To explain such dreams as these some introduce a supernatural element, claiming that they are sent by God to warn his people; others adopt the hypothesis now known as telepathy; while still others content themselves with vague references to "clairvoyance."
Close investigation of a large number of alleged premonitions of death, revelations of current and past facts, and predictions of the future has afforded me no ground for a scientific presumption either of supernatural interference, of telepathy, or of clairvoyance. That is, authentic cases can be more reasonably explained without than with any of these assumptions.
The English Society of Psychical Research was founded in 1882, and has pursued its investigations since that time. The names of its president, vice-presidents, corresponding members, and council include men justly distinguished in various fields of scientific investigation, and some occupying high religious positions; the list of members is also imposing. The investigations, as usual in such cases, have been left to a few members whose tastes and opportunities are favorable, and many of the most learned and conservative members of the body appear, from the reports of all the proceedings, to have taken no active part in the work. President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University, formerly Professor of Psychology and Pedagogics in Johns Hopkins University, who is one of the corresponding members, regrets, in an elaborate review of the experiments and their results, the absence from the investigations of the most celebrated alienists. Certain active members, by the frequency of their contributions, have practically, in the public mind, committed the Society to telepathy, or the ability of one mind to impress, or to be impressed by, another mind otherwise than by means of
