These, it is true, are rarer than the
first, but still they include a certain number that are well
authenticated. It remains to be seen how far they imply a
knowledge of the future.
Here, for instance, is a traveler who, arriving at night in a
small unknown town and walking along the ill-lighted dock in the
direction of an hotel of which he roughly knows the position, at
a given moment tech an irresistible impulse to turn and go the
other way. He instantly obeys, though his reason protests and
"berates him for a fool" in taking a roundabout way to his
destination. The next day he discovers that, if he had gone a few
feet farther, he would certainly have slipped into the river;
and, as he was but a feeble swimmer, he would just as certainly,
being alone and unaided in the extreme darkness, have been
drowned.[1]
[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 422.
But is this a prevision of an event? No, for no event is to take
place. There is simply an abnormal perception of the proximity of
some unknown water and consequently of an imminent danger, an
unexplained but fairly frequent subliminal sensitiveness. In a
word, the problem of the future is not raised in this case, nor
in any of the numerous cases that resemble it.
Here is another which evidently belongs to the same class, though
at first sight it seems to postulate the preexistence of a fatal
event and a vision of the future corresponding exactly with a
vision of the past.
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