rarely see the dead body or skeleton of a cat. We can only suppose that the unconscious clairvoyance, which is of essentially the same kind whether in man or beast, calls forth presentiments of different degrees of definiteness, so that the cat is driven to withdraw herself through a mere instinct without knowing why she does so, while in man a definite perception is awakened of the fact that he is about to die. Not only do people have presentiments concerning their own death, but there are many instances on record in which they have become aware of that of those near and dear to them, the dying person having appeared in a dream to friend or wife or husband. Stories to this effect prevail among all nations, and unquestionably contain much truth. Closely connected with this is the power of second sight, which existed formerly in Scotland, and still does so in the Danish islands. This power enables certain people without any ecstasy, but simply through their keener perception, to foresee coming events, or to tell what is going on in foreign countries on matters in which they are deeply interested, such as deaths, battles, conflagrations (Swedenborg foretold the burning of Stockholm), the arrival or the doings of friends who are at a distance. With many persons this clairvoyance is confined to a knowledge of the death of their acquaintances or fellow-townspeople. There have been a great many instances of such death-prophetesses, and, what is most important, some cases have been verified in courts of law. I may say, in passing, that this power of second sight is found in persons who are in ecstatic states, in the spontaneous or artificially induced somnambulism of the higher kinds of waking dreams, as well as in lucid moments before death. These prophetic glimpses, by which the clairvoyance of the unconscious reveals itself to consciousness, {126} are commonly obscure because in the brain they must assume a form perceptible by the senses, whereas the unconscious idea can have nothing to do with any form of sensual impression: it is for this reason that humours, dreams, and the hallucinations of sick persons can so easily have a false signification attached to them. The chances of error and self-deception that arise from this source, the ease with which people may be deceived intentionally, and the mischief which, as a general rule, attends a knowledge of the future, these considerations place beyond all doubt the practical unwisdom of attempts to arrive at certainty concerning the future. This, however, cannot affect the weight which in theory should be attached to phenomena of this kind, and must not prevent us from recognising the positive existence of the clairvoyance whose existence I am maintaining, though it is often hidden under a chaos of madness and imposture.