of the dying person is so potently exercised on some particular living person, as to cause the recipient to project a figure of the other upon the air.  That power of visualization is not a very uncommon one; indeed, we all possess it more or less; we can all remember what we believe we have seen in our dreams, and we remember the figures of our dreams as optical images, though they have been purely mental conceptions, translated into the terms of actual sight.  The impression of a dream-figure, indeed, appears to us to be as much the impression of an image received upon the retina of the eye, as our impressions of images actually so received.  The whole thing is strange, of course, but not stranger than wireless telegraphy.  It may be that the conditions of telepathy may some day be scientifically defined; and in that case it will probably make a clear and coherent connection between a number of phenomena which we do not connect together, just as the discovery of electricity connected together phenomena which all had observed, like the adhering of substances to charged amber, as well as the lightning-flash which breaks from the thunder-cloud.  No one in former days traced any connection between these two phenomena, but we now know that they are only two manifestations of the same force.  In the same way we may find that phenomena of which we are all conscious, but of which we do not know the reason, may prove to be manifestations of some central telepathic force—­such phenomena, I mean, as the bravery of armies in action, or the excitement which may seize upon a large gathering of men.

We ought, I think, to admire and praise the patient work of the Psychical Society,—­though is common enough to hear quite sensible people deride it,—­because it is an attempt to treat a subject scientifically.  What we have every right to deride is the dabbling in spiritualistic things by credulous and feeble-minded persons.  These practices open to our view one of the most lamentable and deplorable provinces of the human mind, its power of convincing itself of anything which it desires to believe, its debility, its childishness.  If the professions of so-called mediums were true, why cannot they exhibit their powers in some open and incontestable way, not surrounding themselves with all the conditions of darkness and excitability, in which the human power of self-delusion finds its richest field?

A friend of mine told me the other day what he evidently felt to be an extremely impressive story about a dignitary of the Church.  This clergyman was overcome one day by an intense mental conviction that he was wanted at Bristol.  He accordingly went there by train, wandered about aimlessly, and finally put up at a hotel for the night.  In the morning he found a friend in the coffee-room, to whom he confided the cause of his presence in Bristol, and announced his intention of going away by the next train.  The friend then told him that an Australian was dying in the hotel,