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XIV

PRESCIENCE

LIMITED amount of prescience, or power

to read the future, is a property of all human personalities. God foreknows all things, but forecompels nothing. Man is the created copy. God absolutely foreknows what is to be. Ordinary human beings relatively know and lay their plans accordingly. But in the case of a selected few, the future at times reveals itself with vividness and accuracy, sometimes in the waking, sometimes in the sleeping state.

The subliminal self scans the page of coming events, which do more than cast shadows before. No student of abnormal psychology will gainsay the existence of this power, which manifests itself through various channels.

A friend of the author's, who on occasion is given to automatic writing, wrote two years ago that she saw President Huerta of Mexico imprisoned in a room where he lay dying after a knife-cut inflicted neither by himself nor by an

enemy. Such seems to be the case at the present writing (January 10, 1916) after a serious operation. (The forecast has since been realized in the Mexican's death.)

A niece of the Quaker poet possesses this gift to a remarkable degree. In the spring of 1913, at the writer's home, where she was calling, she told a gentleman whose affairs were absolutely unknown to her as well as to every one presentin fact, a perfect stranger to us all-that he was endeavoring to make some change in his business that would be of great advantage to his firm, but that he was up against a great iron door. She assured him that some one would come forward and show him how to open the door and pass through. "I see you on a steamer," she continued; "you will sail early in June. I see you abroad in a great city, in the midst of an important gathering. It is Berlin." At this the gentleman interrupted the conversation, took me out into the hall, and asked me who the woman "I do not want her to reveal any more,' he said, "for I do not know who these people are. But we are trying to effect a merger in our business, the iron door that blocks our way is the United States government, and in my pocket are tickets for Berlin. I sail the first week in June." Subsequently a person did come forward who pointed a way out of the difficulty.

was.

Miss W., who has made at my office a number of predictions equally significant, all which have come true, asked me to advance a psychological explanation of her superusual power to foresee, and this is what I said to her.

Prescience is explicable on the theory that a subliminal knows the future of its own fractional incarnation, its own earth-life; and certain persons who possess the power of interfusion with outside minds, operative voluntarily or involuntarily, but always subconsciously, may possess themselves of knowledge dormant in the subjective life of the personality with whom they elect to companion, and thereupon learn what is about to happen in its objective life. There are occasions when men foresee what is to happen to themselves. Napoleon was wont to declare, when entreated by his officers not to expose himself in battle, that the bullet was not cast that would shorten his career.

About nine years ago the writer, who has been studying prescience for a quarter-century, and who has examined many psychics with reference to its possession, investigated a Mrs. Gladstone Stuart, a Scottish lady rarely gifted, at her apartment in one of the New York hotels. In the course of the séance she predicted the publication of the volume on Hypnotic Therapeutics and the death of Mrs. Quackenbos three years be

fore the latter event occurred. Not a line of the book had been written, and Mrs. Quackenbos was in perfect health.

The lady was afterward induced to change her name to that of a man whose business had been most successfully conducted through her predictions. A patient from Detroit told the writer that for six years he had been similarly directed in his business ventures by a seer who had never made a mistake. This same seer was afterward employed by a fire insurance company, and was said to pass on their risks with unfailing accuracy.

Gifted with similar power to foresee is Mrs. S., a Southern lady, a friend of the author's family, and non-professional. Last spring, while visiting his house, this person informed a cousin from northern New York that there would shortly take place a sale of real estate which would accrue to her advantage. Her property not being in the market, and she having no expectation of ever parting with it, the lady was naturally seriously concerned; but she was advised not to worry, as the sale would certainly benefit her. This same cousin, just returned to the city, relates that a week after the prediction, she received a letter from a neighbor who had sold his property and desired to rent her farmland - all which was wholly unexpected, but of decided advantage to