say that he could assert to have occurred in his life, but without further significance and without deserving to be specially noted. The present writer could answer both questions in the negative, even without the qualification as to 'health,—excepting only as regards one period of delirium, during a typhoid fever,—and we fancy that the great majority of Englishmen and Englishwomen would answer them in the same manner.
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