accounts are given of what people are doing elsewhere; the contents of
sealed letters are read; the symptoms of disease are diagnosed and
suitable remedies sometimes prescribed; and so on. Distance appears to
make no difference. In many cases time also does not count, and
historical events of long ago, with the details of which the seer had no
acquaintance, are accurately described in all their minutiæ, which have
afterwards been corroborated by contemporary documents. Nor are cases
wanting in which events still future have been correctly predicted, as,
for example, in Cazotte's celebrated prediction of the French
Revolution, and of the fate that awaited each member of a large
dinner-party when it should occur--though this was a spontaneous case,
and not under hypnotism, which perhaps gives it the greater value.

The same powers are shown in spontaneous cases also, of which my own
experiences related in a previous chapter may serve as a small example;
but as there are many books exclusively devoted to the subject I need
not go into further details here. If the reader be curious for further
information, I would recommend him to read Gregory's "Letters on Animal
Magnetism." It was published some fifty years ago, and, for all I know,
may be out of print, but if the reader can procure it, he will find that
it is a book to be relied upon, the work of a Professor of Chemistry in
the University of Edinburgh, who investigated the matter calmly with a
thoroughly trained scientific mind. But what I want the reader to lay
hold of is the fact, that whether the action occur spontaneously or be
induced by experimental means, these powers actually exist in us, and
therefore in reckoning up the faculties at our disposal they must not be
omitted.

In our more usual condition however, these faculties are subordinate to
those which put us in touch with the every-day world, and I cannot help