He completes his fallacy by
saying, "It is not much more wonderful than that a person whom we had
no reason to expect should appear to us at the very moment we had been
thinking or speaking of him". But Lord Brougham had _not_ been
speaking or thinking of G---; "there had been nothing to call him to
my recollection," he says. To give his logic any value, he should
constantly when (as far as he knew) awake, have had dreams that
"shocked" him. Then _one_ coincidence would have had no assignable
cause save ordinary accident.
If Lord Brougham fabled in 1799 or in 1862, he did so to make a
"sensation". And then he tried to undo it by arguing that his
experience was a thoroughly commonplace affair.
We now give a very old story, "The Dying Mother". If the reader will
compare it with Mr. Cleave's case, "An Astral Body," in this chapter,
he will be struck by the resemblance. Mr. Cleave and Mrs. Goffe were
both in a trance. Both wished to see persons at a distance. Both
saw, and each was seen, Mrs. Goffe by her children's nurse; Mr. Cleave
by the person whom he wished to see, but _not_ by a small boy also
present.
Pages:
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138