Mrs. Bruce writes:—
"The first thought that flashed across me as the accident happened was, 'What will W. say?' My ruling idea then was to get home before my husband, so as to save him alarm."
The Rev. A. T. Fryer, to whom the incident was originally communicated by the percipient, ascertained independently from the Vicar of Ebbw Vale that the date of Archdeacon Bruce's visit to him was April 19th, 1892. It is worth noting that here, as in case 45, an external object appears to have acted as a point de repère, and to have thus aided in the development of the transferred idea. Another instance of a telepathic impulse leading to speech is to be found in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques (vol. i. p. 36). The Lady Superior of a convent was moved during the celebration of a service to pray for the safety of the children of a neighbour—a visitor to the convent—who was somewhat startled by the Superior's abrupt action. It subsequently appeared that at about the time of this prayer the two boys were involved in a carriage accident.
The most striking evidence, however, of telepathically induced action is to be found in automatic writing. Some experimental cases of the kind have been quoted in Chapter IV. The spontaneous cases are more numerous. Mr. Myers has recorded several instances in his article on Motor Automatism (Proc. S.P.R., vol. ix. pp. 26 et seq.), and Mr. W. T. Stead has published, in the Review of Reviews and elsewhere, accounts of messages and conversations with friends at a distance written through his hand. Generally speaking, however, where living persons are concerned, it is difficult, without full knowledge of all the circumstances, to feel assured that the facts recorded by this means are not such as might conceivably have been within the knowledge of the writer, or at least within his powers of conjecture. The best evidence, therefore, for spontaneous telepathic automatism is no doubt afforded by those cases in which some altogether unforeseen event, such as the death of the presumed agent, is communicated. Such is the case recorded by M. Aksakof (Psychische Studien, February 1889, quoted in Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 434, etc.), in which Mademoiselle Emma Stramm, a Swiss governess at Wilna, on the 15th January 1887 wrote particulars of the death on the same day of a former acquaintance of hers, August Duvanel, in Canton Zurich. A similar instance is recorded by Dr. Liébeault (Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. i. pp. 25, 26). The automatic writer was in this case at Nancy, and the person whose death was announced was a young English lady resident at Coblentz. Dr. Liébeault was shown the written message within an hour or two of the séance, and some days before news of the death was received. Other cases of the kind are recorded by M. Aksakof and others (Revue Spirite, August 1891, April 1892, etc.).
CHAPTER VIII.
COINCIDENT DREAMS.
Seeing that so large a part of our lives is spent in sleep, we should perhaps be warranted in looking amongst dreams for evidence of the transference of thought from one mind to another; especially as the quiescence and the absence of outward impressions characteristic of sleep are precisely the conditions indicated by our researches as favourable to such transmission. Nor do the actual results in this direction at all fall short of any reasonable expectation. Long before scientific attention was directed to the subject the coincidences reported between dreams and external events had won the special consideration of the superstitious, and had given to the dreamer of dreams high rank in the company of the prophets and soothsayers. And such coincidences appear to be not less frequent at the present time. My chief difficulty in writing this chapter has been the task of selection from the super-abundant material at hand, much of it accumulated within the last five or six years; and this material is itself the carefully-sifted residuum of a much larger mass of testimony, inferior, if at all, by slight and various degrees. But notwithstanding this great accumulation, it cannot be contended that the proof of telepathy derived from a consideration of dream coincidences is at all comparable in cogency with that furnished by impressions received during waking life. That some at least of the dreams quoted below owed their origin to ideas transmitted to the sleeper from another mind will no doubt be admitted as probable, but the probability depends perhaps not more on their intrinsic value than on the analogy of similar testimony from waking percipients. When (as in some of the cases to be given later, in Chapters X.-XIII.) a witness of integrity asserts that he saw in broad daylight a figure where no such figure was, resembling a friend, and coincident with that friend's death, we are justified in attaching great weight to the coincidence. But if the same witness had dreamt of the figure, instead of seeing it, the coincidence would deserve far less consideration. And yet the cerebral mechanism involved in both processes is no doubt very similar. A dream is a hallucination in sleep, and a hallucination is only a waking dream; though it is probable that the waking impression, seeing that it can contend on equal terms with the impressions derived from external objects, is more vivid than the common run of dreams. But the evidence of dream coincidence is defective, primarily, from the frequency of dreams; it is only a small proportion of educated persons, at any rate, who ever experience a hallucination, but everybody dreams occasionally, and some persons dream every night. Clearly there must be here a wide scope for coincidence. Secondly, whilst dream impressions are probably less vivid at the time, they are certainly more elusive in the memory. There is a serious risk, therefore, that after the event is known detailed correspondences may be read back into the indistinct picture preserved in the memory; or that a dream which at the time made but a slight impression may be charged retrospectively with emotional significance. Finally, as the dream does not enter into any organic series of impressions, and has no landmarks of its own, either in space or time, it becomes after the lapse of a few days, or even hours, a matter of difficulty to determine its date. Against the last two sources of error it is indeed possible to guard. Under ordinary circumstances no dream should be regarded as having evidential value which has not been either recorded in writing or mentioned to some other person before the coincidence is known. Mention of the dream immediately after the receipt of the news, even with persons of proved accuracy, can by no means be regarded as equivalent to mention of it beforehand. For it is possible, as already pointed out (p. 155), that some alleged coincident and prophetic dreams may be due to hallucination of memory, or still more probably to the embellishment and amplification of vague pre-existent memories.
But however carefully dreams are noted and described, the objection still holds good that with impressions of such frequent occurrence chance alone will account for a considerable number of coincidences. It is easy, however, on a superficial view to exaggerate the probabilities of chance coincidence. The great majority of dreams, vague at the time and fugitive in the retrospect, are like footsteps in the sand. Yet as, here and there, one set of footprints out of the millions impressed upon the shore of a long-forgotten sea has been preserved for us in sand now turned to stone, so now and then one dream stands out from all the rest, and leaves on the memory an imprint which the daily reflux of the tide of consciousness cannot efface. If we strike out of the account all the dreams which are too vague to leave any permanent impress on waking, all those which are purely inconsequent and fantastic, and all which can be readily traced to some physical cause, we shall find that the number which we have to deal with,—the number, that is, of vivid and passably realistic dreams,—though no doubt large, is perhaps not beyond the range of definite calculation. It could not, for instance, be plausibly contended that the correspondence of a dream such as that of Captain Campbell's, recorded below, with the death of the person portrayed, is on the same level as the prophetic vision of the City clerk, who, dreaming every other night of the success of some horse which he has backed, happens on some one occasion to dream of the future winner.