ve the _absence_
(italics) of _the association of ideas_. Certainly we cannot; but ideas in
endless millions are being associated all day long. A hundred thousand
different, unnoticed associations may bring Jones to my mind, or Brown.
But I don't therefore see Brown, or Jones, who is not there. Still less do
I see Dr. Parish, or Nebuchadnezzar, or a monkey, or a salmon, or a golf
ball, or Arthur's Seat (all of which may be brought to my mind by
association of ideas), when they are not present.

Suppose, then, that once in my life I see the absent Jones, who dies in
that hour (or within twelve hours). I am puzzled. Why did Association
choose that day, of all days in my life, for her solitary freak? And,
if this choice of freaks by Association occurs among other people, say two
hundred times more often than chance allows, the freak begins to suggest
that it may have a cause.

Not even the circumstance cited by Herr Parish, that a drowsy tailor,
'sewing on in a dream,' poor fellow, saw a client in his shop while the
client was dying, solves the problem. The tailor is not said even once to
have seen a customer who was _not_ dying; yet he writes, 'I was accustomed
to work all night frequently.' The tailor thinks he was asleep, because he
had been making irregular stitches, and perhaps he was. But, out of
all his vigils and all his customers, association only formed _one_
hallucination, and that was of a dying client whom he supposed to be
perfectly well. Why on earth is association so fond of dying people--
granting the statistics, which are 'another story'? The explanation
explains nothing. Herr Parish only moves the difficulty back a step, and,
as we cannot live without association of ideas, they are taken for granted
by our side. Association of ideas does not cause hallucinations, as Mrs.
Sidgwick remarks, though it may determine their contents.

The difficult theme of coincidental collective hallucinations, as when two
or more people at once have, or profess to have, the same false perception
of a person who is really absent and dying, is next disposed of by Herr
Parish. The same _points de repere_, the same sound, or flicker of light,
or arrangement of shadow, may beget the same or a similar false perception
in two or more people at once. Thus two girls, in different rooms, are
looking out on different parts of the hall in their house. 'Both heard, at
the same time, an [objective?] noise' (p. 313). Then, says Herr Pari