SOME CASES OF PREDICTION By Dame Edith Lyttelton
The purpose of this volume (Bell, 2S. 6d.) is to stimulate public interest in the possibilities of precognition, and so raise funds to enable laboratory investigations to be undertaken. It consists, in the main, of correspondence including corroborative documents received by the author after a broadcast talk which was delivered in 5934. None of the cases have been hitherto published, and all are of com- paratively recent occurrence. The author divides the material up into four categories : cases which might possibly be attributed to coincidence ; cases which could be accounted for by tele- pathy, but cannot be easily dismissed as examples of coincidence ; cases of too complicated a character to admit of simple telepathy being involved ; and cases which seem clearly to denote the ability of the human mind, consciously or unconsciously, to predict coming events. This attempt at classification bespeaks careful and critical work on the part of the author ; nevertheless, one feels that category i—possible coinci- dence—might be extended ; and fur- ther, that the dreams and hypnogogic experiences recorded might lend them- selves to very different interpretation if handled by a psycho-analyst of the Freudian School. The book fails in its purpose inasmuch as the predictions, while no doubt genuine enough, are generally of so trivial a nature that fur- ther investigation seems barely merited. Dame Edith Lyttelton herself is aware of this, but in her " Conclusion " she suggests that if some part of the human psyche is able to- get a glimpse beyond time and space, then that part possibly survives after the body's disintegration. However, why so lofty a power should concern itself with horse-racing and foot- ball matches remains unexplained and is doubtless inexplicable.
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