chief." In such cases as this, when the illusion is dispelled, the real perception out of which it was formed becomes plain; whereas the hallucinatory impressions to which our question relates leave behind no discoverable basis of external perception.

Copies of this question, on papers, of which each has space for answers from twenty-five persons, are entrusted to volunteer collectors, together with additional forms for entering the details of the experiences of those who answer "Yes." These collectors, when they have obtained the twenty-five answers, or as many of them as they can, return the forms to me.

A similar inquiry was conducted some years ago by the late Edmund Gurney, in connection with the work on Phantasms of the Living, in the composition of which he took the largest share; but it was hoped that the increased appreciation of the importance of the subject would now enable us to make a much more extensive collection, and so to obtain more conclusive results. So far our expectations have scarcely been realised; for, though we have got between six and seven thousand answers, our aim extends to fifty thousand. It is, therefore, in hopes of stirring up a wider interest in the inquiry, and inducing more people to become collectors, that I am now writing.

The inquiry will, I hope, yield various results of some value for psychologists; but my own chief motive for undertaking it is a desire to investigate more methodically than has yet been done the causes of a peculiarly interesting class of hallucinations, viz., those that coincide with some external event so as to suggest strongly that they are causally connected with it in some as yet unknown way. The most familiar species of this class-though not by any means the only species-consists of the apparitions of dying persons occurring, simultaneously with the death, to relatives or friends at a distance. Such an apparition is, on the one hand, a clearly hallucinatory impression-the percipient apparently sees the clothed body of a human being occupying a portion of space which is, in fact, not so occupied ; at the same time it is, in a sense, a "veridical" or truth-telling impression, since it suggests that something remarkable is happening to the human being so seen, and it afterwards becomes known that something remarkable and

unexpected did in fact happen to him at the time. The question, then, is whether this coincidence is merely accidental, or whether it indicates that the external event and the apparition are really connected as cause and effect. It is impossible to answer this question conclusively by the most careful scrutiny of any particular case of a "coincidental" apparition; it can only be answered by means of a wide statistical inquiry, such as we have now in hand.

I will presently try to show exactly why this statistical labour is needed; but before doing this I will illustrate, by a few examples, the distinction just drawn between "veridical" or "coincidental " and "non-coincidental" or "purely subjective" hallucinations. It seems desirable to give examples of both classes; because, while many educated persons underrate the extent and importance of the former class, superstitious errors are undoubtedly liable to arise through misapprehension of the latter. I will give first a case of which the purely subjective origin can be clearly traced.

A lady writes:

"On the evening of January 21st of this year, 1890, I had been reading aloud to a young friend Lord Tennyson's poem entitled 'Roa,' and the last word on which my eye rested ere closing the book was the name 'Rover. Please note this seemingly insignificant circumstance, for thereby hangs my tale. Soon after my young friend left, my mother was seized with a sudden spasm in the throat which greatly alarmed me and caused me to lie awake that night in a state of extreme nervous tension through anxiety on her behalf. While in this condition of mind, at about 2 a.m., I saw a diffused white light filling one side of the bedroom, which seemed to focus itself to a still brighter light that presently took the shape of the page of a book, which, by-and-bye, became crossed with dark lines that resolved themselves into printed letters. Fascinated at this unlookedfor occurrence, I thought to myself, if only I can read those letters I may discover something that may prove useful in the study of phantasmagorical appearances, so I directed my whole attention to the ghostly page of the book and read thereon Rover.

66 As my mother's sudden attack had been the one subject that had been engrossing my thoughts up to that time, I could not at first imagine how I could have conjured up the ghost of a word so out of place and so unmeaning, till I remembered that it was the last word my eyes had rested on ere anxiety on my mother's account had blotted out every other subject from my mind, and had induced the morbid condition of nervous tension that gave rise to the vision."

As our correspondent remarks, had the word she saw been of more significance-had she, for instance, been reading the eighth chapter of Revelation and afterwards seen the word "woe," and had she lived in the Middle Ages, instead of being a matter-of-fact person living in the nineteenth century, she might easily have imagined herself a prophet, to whom a written scroll had been revealed direct from Heaven.

For those who are studying hallucinations this is an interesting one, on account of its gradual development; and I may remark that. this feature is often observed in hallucinations voluntarily induced by crystal-gazing or otherwise. The next one I shall cite presents. the same feature. It comes to us from Germany, and I select it because, though its subjective origin cannot be definitely traced, as in the last case, it seems highly improbable that it can have had any other. The lady who relates it was walking home along a familiar road one night in 1885, after spending the evening with a friend. It was full moon, and as she approached a cross with which popular tradition associated various uncanny rumours, but which she had often passed at night without seeing anything, she saw, as she supposed, a tramp sitting on a stone opposite to it. As she drew nearer she perceived that it was a female figure, and as it was. bitterly cold, and sleeping in the open air was likely to be injurious, she went up to the woman to awake her. I now translate her own words: "With bewilderment I recognised the dress I was myself wearing on the creature on whose shoulder I was about to place my hand. At that moment, it raised its head, looked fixedly at mewith my own countenance, and vanished. An icy shudder passed

This lady had on a previous occasion in the same year seen a figure of herself which she at first took for another person, till it turned its face to her and vanished. In neither case was there any external event, simultaneous or subsequent, that the most ingenious. superstition could connect with the apparition. Such appearances are sometimes thought to forebode evil, but in these cases neither evil nor good fortune followed.

I now turn to the coincidental cases, and I will first give a wellattested specimen of perhaps the commonest type, an apparition

occurring within a few hours of the death of the person seen. I give it in the percipient's own words :—

"In the spring and summer of 1886 I often visited a poor woman called Evans, who lived in our parish. She was very ill with a painful disease, and it was, as she said, a great pleasure when I went to see her; and I frequently sat with her and read to her. Towards the middle of October she was evidently growing weaker, but there seemed no immediate danger. I had not called on her for several days, and one evening I was standing in the dining-room, after dinner, with the rest of the family, when I saw the figure of a woman dressed like Mrs. Evans, in large apron and muslin cap, pass across the room from one door to the other, where she disappeared. I said, 'Who is that?' My mother said, 'What do you mean?' and I said, That woman who has just come in and walked over to the other door.' They all laughed at me, and said I was dreaming. But I felt sure it was Mrs. Evans, and next morning we heard she was dead.”

Miss H.'s mother writes :

"On referring to my diary for the month of October, 1886, I find the following entry: "19th. B. startled us all after dinner, about 8.30 last evening, by saying she saw the figure of a woman pass across the diningroom, and that it was Mrs. Evans. This morning we hear the poor woman is dead." On inquiring at the cottage, we found she had become wandering in her mind, and at times unconscious, about the time she appeared to B., and died towards the morning."

It

My last case will illustrate a different kind of coincidence. is that of an apparition of a living person, representing that person as she was, but not as the percipient could have known her to be. The story comes to us from America. The percipient was a Dr. H. In 1867 he was in the service of the Government, and was placed at Fort Smith, in Arkansas, his wife living in Michigan. Business had called him away for three or four weeks out of reach of postoffices, so that he had not written to her for some time. He returned to Fort Smith on Saturday and sat up very late answering the letters he found waiting for him, and writing to his wife. The next day he was very tired, and after dinner, in the middle of the day, he went to his room to rest. He continues :

"I turned the key in the lock, and lay down on the bed, with my back towards the door. I had not been there ten minutes when I heard someone coming upstairs with a light step, and I wondered who it could be. I had

expected several of my friends would call as soon as they knew I had returned, and I was too tired to see anyone. I took this course to rested. While this idea was in my mind that I needed rest, I heard the door open, or seem to open, and I heard footsteps coming towards the bed. I turned over so as to look in that direction, and there stood my wife. I was a little excited, as it was so unexpected. I immediately got up and reached for a chair that stood near, and whilst doing so I said, 'Why, Libbie, when did you come? You look so tired; you must be-you have had three hundred miles of staging.' She spoke, and said, 'Yes, I am a little weary.' I stepped forward with the chair, and was about to ask her to be seated when, to my surprise, she was not there. I stepped to the door and found it was locked. Not being accustomed to such apparitions, felt sure that she had passed from the mortal form. As soon as I could compose myself I sat down and wrote her what I saw, describing the dress she had on, also the collar on her neck, together with the ring she had on her finger, all of which I had never seen before. On receiving an answer, which was as soon as possible, my wife said, 'On the day you speak of I dressed myself with the dress and collar you saw in your vision, also the ring, which you have described as perfectly as you could have done if it were in your hand. I felt tired, and went to my room about eleven o'clock and immediately fell asleep, and slept soundly for three hours.' "

Mrs. H. confirms her husband's account. She kept the letters for several years, but they were by accident destroyed. Dr. H. has on four other occasions seen apparitions of living friends which did not coincide with their death, but he never ascertained whether there was any other coincidence or whether they were purely casual.

Assuming, then, that there are apparitions which it seems unreasonable to attribute to anything but a subjective origin, and others, apparently similar, coinciding in a remarkable way with events occurring at a distance from and unknown to the percipient, let us proceed to consider whether the coincidence indicates a real connection. If the coincidental cases were as numerous or nearly as numerous as the non-coincidental, we should answer this question without hesitation; the coincidence would be clearly inexplicable by mere chance. But even on a cursory investigation, it soon becomes clear that this is not the case; the non-coincidental hallucinations far outnumber the coincidental. And though only a small minority of Englishmen have had any such experiences, still the aggregate of hallucinations that occur in any year in these islands must be reckoned by tens of thousands, so that some