§ 6. This frequent activity of the percipient's mind in the elaboration and projection of his percept forms a ready key to much of the evidence that follows. How, for instance, on any theory of merely passive affection of the percipient's mind or senses, could we account for the appearance of a dying friend, attired in a style of dress which was habitual to him at the time when the percipient associated with him, but which has been discontinued, or, at any rate, is not that in which he would be pictured in his own mind? The "ghosts of clothes" in general - a stock bugbear - are the simplest things in the world to explain on a theory of telepathic impressions; but the ghosts of old clothes - how could they be impressed ab extra? What, on the other hand, is more natural, when once the percipient's active share in the phenomenon is recognised, than that he should invest the idea of his friend with the visual traits that memory supplies, and should project the figure into space in its most familiar aspect?

A few instances of this sort may be quoted. [The first, No. 200, is omitted].

The next case (which again exemplifies the development of a feeling of presence into distinct hallucination) is from Mrs. Bolland, of 7, Cranbury Terrace, Southampton, the narrator of case 126 above.

"July, 1884.

(201) "About March, 1875, the circumstances hereafter detailed happened to me at Gibraltar. I wrote an account of them from memory in 1878. It was published in All the Year Round, of August, I think, that year, but I have not since seen it, so I can only give the story as far as I remember it now.

1The psychological identity of hallucinations and dreams - alike in subjective and in telepathic cases - is a point which I am the more anxious to enforce in that there seems sometimes to be a difficulty in catching it. For example, a leading daily paper contrasts members of the Society for Psychical Research with the sensible people "who believe that all those apparitions and stories of second-sight which engage the curiosity of that Society may be relegated to the limbo of waking dreams." With the substitution of "class" for " limbo," this "relegation" is precisely what the present argument seeks to effect.

"I was lying down in my drawing-room on a bright sunshiny afternoon, reading a chapter on Chalk Streams in 'Kingsley's Miscellanies,' when I suddenly felt that some one was waiting to speak to me. I looked up from my book and saw a man standing beside an arm-chair, which was about 6 feet from me. He was looking most intently at me, with an extraordinary earnest expression in his eyes, but as I walked forward to speak to him he disappeared.1

" The room was about 18 feet long, and at the further end of it I saw our servant [Pearson], holding open the door as if he had admitted a visitor. Thinking that perhaps he too was but a delusion, I spoke to him, asking if anyone had called. To which he replied, 'No one, ma'am,' and walked away. I then tested myself as to whether I had been sleeping, seeing that it was 10 minutes since I lay down. I said to myself what I thought I had read, began my chapter again, and in 10 minutes had reached the same point.

"I then thought it over again. I knew the face quite well, but could not say whose it was, but the suit of clothes impressed me strongly as being exactly like one which my husband had given to a servant named Ramsay the previous year. This man was a discharged soldier whom I had found in a dying state in Inverness, and who had been taken into our service after leaving the infirmary. He turned out badly and I had to send him away before we went to Gibraltar [in February, 1875], but he was taken on as waiter at the Inverness Club, and I had no cause to be anxious about him, as I thought he was well and doing well, and would probably profit by his past experience and keep that situation.

" I told my husband when he came in what I had seen, and also told his colonel's wife (now Lady Laffan), but did not put down the date. But almost as soon, I believe, as a letter could have come from Inverness, my husband received one from his late sergeant, to say that Ramsay was dead, but giving no particulars. To this my husband wrote that he was sorry, and would like to hear ' any particulars of his illness and death.' This was the answer: ' Ramsay died in hospital, raving, and calling incessantly for Mrs. Bolland'.

"I will only add that I believe the face of the man I saw was that of Ramsay as I had known him at first, when I visited him as a dying man in the infirmary. But seeing him every day as my servant, and in health, it had passed from my mind, or rather did not connect itself with this man in my memory.

" I may add that I had been in ill-health for some years, but at that time was stronger than I ever was in my life, the warm climate suiting me - so well that I felt a strength and enjoyment of life for its own sake, which was a delight to me. " Kate E. Bolland".

In reply to inquiries, Mrs. Bolland adds, " This is the only instance in which I have ever experienced a hallucination of the sense of sight".

The following corroboration is from Lieut. Colonel Bolland, R.E.: -

" July 20th, 1884. " With regard to the apparition at Gibraltar, Mrs. Bolland mentioned it to me an hour or two after she saw it, which would be about 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon. She said she knew the face, but she could not say whose it was, but distinctly recognised the clothes worn as being like a suit I had given to Ramsay when in Inverness.

1See p. 427, second footnote.

"The news of his death was a shock, coming shortly afterwards; and I wrote to my late sergeant on the Ordnance Survey at Inverness (Sergeant Dedman, R.E.) for particulars, with the result which Mrs. Bolland has told you. "G. Herbert Bolland".