My first introduction to Scotland was when I delivered the course of lectures in Edinburgh which led to the publication of my first book, the “Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.”  The following years I gave a second course of lectures in Edinburgh, but the friends who had kindly entertained me on the former occasion had in the meanwhile gone to live elsewhere.  However, a certain Mr. S., whose acquaintance I had made on my previous visit, invited me to stay with him for a day or two while I could look round for other accommodation, though, as it turned out, I remained at his house during the whole month I was in Edinburgh.  I had, however, never seen his house, which was on the opposite side of the town to where I had stayed before.  I arrived there on a Tuesday, and Mr. S. and his family at once met me with the question: 

“What were you thinking of at ten o’clock on Sunday evening?”

I could not immediately recall this, and also wanted to know the reason of their question.

“We have something curious to tell you,” they replied, “but first try to remember what you were thinking of at ten o’clock on Sunday evening—­were you thinking about us?”

Then I recollected that about that time I was saying my usual prayers before going to bed and had asked that, if I could stay only a day or two with Mr. S., I should be directed to a suitable place for the remainder of the time.

“That explains it,” they replied; and then they went on to tell me that at the hour in question Mr. S. and his son, a young man of about twenty, had entered their dining-room together and seen me standing leaning against the mantel-shelf.  They were both hard-headed Scotchmen engaged in business in Edinburgh, and certainly not the sort of people to conjure up fanciful imaginings, nor is it likely that the same fancy should have occurred to both of them; and therefore I can only suppose that they actually saw what they said they did.  Now I myself was in London at the time of this appearance in Edinburgh, of which I had no consciousness whatever; at the same time the fact of my being seen in Edinburgh exactly at the time when my thought, in prayer, was centred upon Mr. S.’s house (which I had not then seen) is a coincidence suggesting that in some way my Thought had made itself visible there in the image of my external personality.

In this case, as I have said, I was not conscious of my psychic visit to Edinburgh, but I will now relate a converse instance, which occurred in connection with my first visit there.  At that time I had never been in Scotland, and so far as I knew was never likely to go there.  I was wide awake, writing in my study at Norwood, where I then lived, when I suddenly found myself in a place totally unknown to me, where stood the ruins of an ancient abbey, part of which, however, was still roofed over and used as a place of worship.  I felt much interested, and among other things I noted a Latin inscription