As regards Case 201, though quite in the dark as to Mr. Peirce’s principle of selection, I cannot quite believe that he would pitch on this particular informant in connection with this particular suspicion. If he has really done so, I shall not insult a lady who is my esteemed friend by making a syllable of reply. But I am fain to hope that by No. 201 he again means No. 249, in speaking of which in another place he has mentioned “ the festivities of the season” as a possible element in the case. Not that the idea would be any less absurd in connection with this percipient. Even on Christmas-day, men of business in England are not usually intoxicated at 4 o’clock in the afternoon; and the suspicion seems specially extravagant in the case of an elderly and respected member of the Society of Friends—“a typical Quaker,” as Mr. Podmore describes him in a letter which lies before me. Is it likely, moreover, that a man in his position, if he had really been the worse for liquor, would have cared to revive the recollection of the fact in his friends’ minds, by calling them to bear witness to the occurrence of a hallucination which took place while he was in that state?
Mr. Peirce seems to have taken a rather unfair advantage of the fact that, though much time has been spent in forming a judgment as to witnesses’ characters by personal interviews, and often by prolonged correspondence, I have expressly avoided giving the results in the shape of definite testimonials.
13th. Case 214. There is not a word in the account about “constant delirium,” or about any delirium at all. Like the cancer in a former case, it is a contribution of Mr. Peirce’s. And what authority has he for regarding illness, caused by shock, as likely to produce a single perfectly distinct and isolated “retrospective hallucination”?
14th. This objection seems to me quite fallacious. The fact of experiencing a hallucination of the senses does not make a person an expert in regard to such phenomena, any more than having an illness would make him an expert in disease. If, in the course of long study of the subject, including the formation of a large collection of cases of purely subjective hallucination, I have found no evidence that affectionate thoughts directed to a person, even though that person has been “ailing for years,” as in Case 195, have the power of evoking a distinct visual impression representing that person and another, I am justified in not inventing the hypothesis for this particular case. Nor even if I did invent it, could the coincidence do otherwise than enormously detract from its plausibility.
15th. Mr. Peirce’s axiom seems to me decidedly too sweeping. As to the hypothesis of lying, I must hold that our mode of conducting the investigation reduces the scope of its possible application to an extremely small proportion—I do not myself believe it to be applicable to a single one—of our cases. Each case must be judged on its merits, with the aid of all the knowledge attainable of the witness’s character.
The central fact in Case 173 is an extremely simple one, and there is no attempt at adornment. The account of Case 174 may, to the best of our judgment, be relied on. The absence of any personal relation between the person who died and the percipient makes the narrative a particularly unlikely one to have been consciously invented. In Case 184—also, I believe, quite reliable—we have a second person’s testimony to the percipient’s depression, and his anxiety about the child, though he did not mention the cause before the news of the death arrived. In Case 214 we are told that the percipient was clear-headed and truthful, and never varied in her statement.
I do not quite understand Mr. Peirce’s suggestion that some of the cases may be explained by “the well-known sensation of having undergone a present experience on some previous occasion.” Does he mean that the witness had a sensory hallucination representing the deceased person on some occasion subsequent to the death, accompanied by the delusion of having had it before? But this would involve a double improbability. The supposed delusion is not of the vague sort, unlocalized in time, and often in space, which is the common form of the “well-known sensation” referred to, but a very distinct picture of an experience belonging to a particular hour and a particular place. And, stranger still, the supposed real sensory hallucination, which actually does belong to a particular place and time, is clean forgotten—vanishes from the mind—its place being wholly usurped by the retrospective delusion to which it is supposed to give birth.
16th. Case 27. As Mr. Peirce gives no clue to the “inaccuracy of more or less importance” which he detects in this case, and as careful scrutiny fails to reveal any, I can make no reply with regard to it. Is it, perchance, that while the percipient says “Every feature of the face and form of my old friend X,” his wife, to whom he immediately mentioned his experience, merely says “X’s face”?
Case 180. This case is not included in my list, and I presume that Mr. Peirce has included it in his through rough inadvertence. As he has mentioned it, however, I may quote my comment on it. “It seems practically beyond doubt,” as will be admitted, I think, on a perusal of the account, “that at the time that the news arrived, Mr. C., as well as his wife, fixed the date of the dream [more correctly ‘Borderland’ hallucination] as Monday, the 19th; and the fact that in his letter to us, written more than three years afterwards without reference to documents, he says ‘about the 25th,’ is therefore unimportant.”
Case 182. Mr. Peirce says that the percipient “is positive that her vision took place at half-past ten; and, as no bell is rung at that time, this positive precision is already suspicious.” The reader will be surprised to learn that Mr. Peirce is the sole authority for the suspicious circumstance. There is not a word as to the hour of the vision in the percipient’s account; and in the passage quoted from her letter to her father, the only indication of time is in the words, “in the night, or rather morning.”
The percipient says that she mentioned her experience to “two or three passengers on board, who made a note of it.” Afterwards she gives the names of four persons whom she told “next day,” but adds nothing there about a note. Mr. Peirce’s version of these statements is: “She testifies positively that she mentioned the occurrence the next morning to four persons, who all severally took written notes of it.” (I am forced to notice these frequent inaccuracies in his versions of the facts, as they would, of course, be extremely misleading to any one who did not take the pains to study the original cases.) “Two of these persons,” Mr. Peirce adds, “now profess to know nothing whatever about the matter.” Even this is not quite accurate, as “the matter” was not mentioned by me to one of these two persons; he was merely asked generally if he remembered any singular announcement made by Miss J. during the voyage. I have, however, now received the independent recollections of one of the persons told, to whom I was unable to apply last year, as he was travelling and his address could not be ascertained. He writes as follows:—
June 1, 1887.
It was some years [four] ago that the voyage referred to in your note took place; but I distinctly remember that one morning during that voyage, Miss K. J. told me that during the previous night she had dreamed that a lady friend of hers was dead, or (for I cannot now remember which) that this friend had appeared to her on that night and announced her death.2
A short time after arriving at the Cape (about the time that would be required for the transmission of a letter), Miss J. informed me that she had heard that her friend had died on the identical night of the dream or supposed appearance.
In