herself created, by self-suggestion, her illness, her fright, her
fall and her miscarriage and adapted herself to most of the
circumstances which she had foretold in her secondary state. The
appearance of the rat at the fatal moment is the only thing that
would suggest a precise and disquieting vision of an inevitable
future event. Unfortunately, we are not told that the rat was
perceived by other witnesses than the patient, so that there is
nothing to prove that it also was not imaginary. I have therefore
quoted this inadequate instance only because it represents fairly
well the general aspect and the indecisive value of many similar
cases and enable us to note once and for all the objections which
can be raised and the precautions which we should take before
entering these suspicious and obscure regions.

We now come to an infinitely more significant and less
questionable case related by Dr. Joseph Maxwell, the learned and
very scrupulous author of Les Phenomenes Psychiques, a work which
has been translated into English under the title of Metapsychical
Phenomena. It concerns a vision which was described to him eight
days before the event and which he told to many people before it
was accomplished. A sensitive perceived in a crystal the
following scene: a large steamer, flying a flag of three
horizontal bars, black, white and red, and bearing the name
Leutschland, was sailing in mid-ocean. The boat was suddenly
enveloped in smoke; a great number of sailors, passengers and men
in uniform rushed to the upper deck; and the boat went down.

Eight days afterwards, the newspapers announced the accident to
the Deutschland, whose boiler had burst, obliging the steamboat
to stand to.