addressed: Mrs. E. A. C----, 217
Del. Ave., N. E., Washington, D. C., and with the postmarks,
Washington, D. C., Jan. 15, 7 A. M., 1889, and Washington, N. E. C.
S., Jan. 15, 8 A. M. Some further letters in the postmarks are
illegible.

Now the point is that every detail in this telepathic vision was
correct. Mrs. C---- had actually (as she tells me in a letter dated
March 7, 1889) fallen in this way, at this place, in the dress
described, at 2.41, on January 14. The coincidence can hardly have
been due to chance. If we suppose that the vision preceded the
accident, we shall have an additional marvel, which, however, I do not
think that we need here face. "About 2," in a letter of this kind, may
quite conceivably have meant 2.41.

The _definiteness_ of the details here reproduced, is all, I think,
that we can reasonably desire. But most important, and I fear, most
difficult to obtain, of all the qualities of our ideal telepathic
experiment, is that of _reproducibility_. This is, I think, a
difficulty which inheres in the very nature of the phenomenon itself.
We are mainly concerned here with the powers not of the waking or
empirical, but of the submerged or unconscious self. The transference
of the telepathic message, though it may be helped by conscious
concentration, takes place (as I hold) mainly in strata of our being
which lie below the threshold of ordinary consciousness. It seems as
though the influence of the _percipient's_ conscious self, at any
rate, were merely hurtful to the experiment, so that to get the
percipient at his best we have to catch him in a state of original
innocence which he cannot long maintain. It too often has happened
that so soon as his own curiosity was roused, so soon as he began to
speculate on the process which was going on, and to wonder how he
caught the impression, so soon did the impression cease to travel, and
his unconscious self could send its message upwards no more.

I am disposed to think that for the present it is to hypnotism that we
must look for cases where the telepathic message can be sent
repeatedly and at will. It is in the rare cases of _sommeil a
distance_, or such cases as those of Mrs. Pinhey, Dr. Hericourt, and
Dr. Gley, reported in Vol. II. of _Phantasms of the Living_, that
there has as yet been the nearest approach to that clock-work
regularity and repeatability which is the experimental ideal. It is,
therefore, on the medical profession that I would urge