idental,' even
when external circumstances have made that very hallucination a probable
occurrence by producing 'tension of the corresponding nerve element
groups.' That is to say, a person is in a condition--a nervous condition--
likely, _a priori_, to beget an hallucination. An hallucination _is_
begotten, quite naturally; and so, if it happens to coincide with an
event, the coincidence should not count--it is purely fortuitous.[8]

Here is an example. A lady, facing an old sideboard, saw a friend, with no
coat on, and in a waistcoat with a back of shiny material. Within an hour
she was taken to where her friend lay dying, without a coat, and in a
waistcoat with a shiny back.[9] Here is the scientific explanation of Herr
Parish: 'The shimmer of a reflecting surface [the sideboard?] formed the
occasion for the hallucinatory emergence of a subconsciously perceived
_shiny black waistcoat_ [quotation incorrect, of course], and an
individual subconsciously associated with that impression.[10] I ask any
lady whether she, consciously or subconsciously, associates the men she
knows with the backs of their waistcoats. Herr Parish's would be a
brilliantly satisfactory explanation if it were only true to the printed
words that lay under his eyes when he wrote. There was no 'shiny black
waistcoat' in the case, but a waistcoat with a shiny _back_. Gentlemen,
and especially old gentlemen who go about in bath-chairs (like the man in
this story), don't habitually take off their coats and show the backs of
their waistcoats to ladies of nineteen in England. And, if Herr Parish had
cared to read his case, he would have found it expressly stated that the
lady 'had never seen the man without his coat' (and so could not associate
him with an impression of a shiny back to his waistcoat) till _after_ the
hallucination, when she saw him coatless on his death-bed. In this
instance Herr Parish had an hallucinatory memory, all wrong, of the page
under his eyes. The case is got rid of, then, by aid of the 'fanciful
addenda,' to which Herr Parish justly objects. He first gives the facts
incorrectly, and then explains an occurrence which, as reported by him,
did not occur, and was not asserted to occur.

I confess that, if Herr Parish's version were as correct as it is
essentially inaccurate, his explanation would leave me doubtful. For the
circumstances were that the old gentleman of the story lunched daily with
the young lady's mother. Suppose th