They confine themselves--I speak of the genuine mediums--to bringing
to light and revealing to us our unconscious and personal intuition
of an event that is hanging over us. But, when they venture to predict
a general event, such as the result of a war, an epidemic, an
earthquake, which does not interest ourselves exclusively or which is
too remote to come within the somewhat limited scope of our intuition,
they almost invariably deceive themselves and us.

It is very difficult to fathom the nature of this intuition. Does it
relate to events partly or wholly realized, but still in a latent
state and perceived before the knowledge of them reaches us through
the normal channels of the mind or brain? Does our ever-watchful
instinct of self-preservation notice causes or traces which escape our
ever-inattentive and slumbering reason? Are we to believe in a sort of
autosuggestion that induces us to realize things which we have been
foretold or of which we have had presentiments? This is not the place
to examine so complex a problem, which brings us into contact with
all the mysteries of subconsciousness and the preexistence of the
future.

There remains another point to which it is well to draw attention in
order to avoid misunderstanding and disappointment. Experience shows
us that the medium perceives the person in question quite clearly, in
his present and usual state, but not necessarily in the exact
accidental state of the moment. She will tell you, for instance, that
she sees him ailing slightly, lying in a deck-chair in a garden of
such and such a kind, surrounded by certain flowers and petting a dog
of a certain size and breed. On enquiring, you will find that all
these details are strictly correct, with one exception, that at that
precise moment this person, who ordinarily spends his time in the