An account

In reply to your inquiry I am unable to speak positively at this distance of time, but am under the impression that the scene did correspond. Such incidents as these really belong to the class which may be described as clairvoyant, and which I am reserving for the end of the chapter ; but I have brought forward these few examples for the sake of a special observation. In all the earlier dream-cases of this chapter, the rSle of the percipient was purely passive ; the impression received by him was apparently a direct and literal reproduction in whole or in part, of what was, or had been, consciously in the agent's mind. But these last narratives have introduced the same difference as appeared in the concluding cases of Chapter VI. : though the scene which the dreamer pictured was the very one in which the agent was, the agent's own figure, with which his own attention was certainly not occupied, appeared in the dream. If, therefore, this part of the percept was transferred ready-made (so to speak) from the agent's mind, it must have been from a sub-conscious part of his mind. Such a view would present no serious difficulty ; for probably every one, after early childhood, retains at the background of his mind a dim realisation of his own personality in connection with viii.] REGARDED AS TELEPATHIC. 341 his outer aspect ; and we have had proofs that a person may transmit an idea of which he is at the moment quite unaware.1 At the same time, the cases where the agent's figure appears are equally suggestive of another explanation, and one which will prove of the highest importance in the sequel. They bring us to the point where we may suppose that the percipient is often Jdmself the source of a great part of what he seems to perceive ; that he is no longer passively receptive of the impression which comes to him from without, but actively modifies and elaborates it. Thus, granted an idea of the agent to be transmitted, the appearance of the agent's figure in the telepathic picture will be no more remarkable than that, on reading a friend's name in a letter, I should be able instantly to project his image on my mental camera. It is only, however, in the next group of cases that this new role of the percipient becomes obvious. § 6. It will be useful at this juncture to recall the more familiar ways in which dreams are shaped. We all know that physical disturbances— whether of sound, or light, or cold, or touch — will excite dreams, in which the disturbance appears as an element, sometimes without undergoing any change,