An account

The above account correctly describes what I saw. — Keith Bremner. Mrs. Bremner wrote from Sandilands, Cupar, Fife, on September 22nd, 1884 : — Mrs. Bremner begs to inform Mr. Podmore that her daughter told her immediately she saw the face in the pansy. Mr. Podmore's written statement is quite correct. The wedding took place on Wednesday, the 18th of June. ' See, for example, the cases in Chap, xiv., § 7. § 1. In Chapter XII., a good many specimens of telepathic phantasms were quoted, in illustration of certain special points ; and particularly as showing what part in the phenomena we may attribute to the obscure action of the agent's and of the percipient's mind respectively, and how the original impulse may become modified in transitu. A still larger number of cases remain, of which only a few present specially noticeable characteristics of dress, or development, or phantasmal imagery ; but which have their share with the others in the cumulative proof of telepathy, and include moreover several fresh features and types. The present chapter will be devoted to visual examples. In the General Sketch of Hallucinations (Vol. I., pp. 480-3 and 488), I mentioned the various degrees of externalisation that the phenomena may present ; beginning with the ideal picture which is not a sensory hallucination at all — which is realised as a purely internal impression, as seen by the mind's eye ; and ending with the actual percept, which, though equally the product of the percipient's mind, seems to take its place in the external world on a par with all the other objects within his range of vision. Now between these first and last stages there seems a wide gap ; and if our review of telepathic incidents had to pass at one step from the vivid pictures flashed from mind to mind, to the phantasmal figure out in the room, there might be a certain difficulty in conceiving two such diffierent-seeming phenomena as having a similar origin. It is satisfactory, then, to be able to point to several intermediate stages. That such stages are found in the telepathic, as well as in the purely subjective or pathological, class of phantasms, is only a fresh indication that telepathic phantasms, in spite of their peculiar origin, are worked (so to speak) by the ordinary mechanism of hallucination. 30 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [chap. I may first quote a case which shows how the percipient may himself be doubtful as to the degree of externality that the phantasmal appearance had. In the summer of 1884, Mr. Henry H. Howorth, M.P., of Eccles, Manchester, filled up a question-form with the information that one morning, in 1857, he had a visual hallucination representing a great-uncle ; and added : — (218) My great uncle died at the very time ; and someone came to bring me home from school, where I then was. I don't think I was at all excitable or impressionable. My uncle was a very unlikely person for me to have thought about. He had been for years troubled with gout of a chronic type, but was otherwise hearty and well, and to a boy had the appearance of robust health. He was much attached to my mother and her children.