in time past, the puzzle is difficult enough. But if the events are
still in the future, perhaps no kind of explanation except a mere
"fluke" can even be suggested. Say that I dream of an event occurring
at a distance, and that I record or act on my dream before it is
corroborated. Suppose, too, that the event is not one which could be
guessed, like the death of an invalid or the result of a race or of an
election. This would be odd enough, but the facts of which I dreamed
must have been present in the minds of living people. Now, if there
is such a thing as "mental telegraphy" or "telepathy," {28} my mind,
in dream, may have "tapped" the minds of the people who knew the
facts. We may not believe in "mental telegraphy," but we can
_imagine_ it as one of the unknown possibilities of nature. Again, if
I dream of an unchronicled event in the past, and if a letter of some
historical person is later discovered which confirms the accuracy of
my dream, we can at least _conceive_ (though we need not believe) that
the intelligence was telegraphed to my dreaming mind from the mind of
a _dead_ actor in, or witness of the historical scene, for the facts
are unknown to living man. But even these wild guesses cannot cover a
dream which correctly reveals events of the future; events necessarily
not known to any finite mind of the living or of the dead, and too
full of detail for an explanation by aid of chance coincidence.

In face of these difficulties mankind has gone on believing in dreams
of all three classes: dreams revealing the unknown present, the
unknown past, and the unknown future. The judicious reasonably set
them all aside as the results of fortuitous coincidence, or revived
recollection, or of the illusions of a false memory, or of imposture,
conscious or unconscious. However, the stories continue to be told,
and our business is with the stories.