" BRAIN-WAVES."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"] SIR, —The important mental phenomena recently discussed in your journal under the perhaps somewhat questionable title of " BrainWaves" are in themselves of so wide an interest, that I venture to add some further testimony as to their actual occurrence.
Some years since, my brother paid a visit, on a Saturday evening, to a family residing in one of the London suburbs. He was on the point of returning to town, when the lady of the house (who had been unusually vivacious during the evening) suddenly broke a blood-vessel in her head. A rupture had taken place once before in the same part, so that a fatal termination was momentarily expected. This impression was shared by my brother ; but he does not seem to have felt it acutely until the following Sunday evening, when, under the gentle stimulus of an apparently tedious discourse, his thoughts reverted for a short time to the lady. Conversation and a short walk with a friend, however, directed his attention elsewhere; but after reaching his lodgings and partaking of a meal, he was attacked, precisely at ten o'clock, by an extreme feeling of uneasiness. Again he thought of the sick lady, and discussed the subject of her illness with his younger brother,—his anxiety now increasing. He retired to rest at eleven o'clock ; and had scarcely lain down, when, being still wide awake, he thought he saw the lady in bed, with her servants and two men by her side. One of the men said, " She is dead ;" but the other, whom he took for a physician, gave her some medicine. Hereupon the lady struggled, the vision vanished, and my brother felt impressed with the notion that she was perfectly well again. A letter of inquiry having been sent on the following Monday to his friends, my brother was informed that, as the local doctor feared the worst, a City physician was telegraphed for at eleven p.m., and that until midnight, when recovery took place, hope had been resigned. My brother had, therefore, been affected at first by only a simultaneous impulse ; but lie had anticipated the result of the crisis by threequarters of an hour.
But the most striking instance of a simultaneous impulse with which I am acquainted had occurred to us some time previously. He had not long come to reside in town, and we one day had a conversation in which I mentioned the Reading-Room at the British Museum. I explained to him the arrangement of the room (to which he was then quite a stranger), and stated that each radial set of seats had one letter, each individual seat a number. The details immediately following are taken from a letter, written to me by my brother very soon after the circumstance to which they refer had taken place :—
" Thus," says I, " you might be sitting at —;" when, after a moment's hesitation, we both instanced " D 5 " Ia ills such consent that we could detect no di ference in point of time between the sounds. We could not afterwards remember having ever spoken in each other's presence of " D 5 " previously. Several years have elapsed since these events happened. We took some trouble to investigate their nature at the time, and soon found that illustrations of them were not by any means uncommon, but, on the contrary, very frequent. I am convinced that any one else who will make careful inquiry at reliable sources will find enough to prove that this is the case. For our own part, we were assured of the general existence of a sympathetic as well as a prophetic power, which appeared to be as natural and common functions of the mind as memory or reflection. As to the influence of the Will upon either, we did not meet with any evidence ; but I think it very likely that the Will can affect them, and sometimes really does so. 77,is is one of the most important problems the phenomena present ; and its solution will furnish more vital results than have yet been obtained in mental analysis.—I am, Sir, &c., EDMUND J. MILLS, D.Sc. (London).
Previous page
