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345 As Gurney has put it:

"When the actual facts are learnt a faint amount of resemblance may often suggest a past dream, and set the mind on the track of trying accurately to recall it. This very act involves a search for detail, for something tangible and distinct; and the real features and definite incidents which are now present to the mind, in close association with some definite scene or fact which actually figured in the dream, will be apt to be unconsciously read back into the dream . . . dreams in this way resemble objects seen in the dusk; which begin by puzzling the eye, but which when once we know or think we know what they are, seem quite unmistakable and even full of familiar detail."

Nor have we in most of these "prophetic" dreams the kind of certificate which we were enabled to produce in several of the dreams quoted in Chapter IV.—the evidence of contemporary documents. In comparatively few cases does it appear that any note of the "prophetic" dream was made before the fulfilment.

If we consider only those "prophetic" dreams which are attested by contemporary documents, or in which there is other satisfactory evidence that the experience has been correctly reported, we shall find that in many cases the facts admit of some other explanation than foreknowledge of the future. Thus, we have several cases in which the winner of the Derby or some other race was revealed in a dream; or in which the position of a candidate in some important examination was accurately foreseen. Professor G. Hulin, of the