appearing in type. Startled by this,
she looks at the 'Times' of the previous day for verification, and
there among the deaths are the identical words which she has seen. On
the same page of the Times are other items which she remembers reading
the day before; and the only explanation seems to be that her eyes then
inattentively observed, so to speak, the death-item, which forthwith
fell into a special corner of her memory, and came out as a visual
hallucination when the peculiar modification of consciousness induced
by the crystal-gazing set in.

Passing from papers based on observation to papers based on narrative,
we have a number of ghost stories, etc., sifted by Mrs. Sidgwick and
discussed by Messrs. Myers and Podmore. They form the best ghost
literature I know of from the point of view of emotional interest. As
to the conclusions drawn, Mrs. Sidgwick is rigorously non-committal,
while Mr. Myers and Mr. Podmore show themselves respectively hospitable
and inhospitable to the notion that such stories have a basis of
objectivity dependent on the continued existence of the dead.

I must close my gossip about the Proceedings by naming what, after all,
seems to me the most important part of its contents. This is the long
series of articles by Mr. Myers on what he now calls the 'subliminal
self,' or what one might designate as ultra-marginal consciousness.
The result of Myers's learned and ingenious studies in hypnotism,
hallucinations, automatic writing, mediumship, and the whole series of
allied phenomena is a conviction which he expresses in the following
terms:--

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"Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more
extensive than he knows,--an individuality which can never express
itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The self
manifests itself through the organism; but there is always some part of
the self unmanifested, and always, as it seems, some power of organic
expression in abeyance or reserve."

The ordinary consciousness Mr. Myers likens to the visible part of the
solar spectrum; the total consciousness is like that spectrum prolonged
by the inclusion of the ultra-red and ultra-violet rays. In the
psychic spectrum the 'ultra' parts may embrace a far wider range, both
of physiological and of psychical activity, than is open to our
ordinary consciousness and memory. At the lower end we have the
_physiological_ extension, mind-cures, 'stigmatization' of ecstatic