died the first should appear
to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of 'the
life after death'. G--- went to India, years passed, and," says Lord
Brougham, "I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I
have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort
of the heat, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on
which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the
bath. On the chair sat G---, looking calmly at me. How I got out of
the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself
sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was that had
taken the likeness of G---, had disappeared. . . . So strongly was I
affected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with
the date, 19th December, and all the particulars as they are now fresh
before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep" (he has just said that he
was awake and on the point of leaving the bath), "and that the
appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream I cannot for
a moment doubt. . . ."

On 16th October, 1862, Lord Brougham copied this extract for his
Autobiography, and says that on his arrival in Edinburgh he received a
letter from India, announcing that G--- had died on 19th December. He
remarks "singular coincidence!" and adds that, considering the vast
number of dreams, the number of coincidences is perhaps fewer than a
fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect.

This is a concession to common-sense, and argues an ignorance of the
fact that sane and (apparently) waking men may have hallucinations.
On the theory that we _may_ have inappreciable moments of sleep when
we think ourselves awake, it is not an ordinary but an extraordinary
coincidence that Brougham should have had that peculiar moment of the
"dream" of G--- on the day or night of G---'s death, while the
circumstance that he had made a compact with G--- multiplies the odds
against accident in a ratio which mathematicians may calculate.
Brougham was used to dreams, like other people; he was not shocked by
them. This "dream" "produced such a shock that I had no inclination
to talk about it". Even on Brougham's showing, then, this dream was a
thing unique in his experience, and not one of the swarm of visions of
sleep. Thus his including it among these, while his whole language
shows that he himself did not really reckon it among these, is an
example of the fallacies o