§ 1. We come next to a class of cases which are characterised not so much by the distinctness of the idea as by the strength of the emotion produced in the percipient. In some of these the emotion has depended on a definite idea, and has been connected with a sense of calamity to a particular individual, or a particular household: in others it has not had reference to any definite idea, and has seemed at the time quite causeless and unreasonable. Sometimes, again, the analogy with experimental cases, in the direct reflection of experience from mind to mind, is distinctly retained,1 the experience of the percipient seeming actually to reproduce that of a relative or friend who is in some physical or mental crisis at a distance; while in other cases a peculiar distress on the one side is so strikingly contemporaneous with a unique condition on the other, that we cannot refuse to consider the hypothesis of a causal connection.

From the point of view of evidence, this class of emotional impressions clearly requires the most careful treatment. There is all the difference between a sensory impression, and even between the more distinct "mental pictures" of the last chapter, and a mere mood. We have no grounds for assuming that the news (for instance) of a friend's death will incite a man of sense and honesty to say that he saw, heard, felt, or strongly pictured, something unusual at or near the time of its occurrence, unless he really did so; but it is easy to suppose that, having chanced to be slightly out of spirits at the time, he afterwards seems to remember that he was very much depressed indeed, and even filled with a boding of some impending calamity. Nay, since a person who is oppressed by gloom and apprehension will often embrace in mental glances the small group of persons with whom his emotional connection is strongest, he may recall, when one of these persons proves actually to have been passing through a crisis at the time, that this particular one was present to his mind, and may easily glide on into thinking that it was with him that the sense of apprehension was specially connected.

In these cases, then, it is of prime importance that the percipient's impression shall be mentioned or otherwise noted by him in an unmistakable way, before the receipt of news as to the supposed agent's condition. And even when we have clear proof that the emotion was really of a strongly-marked character, it is necessary further to obtain some assurance that such moods are not of common occurrence in the percipient's experience. Failing this, it is safest to regard any unusual character that may afterwards be attributed to the emotion as the result of its being afterwards dwelt on in connection with the coincident event.

1 The emotional class of impressions is, of course, a field peculiarly ill-adapted for deliberate experiment. Strong emotion cannot be summoned up at will by an experimenter even in his own mind; while, if it exists, it probably betrays itself in ways beyond his control. Cases are, indeed, alleged where a secret grief or anxiety on a mesmeriser's part has been reflected in the demeanour of his "subject." But this would not necessarily prove more than that the "subject" was, so to speak, hyper* Aesthetic to slight physical signs of mental disturbance - which would be quite in accordance with the one-sided concentration of his mind that is shown in other ways, e.g., in his frequent deafness to any other voice than that of his operator. I may quote for what they are worth the following observations of Mr. H. S. Thompson (Zoist, v. 257): "One patient who was highly sensitive, and whom I mesmerised for a nervous disorder, could, when awake, point out immediately whatever part of ray head was touched by a third person. If I mesmorised her when I was in spirits, she was in spirits also; if I was grave, she was grave; and I never dared mesmerise her when I was suffering from any annoyance.

I did not find that she often had distinct thoughts corresponding with my own, even when I tried to impress her by will with them. But she has experienced and shown a feeling corresponding with the thoughts I had".

It need hardly be added that all cases must be rejected where there has been any appreciable cause for anxiety, however unmistakable and unique the impression may be shown to have been. Thus it cannot be regarded as usual for a lady who is at a friend's house, and intending to remain there for a week or two, to find herself suddenly and irrationally impelled, by the certainty of a domestic calamity, to pack her boxes and sit waiting for a telegram - which, (to borrow the phrase of a business-like informant) was shortly delivered "as per presentiment." But the surmise which was thus confirmed related to a baby grandchild at home; and though she had not heard that it was ailing, those who watch over the health of young children are often, of course, in a more or less chronic state of nervousness.