An incident of this character might very properly be ranked as a mere coincidence, were it not for the fact that it is one only of a considerable number of well attested acts of vision connected either with the hypnagogic state or with the act of dreaming itself. The comparative rarity of such events lends them a marvelous aspect; yet there is really nothing about them any more wonderful or preternatural than the demonstrated possibility of telegraphic signaling across the sea without the intervention of an electric wire.[67] Under ordinary circumstances a metallic conductor must serve as the avenue of communication between distant stations; but if a sufficiently sensitive piece of apparatus be placed in contact with the water on either side of an arm of the sea, communications may be transmitted from one to the other by a diffusion of impulses through the entire body of water.
In like manner we ordinarily see and hear and feel as a consequence of cerebral excitement occasioned by specific impressions concentrated through the organs of sight and hearing and touch. But it is quite reasonable to believe in the possible existence of a brain so delicately organized as to be capable of reacting to impressions which are too diffuse and too feeble to arouse the ordinary apparatus of sensation. With such a brain it might be possible to experience perception without eye-sight. Evidence furnished by the facts of somnambulism and hypnotism indicates that the receptivity of the brain may become temporarily exalted to a degree which warrants the inference that clairvoyance itself may be thus brought within the capacity of certain peculiarly sensitive organizations. The same extraordinary receptivity occasionally seems to attend the act of dreaming. For example, one of my acquaintances, a lady of a highly wrought nervous temperament, the wife of a distinguished physician in a neighboring State, dreamed one night that a favorite cousin, a beautiful little girl, who lived at a distance of twelve or fifteen miles, was very dangerously ill. She saw the child lying on its mother’s lap, evidently at the point of death, when some one brought a tub of warm water and proceeded to give the patient a bath. This revived the little one so that she recovered. The dream made a very considerable impression upon my friend, by reason of its peculiar character, and because dreaming was for her a very unusual experience. Next morning she rose as usual, but during the forenoon she was startled by the receipt of a message requesting her to come at once to the house of her uncle, as his little daughter had been taken suddenly ill with the croup, and had expired during the preceding night. Hastening to the bereaved household, she found her aunt sitting with the dead child on her lap, precisely as she had appeared in the dream. The little girl had been suddenly attacked during the night, and, as she lay gasping in her mother’s arms, some one advised a warm bath, and brought a tub of water into the room for that purpose. Unfortunately, just as they were hopefully preparing to dip the child into the water, she had ceased to breathe.
