Afterwards, if the unknown overwhelm us utterly, if the darkness
engulf us beyond all hope, there will still be time to go, none
can tell where, to question the deities or the dead.
CHAPTER III. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE
1
Premonition or precognition leads us to still more mysterious
regions, where stands, half merging from an intolerable darkness,
the gravest problem that can thrill mankind, the knowledge of the
future. The latest, the best and the most complete study devoted
to it is, I believe, that recently published by M. Ernest
Bozzano, under the title Des Phenomenes Premonitoires. Availing
himself of excellent earlier work, notably that of Mrs. Sidgwick
and Myers[1] and adding the result of his own researches, the
author collects some thousand cases of precognition, of which he
discusses one hundred and sixty, leaving the great majority of
the others on one side. Not because they are negligible, but
because he does not wish to exceed too flagrantly the normal
limits of a monograph.
[1] Proceedings, Vols. V. and XI.
He begins by carefully eliminating all the episodes which, though
apparently premonitory, may be explained by self-suggestion (as
in the case, for instance, where some one smitten with a disease
still latent seems to foresee this disease and the death which
will be its conclusion), by telepathy (when a sensitive is aware
beforehand of the arrival of a person or a letter), or lastly by
clairvoyance (when a man dreams of a spot where he will find
something which he has mislaid, or an uncommon plant, or an
insect sought for in vain, or of the unknown place which he will
visit at some later date).
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