416. I quote another case which raises a somewhat curious point as to the relation of what I may call the subliminal gaze to defects of ordinary vision.

1 See cases given in Appendix 415. 2 Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 507.

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),

July 14th, 1884. H. Wallis.

[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.1

" 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.

1 Revue Scientifique, 3e série, xxxii. p. 167.

417. In the cases which I have thus far quoted the dream-self has presented a significant scene, - has chosen, so to say, from its gallery of photographs the special picture which the waking mind desired, - but has not needed to draw any more complex inference from the facts presumably at its disposal. I have now to deal with a small group of dreams which reason as well as remember; - if indeed in some of them there be not something more than mere reasoning on facts already in some way acquired, - something which overpasses the scheme prescribed for the present chapter.

In the first place we cannot doubt that definite data already known may sometimes be treated in somnambulism or ordinary dream with more than waking intelligence. Such are the cases of mathematical problems solved in somnambulism, or of the skeletal arrangement discovered by Agassiz in common sleep for scattered bones which had baffled his waking skill. I give in Appendices some striking cases. The first case is of old date, but it was reported by the dreamer about a month after its occurrence to Dr. Davey, a physician well known in his day, and was sent by him to Dr. Elliotson, who printed it in the Zoist, where it is published as a case of clairvoyance. But the needed data had passed before the waking eyes, although it was left for dream to interpret them fruitfully. Professor Lamberton's case is about the best of the dream-solutions of mathematical problems which I have seen recorded. And Professor Hilprecht's second case carries dream-intelligence to its highest point. Professor Romaine Newbold (who records these cases) is well versed in the analysis of evidence making for supernormal powers, and his explanation of the vision as the result of " processes of associative reasoning analogous to those of the upper consciousness " must, I think, be taken as correct.

But had the incident occurred in a less critical age of the world, - in any generation, one may say, but this, - how majestic a proof would the phantasmal Babylonian's message be held to have afforded of his veritable co-operation with the modern savant in the reconstruction of his remote past!

418. I repeat that with this case of Professor Hilprecht's we seem to have reached the utmost intensity of sleep-faculty within the limits of our ordinary spectrum. In almost every region of that spectrum we have found that the sleeper's faculty, under its narrow conditions, shows scattered signs of at least a potential equality with the faculty of waking hours.

We have already seen this as regards muscular movements, as regards inward vision and audition, and as regards memory; and these last records complete the series by showing us the achievement in sleep of intellectual work of the severest order. Coleridge's Kubla Khan had long ago shown the world that a great poet might owe his masterpiece to the obscuration of waking sense.1 And the very imperfection of Kubla Khan - the memory truncated by an interruption - may again remind us how partial must ever be our waking knowledge of the achievements of sleep.

May I not, then, claim a real analogy between certain of the achievements of sleep and the achievements of genius? In both there is the same triumphant spontaneity, the same sense of drawing no longer upon the narrow and brief endurance of nerves and brain, but upon some unknown source exempt from those limitations.

Thus far, indeed, the sleep-faculties which we have been considering, however strangely intensified, have belonged to the same class as the normal faculties of waking life. We have now to consider whether we can detect in sleep any manifestation of supernormal faculty - any experience which seems to suggest that man is a cosmical spirit as well as a terrestrial organism, and is in some way in relation with a spiritual as well as with a material world. It will seem, in this view, to be natural that this commerce with a spiritual environment should be more perceptible in sleep than in waking. The dogma which my point of view thus renders probable is perhaps, as a mere matter of history, the dogma of all dogmas which has been most universally believed by mankind.

"Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus" - for how many narrow theological propositions have we not heard this proud claim - that they have been believed everywhere, and by everybody, and in every age? Yet what can approach the antiquity, the ubiquity, the unanimity of man's belief in the wanderings of the spirit in dream? In the Stone Age, the sceptic would have been rash indeed who ventured to contradict it. And though I grant that this "palaeolithic psychology" has gone out of fashion for the last few centuries, I do not think that (in view of the telæsthetic evidence now collected) we can any longer dismiss as a mere bizarrerie of dream-imagery the constant recurrence of the idea of visiting in sleep some distant scene, - with the acquisition thereby of new facts not otherwise accessible.