"Wednesday morning young Brooks arose as usual, breakfasted comfortably, and according to all appearances seemed destined to a long life; the doctor left him without the least disquietude. The young man insisted that his mother should not remain with him, saying: 'It would kill you to see me die.' His mother, in order to appear not to take him seriously, left him without opposition, but proposing to return. At two o'clock he lunched with the family, then feeling weak asked to return to his room where he wrote to the young lady, who arrived in twenty minutes. "He died in the presence of his family ten minutes after three. His mother and the doctor, who arrived a few moments later, were stunned to find the prediction come true."

Mr. Gurney, who verified this case, wrote: "He was a young man of very strong character, exceptional mind, and splendid physique."

In special studies, this narrative and many others in similar vein always figure in the chapter upon premonitions. But the question raised is how a premonition may be given by an apparition without consciousness or aim, an apparition that could exist only by virtue of a previously expressed thought, and that would reach the subject under the form of retarded telepathy.

It is of small importance, indeed, that the apparition may have been material, or spiritual, or whether it resulted from a simple mental vision. We shall not seek to determine its exterior nature, but we wish to know if, in the other world, there is an essential entity representing the active force, without which not one of these phenomena could be produced.

The fact of determining the day and the hour of death is a feat beyond human powers, and autosuggestion cannot furnish its explanation. A definite fact announced by a definite individual, even supposing that this agent be only an image perceived by the subconsciousness, necessitates the intervention of an intelligence which has created the image as in a mirror. Whether the message be seen or heard, whether it be expressed by a vision or by automatic writing, from the moment that it contains correct information unknown to everyone present, we are, indeed, obliged to conclude that a foreign intelligence is the determining cause of these phenomena.

There is another fact quoted from Human Personality, by Frederick Myers, Vol. II, p. 244.

"It concerns a lady, Eliza Mannors (pseudonym). This lady, whom the author had known during her life, having been dead a certain time, manifested herself by automatic writing the day after the death of her uncle, a certain Mr. F-------. She described an incident tending to prove fully that she had really been present at the death-bed of her uncle."

Myers in his work cites the report given in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. XII, p. 378, of which a summary follows here:

"The notice of his death was inserted in a morning paper in Boston, and I had read it while going to a seance of Mrs. Piper. At this seance the first message came to us, against all expectation, from Mrs. Eliza. She explained in clear and definite terms that F------- was there near her, but that he could not express himself. She desired to recount how she had assisted F-------in drawing him to her. She said that she had been beside his death-bed, had talked with him, and repeated to me what she had said. She expressed herself in an unusual manner and specified that she had been heard and recognized by him.

"All this was confirmed in detail in the sole way then possible, through an intimate friend of Mrs. Eliza and myself, and a friend likewise of the nearest living relative of Mr. F-------. I showed the report of the seance to my friend and to another of his relatives who had been near the death-bed.

"A day or two afterward the latter declared spontaneously that in his last hours Mr. F-------had seen Eliza, that she had spoken with him, and he repeated what she had said.

"The communication that this relative reported to my friend was the same that I had received from Mrs. Eliza during Mrs. Piper's trance: and what had occurred at the bedside of the dying man was entirely unknown to me."

I will conclude these illustrations, having no intention to prove the case, but simply to show how, in eliminating, little by little, the insufficient hypotheses one may create for himself a certainty concerning communications from the other world.

In a spiritual influx, a telepathic influence, creating automatic obedience in the organs, lies the normal interpretation of true hallucinations and automatisms. To sum up, experience proves that psychic phenomena have their source in a new force which manifests consciousness in all degrees. The motive agents of a table that rises without contact may be, turn by turn, elementary consciousness, the consciousness of a living person, surrounding influences, actions of the deceased or of occult entities, serving unconsciously as a mirror to our psychic powers, still inadequately studied.

Automatic writing emanates equally from lower physiology, influenced by surrounding forces which are difficult to define but which in certain cases give proof of intelligence and knowledge surpassing our grasp and which sometimes establish with great probability the identity of the deceased person who claims to communicate thus.

Motive agents may act directly upon the brain, indirectly upon the sensory organs and mechanically upon the motor and sensitive ganglion centers.

The intellectual value of the phenomenon is in proportion to the degree of consciousness in the motive agent.