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Problems vainly studied, and abandoned as insoluble, are decided in dreams, or in the somnambulistic state;
aesthetic works of an elevated order, poems, hymns, symphonies, have been conceived and executed. Is this
done by the superior ME, or by the collaboration of spirits who come to inspire our work? It is probably that
the two factors assist in phenomena of this order. Agassiz, Voltaire, La Fontaine, Bach, Fordini, all composed
important works under these conditions.
We must not pass without mention another form of dreams, which until now has escaped explanation
by science. I refer to premonitory dreams - an ensemble of images and visions bearing on future events of
which the exactitude is later verified. They seem to indicate that the soul has power to penetrate the future, or
that the future has been revealed to it by superior intelligences.
There was the dream of the Duchess of Hamilton, who saw, fifteen days in advance, the death of
Count L----- with the details of an intimate order, which surrounded the event. A similar fact was published in
The Progressive Thinker, of 1st November 1913. A magistrate of Hauser, Mr. Reed, was killed in an
automobile. His ten-year-old son had twice in succession, in a dream, seen this catastrophe in all its details.
Despite his supplications, and those of the wife and mother, Mr. Reed refused to abandon his project, and
found death under the identical circumstances perceived by the child in his dreams.
In the Journal des Débats, May 1904, there is a curious story guaranteed as true. A man disappeared
from his home, and a little dog, devoted to his Mistress, disappeared with the husband. One night she dreamed
the little dog came to her, barking furiously, and after a few moments, scratched at the door to go out. She
followed the animal through various streets and finally saw him disappear in a restaurant. The street, the
house, the locality - were all clear in her memory when she awoke. She spoke to three friends of the matter,
and decided to make a search for the place. She found it, and there was her husband, and with him the little
dog. Innumerable other authentic cases of this kind could be given.
The perceptions of the soul in sleep are of two orders. First the vision of things at a distanceclairvoyance,
lucidity; then comes an ensemble of phenomena known under the name of telepathy, of the
reception and transmission of thoughts and sensations and impulses. In this category are cases of apparitions,
known under the names of phantoms of the living. Official psychology has recorded great numbers of these
cases. They form a continuous chain of facts.
The great astronomer, M. Flammarion, in his book, The Unknown and Psychic Problems, mentions a
series of vision directed to a distance in sleep, resulting in verifying inquests. In the Annals of Psychic Science,
September 1915, page 551, a detailed account of a proven psychic dream is given, which revealed the death of
a man who had disappeared ten years previously, and the finding of his skeleton in the place indicated. In the
same periodical, Professor Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, relates many examples, which prove
the activity of the soul in sleep, and the knowledge it gains of worlds invisible. In all these cases the body
reposes, its organs sleep, but the psychic being continues to be awake-to act. It sees, hears, and communicates,
without the aid of words, with other beings like itself; that is to say, other souls. In a certain manner this
phenomenon is found in each one of us. In sleep, when our ordinary means of communication with the exterior
world are suspended, new outlets open for us, and through them our vision reaches out on intense rays of light.
We see revealed another form of life - the life psychic - which proves to us that there exists for the human
being a mode of perception different from that of the normal senses.
Besides the visions of natural sleep, there is that of provoked clairvoyance. Doctor Maxwell plunged a
psychic, Mme. Aguelana, in magnetic slumber. Dr. Maxwell suggested to her to go to one of his friends, Mr. B
- and see what he was doing. ‘The medium,’ says Dr. Maxwell, ‘to my great surprise, said she saw Mr. B. -
only partly dressed, walking bare-footed on stones. It was then 10:30 P.M. I could see no sense in the
medium’s statement, yet, when I saw my friend the next day, I told him the tale, and he was greatly astonished.
He said, the previous evening, he had not felt well, and a friend had urged him to try to Kneipp cure, and walk
bare-footed of doors. So, partly dressed, he walked up and down some stone steps outside his home.’ Verified
cases of clairvoyance are innumerable; and only those have made no careful investigations in this realm can
deny their reality as facts.
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