§ 5. First, then, as to anxiety. A person who has been brooding over the state of some absent friend or relative suddenly has a hallucination which suggests that person's presence. Now suppose that the crisis which was apprehended - say the death of the person whose serious illness was the cause of the anxiety - turns out afterwards to have occurred at the same time as the hallucination. Let us take a couple of cases - one auditory, the other visual.

The following account is from Mr. Timothy Cooper, late of 21, Cadogan Terrace, Victoria Park, E.

"January, 1882.

' My father was a Baptist minister at Soham, Cambridgeshire. In the year 1849, being one of a large family, I went from home to begin the battle of life. There was great love between my mother and me. When I had been away about a year, I was sent for in a hurry to see my dear mother, who was thought to be dying. I got leave of absence for a week and went home, and the last day before returning to business, while sitting by my mother's side, I said, 'Mother, if it is possible, when you pass away will you come and tell me? ' She said, ' I will if I possibly can.' On the morning of October 7th, 1850, I awoke and felt like a soft hand touch me, and heard the well-known voice say, ' I am gone,' and something seemed to glide away from my side. I awoke the young man who was sleeping with me, and said, ' My mother is gone. She has just been here and told me so'; and just as I said it the clock standing on the stairs struck 3. The news came to hand that my mother had died at five minutes to 3. "Timothy Cooper".

We have verified the date of death in the Baptist Reporter.

The next account is from Miss Summerbell, of 140, Kensington Park Road, W., who has had no other hallucination of vision. This one was mentioned at once to the friend with whom she was staying.

"November, 1882. " I do not know how far the following story will be considered significant, as I was in much anxiety about the gentleman whom it concerns at the time. I have been for many years on terms of close intimacy with the family of a Dutch nobleman [Jonkheer Huydecoper], who reside in Holland. Early in July last, I received a letter from the eldest daughter of the house, saying that her father was seriously ill. From that time I received news of his condition every day. On the 27th July, I received a post-card, saying that he was slightly better. I was staying at the time at the Spa; Tunbridge Wells, and suffering much from neuralgia. On the night of the 27th, I was lying unable to sleep from pain; no doubt I dozed now and then, but I firmly believe that I was awake when what I am about to relate occurred. It was beginning to be light, and I distinctly saw every object in the room. I do not know whether it is necessary to say that in Holland, when a person of distinction dies, a ' prieur d'enterrement' is employed. This man is dressed in black, with dress-coat, knee-breeches, and cocked-hat, with bands of crape hanging from the corners. It is his office to go to all the houses where the deceased was known, and announce the death.

On the morning of which I speak, I saw the door of my room open, and a 'prieur d'enterrement * enter. He said nothing,but stood with a long paper in his hand. I remember distinctly wondering whether I had fallen asleep and was dreaming; I looked round and saw the furniture, and the window, with the dim light coming through the closed blind. I looked at my watch; it was nearly 5 o'clock. I looked towards the man, but he was gone. It is nearly 6 years since I lived for any time in Holland, and I had forgotten the custom of announcing deaths; or, at least, I had not thought of it for years." Miss Summerbell's friend, as it proved, had died about an hour and a half before her vision.

[We may note here how curiously the idea of death, in working itself out, availed itself of materials that had long been dormant - the slumbering memories which associated Dutch customs with Dutch friends in the percipient's mind].

Supposing these incidents to be correctly reported, which we have no reason to doubt, what is the most probable interpretation of them? Is the state of mind in which the percipients were a sufficient cause for what they respectively heard and saw? If so, the coincidence between the death and the hallucination would be accounted for by the fact that the very conditions which led to the death were also indirectly (through the anxiety connected with them) the cause of the hallucination. But to answer the question,1 we need some independent evidence of the power of simple anxiety about an absent person to produce a distinct delusion of the waking senses. Anxiety is readily enough assumed as a vera causa of such delusions, just as lobster-salad is; but can the assumption be supported? Not very completely, it must be admitted. The cases are nearly all of the same indecisive type; for the condition of an absent person which is sufficiently exceptional to create grave anxiety about him is, as a rule, also sufficiently exceptional to afford a conceivable occasion for telepathic influence, supposing telepathic influences to be facts in Nature; and the hallucination can, therefore, only be assumed to be certainly due to anxiety by rejecting a priori the other explanation.

Thus, in the collection of hallucinations which I have mentioned, I find none of such a type as this - that a mother, in great anxiety for a sailor son, seems to see his figure in the room, though really the weather at sea has been calm and he has met with no mishap. Still, evidence pointing in this direction does exist. For instance, the records of witchcraft contain many cases, which there is no reason to call in question, of apparitions of the supposed witch to the supposed victim - indeed Bernard1 mentions this form of hallucination as one of the signs of "possession"; the experience seems, however, to have been invariably connected with a thoroughly morbid and hysterical condition of the percipient. Again, an unusually absorbing possession of the mind with the person whose form appears, at the very moment when the appearance takes place, may make even an "ambiguous" experience seem almost beyond question subjective. Thus a lady writes to us: -

1A caution may not be out of place against the common habit of deciding such questions off-hand, from a. single instance, by mere bias. Some informants have sent us cases of the sort expressly as subjective experiences; others as proofs that the dying person's thoughts turned to them at the last. But if the proof of telepathy itself requires an accumulated mass of evidence, much more must the decision in these doubtful instances.

"Rather more than 10 years ago a person with whom I had had much to do was lying dangerously ill. In the evening of a certain day I was standing in my own room, thinking of her case, and reproaching myself for one or two things in connection with my conduct to her, when I turned suddenly round, and saw her gazing steadily, very steadily, and reproachfully at me. She died that night. She was not a near relative, or an intimate friend".

In the case of auditory hallucinations, the evidence is clearer: some of these, occurring in circumstances of anxiety, bear the conclusive mark of a purely subjective experience. A sister in trouble about her brother, who has had an accident, hears the words, "Your brother is dead." A mother nursing her son in a dangerous crisis hears an imaginary voice say, "You can't save him." In impressions corresponding so closely to the hearer's state of mind, and not corresponding to the actual facts, there can be no question of telepathy. On the whole, then, it seems reasonable to conclude that anxiety has a certain independent tendency to promote hallucinations. Even so, we might fairly enough argue that it is as likely to facilitate telepathic hallucinations as to produce purely subjective ones. But when the question is of admitting cases to the present collection, the assumption ought always to be made against the telepathic hypothesis; and our principle has been to regard anxiety which has reached a certain pitch as distinctly weakening the evidential value of a coincidence, though great perfection in other points - as, for instance, a complete identity of time - might more than outweigh the objection.

The fact that the anxiety may not have been actually dominating consciousness at the moment of the hallucination cannot be held to remove the probability (such as it is) that the hallucination was subjectively caused; for it is the rule rather than the exception for hallucinations which can be at all connected with previous experience to be developed from ideas that are quite latent.

1Guide to Grand Jurymen, 1627. As typical instances I may refer to the History of the Witches of Renfrewshire, pp. 74-5; the report of the Tryal of Witches at Bury St. Edmunds on the Tenth Day of March, 1664 (published in 1682), where some of the victims who saw the form of Amy Duny saw apparitions of cats and mice as well; and the Tryals, Examination, and Condemnation of Four Notorious Witches at a Worcester assizes, where the child who had the hallucination had apparently been previously unhinged by fright, and shortly died. As a rule, it is expressly stated that the apparitions took place during "fits" - i.e., hysteric or epileptic seizures; but this seems not to have been invariable See Deodat Lawson's Further Account of the Tryals of the New England Witches (London, 1093), p. 9.