6 4 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Another of Miss X 's visions * is almost precisely similar to 



that of the sea and the mouse, save that it is still more difficult to 

 suppose that she had any conscious knowledge of that which was 

 revived in the crystal : " It was suggested to me, one day last Sep- 

 tember, that I should look into the crystal with the intention of 

 seeing words, which had at that time formed no part of my ex- 

 perience. I was immediately rewarded by the sight of what was 

 obviously a newspaper announcement in the type familiar to all 

 who read the first column of the Times. It reported the death of 

 a lady, at one time a very frequent visitor in my circle and very 

 intimate with some of my nearest friends, an announcement, 

 therefore, which, had I consciously seen it, would have interested 

 me considerably. I related my vision at breakfast, quoting name, 

 date, place, and an allusion to 'a long period of suffering ' borne 

 by the deceased lady, and added that I was sure that I had not 

 heard any report of her illness, or even, for some months, any 

 mention of her likely to suggest such an hallucination. I was, 

 however, aware that I had the day before taken up the first sheet 

 of the Times, but was interrupted before I had consciously read 

 any announcement of death. Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, with whom 

 I was staying, immediately sought for the paper, where we dis- 

 covered the paragraph almost exactly as I had seen it." If Miss 

 X had consciously seen this notice, how came she to for- 

 get it ? 



Cases of this kind strongly suggest, I think, what Mr. Gurney 

 calls "an underground psychosis," but they do not demonstrate 

 its existence ; and, unfortunately, most of the cases which would 

 seem to require the assumption of subconscious states also require 

 the still more revolutionary assumption of such powers as telep- 

 athy and clairvoyance, which lie outside my present scheme of 

 topics. 



All these forms of hallucination are known as sensory autom- 

 atism, and in my last paper I sketched the conception which un- 

 derlies the term. I there also alluded to ideal automatism, and 

 with a few words upon that point I must let the subject go. 



Our thought trains usually belong to well-defined types, are 

 of a certain average grade of development, and behave in pretty 

 definite ways. For example, they are for the most part sub- 

 servient to our will, and come and go at our bidding. But some- 

 times the orderly process of thought is broken up ; new classes 

 of ideas obtrude themselves, familiar types rise to a higher level 

 without becoming full-fledged hallucinations, and, last but not 

 least, the will finds itself unable to control them. Such disorders 

 of ideation are often termed ideal automatism. As a very large 



* Op. tit., p. 508. 



