remember seeing such real-seeming figures in waking dreams, will, for the most part, remember that no fright was caused, that the appearance seemed natural, that they, perhaps, addressed, or seemed to address, it. And there was nothing frightful in the aspect of Lord Brougham's friend; yet he tells us, "How I got out of the bath, I know not; but, on recovering my senses, I found myself sprawling on the floor." "This vision produced such a shock," etc.

The probability, then, against a natural dream between sleeping and waking, being of this extraordinary and imposingly real character, must properly be further multiplied into the product of probabilities against the appearance and coincidence being fortuitous, making a total probability against the fortuitousness of the appearance which is something immense, and amounting to a virtual certainty that it could not have been mere chance.

Unless the whole question at issue, that of prolonged existence after "death" and occasional influence of the "dead" upon the living, be begged, by the assumption that there is no such continued existence or influence, some other explanation than a fortuitous coincidence must be sought for the above event. I have already given some considerations to show that we have no right to assume that the thinking self is a mere result of the mechanical action of the material brain, and ceases to exist when the brain is dissolved. Neither have we any right to assume that thought or mind, if it can continue to exist when disembodied, can find no other modes of expressing itself, or influencing others, than those we now possess, through the organs of the body; though we must admit that we have. no means of knowing what, in that condition, its means of expression, or of influence upon others, may or may not be. Certain it is, meanwhile, that Lord Brougham's vision is far from being the only well-authenticated instance of the mind of a deceased person exercising an influence, by a visual (or seemingly visual) appearance,

upon the minds of survivors,' though it is, perhaps, the only one we possess in a sufficiently careful and methodical record.

But, if we accept the hypothesis that the impression upon Lord Brougham's mind and vision was produced by an act of will on the part of his departing or already "departed" friend (and no other hypothesis is possible save that of accidental coincidence, already shown to be untenable), there is no escape from the conclusion above stated, that the intelligent-volition of the friend was in full and even abnormal force at or after the moment of his corporeal death.

The dying companion of Lord Brougham's youth may, perhaps, have had, in his "last" moments, the experience often recorded of drowning men who have been resuscitated, of going over, in rapid mental review, the whole course of his life. The solemn promise made to his early friend would recur in this review, as involving a duty still unfulfilled. How the thinking self, in the act, or shortly after the act, of leaving its bodily home, could find the means of performing that duty, by producing the impression upon that other mind, which Lord Brougham has recorded, and which fulfilled that early promise, must, in the present state of our knowledge, remain a mystery.

On the whole, then, while it is certain that the Ich or very self of a person who has died, no longer acts through the body which is dead, it cannot be proven from this that the Ich itself is dead, or incapable of any further action. On the contrary, the duality of mind brought out by sleep as well as by certain phenomena of memory and

The other instance already referred to, given by Lord Erskine, is that of his meeting in the streets of Edinburgh, in broad daylight, the appearance of an old family-servant, who had, without his knowledge, and during his absence, died some weeks before. He says he conversed with the figure without for a moment suspecting it was not a man of flesh and blood. For this anecdote I refer the reader to his Memoirs. The figure gave Lord Erskine details of a family event which had occurred also without his knowledge and during his absence, which he afterwards found to be correct. The appearance can thus hardly be set down to subjective hallucination.

unconscious cerebration, and by those of insanity—seems to indicate that as the Ich (intelligent-volition) continues to be self-conscious, and acts in its ordinary way with its usual force, during sleep, that state of temporary torpidity or partial torpidity of the memory and imagination, which these faculties undergo in common with the physical frame, and also during some forms of brain disease, -it must therefore possess a life of its own independent of the physical life, or of the brain and its mechanical action and powers. This independence of the physical life, this higher and continuing life of the Ich, which was thus already probable on general grounds, may be said to be positively proven by such a crucial experiment as that recorded in Lord Brougham's diary, proven, that is, so far as the continuance of this higher life, with a novel development of psychic force, or of its power of affecting other minds, for some time after the cessation of the physical life. As to how long this continued life may last, in what state or with what faculties, we are not in a position to decide from merely physical considerations, or from the narrative just quoted. But we cannot but remark, that a vast expansion of the psychical influence, an expansion setting at defiance the obstacles of space and external separation, accompanied the physical death of the friend of Lord Brougham.

The modes and powers of this independent life of the Ich, when no longer in communication with the world through the body, the brain, and the senses, must necessarily be such as we, under the limitations of our bodies, would be unable to conceive of. The Ich itself is inappreciable by the senses if disembodied, it might perhaps perceive and appreciate the same objects as "living" men do; but

For it can hardly be supposed that the Ich of Mr. G could possess this new faculty of presenting itself to the mind of a far-distant friend while still inhabiting the moribund body in India. It is a power unknown to "life" in this world, save in some doubtful cases of "trance." In the scarcely less important case from his own experience, given us by Lord Erskine, the apparition of the old servant occurred some weeks after the latter's death.

it would perceive and appreciate them in a different way, and under different relations. On the supposition of its power to outlive the body, we may conceive it as possible for a world of intelligent wills without "senses to coexist with the world of "living" men side by side, as it were, without either world being conscious of the other's presence.

As says Carlyle ("French Revolution "), "The very Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic teaches) are, in strict language, made by these Outward Senses of ours." Thus, too, Kant ("Critik der reinen Vernunft "): "Sensuous objects cannot be known, except such as they appear to us, never such as they are in themselves." The absolute or objective qualities of physical objects cannot be known to us, but only their relative or subjective qualities; that is, the impression they make upon our senses. Thus the "hardness" of an object is its resistance to our effort, its impression upon our touch. Objects cannot be said to possess intrinsically and independently the qualities of length, breadth, and thickness, sweetness, sourness, smell, color, etc. All these qualities are impressions made upon. the several senses; or rather, are compounded, so to speak, of an intrinsic quality in the object, of what real nature we know not, and of the effect produced upon the human sense by that quality: the compound or relative quality cannot subsist, therefore, without the intrinsic quality in the object being complemented by the human sense on which that quality produces those effects.

The various objects in Nature may affect quite otherwise intelligences who do not possess the bodily senses, or who are not limited by them. "Length" and "distance," for example, are conceptions dependent upon the reach of the human arm or fingers, the repeated tread of the human foot, to make them intelligible. The longest distances, between the most remote places, are, to our minds, merely multiples of our walks, of our day's journeys. Can "distance," then, physical distance, be said to exist between

two disembodied minds who no longer think through or by the body? It is an inquiry which cannot be pursued in the present state of our knowledge; but enough has been said to indicate the possibility that between the mind of Lord Brougham in the species of trance into which he had fallen, and which momentarily separated mind from body-and the mind of his friend in its disembodied state, physical distance might constitute no separation; that it might indeed be to them a non-entity; that the thought, the inquiry, the compact, that was in both minds alike, brought them into what may be termed mental contact, -a contact upon which physical "distance," such as that between India and Sweden, could have no effect; as it could not, for them, exist.