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It is true that this explanation does not explain much; but the
others are just as ineffectual and are open to the same
objections. These objections are many and various; and it is
easier to raise them than to reply to them. For instance, we can
ask ourselves why the subconsciousness or the spirits, seeing
that they read the future and are able to announce an impending
calamity, hardly ever give us the one useful and definite
indication that would allow us to avoid it. What can be the
childish or mysterious reason of this strange reticence? In many
cases it is almost criminal; for instance, in a case related by
Professor Hyslop[1] we see the foreboding of the greatest
misfortune that can befall a mother germinating, growing, sending
out shoots, developing, like some gluttonous and deadly plant, to
stop short on the verge of the last warning, the one detail,
insignificant in itself but indispensable, which would have saved
the child. It is the case of a woman who begins by experiencing a
vague but powerful impression that a grievous "burden" was going
to fall upon her family. Next month, this premonitory feeling
repeats itself very frequently, becomes more intense and ends by
concentrating itself upon the poor woman's little daughter. Each
time that she is planning something for the child's future, she
hears a voice saying:
"She'll never need it.
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