1886, attempts to lay down the essence of a true presentiment. He says that "it must be spontaneous; it must come at a time when you have no reason to look for it." He explains these conditions by saying that you must not be ill and think you have a presentiment that you will not recover; you must not be away from home and think that some calamity has happened there; you must not know that a friend is in danger and have a presentiment of his death; you must not have reason to suspect a man and have a presentiment that he will cheat you.
In laying down these conditions he justifies himself by saying that they are necessary, "because in all these instances there is a simple natural cause for fear or uneasiness." I cannot admit that all these conditions are exact. The person may indeed be sick, yet the illness may be slight, and its seat removed from any fatal possibility; and if in opposition to every indication he have a foreboding that he will not recover, which persists in defiance of reason, and does or does not end in death, it has the mental and emotional characteristics of a presentiment. Of course if a person have yellow fever, and a presentiment of his death, it is in harmony with popular belief; though, according to the statistics of the last epidemic in Jacksonville, the proportion of deaths is but one to ten cases, and the rational expectation would be that an ordinary person attacked had nine chances in ten for recovery. Again, if a person leaves his family in perfect health, knowing no cause of danger either to them or to his property, and has a presentiment impelling him to go back, and on arriving finds his worst fears realized, although his peculiar state of mind arose during an absence from home, it has the characteristics of a presentiment, both in its origin and the relation of time and events.
