APPARITIONS.

An apparition may be defined a spectral illusion, involuntarily generated, by means of which figures or forms, not present to the actual sense, are nevertheless depictured with a vividness and intensity sufficient to create a temporary belief of their reality. It is the result of the re-action of an excited imagination, renovating past feeling or impressions, with an energy proportioned to the degree of excitement; arranging them often in new and fantastical groups; and thus surrounding us with a phantasmagoria of the bodiless creation of the brain, so distinct both in outline and lineament, that, while the exciting cause continues to operate, the illusion of reality predominates over the mind with an intensity generally equal to, sometimes greater than, that of the impressions produced by actual perceptions. But although the illusion thus generated is necessarily co-existent with the state of excitement in which it has its origin; or, in other words, ceases to be active when the spectral phenomena vanish; it does not therefore follow that the mind, when it regains its ordinary condition, becomes immediately sensible of the hallucination under which it has for a time been labouring, or capable of distinguishing between the perceptions of sense and the phantasms of imagination. On the contrary, observation proves, hvhat theory equally sanctions, that the conviction of reality generally outlasts the impressions which originally produced it; and that, so far from any suspicion of illusion being entertained, or any power of discriminating the actual from the imaginary being evinced, this conviction takes entire possession of the mind, and, in many instances, maintains its hold with a firmness which all the force of argument and reason is insufficient to overcome. Hence the tenacity, and we may add the universality, of the belief in apparitions; and hence also the prodigious diversity of forms under which these spectral illusions are presented in the popular legends and superstitions of different ages and countries ;—a diversity, in fact, which seems commensurate with the incredible variety of influences, whether morbific or other, by which the imagination may be excited, and past feelings or impressions vividly renovated in consequence of its reaction on the organs of sense.

But however this may be, every one must, we think, agree that the subject of apparitions, viewed in connection with the philosophy of the human mind, is one of no mean importance: and, as it has more or less engaged the attention of philosophers from the earliest times, a brief and condensed historical view of the various theories which have been formed to account for these illusions may prove neither uninteresting nor uninstructive; while, in a work of this nature, intended to form a record of the great mass of human knowledge, such an outline appears to be not only requisite, but altogether indispensable.

In the ancient systems of philosophy we meet with the most opposite and contradictory opinions on the subject of spiritual essences, as well as in regard to their supposed occasional manifestations to the eye of flesh and blood. Ocellus Lucanus, one of the earliest of the Greek philosophers whose works have come down to our times, attempts to account for the appearances of the universe by having recourse to eternity and the circle. The circle he conceived to be the appropriate representative of eternity, if not absolutely identical with it; and as form, time, motion, and substance are without beginning and without end, so the universe, of which these are but parts, cannot have been generated, and, for the same reason, must be incapable of corruption. It is infaet a circle, without beginning and without end. But this stupendous circle is divided into parts totally dissimilar, by an isthmus which our fanciful author has placed somewhere in the neighbourhood of the moon, and which forms the boundary between the residence of the gods, where all is invariable, and the material universe, where every thing is in a state of endless change and revolution; the fates having drawn this line of demarcation to separate the passible and corruptible part from that which is impassive and incorruptible, or, in other words, subject to neither motion nor change. The changes on this side of the isthmus, however, are, according to Ocellus, just as endless as the state of things beyond it is immutable; for these changes revolve in a circle, which has neither beginning nor end, and consequently must be eternal; and hence the only difference between the two unequal compartments is, that, in the one, every thing is in a state of eternal rest, while, in the other, all is motion and revolution without end. It seems to follow, therefore, that the fates, in tracing this line of demarcation, have excluded the gods from all control over the material or corruptible part of the universe; and that the existence of an immortal essence, in the midst of the confusion of our lower world, is wholly impossible. Yet, in his fourth book, Ocellus speaks of the Deity conferring instincts and appetites on man: and, in a fragment preserved by Stobaeus, he says that life is that which holds the body together, and that the cause of life is the soul; that the world is held together by harmony, and that the cause of harmony is the Deity; that states are held together by agreement, and that the cause of this agreement is the law ;—sentiments which seem strangely at variance with the transcendental doctrine of eternity and the circle, by which all the varied phenomena of the universe were >io be explained.

The atomic theory of Democritus, which some have recently attempted to revive, was adopted with certain modifications by Epicurus, and has been explained and illustrated by Lucretius in his philosophical poem on the Nature of Things; in which he enters with ardour and enthusiasm into the views of his favourite master, assails his enemies with the bitterest invective, combats every objection and difficulty, palliates and mystifies what cannot be defended, and pours forth his whole genius in support of the system which Democritus imagined and Epicurus taught. But neither the numbers nor the ingenuity of the poet have succeeded in recommending to any rational mind a theory based on the most extravagant assumptions, and involving consequences subversive of all those checks and restraints by which society is held together. At the same time, Lucretius is the first ancient writer who makes a formal attack on the popular notions entertained respecting ghosts and apparitions. These he justly regards as complete illusions; and maintains, conformably to the philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus, that so far from being spirits returned from the mansions of the dead, they are nothing more than attenuated films, pellicles, or membranes, cast off from the surface of all bodies, like the exuviae or sloughs of reptiles;^[1. It is often amusing as well as instructive to trace the history and descent of opinions. The strange notion of Lucretius, that apparitions are subtile films or images rising from the surfaces of bodies, appears to have entered more or less into many of the systems on the same subject taught by the schoolmen in the middle ages, although the latter have not always remembered to acknowledge their obligations to the Roman poet. A similar view may also be detected in the reveries of the sympathetic philosophers, and par-ιcularly in the theory of the transmission of spirits propounded by Lavater; nor are there wanting traces of its existence in the popular superstitions both of ancient and modern times. Some of the older philosophers, on the other hand, appear to have construed the Epicurean doctrine of corporeal images much more literally than its great poetical expounder seems to have intended, sellus, for instance, stoutly contends for the heretical doctrine of the materiality of demons, in which he seems to have been a stanch cliever. Paracelsus, conceiving that the elements were inhabited by four kinds of demons—spirits, nymphs, pigmies, and salamanders—argues, in like manner, for the materiality of these non-descript beings,’ but seems inclined to think that they possessed caro non-adamica, which may easily be conceded to him. Cudworth maintains the materiality of angels; and some of his successors, improving upon their models, contend for the materiality of every thing in heaven above or in the earth beneath; thus completing the cycle of absurdity, and bringing us back at last to the Epicurean doctrine, from which we set out. ] or, in other words, the mere shadows [7:3:295]of things which fear, and its offspring superstition, mistake for realities. The world, he observes, has long been in a state of horror and despair from dread of these incorporeal beings; and he acknowledges that his principal object, in expounding the doctrines of his master, is to rescue mankind from their vain apprehensions, by showing that all things are corporeal and dissoluble, not even excepting the soul itself; and thus destroying that pneumatophobia which, to use the language of Cudworth, makes men “have an irrational but desperate abhorrence from all spirits or incorporeal substances.” Philosophy cannot certainly be better employed than in endeavouring to emancipate the mind from the unreal terrors by which it is so frequently enslaved. But it can scarcely fail to be a subject of regret that the philosophers of the Epicurean school should have sought to accomplish a laudable end by the intervention of means alike absurd and pernicious. Material necessity, and by consequence atheism, is at the root of all their doctrines; nor can these, therefore, be admitted to be true without overwhelming religion in the same ruin with superstition. Hence they are chargeable with the grievous fault of striking at a mass in order to reach an individual; of attempting to hew down the trunk in order to clear away a withered branch. At the same time they have the unquestionable merit of being the first who endeavoured, however unsuccessfully, to account, upon natural principles, for those appearances, which have in all ages more or less excited the fears and mingled with the superstitions of mankind.

But, without dwelling on particular systems of philosophy, we may observe generally, that although the belief in spectres or phantasms appears to be as old as the existence of the human race, this belief has in every instance been modified, and we may almost say regulated, by the prevalent pneumatological opinions respecting the soul, whether these have been derived from the writings of philosophers and poets, or imbibed from sources purely mythological. Strictly speaking, indeed, the character of superstitious credulity has been in all ages the same; but it is nevertheless true, that its particular objects have varied, as the opinions of mankind have changed respecting the sentient principle or cause of the vital phenomena.

In the case of the Greeks and Romans this is peculiarly remarkable; inasmuch as their superstitions afford ample evidence of the diversity of opinion that prevailed regarding the soul, yet are all more or less tinctured with its predominant colour and complexion. Democritus and Epicurus, as we have seen, considered it corporeal, but difíered widely as to its substance; the Stoics maintained that it was ignited air; Hippo held that it was water; and Heraclitus was of opinion that, as the anima mundi, or soul of the world, was a vapour or exhalation from the moist elements, so the souls of animals were vapours or exhalations from their own bodies, or something external. Of those, again, who believed the soul to be incorporeal, some maintained that it was a substance, and immortal, while others asserted that it was neither. 1 hales taught that it was always in motion, and itself the origin or cause of that motion; Pythagoras regarded it as a self-moving monād or number; Plato thought it a substance conceivable only by the understanding, and moving according to harmony and number; Aristotle described it as the first entelecheia, or, to use the language of the translator of Nemesius, “the first continuall-motion of a bodie-naturall, having in it those instrumental parts, wherein was possibility of life ;” and Dinarchus considered it a harmony of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness, or, in other words, a contradiction. Some imagined that there is but one universal soul, distributed in portions throughout all bodies, animate and inanimate, which doctrine was subsequently adopted by the Manicheans; while others taught that there is indeed one universal soul, but at the same time many different species. The illustrious head of the Platonic school seems to have believed in the existence of an universal soul, by means of which all things were supported in being; but he conceived that those only were to be accounted living creatures which had separate souls. The doctrine of transmigration was a natural consequence of these opinions, and, what is not a little remarkable, it seems to have been generally received among those philosophers who believed most firmly in the immortality of the soul; some making it pass indiscriminately into the bodies of plants and animals; others, into all organized structures; while a third set, conceiving that every kind of soul, whether rational or irrational, has a structure exactly suited to its own faculties and no other, confined it to structures of the same species. Plato distinguished these faculties into three classes, the vegetative, sensitive, and rational; and assigned a separate residence to each, the habitation of the last being, according to him, in the head.

Indeed the practice of arranging the logical entities, known by the names of powers,faculties, or functions, into different classes, and ascribing them to different species of souls, appears to have been prevalent at an early period, both among philosophers and poets. Empedocles allotted a rational and a sensitive soul to every animal; the rational one being derived from the gods, and the sentient a product of the four elements. But the ancients generally reserved the rational soul for man. In Homer’s time the soul was divided into two species, the f>gnv and the ΰυμος, but afterwards, according to Diogenes Laertius, into three; while the body was considered tripartite, being composed of a mortal or crustaceous part,—a divine, ethereal, or luciform portion, appropriated to the pçrçv,— and an aerial, misty, or vaporous part, allotted to the 0υμος. After the dissolution of the mortal part, however, the <l>ξfv was entirely separated from the 0υμoς, and a different habitation assigned to each. Hence we learn from Homer, that the (pgnv of Hercules was actually feasting with the gods, and making love to Hebe, at the very time that Ulysses was conversing with his 0υμος in Hades. Similar notions were entertained by the Roman poets. According to them, every man possessed a threefold soul, which, after the dissolution of the body, resolved itself into the Manes, the Anima or Spiritus, and the Umbra, to each of which a different place was assigned. The Manes descended into the infernal regions, to inhabit [7:3:296]either Tartarus or Elysium; the Anima ascended to the skies, to mingle with the gods; while the Umbra hovered around the tomb, as if unwilling to quit its connection with the body, of which it was the wraith or shadow. Hence Virgil represents Dido, when about to expire, as threatening to haunt Aeneas with her umbra, at the same time consoling herself with the expectation that the tidings of his punishment will reach ∖∖ er manes in the shades below.^[2. This notion of a threefold soul is well expressed in the following lines, attributed to Ovid :— Bis duo sunt homini: Manes, Caro, Spiritus, Umbra: Quatuor ista loci bis duo suscipiunt; Terra tegit Carnem, tumulum circumvolat Umbra, Orcus habet Manes, Spiritus astra petit. ] Nor are there wanting traces of an analogous belief in the popular superstitions of modern times. It is an article of ghostly faith, that apparitions are frequently seen near the spot where the gross or crustaceous body lies, waiting either until that body be interred, or until some crime be confessed and expiated; and,- if tradition may be in aught believed, the spectral appearances of individuals have occasionally been observed previous to their death, of which, indeed, these illusions are the sure forerunners or harbingers. Among the Greeks such spectres were denominated φανταϋματα, nvwμaτa, ∈∕δωλα, apparitions, aerial forms, likenesses; while the Romans called them spectra, urnbroe, simulacra, manes, imagines, visions, shades, similitudes, ghosts, and images.

Some, however, thought that spectral illusions were souls visibly expanded; but others doubted whether they were the principles of life, or merely the vehicles of such principles. The ghost of Hercules, which Ulysses saw in Hades, was, according to Homer, his -ψυχ ι r ∣ and uδωλoι ∣ , or his corporeal likeness, animated by his βυμος; and such simulacra were supposed to speak, to complain, to feel hunger, and to receive nourishment, though probably at that table only where spare fast diets with the gods. It may also be observed, that, according to Virgil, the timbres were the animae or souls themselves, and were all sprung from the same source as the soul of the universe, namely, from ether or elemental fire. Hence, the umbroe which Aeneas beheld in the shades below, when he went thither to visit his father Anchises, were ethereal souls, receiving rewards or suffering punishments for their past deeds; some for inexpiable crimes, which rendered their punishments eternal; others for offences, the stains of which might be obliterated, and who, consequently, were exposed for a series of ages to the action of air, water, or fire, “until the crimes done in their days of nature were burned and purged away.” At the same time, it is quite true, as Dr Barclay has remarked, that “in most, if not ⅛ all of these simulacra, the dress and its fashions were represented as well as the body; while, in all the poetical regions of the dead, chariots and various species of armour were honoured likewise with their separate simulacra; so that these regions, as appears from the Odyssey, Aeneid, and Edda, were just the simulacra of the manners, opinions, customs, and fashions, that characterized the times and countries in which their poetical historians flourished.”^[3. Inquiry into the Opinions, ancient and modern, concerning Life and Organization, p. 14. By John Barclay, Μ. D. Edinb. 1822, 8vo∙ ]

To the superstitions of Greece and Rome we are also indebted for those subordinate spirits named demons or genii, who for many centuries were the subject of numberless spectral illusions. These intermediate beings were distinguished by the Platonists from the superior deities of the popular mythology on the one hand, and from heroes or demigods on the other. They were divided into beneficent and malignant spirits; and, according to the conceptions of the Platonic philosophers, differed in no material degree from the good and evil angels of the Christian belief. Socrates fancied himself constantly attended by a demon or genius, to whose inspirations or suggestions he conceived himself indebted for those views of practical wisdom and philosophy which have rendered his name so deservedly illustrious. Among the Romans, again, genii were supposed to be messengers of the gods, employed, on particular occasions, to give intimation to men of approaching events, or calamities soon to befall them. Of this kind was the phantasm which appeared to Brutus sitting dejected in his tent, and told him that they would meet again at Philippi.^[4. The observations of Sir Walter Scott on the spectre which appeared to Brutus on the eve of the battle of Philippi are equally just and philosophical, in so far as regards the exciting cause :—“The anticipation of a dubious battle, with all the doubt and uncertainty of its event, and the conviction that it must involve his own fate, and that of his country, was powerful enough to conjure up to the anxious eye of Brutus the spectre of his murdered friend Caesar, respecting whose death he perhaps thought himself less justified than at the Ides of March, since, instead of having achieved the freedom of Rome, the event had only been the renewal of civ wars, and the issue might appear most likely to conclude in the total subjection of liberty. It is not miraculous that the masculi« spirit of Marcus Brutus, surrounded by darkness and solitude, distracted probably by the recollection of the kindness and favour ol the great individual whom he had put to death to avenge the wrongs of his country, though by the slaughter of his own friend, shouk at length place before his eyes in person the appearance which termed itself his evil genius, and promised again to meet him at Phi· lippi. Brutus’ own intentions, and his knowledge of the military art, had probably long since assured him that the decision of th< civil war must take place at or near that place; and allowing that his own imagination supplied that part of his dialogue with the spectre, there is nothing else which might not be fashioned in a vivid dream or a waking reverie, approaching, in absorbing and en grossing character, the usual matter of which dreams consist. That Brutus, well acquainted with the opinions of the Platonists should be disposed to receive without doubt the idea that he had seen a real apparition, and was not likely to scrutinize very minute!’ the supposed vision, may be naturally conceived; and it was also natural to think, that although no one saw the figure but himself his contemporaries were little disposed to examine the testimony of a man so eminent, by the strict rules of cross-examination an∣ conflicting evidence, which they might have thought applicable to another person and a less dignified occasion.” (Demonology am Witchcraft, p. 10, 11.) ] Cornelius Sylla received a similar intimation from an apparition, which accosted him by his name: and, concluding that his death was at hand, the ex-dictator prepared himself for the event, which took place the following evening, in consequence of a sudden and violent attack of fever. Cassius Severus, the poet, a short time before he was slain by order of Augustus, saw, during the night, a human form of gigantic size, with his skin black, his countenance squalid, his beard grizzled, and his hair dishevelled; a phantasm not unlike the evil genius so powerfully described by Lord Byron as appearing to Manfred in the hour of his agony.^[5. The description alluded to in the text is as follows: I see a dusk and awful figure rise Like an infernal god from out the earth; His face wrapt in a mantle, and his form Robed as with angry clouds; he stands between Thyself and me, but I do fear him not. ] The emperor Julian, on [7:3:297]one occasion, while engaged in an expedition, beheld a - spectre or apparition clad in rags, yet bearing in its hands a horn of plenty, covered with a linen cloth; and thus emblematically attired, the spirit stalked mournfully past the hangings of the Apostate’s tent. Lastly, Dio of Syracuse was visited by one of the Furies in person, not in the shape of a vixen, but of a horrid phantasm, the appearance· of which was considered by the soothsayers indicative of the death of his son (which occurred soon after), as well as of his own approaching dissolution. Many other instances might be given of similar illusions, evidently conjured up by the workings of an excited imagination rc-acting on the organs of sense, and believed to be harbingers of “coming events ;” but those we have mentioned are sufficient to show the opinions entertained in regard to such apparitions, and to exemplify the power which superstition exercises over the mind when unenlightened by a sound and rational philosophy. We may add, however, that demons or genii were frequently regarded as private monitors, who by their insinuations disposed each man to good or evil actions, and were not only reporters of his crimes in this life, but registrars of them against his trials in the next; an opinion which the Romans evidently derived from the Greeks, among whom a similar notion prevailed from an early period of their history.

Among the Jews and early Christians we find analogous superstitions, though, as might have been expected, much more varied and complex in their details. Like the Greeks and Romans, the Jews believed in good and evil spirits, to the latter of which the name of demons came to be exclusively appropriated; and this belief they founded partly on the statements contained in their owm Scriptures, partly on notions derived from the Pagans. Some of their angels were supposed to be created out of the elements of fre, others out of the wind; and both classes forfeited their immortality whenever they issued from their allotted place. Their business was to instruct mankind in wisdom and knowledge; and every thing in the world was conceived to be under their government. Even to the herbs of the field, supposed to exceed twenty thousand in number, presiding angels were assigned; and rain, hail, thunder, lightning, fire, fishes, reptiles, animals, men, cities, empires, nations, were >dl respectively under the dominion of spiritual powers. Nor were their demons less numerous than their tutelar genii or angels, as any one may easily satisfy himself by consulting the Talmud, in which this multitudinous array of spirits is very minutely described. Every form of evil, whether physical or moral, was ascribed to the direct agency of one or other of this subordinate tribe of devils, whose sole business it was to work mischief, and who were also conceived to be indefatigable in the exercise of their calling; so much so that, in the constant warfare carried on between the good and evil spirits, it is far from being clear that the former had always the advantage. Demoniacal possession is only one form under which this infernal agency manifested itself. In a word, the superstitious Jew who devoutly believed in the wild vagaries engendered by the seething imaginations of the Rabbin, might have said with the Roman satirist, Nostraregio tarn plena est 7ιuminibus, ut'.faciHus pos- sis deum quam, hominem invenire.

It is not to be wondered at, however much it may be regretted, that many of these notions accompanied the spreading of the gospel, and communicated a taint of Jewish superstition to the faith of the first Christians. The mind is unable at once to emancipate itself from the dominion of delusions, which have been consecrated by time and sanctioned by authority, and which, insensibly imbibed by education and habit, address themselves to the natural fears and feelings of the human heart. Hence it ought not to surprise us that, not only at the commencement of the Christian dispensation, but during a very long period afterwards, evident traces may be discovered of the prevalence of the popular opinion mentioned by Symmachus, namely, “that the Divine Being had distributed to cities various guardians, and that as souls were communicated to infants at their birth, so particular tutelary spirits were assigned to particular societies of men.” On the other hand, some sects, puzzled to account for the origin of evil, and affecting philosophy without possessing a philosophical spirit, systematized the Jewish superstitions, by combining them with the creed of Zoroaster, and promulgating formally the doctrine of a ceaseless antagonism between the good and evil principles, personified in the Ormusd and Ahriman of the Persian mythology; while others, again, imitating the classification of the different orders of spirits by Plato, attempted a similar arrangement with respect to the hierarchy of angels.^[6. We allude to the Gnostics, according to whom the gradations in the hierarchy of angels stood thus :—The first and highest order ' as named seraphim, and the second cherubim; the third was the order of thrones, and the fourth that of dominions; the fifth was the order of virtues, the sixth of powers, the seventh of principalities, the eighth of archangels, and the ninth or lowest that of angels. Uns fable, as Dr Hibbert remarks, was pointedly censured by the apostles; yet, nevertheless, it outlived the pneumatologists of the middle ages, and is scarcely even now exploded. ] Both systems involved the constant agency of spiritual power in the government of the world, and admitted also its occasional manifestation in the shape of apparitions. Among the Fathers, however, great diversity of opinion prevailed in regard to these illusions, which no one seems to have dreamt of attempting to explain by reference to natural causes. Origen, for example, conceived that souls, tainted with the guilt of flagrant crimes, and not purged from their impurity, were either confined in a species of limbo, or attached to particular spots, where, within certain limits, they might ramble about at will. Athanasius maintained that souls, when they were once released from their bodies, held no more communion with mortal men; and the more rational of the early theologians condemned all visions and apparitions that had not the unequivocal sariction of the Deity, our Saviour, or the angels. Augustin also remarked that, if souls did actually walk and visit their friends, he was convinced his mother, who had followed him by land and sea, would have shown herself to him, in order to inform him what she had learned in another state, as well as to give him much useful advice. Others, how ever, yielded to the current superstitions, which they laboured to reconcile with the doctrines and statements of Holy Writ.

But it was not until a much later period of Christianity that more decided doctrines were established relative to the origin and nature of demons; and it is principally to the Papal Church of Rome that the unenviable honour is due, of adopting and methodizing the vagaries of the Pagans, as well as the legends of the Talmud, and thus originating that system of demonology which, from various causes, grew to such a monstrous height during the middle ages, as completely to overwhelm Christianity under its revolting and abominable fictions. When this church recognised the doctrine, that the functions of ministering angels were assigned to the spirits of departed saints, she opened a door for the admission of the abominations of Paganism in a new form,^[7. It is impossible not to feel that the reproaches which Reginald Scot casts upon the church of Rome, on account of her heathenism, are well merited, and that their chief bitterness is not so much in the unrelenting irony of that dauntless writer, as in their truth. “Surelie,” says he, “there were in the Popish church more of these antichristian gods in number, more in common, more private, more publicke, more for lewd purposes, and more for no purpose, than among all the heathen, either heretofore or at this present time; for I dare undertake, that for everie heathen idol I might pronounce twenty out of the Popish church. For there were proper idols of every nation, as St George on horseback for England, St Andrew for Burgundie and Scotland, St Michael for France, St James for Spain, St Patrike for Ireland, St Davie for Wales, St Peter for Rome and some part of Italie. Had not every citie in all the Pope’s dominions his severall patrone; as Paule for London, Denis for Paris, Ambrose for Millen (Milan), Louen for Gaunt, Roinball for Mackline, St Mark’s Lion for Venice, the three magician kings for Cullen, and so of other? Yea, had they not for everie small towne and everie village and parish (the names whereof I am not at liberty to repeat) a severall idol: as St Sepulchre for one, St Bride for another; St All Hallowes, All Saints, and Our Ladie for all at once? Had they not hee idols and shee idols, some for men, some for women, some for beasts, and some for fowels? And do you not thinke that St Martine might be opposed to Bacchus? If St Martine be too weak, we have St Urbane, St Clement, and manie others to assist him. Was Venus and Meretrix an advocate for whores among the Gentiles? Behold, there were in the Romish church to encounter them, St Aphra, St Aphrodite, and St Maudline. Was there such a traitor among the heathen idols as St Thomas Becket? or such a whore as St Bridget? I warrant you, St Hugh was as good a huntsman as Anubis. Was Vulcane the protector of the heathen smithes? Yea, forsooth, and St Euloge was patron for ours. Our painters had Luke, our weavers had Steven, our miliars had Arnold, our potters had St Gore with a devil on his shoulders and a pot in his hand. Was there a better horseleech among the gods of the Gentiles than St Loy? or a better sow-gelder than St Anthonie? or a better tooth-drawer than St Apolline? I believe that Apollo Parnopeius was no better ayat-catcher than St Gertrude, who hath the Pope’s patent and commendation therefore.” And so honest Reginald proceeds with his expostulatory comparison, which, in the true spirit of his age. (when the phantasms of demonology maintained their dominion even over those minds which had cast off the fetters of the church of Rome), he concludes by declaring that “all these antichristian gods, otherwise called popish devils, are as rank devils” as any that are spoken of in the Psalms, or mentioned in other parts of Scripture. (See Discourse on Devils and Spirits, appended to the Discourse of Witchcraft.) ] and the encouragement of superstitions, [7:3:298]utterly subversive of all true religion; while, on the other hand, by countenancing and fostering the frantic extravagances of the demonologists, more particularly in regard to the impossible crime of witchcraft, she did all in her power to perpetuate the empire of delusion, and at the same time made herself responsible for the multiplied atrocities which were committed under its influence. She became, in fact, the nursing mother of lies, and the avowed patroness of the powers of darkness. The devil and his legions were everywhere and in every thing: diabolical agency was supposed to be unremitting and universal. The priests strengthened their dominion by practising conjurations and exorcisms; while the monks fabricated legends suited to the prevailing taste, and calculated to thicken the delusion which added so greatly to their spiritual power. In the meanwhile Satan’s invisible world was displayed with a topographical minuteness of detail, which could scarcely have proved very agreeable to that great personage. The nature, history, and rank of devils were curiously inquired into, and the point of precedency in the infernal hierarchy settled to a nicety; the various forms assumed by them in the course of their operations upon earth were also very fully described; the different tests by which their presence might be detected were given with something like scientific precision; and, what is still more extraordinary, the number of these fallen spirits was determined to a fraction. In short, the wildest fictions which imagination ever coined were gravely received as matters of faith and doctrine; while a new impulse and direction were thereby given to popular superstition, which the ghostly legends of the Church had far outstripped in point of extravagance.

At this period, accordingly, the belief in apparitions was universal, and people would have sooner doubted their own existence or identity, than ventured to call in question the most grotesque fooleries which the human fancy ever imagined. Even the Reformation, which overthrew so many errors, eradicated so many prejudices, and destroyed so many delusions, left this one as hideous as ever. And so far from proving himself superior to the vain imaginations and follies of his time, Martin Luther has left abundant evidence to show, that he was as deeply imbued with superstitious credulity, and believed as firmly in diabolical apparitions, as the most illiterate monk in the church which he shook to its very foundations. He even fancied that the devil took a particular pleasure in annoying him, doubtless from pique at the successful resistance he had opposed to the power and pretensions of Rome; and he relates several conversations, or rather altercations, he had had with the Evil Onc, in which, by his own showing, the reformer had clearly the best of it (so far at least as abuse was concerned), and generally ended by putting the fallen spirit to flight. On one occasion in particular, when the Tempter had intruded himself rather unseasonably, and had chosen to assume “a glorious form of our Saviour Christ,” the reformer, who at first expected a revelation, lost all temperas soon as he discovered the real character of his visitant, and exclaimed fiercely, “Away, thou confounded devil; I know no other Christ than he that was crucified, and who, in his word, is pictured and preached unto me; whereupon,” he adds, “the image vanished, which was the very Devil himself” And all his narratives of losses or misfortunes which happened to individuals in whom he felt an interest commonly end with the pithy solution, “This did the devil.”^[8. Mr Coleridge, in his Friend, vol. ii. p. 336, gives the following natural and rational account of the origin of Luther’s visions:·— “Had Luther been himself a prince, he could not have desired better treatment than he received during his eight months’ stay iļţ the Wartzburg: and in consequence of a more luxurious diet than he had been accustomed to, he was plagued with temptations both rom the ‘ flesh and the devil.’ It is evident from his letters that he suffered under great irritability of his nervous system, thθ common effect of deranged digestion in men of sedentary habits, who are at the same time intense thinkers; and this irritability adding to and vivifying the impressions made upon him in early life, and fostered by the theological systems of his manhood, is abundantly sufficient to explain all his apparitions, and all his mighty combats with evil spirits.” ] Nor was he at all singular in entertaining these notions, which in fact were equally shared by the other reformers, and continued long afterwards to exert a most powerful influence upon the faith of all Europe; particularly in regard to the imaginary crime of witchcraft, for which so many unhappy wretches suffered death both in this and in other countries.

It would be vain to inquire whether, at the period in question, or indeed for a long time afterwards, any attempt was made to expose the impostures which were continually practised, or to account, upon rational principles, for those spectral illusions which are known to be generated in particular states of the body and mind. Such an idea seems never to have entered the head of any one; and indeed if a sceptic had arisen bold enough to insinuate even a suspicion of the fallacy of the received opinions, he would have been sacrificed without mercy to the bloody Moloch, who was then the object of almost universal homage. He might perhaps have denied his God, and blasphemed his Saviour with impunity; but if he had dared to dispute the agency of the Devil, to doubt the reality of his appearances, or in any manner of way to assail the creed of the [7:3:299]demonologists, it would have been better for him that a millstone had been hanged about his neck, and he had been ' cast into the midst of the sea. On the gibbet or at the stake, he would infallibly have expiated the audacity of his unbelief. In process of time, however, humanity began to lift up her voice, and reason seemed to recover from the long trance into which the reign of delusion had thrown her. Scattered rays of light broke in from various quarters; as knowledge advanced, the mind became expanded; a spirit of inquiry was gradually developed; the learned began to reason and to doubt; and the empire of superstition was shaken. For long, the vulgar creed, which had been deeply tinged with the monstrosities and follies we have alluded to, resisted the influence of the causes which were now at work, sapping the foundations of the whole edifice of delusion; and even yet, amidst all the light with which we are surrounded, some corners of the world still remain unilluminated. But a change had come over the spirit of the dream in which the nations had so long been entranced; and men, having begun to examine, soon learned to doubt and disbelieve.

About the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, various theories were suggested to account for those extasies of imagination in which spectral illusions have their origin; and, in the memorable experiment of palingenesis, or the resurrection of plants (a secret known to Digby, Kircher, Schot, Gafferel, Vallemont, and others), an explanation was sought of apparitions, which were thought to be reproduced in a similar manner. To this succeeded the doctrine of astral spirits, as they were called; which was an attempt to combine the metaphysical opinions then entertained respecting ideas, with the conclusions deduced from the experiment of palingenesis, or the reproduction of a rose, like the phénix from its ashes. Others, again, referred all the phenomena of extasies, hallucinations, and apparitions to the phantasy or imagination, which was justly conceived to exert a powerful influence over the mind, and to be primarily concerned in the production of those illusions which give birth to a belief in apparitions. Van Helmont, Hoffmann, and most of the medical inquirers of that age, adopted this explanation; and several passages in Hamlet show that such was also the belief entertained by our immortal dramatist. If the imagination, it was argued, can induce a particular form or mark upon the foetus in the womb, much more must it be capable of vivifying and clothing ideas in the mind so as to create an illusion of reality. Nor were these inquiries confined to apparitions alone. In the year 1701 the celebrated Thomasius distinguished himself by an inaugural dissertation De Crimine Magice, in which he attacked, with irresistible force of reasoning, the prevalent belief in witchcraft, and boldly exposed the insane and murderous delusions which had conducted whole hecatombs of victims to the stake. This thesis, embodying a formal attack on demonology, was publicly read in the university of Halle, which, to its honour, greeted with applause the bold scepticism of the young jurisconsult; and so well did the latter perform his task, that his juvenile production is still considered valuable, both for its facts and its reasonings.

The approbation with which the inaugural dissertation of Thomasius was at first received, and the merited celebrity which it subsequently obtained, may be considered as proofs that more rational opinions had already begun to prevail, at least among the learned; and that the minds of men were in some measure prepared for the reception of the new doctrines he so fearlessly promulgated. Popular credulity, indeed, still continued gaping and greedy: it still yearned, with an unabated craving, for the supernatural and the diabolical. But the softening and humanizing influence of knowledge had imperceptibly mitigated the ferocity which the belief in demonology had originally inspired; and, although the public generally were not more enlightened or less superstitious, the magistrate had insensibly become more humane, and the fires of persecution burned less frequently and fiercely. The tide, in short, had obviously turned; and the first indication of the reflux is afforded by the justly-celebrated discourse in question.

At the same time, Thomasius, though among the foremost, was not the first, to assail demonology. This honour of right belongs to Dr Balthasar Bekker,^[9. Balthasar Bekker was a native of Metselawier in Friesland, where he was born in the year 1634. He had no other master than his father, who was the pastor or clergyman of the place, until he attained the age of sixteen, when he went to prosecute his studies at Groningen, and afterwards at Franeker. In the first of these universities AÍting was his master in Hebrew, and conceived a strong affection for his pupil, whom he subsequently supported against his numerous enemies and persecutors. Having completed his studies at Franeker, Bekker was appointed rector of a Latin school, and afterwards pastor at Ooterlitten, where he signalized himself by his zeal in the discharge of his duty, and in consequence drew down upon himself the enmity of his less active colleagues. In 1666 he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity at Franeker, together with the situation of pastor, and soon afterwards published a tract entitled De Philosophia Cartesiana Admonitio Sineera, in which he attempted to prove that the Cartesian philosophy, a taste for which he was anxious to diffuse, might be easily allied with the study of theology. This piece appears to have procured him nothing but enemies, the number of whom was considerably increased by the publication, about the same period, of two catechisms, under the absurd titles of Gesneden Brood and Vaste Spyze ; in the last of which he advanced some peculiar opinions concerning the state of Adam before his fall, the nature and duration of the pains of hell, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the rights of ecclesiastical assemblies. His jealous colleagues accused him of Socinianism and Cartesianism; and although he wrote a defence of his opinions, and showed a disposition to alter or retract every thing that might be conceived contrary to the faith, the synod, disregarding his concessions, prohibited the printing of the Vaste Spyze under a severe pecuniary penalty. Chagrined at this proceeding, he quitted l’raneker, and became successively pastor at Loenen and Wesop, chaplain of a regiment of the line, and finally, in 1679, established himself at Amsterdam, where new writings soon kindled up afresh the animosity of his brethren. He combated the prejudices of the vulgar in a tract which he published on the occasion of the appearance of a comet in 1680 and 1681; and, in his Recherches sur les Comètes, published in 1683, he adopted a course of argument similar to that pursued by Bayle, showing that comets are neither presages nor forerunners of calamities, as was then currently believed, and ridiculing the popular notions and superstitions on this subject. This little work, replete with sound and just ideas, was well received. But a very different fate awaited another and far more important one, which he published soon after, under the title of De Bctooverde Wereld, or The World Bewitched ; a performance which justly entitles him to be ranked with the freest, boldest, and most philosophical thinkers which any age or country has produced. De Betooverde Wereld was first printed at Franeker, and afterwards reprinted several times at Amsterdam, where a French translation, in four volumes 12mo, appeared in 1694; and a new edition was published at Deventer so late as the year 1737. This work, which had the misfortune to appear too soon, is the one which has most contributed to render Bekker’s name famous, both from ftom its own intrinsic merits, and from the fury of calumny and persecution to which it exposed him. If formerly he was regarded as a Cartesian and Socinian, he was now denounced as a downright Sadducee. All pens were in motion against him; and betoreBekker had time to reply to the host of adversaries by whom he was assailed, his book was submitted to the censure of the ecclesiastical council. The author published a defence or apology, Schrißélike Satìsfactie, in which he protested against all. malignant interpretations of his book, and avowed his belief in the existence of the devil, but at the same time expressed his conviction that Satan was chained in the bottom of hell, and consequently prevented from intermeddling with human affairs. The council had the good sense to be satisfied with this explanation; but the clergy of Holland, irritated at the indulgence shown to Bekker, overwhelmed it with reclamations, and forced it, by dint of clamour, to examine the affair more seriously. .Bekker then demanded that the matter should be carried before the synod, and presented a new defence of his opinions; but the synod condemned the work, and deposed the author from his ministerial charge. This judgment was received with a sort of triumph by the clergy, and attacked by some of the author’s friends in a clever tract, entitled, Le Diable Triomphant, parlant sur le Mont Parnasse. The synod, however, adhered to its sentence, and Bekker died of a pleurisy in 1G98, without having been reinstated in his charge. On the occasion of his deposition, his enemies caused a medal to be struck, representing the devil dressed in clerical costume, and mounted upon an ass, with a sort of banner in his hand, emblematical of the triumph which the clergy had obtained in the synod. But this triumph was shortlived; for although the synod declared to a man in favour of the devil, the rational part of the world were ultimately convinced by the reasonings of the deposed minister; which soon began to gain ground, and contributed largely to emancipate the minds of men from the thraldom of a bloody and debasing superstition. Bekker, it seems, though a profound theologian and an able scholar, was a very ugly man, with bandy legs, and a nose and chin so prominent that they almost met; peculiarities which gave rise to the following epigram of Lamonnoye, prefixed to some of the French editions of The World Bewitched :— Oui, par toi de Satan la puissance est brisée; Mais tu n’as cependant pas encore assez fait; Pour nous ôter du Diable entièrement l’idée, Bekker, supprime ton portrait. ] a protestant clergyman at Amsterdam, and author of a learned [7:3:300] work, first published in Dutch and afterwards in French entitled, The World Bewitched, or an Examination of the Common Opinions concerning Spirits, their Nature, their Administration, and their Operations, and also concerning the Effects which Men are capable of producing by their Intercourse and their Virtue : a work which Thomasius must in all probability have seen and consulted, as the French edition appeared in 1694, ten years prior to the publication of his thesis; and the persecution which the author experienced on account of his scepticism about devils and their supposed operations could scarcely fail to make it generally known. But be this as it may, the performance of the Dutchman is certainly an extraordinary one for the time at which it appeared; being not more remarkable for the learning it displays than for the boldness with which it combats the received opinions regarding spirits, and the exceeding ingenuity with which the various frauds and impostures of the demonologists are detected and exposed.

The author sets out by giving an able and accurate exposition of the opinions, or rather fables, of the Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans, on the subject of demons, or good and evil spirits, with their supposed attributes, functions, and operations, as described in their different mythological systems, and particularly as received at the period when Christianity was first preached to the world. He then proceeds to show that the early Christians insensibly introduced and mixed up with the new faith many of the fictions of Paganism and Judaism; and that this corrupting process went on continually increasing, until it attained a maximum under the Papacy, when all the miracles which the Pagans had supposed to have been performed by their demons or inferior divinities were ascribed to angels, to the souls of sinful men, and, above all, to the power of the devil. In particular, he traces the progress of Manicheism, from the time when it first assumed consistency and form; and shows, in a very striking manner, how this heresy, though anathematized by the Church, gradually insinuated itself into the very core of all her doctrines respecting spiritual agency in human affairs; and thus became part and parcel of the creed which she ordained men to believe under the penalty of eternal damnation. It is to this unfortunate intermixture of Paganism with Christianity, therefore, that he ascribes all the abominations with which the latter was polluted; and hence he contends, “que plus on se trouve éloigné du Paganisme, soit pour le temps, soit pour les lieux, moins on ajoute de foi à toutes les choses qui regardent le diable et son pouvoir.” But his great principle is, that the doctrines of the demonologists are not more repugnant to reason, than adverse to Scripture when rationally interpreted. Revelation, he holds, contains nothing to sanction such doctrines; and he supports this opinion by a detailed examination of all the cases mentioned in holy writ where the devil is either represented as appearing to men, or exercising an'' immediate power over their bodies or minds,—explaining them on rational or natural principles with singular skill and ingenuity. For example, he rejects as absurd the idea of demoniacal possession, though generally received by the Protestant as well as the Catholic Church; and regards the cases of daemonia mentioned in the New Testament as not properly “one expulsion des diables, mais une guérison miraculeuse de maladies incurables.” Again, with regard to the metaphysical doctrine of the demonologists, “qu’un esprit en tant qu’esprit, et d’autant plus meme qu’il est un esprit, peut sans corps agir sur toutes sortes de corps et sur les autres esprits,” he does not meet it by a direct denial, but calls upon his adversaries to prove their own fundamental proposition, “Je demande des preuves de cette thèse,” says he, in his Abrégé and Bé-fense ; “ et parce que cette demande est imprévue et extraordinaire, et sur laquelle par conséquent on ne s’étoit préparé, on prend ma demande pour one negative.—I do not deny the truth of it, if it be true, but neither can I admit the truth of it till it be proved, nor can you assume it without proof, and then call upon others to believe it.” Upon the same principle he demonstrates the utter absurdity of all supposed compacts with the devil, which he considers as not more impossible in themselves than incapable “subsister, en aucune manière, avec ce qui est contenue dans la doctrine de l’Ecriture, ni avec l’économic de l’alliance de Dieu, tant avant la Loi que sous la Loi, et moins encore sous l’Evangile.”

But the most interesting part of this curious work, perhaps, is that where the author exposes, with equal skill and severity, the various frauds and impostures which have been practised upon ignorant credulity, and have thus given rise to all the delusions of witchcraft, and to a vast majority of those on the subject of apparitions. He examines in detail a great number of cases of both descriptions, and never fails to 'detect and drag to light the deception in which they originated. He exhibits a commerce of imposture and dupery, of fraud and credulity, often amusing, always instructive, sometimes truly horrible with reference to its consequences. In short, his exposure is complete and triumphant. “Les diables qui se faisoient voir et entendre,” says he, “étoient dans la cervelle des hommes; si non, ils étoient faits de chair et d’os ;” and he holds, qu’il n’y auroit point du tout de sorcellerie, si l’on ne croyoit pas qu’il y en eust.” But this being once believed, and the magistrate having set himself to punish an imaginary and impossible crime, the belief became stronger as the fires of persecution grew hotter, and each new holocaust only prepared fresh victims for the [7:3:301]sacrifice. Dr Bekker concludes his remarkable work in these words :—“Si les souverains et les magistrats punis-soient aussi exactement ceux qui accusent les autres de magic, qu’il y en a qui sont prestes à punir ceux qui sont accusés, lesquels ils jettent à la première délation dans les fers, et qu’ils donnassent la question sculement la moitié aussi forte aux délateurs, pour donner des preuves de leurs accusation, qu’ils'la donnent à ceux-là pour confesser, je suis certain qu’ils n’auroient pas beaucoup besoin de bois pour les brider. Car quoique dans le commencement ils eussent beaucoup à faire avant que cette nouvelle manière de plaider fust venue à leur connoissance, cela ne laisseroit pas de se passer bientost, lorsqu’ils verroient, qu’en accusant, ils se mettroient dans l’obligation de prouver ce qu’ils avanceroient, ou de subir la peine de la faute, en cas qu’ils ne peussent la prouver.” Whoever takes the trouble to read the records of our own criminal procedure, and to observe the nature of the evidence upon which persons accused of witchcraft and sorcery were “fylit, convict, and brynt,” will probably be convinced that these records would have been disgraced by few such atrocities had Dr Bekker’s principle been adopted and acted upon. But a different form of practice was followed, of which it may with literal truth be said, Siquidem accusasse hic sufficit, quis insons habebitur? ^[10. One of the charges, it seems, against Dr Bekker, in the libel tried by the synod which ultimately deposed him, was his having attempted to banish all devils from the world. This absurd charge proceeded upon a complete misunderstanding of the whole gist and tenor of the work upon which it professes to be grounded. Dr Bekker does not deny the existence of the devil, as taught in Scripture, and is indeed most anxious to guard against such a construction being put upon his words, or such an inference deduced from his reasonings. The following passage, which is otherwise interesting, sets this in the clearest light:—“Ainsi la vérité de la Foy Chrétienne peut subsister, sans pourtant rien croire de la magie; ainsi moins l’on pense savoir ce que c’est que le diable, à fa reserve de ce que l’ Ecriture nous en enseigne, plus l’on peut connoitre Dieu et Jesus Christ. Quand on ne connoit que Dieu, on en connoit assez; et toutes les connoissances qui sont, hors de cet Etre Divin, ne sont que vanités et sottises.” Scripture has declared that a knowledge of God is necessary to salvation; but it has nowhere said, so far as we remember, that, unless men know and believe m the devil, they will be damned. Dr Bekker, however, knew and believed all that the Scripture, rationally interpreted, warrants us to believe respecting the father of lies; and if his belief did not rise exactly to the pitch required by the demonologists of the Butch synod, but, on the contrary, recoiled from their diabolical dogmas, it is precisely this inferiority of faith, conjoined with his manifest superiority of reason, which entitles him to the respect of all who can appreciate the honest boldness which enabled him to rise above the prejudices of his age, and to assail the abominations by which it was degraded and enslaved. ]

Upon the whole, it is impossible not to regard the production of the Dutch divine as in many respects one of the most remarkable extant, considering the time when it appeared; nor are we aware of any similar instance of a writer who so far outstripped his age, and evinced so complete a superiority to its prejudices and superstitions. Bekker’s work, indeed, had the misfortune to appear too soon; and of this he was early made sensible, by the torrent of abuse with which he was assailed, and the persecution he was called upon to undergo. What must -have been the boldness and courage of that man who, in an age when the wildest fictions of demonology and witchcraft were implicitly, nay almost universally believed, commenced his attack on them by declaring, “C’est pour détruire cette vaine idole de la crédulité populaire que j’ai écrit mon livre: si le démon s’en fâche, qu’il emploie sa puissance pour m’en punir; s’il est Dieu, qu’il se défende lui-même, et qu’il s’en prenne à moi qui ait renversé ses autels !”

When Lucian ridiculed apparitions, and laughed at those who believed in them, he thought only of the lies, impostures, and absurdities which the ignorant and credulous had received as undoubted facts. All the passions exaggerate, and none more so than that of fear, the parent of superstition. Hence every thing seen through such a medium is beheld distorted, and out of all natural proportion. But, in cases of this description, it too frequently happens that the love of the marvellous comes in to finish the caricature which passion had commenced; and that imagination performs the double function of first imposing upon the seer himself, and afterwards contributing to enable him to impose still farther upon others. It is certain, indeed, that most if not all of the ghost stories which have been told are grossly exaggerated in almost every particular. Indeed, with the exception of Nicoai’s truly philosophical narrative of the spectral illusions, which he beheld during a period of strong excitement produced by various misfortunes,^[11. Memoir on the Appearance of Spectres or Phantoms occasioned by Disease, with Psychological Remarks. Read by Nicoai to the Royal Society of Berlin on the 28th of February 1799. See a translation of this paper in Nicoson’s Journal, vol. vi. p. 161 ∙ ] we scarcely know of a single case which does not bear on the face of it evident marks of embellishment and romance. Hence the difficulty of forming any theory of apparitions, to which, as matters stand, strong objections may not be taken, on the ground of its not embracing all, or even a majority, of the cases reported. We still want data upon which we can safely rely: and this want is to be ascribed mainly, if not solely, to the circumstance that every reporter was not a Nicoai; and that most of them have chosen rather to pander to the appetite for the marvellous than to tell their story simply and rationally. Lucian perceived this tendency of human nature, and unphilosophically ridiculed all apparitions as gross impositions on the credulity of the world; while the inquirers of the period to which we refer went to the opposite extreme, and, admitting every legend as authentic, racked their brains to account for what was in its own nature inexplicable upon any metaphysical theory. They never thought of cross-interrogating the witnesses before proceeding to consider the import of their testimony, or of endeavouring to test the credibility of the evidence before attempting to construct a theory out of it. They believed every thing without discrimination, and therefore could account for nothing. Thus Reginald Scot ridicules the paganism of the Church of Rome, yet comes to the conclusion that all her saints are as authentic devils as any in Pandemonium. Burton is scarcely more fortunate; and later inquirers, who finally gave up Satan and his invisible world altogether, landed in absurdities nearly as great as those they attempted to expose, though of course incomparably less mischievous.

But the progress of discovery and knowledge, independently of all theory, has cleared away many of the marvels which puzzled our ancestors. The devils, for example, which Benvenuto Cellini saw when he got into the conjurer’s circle are now known to have been produced by a magic lantern; the Giant of the Broken, in the Hartz Mountains, has lost all his terrors since it was discovered that the spectre which had frightened men for ages is nothing more than the image of the individual who happens to be on the mountain-top at sun-rise reflected from the clouds beyond in gigantic proportions; and the Fata Morgana, as well as the Mirage, are now classed as pseudo-apparitions.

Of the more modern attempts to account for apparitions, the first which we shall notice is attributed to Meyer, and proceeds upon a particular theory respecting the origin of ideas, the conception of which appears to have [7:3:302]been derived from the subtile images of Epicurus. These, the reader will remember, were held by the Epicureans to be spontaneously exhaled or given off by all bodies; and, when they entered the mind, or, we should rather say, were impressed on the attenuated atoms or corpuscles, of the material soul, were supposed to generate spectral illusions. Rejecting the notion of exhalation, however, Μ. Meyer adhered to the spirit of this philosophy; contending that all our ideas are material, and that they are transported from unknown sources to the storehouse of the memory, through the medium of the organs of sense. Hence it was conceived, that the nerves upon which sensations depend might not only be affected by external agents, but impressed by internal causes, and that the result of this impression would be hallucinations or illusions. Thus, rays of light impressing the optic nerves from without might cause the sensation of yellow, while corrupt humours, as those of jaundice for instance, by impressing the nerves from within, might produce a similar effect. Further, as ideas were held to be material, and might be treasured up by the memory, it was conceived that they might, through some unknown channel, find their way to the nerves, and impress them after the manner of internal causes influencing the mind. “I shall suppose,” says M. Meyer, “that I have lost a parent whom I loved, and whom I have seen and spoken to an infinity of times. Having perceived him often, I have consequently preserved the material figure and perception of him in the brain; for it is very possible and reconcilable to appearances, that a material figure, like that of my deceased friend, may be preserved for a long time in my brain, even after his death. By some intimate yet unknown relation, therefore, which the figure may have to my body, it may touch the optic or acoustic nerves. In the very moment, then, that my nerves are affected in the same manner that they formerly were when I saw or listened to ray living friend, I shall be necessarily induced to believe that I really see or hear him, as if he were present.”^[12. Essay 011 Apparitions, attributed to Μ. Meyer, professor in the university of Halle, 1748. ] This has certainly the merit of being teres atque rotundus ; but, in the first place, it proceeds upon the assumed materiality of ideas, which, besides being abandoned by all philosophers, is an assumption that is far from being self-evident, and can never be proved; secondly, M. Meyer is forced at every step to take for granted some new principle, in regard to the re-action of these material ideas on the nervous system, that equally requires, without admitting of, proof; lastly, he ascribes to his ideas the functions performed by the imagination, and thus infuses an ingredient of truth which gives a colour of plausibility to his theory.

Dr Ferriar’s Theory of Apparitions, as he has been pleased to call his very entertaining collection of ghost stories, is a complete misnomer, inasmuch as the book really contains no theory at all. κ It is a well-known law,” says he at the outset, “that the impressions produced on some of the external senses, especially on the eye, are more durable than the application of the impressing cause.” It certainly required no ghost to tell us this; yet it is all that Dr Ferriar has vouchsafed to give us of a theoretical kind; “and,” as Dr Hibbert pertinently remarks, “the brevity with which it is given is in exact conformity with the abruptness of its dismissal; for, after being applied to explain one or two cases only of mental illusions, numerous other instances of the kind are related, but the theory is not honoured with any further notice.” Still the book is valuable as a collection of cases establishing the existence of morbid impressions, without any sensible external agency, and also as showing the power which the imagination possesses under particular circumstances, of re-acting upon the organs of sense with an intensity sufficient to create a temporary belief in the reality of the objects, the impressions of which are thus renovated and vivified.^[13. An anecdote is told by this author, which serves to illustrate the incidental observation in the text: ‘ ¢ A gentleman was be nighted, while travelling alone, in a remote part of the Highlands of Scotland, and was compelled to ask shelter for the evening at a small lonely hut. When he was to be conducted to his bed-room, the landlady observed, with mysterious reluctance, that he would find the window very secure. On examination, part of the wall appeared to have been broken down to enlarge the opening. After some inquiry, he was told that, a pedlar, who had lodged in the same room a short time before, had committed suicide, and was iound hanging behind the door in the morning. According to the superstition of the country, it was deemed improper to remove the body through the door of the house; and to convey it through the window was impossible, without removing part of the wall. Some hints were dropped that the room had been subsequently haunted by the poor man’s spirit. My friend laid his arms, properly prepared against intrusion of any kind, by the bed-side, and retired to rest, not without some degree of apprehension. He was visited in a dream by a frightful apparition, and, awaking in agony, found himself sitting up in bed, with a pistol grasped in his right hand, θ n casting a fearful glance round the room, he discovered, by the moonlight, a corpse dressed in a shroud, reared erect against the wa U ,lose . to t ae window.. M ith much difficulty he summoned up resolution to approach the dismal object, the features of which, an κ κ m ιnul θ≡parts of its funeral apparel, he perceived distinctly. He passed one hand over it, felt nothing, and staggered back to thθ hed∙ After a long interval, and much reasoning with himself, he renewed his investigation, and at length discovered thatŵ object of rus terror was produced by the moon-beams forming a long bright image through the broken window, on which his fancy, impressed by his dream, had pictured, with mischievous accuracy, the lineaments of a body prepared for interment. Powerful associations of terror, xn this instance, had excited the recollected images with uncommon force and effect. ]

The work of Dr Hibbert, modestly entitled Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions, is of a different description from that of Dr Ferriar. In it a theory is distinctly propounded, and followed up through a vast complexity of details, which the theory is employed to explain and reconcile; and if the author had carried his generalization a step further, and at the same time paid more attention to the logical arrangement of his topics, he would have left little to be supplied by any future writer on this curious branch of the philosophy of the human mind. As it is, however, the book is full of interesting matter, and, what is of still greater importance, it furnishes ample materials for extending and enlarging the view of the subject, which the author has, upon the whole, so satisfactorily developed. After a not very skilful sketch of the opinions, ancient and modern, which have been entertained respecting apparitions, Dr Hibbert proceeds, in the first place, to consider the morbid affections with which the production of phantasms is often connected; 2dly, to show that the objects of spectral illusions are frequently suggested by the fantastic imagery of superstitious belief; 3dly, to investigate the mental laws which give rise to spectral illusions; 4√Z√y, to notice the modifications which the intellectual faculty often undergoes during intense excitements of the mind; and, lastly, to state the comparative degrees of faintness, vividness, or intensity subsisting between sensations and ideas during their various excitements and depressions. And the general result at which he arrives, or, in other words, the law which connects and explains all the phenomena of apparitions, whether arising from morbid affections suggested by the fantastic imagery of superstition, or induced by certain states of the mind without any sensible extrinsic agency, is this, viz. “That apparitions are nothing[7:3:303] ∞ ore than ideas, or the recollected images of the mind, which have been rendered as vivid as actual impressions a principle which, though somewhat incuriously expressed, makes, in our opinion, a very close approximation to the truth.

Dr Hibbert further conceives that the organs of sense a re the actual medium through which past feelings are renovated; or, in other words, that when, from strong mental excitement, ideas have become as vivid as past impressions, or even more so, this intensity is induced by, or rather productive of, an absolute affection of those particular parts of the organic structure on which sensations depend; in the same way precisely as the salivary glands are known to be occasionally as much excited by the idea of some favourite food, as if the sapid body itself were actually present, stimulating the papilloe of the fauces. It would have been more simple and equally true if Dr Hibbert had said that the imagination, in some states, re-acts upon the organs of sense, and renovates past feelings or sensations, the natural antecedents of certain perceptions, with an intensity sufficient to create an illusion of reality; and this statement would have had the double advantage, of not only expressing, in a more generalized form, the important law of the human mind, which it is the object of all Dr Hibbert’s investigations to evolve, but at the same time of excluding the particular views of physiology which are more or less mixed up with his metaphysical speculations. But the re-action in question may be either of a pleasurable kind or the reverse, according to the nature of the causes by which it is primarily produced; and as the mind can only exist in one state at an indivisible instant of time, it follows that when any agent, morbific or other, adds to the general vividness of our pleasurable feelings, those of an opposite or painful kind become proportionally less vivid, or rather are for the moment excluded; and, vice versa, the same law holds in regard to all our painful feelings, the increased intensity of which is necessarily accompanied with a corresponding abatement of those of an opposite kind. As the mind, however, passes from one state to another, or alternates between opposite states, with inconceivable rapidity, memory is sometimes apt to blend the recollected feelings of the one with those of the other, and thus to create a confusion in our conceptions of things which are in their own nature perfectly distinct. In some cases, where the nitrous oxide was administered, the patient, while under its influence, vibrated between perfect happiness and most consummate misery; but in the majority of instances the sensations produced were of a pleasurable description, to the exclusion of all those of an opposite kind; just as the sensations produced by an attack of the febrile miasma are almost invariably and exclusively those of the most acute pain. Hence the law above stated may be considered as a general one, when taken with the modifications proper to be applied to it. Lastly, Dr Hibbert has shown, that when mental feelings of any description attain a certain degree of vividness or intensity, muscular motions obey the impulse of the will, which is as much influenced by the re-acting and renovating power of imagination, as by any of our ordinary passions, appetites, or desires.

These principles, if we are not mistaken, go far to explain all the phenomena of dreams and apparitions; for the latter are merely waking dreams, and differ from the former in degree only, not in kind. In the case of Nicoai, which, as Dr Ferriar justly remarks, is one of the extreme instances of mental delusion which a man of strong judgment has ventured to report of himself, past impressions were renovated with the utmost accuracy and minuteness. The philosophical seer of Berlin beheld no “gorgons, hydras, and chimaeras dire.” The visions which he saw were neither terrible, ludicrous, nor repulsive; on the contrary, most of them were ordinary in their appearance, and some of them even agreeable. They were generally phantasms of his friends and acquaintance; or, in other words, exact copies of his past impressions and perceptions, so renovated and vivified as to create an illusion of reality, though for the most part oddly, if not grotesquely, put together. The story told so well by Dr Ferriar of the vision seen by the benighted gentleman who took up his quarters in the lonely Highland hut, is explicable on precisely the same principle; for his imagination, excited by his dream, pictured the corpse of the selfmurdered pedlar behind the door by renovating and vivifying the mental images produced by the recital of the circumstances previously given to the traveller. In the cases of disease or superstition, again, the exciting causes are different, and the illusions generated consequently vary; .but, in every instance where we can get at the circumstances, it will be found that these illusions or phantasms are merely vivid renovations of mental impressions previously received, and that, although the grouping may be fantastical, the ordinary laws of association are never transgressed.

Dr Brewster has remarked, as a physical fact, that “when the eye is not exposed to the impressions of external objects, or when it is insensible to these objects in consequence of being engrossed with its own operations, any object of mental contemplation, which has either been called up by the memory or created by the imagination, will be seen as distinctly as if it had been farmed from the vision of a real object. In examining these mental impressions,” he adds, “I have found that they follow the motions of the eye-ball exactly like the spectral impressions of luminous objects, and that they resemble them also in their apparent immobility when the eye-ball is displaced by an external force. If this result shall be found generally true by others, it will follow that the objects of mental contemplation may be seen as distinctly as external objects, and will occupy the same local position in the axis of vision as if they had been formed by the agency of light.”^[14. See in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, conducted by Dr Brewster, a paper by the editor, entitled “Observations on the Vision Vol^ reSS j° nS ° n th e ^ cthia, ιn 1 ' e fθ rence to certain supposed Discoveries respecting Visions announced by Mr Charles Bell.” ] This goes to the very root of the theory of apparitions; all the phenomena of which seem to depend upon the relative intensities of the two classes of impressions, and upon the manner of their accidental combination. In perfect health, the mind not only possesses a control over its powers, but the impressions of external objects alone occupy its attention, and the play of imagination is consequently checked, except in sleep, when its operations are relatively more feeble and faint. But in the unhealthy state of the mind, when its attention is partly withdrawn from the contemplation of external objects, the impressions of its own creation, or rather reproduction, will either overpower or combine themselves with the impressions of external objects, and thus generate illusions which in the one case appear alone, while in the other they are seen projected among those external objects to which the eye-ball is directed, in the manner explained by Dr Brewster. We may add, that the same reasoning which applies to the impressions derived from the sense of sight, is equally applicable to those received [7:3:304]through the medium of any other sense,—as the ear, for instance, an organ which ministers abundantly to the production of spectral illusions.

Again, with regard to those illusions, the objects of which are, according to this theory, suggested. by the imagery of superstition, it is obvious that a belief in such imagery is calculated, in an ignorant and credulous age, to make a strong impression on the mind, and to imbue it deeply with all the peculiarities of the prevailing creed. In point of fact, there is nothing which men know so thoroughly, or remember so minutely, as superstitious legends, when this unearthly lore forms the subject of unquestioned and unquestionable belief. But all such impressions are more or less productive of and accompanied with fear; and hence when, from accidental circumstances, this passion happens to be excited to any degree of intensity, it not only withdraws the attention of the mind from the contemplation of external objects, but at the same time stimulates the imagination; which, again, reacts through the senses, vivifying mental images alone, or perhaps intermingling them, in fantastical combinations, with the impressions derived from external objects, and thus creating those spectral illusions which dreamers and seers in all ages have mistaken for realities. If the force of imagination alone can in some instances, without any sensible extrinsic agency, generate unreal mockeries and phantasms, much more must it do so when excited by a belief in supernatural agency, reinforced by fear, the most powerful of all the passions, “What brighter colours the fears of superstition give to the dim objects perceived in twilight, the inhabitants of the village,” says Dr Thomas Brown, “who have to pass the churchyard at any late hour, and the little students of ballad-lore, who have carried with them, from the nursery, many tales which they almost tremble to remember, know well. And in the second sight^[15. Most of the stories of second-sight told by the Highlanders seem arrant fabrications; and although we are by no means inclined to doubt the possibility of such illusions, any more than to question the fact, that they have sometimes accidentally coincided in point of time with events which seemed to give some confirmation to the belief in deuteroscopy, yet there is so much absurdity and imposture in nearly all the narratives of this kind which we have read, that we consider them utterly unworthy of serious consideration. The honest fellow who proposed to sell the secret for a pound of tobacco, knew more of the mysteries of second-sight than some grave philosophers. Dr John Macculloch has the following very pertinent remarks on the subject :—“To have circumnavigated the Western Isles without even mentioning the second-sight, would be unpardonable. No inhabitant of St Kilda pretends to have beenfore-warned of our arrival; ceasing to be believed, it has ceased to exist. It is indifferent whether the propagators of an imposture, or of a piece of supernatural philosophy, be punished or rewarded. In either case the public attention is directed towards the agent; whether by the burning of the witch, or by the flattering distinction which attended the Highland seer. When witches were no longer burned, witchcraft disappeared. Since the second-sight has been limited to a doting old man, or a hypochondriacal tailor, it has been a subject for ridicule; and in matters of this nature ridicule is death.” (Description of the Western Isles, by John Macculloch, Μ. D. vol. ii.,p. 32.) While the world believed in the second-sight and in witchcraft, there never failed to be seers and witches. The supposed possession of these faculties insured notoriety, flattered vanity, conferred power, and afforded the means of gratifying malice: And what will not men and women do to attain distinctions and advantages like these? The vain will covet them, the ambitious will grasp at them, the malicious, if otherwise helpless and spited at the world, will run all risks, both here and hereafter, to secure them∙ Hence the enormous impostures of witchcraft, and hence also delusions as hideous as the knavery was gross and revolting. This is the true key to the solution of a vast number of cases which, it has been supposed, we can neither believe, account for, nor refute. But the misfortune is, that most of those who have written on the subject have had more faith than philosophy, and more fancy than faith, in consequence of which they have jumbled truth and falsehood together in such wild confusion, that all the alchemy of logic is insufficient to resolve the compound into its constituent elements, and separate the one from the other. ] of this northern part of the island, there can be no doubt, that the objects which the seers conceive themselves to behold, are truly more vivid as conceptions, than, but for the superstitious and melancholy character of the natives, which harmonize with the objects of this foresight, they would have been; and that it is in consequence of this brightening effect of the emotion, as concurring with the dim and shadowy objects which the vapoury atmosphere of our lakes and valleys presents, that fancy, relatively to the individual, becomes a temporary reality. The gifted eye, which has once believed itself favoured with such a view of the future, will, of course, ever after have a quicker foresight, and more frequent revelations; its own wilder emotion communicating still more vivid forms and colours to the objects which it dimly perceives.” In the case of such visions, however, there is often more of delusion in the seer, than of illusion in the phantasms which his “gifted eye” is supposed to have beheld; and hence the difficulty, as we have already remarked, or perhaps it would be more correct to say the impossibility, of explaining upon any one theory all the phenomena, as these have been detailed. But although it is inconsistent with the object of this article to diverge into illustrations in detail, we may be permitted to observe that all the narratives of spectral illusions which can be relied upon as deserving of credit, are perfectly explicable upon the principles here briefly but we trust intelligibly unfolded.

Having said thus much in reference to the theory of apparitions, it will not be necessary to enter at any length into that part of Sir Walter Scott’s work on demonology and witchcraft^[16. Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq. By Sir Walter Scott, Bart. ] which relates to the present subject. Sir Walter has indeed attempted to sound the very depths of the philosophy of spectral illusion, and to account for their phenomena on known or admitted principles; but, with all possible respect and deference for this gifted writer, it may be doubted whether his line has reached the bottom, or afforded any just measure of its profundity. He has narrated, with a skill and effect peculiar to himself, a number of very striking cases,^[17. The following is one of the most striking, and although the narrative be long, it will be found exceedingly interesting :—“A second, and equally remarkable instance, was communicated to the author by the medical man under whose observation it fell, but who was, of course, desirous to keep private the name of the hero of so singular a history. Of the friend by whom the facts were attested, I can only say, that if I found myself at liberty to name him, the rank which he holds in his profession, as well as Lis attainments in science and philosophy, form an undisputed claim to the most implicit credit. “It was the fortune of this gentleman to be called in to attend the illness of a person now long deceased, who in his lifetime stood, as I understand, high in a particular department of the law, which often placed the property of others at his discretion and control, and whose conduct, therefore, being open to public observation, he had for many years bome the character of a man of unusual steadiness, good sense, and integrity. .He was, at the time of my friend’s visits, confined principally to his sick-room, sometimes to bed, yet occasionally attending to business, and exerting his mind, apparently with all its usual strength and energy, to the conduct of important affairs intrusted to. him; nor did there, to a superficial observer, appear any thing in his conduct, while so engaged, that could argue vacillation of intellect or depression of mind. His outward symptoms of malady argued no acute or alarming disease· But slowness of pulse, absence of appetite, difficulty of digestion, and constant depression of spirits, seemed to draw their origin from some hidden cause, which the patient was determined to conceal. The deep gloom of the unfortunate gentleman—the embarrassment, which he could not conceal from his friendly physician—the briefness and obvious constraint with which he answered the interrogations of his medical adviser—induced my friend to take other methods for prosecuting his enquiries. He applied to the sufferer’s family, to learn, if possible, the source of that secret grief which was gnawing the heart and sucking the life-blood of his unfortunate patient. The persons applied to, after conversing together previously, denied all knowledge of any cause for the burden which obviously affected their relative. So far as they knew—and they thought they could hardly be deceived—his worldly affairs were prosperous; no family loss had occurred which could be followed with such persevering distress; no entanglements of affection could be supposed to apply to his age, and no sensation of severe remorse could be consistent with his character. The medical gentleman had finally recourse to serious argument with the invalid himself, and urged to him the folly of devoting himself to a lingering and melancholy death, rather than tell the subject of affliction which was thus wasting him. He specially pressed upon him the injury which he was doing to his own character, by suffering it to be inferred that the secret cause of his dejection, and its consequences, was something too scandalous or flagitious to be made known, bequeathing in this manner to his family a suspected and dishonoured name, and leaving a memory with which might be associated the idea of guilt, which the criminal had died without confessing. The patient, more moved by this species of appeal than by any which had yet been urged, expressed his desire to speak out frankly to Dr Every one else was removed, and the door of the sick-room made secure, when he began his confession in the following manner:— . “ ‘ You cannot, my dear friend, be more conscious than I, that I am in the course of dying under the oppression of the fatal disease which consumes my vital powers; but neither can you understand the nature of my complaint, and the manner in which it acts upon me; nor, if you did, I fear, could your zeal and skill avail to rid me of it.’—‘ It is possible,’ said the physician, ‘ that mv skill may not equal my wish of serving you; yet medical science has many resources, of which those unacquainted with its powers "never can form an estimate. But until you plainly tell me your symptoms off complaint, it is impossible for either of us to say what may or may not be in my power, or within that of medicine.’—‘ I may answer you,’ replied the patient, ‘ that my case is not a singular one, since we read of it in the famous novel of Le Sage. You remember, doubtless, the disease of which the Duke d’Olivarez is there stated to have died ?’—‘ Of the idea,’ answered the medical gentleman, ‘ that he was haunted by an apparition, to the actual existence of which he gave no credit, but died, nevertheless, because he was overcome and heart-broken by its imaginary presence.’ ‘ I, my dearest Doctor,’ said the sick man, ‘ am in that very case; and so painful and abhorrent is the presence of the persecuting vision, that my reason is totally inadequate to combat the effects of my morbid imagination, and I am sensible I am dying, a wasted victim to an imaginary disease.’ The medical gentleman listened with anxiety to his patient’s statement, and for the present judiciously avoiding any contradiction of the sick man’s preconceived fancy, contented himself with more minute enquiry into the nature of the apparition with which he conceived himself haunted, and into the history of the mode by which so singular a disease had made itself master of his imagination, secured, as it seemed, by strong powers of the understanding, against an attack so irregular. The sick person replied by stating, that its advances were gradual, and at first not of a terrible or even disagreeable character. To illustrate this, he gave the following account of the progress of his disease. “ ‘ My visions,’ he said, ‘ commenced two or three years since, when I found myself from time to time embarrassed by the presence of a large cat, which came and. disappeared I could not exactly tell how, till the truth was finally forced upon me, and I was compelled to regard it ⅛s no domestic household cat, but as a bubble of the elements, which had no existence save in my deranged visual organs or depraved imagination. Still I had not that positive objection to the animal entertained by a late gallant Highland chieftain, who has been seen to change to all the colours of his own plaid if a cat by accident happened to be in the room with him. even though he did not see it. On the contrary, I am rather a friend to cats, and endured with so much equanimity the presence of my imaginary attendant, that it had become almost indifferent to me; when within the course of a few months it gave place to, or was succeeded by, a spectre of a more important sort, or which at least had a more imposing appearance. This was no other than the apparition of a gentleman-usher, dressed as if to wait upon a lord-lieutenant of Ireland, a lord high commissioner of the kirk, or any other who bears on his brow the rank and stamp of delegated sovereignty. “ ‘ This personage, arrayed in a court dress, with bag and sword, tamboured waistcoat, and chapeau-bras, glided beside me like the ghost of Beau Nash; and, whether in my own house or in another, ascended the stairs before me, as if to announce me in the drawing-room; and at some times appeared to mingle with the company, though it was sufficiently evident that they were not aware of his presence, and that I alone was sensible of the visionary honours which this imaginary being seemed desirous to render me. This freak of the fancy did not produce much impression on me, though it led me to entertain doubts on the nature of my disorder, and alarm for the effect it might produce upon my intellects. But that modification of my disease also had its appointed duration. After a few months the phantom of the gentleman-usher was seen no more, but was succeeded by one horrible to the sight and distressing to the imagination, being no other than the image of death itself—the apparition of a skeleton. Alone or in company,’ said the unfortunate invalid, ‘ the presence of this last phantom never quits me. I in vain tell myself a hundred times over that it is no reality, but merely an image summoned up by the morbid acuteness of my own excited imagination and deranged organs of sight. But what avail such reflections, while the emblem at once and presage of mortality is before my eyes, and while I feel myself, though in fancy only, the companion of a phantom representing a ghastly inhabitant of the grave, even while I yet-breathe on the earth? Science, philosophy, even religion, has no cure for such a disorder; and I feel too surely that I shall die the victim to so melancholy a disease, although I have no belief whatever in the reality of the phantom which it places before me.’ “The physician was distressed to perceive, from these details, how strongly this visionary apparition was fixed in the imagination of his patient. He ingeniously urged the sick man, who was then in bed, with questions concerning the circumstances of the phantom’s appearance, trusting he might lead him, as a sensible man, into such contradictions and inconsistencies as might bring his common sense, which seemed to be unimpaired, so strongly into the field, as might combat successfully the fantastic disorder which produced such fatal effects. ‘ This skeleton, then,’ said the Doctor, ‘ seems to you to be always present to your eyes ?’—‘ It is my fate, unhappily,’ answered the invalid, ‘ always to see it.’—‘ Then I understand,’ continued the physician, ‘ it is now present to your imagination ?’—‘ To my imagination it certainly is so,’ replied the sick man—‘ And in what part of the chamber do you now conceive the apparition to appear ?’ the physician enquired. ‘ Immediately at the foot of my bed; when the curtains are left a little open,’ answered the invalid, ‘ the skeleton, to my thinking, is placed between them, and fills the vacant space.’—‘ You say you are sensible of the delusion,’ said his friend; ‘ have you firmness to convince yourself of the truth of this? Can you take courage enough to rise and place yourself in the spot so seeming to be occupied, and convince yourself of the illusion ?’ The poor man sighed, and shook his head negatively. ‘ Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘we will try the experiment otherwise.’ Accordingly, he rose from his chair by the bedside, and placing himself between the two half-drawn curtains at the foot of the bed, indicated as the place occupied by the apparition, asked if the spectre was still visible? ‘ Not entirely so,’ replied the patient, ‘ because your person is betwixt him and me; but I observe his skull pee’ring above your shoulder.’ “It is alleged the man of science started on the instant, despite philosophy, on receiving an answer ascertaining, with such minuteness, that the ideal spectre was close to his own person. He resorted to other means of investigation and cure, but with equally ^different success. The patient sunk into deeper and deeper dejection, and died in the same distress of mind in which he had spent the latter months of his life; and his case remains a melancholy instance of the power of imagination to kill the body, even when its ιantastic terrors cannot overcome the intellect, of the unfortunate persons who suffer under them. The patient, in the present case, sunk under his malady; and the circumstances of his singular disorder remaining concealed, he did not, by his death and last illness, lose any of the well-merited reputation for prudence and sagacity which had attended him during the whole course of his life.” ] and has connected these by a variety of observations, some of them not less remarkable for the [7:3:305]acuteness they display, than for the very great felicity with which they are expressed. But even with Dr Hibbert’s work as a guide, and all the collateral lights which have been thrown upon the subject by the researches of [7:3:306]Dr Ferriar, Dr Brewster, and others, Sir Walter has failed to reach any general principle applicable to a given class of cases. The consequence is, that, although his observations are almost always valuable, and often involve the very law which connects and explains the phenomena of spectral illusion, he constantly stops short on the verge of the discovery, and is therefore under the necessity of seeking a new explanation of each successive case, which is, for the most part, considered separately and without reference to or comparison with others. On several occasions, indeed, he attempts to generalize, and makes very close approximations to the truth; but, like those tuneless persons who sometimes essay good-naturedly to sing, and stumble about the outskirts of an air, without ever being able to hit it exactly, Sir Walter frequently comes so very near the point he aims at, that we are surprised how he should miss it.

This is singularly exemplified in the following observations, which, with reference to the view we have now taken, are exceedingly important :—“Enthusiastic feelings of an impressive and solemn nature,” says Sir Walter, “occur both in private and public life, which seem to add ocular testimony to an intercourse betwixt earth and the world beyond it. For example, the son who has been lately deprived of his father feels a sudden crisis approach, in which he is anxious to have recourse to his sagacious advice—or a bereaved husband earnestly desires again to behold the form .of which the grave has deprived him for ever—or, to use a darker yet very common instance, the wretched man who has dipped his hand in his fellow-creature’s blood, is haunted by the apprehension that the phantom of the slain stands by the bedside of his murderer. In all, or any of these cases, who shall doubt that imagination, favoured by circumstances, has power to summon up to the organ of sight spectres which only exist in the mind of those by whom their apparition seems to be witnessed? If we add, that such a vision may take place in the course of one of those lively dreams in which the patient, except in respect to the single subject of one strong impression, is or seems sensible of the real particulars of the scene around him, a state of slumber which often occurs—if he is so far conscious, for example, as to know that he is lying on his own bed, and surrounded by his own familiar furniture, at the time when the supposed apparition is manifested, it becomes almost in vain to argue with the visionary against the reality of his dream, since the spectre, though itself purely fanciful, is inserted amidst so many circumstances which he feels must be true beyond the reach of doubt or question. That which is undeniably certain becomes in a manner a warrant for the reality of the appearance to which doubt would have been otherwise attached. And if any event, such as the death of the person dreamt of, chances to take place, so as to correspond with the nature and the time of the apparition, the coincidence, though one which must be frequent, since our dreams usually refer to the accomplishment of that which haunts our minds when awake, and often presage the most probable events, seems perfect, and the chain of circumstances touching the evidence may not unreasonably be considered as complete.”

Now, it must be obvious to every one, that the true theory of apparitions is involved in these observations, though not unfolded in such a manner as to render it available for the explanation of spectral illusions. The author distinctly indicates, in the first place, the power of imagination, when excited, “to summon up to the organ of sight spectres which only exist in the mind of those by whom their apparition seems to be witnessed,” or, in other words, to reproduce past impressions through the medium of the senses; and, secondly, in certain kinds of dreams, he recognises the principle, which Dr Brewster has shown to hold good in our waking hours, that “the objects of mental contemplation may be seen as distinctly as external objects, and will occupy the same local position in the axis of vision, as if they had been formed by the agency of light;” while their being “inserted” amidst so many objects in regard to which there is no deception, will at the same time contribute to strengthen the illusion of reality, and to render the visionary inaccessible to any arguments tending to call it in question. But no use whatever is made of these important principles; which, so far from being pushed to their consequences, and thus disencumbered of the limitations which the author has assigned to them, are stated apparently for no other reason than that they may be straightway cast aside and forgotten.

Another example may be given of this unavailing approximation to the truth, on a most important branch of the subject. That disordered or excited state of the imagination arising from morbific causes, in which it re-acts upon the organs of sense, and generates spectral illusions, “is not,” he thinks, “properly insanity, although it is somewhat allied to that’ most horrible of maladies, and may, in many constitutions, be the means of bringing it on, and although such hallucinations are proper to both." The difference he conceives to be, that “in cases of insanity, the mind of the patient is principally affected, while the senses or organic system offer in vain to the lunatic their decided testimony against the phantasy of a diseased imagination.” There is some confusion here, both in conception and expression; but still the author is correct in his general idea, however vaguely indicated, that the difference he alludes to is one of degree rather than of kind. A few observations, will, we think, make this abundantly evident, and at the same time show in how remarkable a manner the phenomena of insanity, viewed in reference to the subject before us, illustrate that reflective or renovating power of the imagination to which alone we ascribe the production of phantasms and spectres.

The history of this malady (says PineD claims alliance with all the errors and delusions of superstitious credulity —with those of witchcraft, demoniacal possession, oracles, divinations, and spectral illusions; and hence he considers it as eminently deserving of attention, on the part of the mental, as well as on that of the medical philosopher who may be called upon practically to minister consolation and relief to minds diseased. Insanity, considered generally, is merely the excess of that state or of those states of the mind during which hallucinations are produced; and this excess, when prolonged beyond a certain limit, terminates in fatuity, or the complete exhaustion and paralysis of the mental powers, just as bodily exertion, when urged beyond a certain pitch (varying, however, in each individuaD, terminates in the suspension of all physical energy, and ultimately in death. In both cases nature has provided a restorative power, which, up to a definitive point, can repair the injury produced by excited action, and enable the mind and body to recover their wonted tone and health; but if the excitation continue, or be pushed beyond this limit, the restorative efficacy is destroyed, and neither can ever regain their former condition. It is this excess alone which, in the case of mind, constitutes insanity. It is the unnatural continuance or prolongation of excited action which ultimately overwhelms the whole mental powers; not even excepting the imagination itself, the very instrument, if we may so express it, by which this melancholy ruin is accomplished. Hence it is commonly observed that persons endowed with the greatest susceptibility of mental excitement, with the warmest passions, the most active imaginations, and the most acute sensibilities, evince the strongest pre·
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disposition to insanity; and as this is the temperament that usually accompanies genius, every one can easily appreciate the truth of the observation which a celebrated poet has consecrated in his numbers, that great wit is nearly allied to madness, and that “thin partitions do the bounds divide” which separate the one from the other. But this predisposing temperament, of which oenius is a natural product, and insanity the excess or diseased state, is also that which renders men peculiarly susceptible of superstitious impressions, and upon which these, when once received into the mind, and treasured up in the memory, are likely, through the medium of the imagination, to re-act with the greatest force, and thus to give a sort of reflex impulse to the temperament which predisposes towards their reception. Need we wonder, then, to find the imagery of superstition so frequently blended and mixed up with the wild delusions of insanity, or the one acting upon and aggravating all the symptoms of the other? Need we wonder that in a great variety of instances superstition should become the exciting cause of insanity, or that the visions of insanity should, in their turn, form new objects of superstition?

In all cases of mental excitement, howsoever produced, the results may vary in proportion to the relative intensity of the excited action; but on a close examination it will be found that the difference observable amongst them is a difference of degree only, not of kind. “From recalling images by an act of the memory,” says Dr Ferriar, “the transition is direct to beholding spectral objects which have been floating in the imagination ;” and he adds that he has frequently, in the course of his professional practice, conversed with persons who imagined they saw demons, and heard them speak; a species of delusion which, he thinks, admits of many gradations and distinctions exclusive of actual insanity. Sir Walter Scott also mentions the case of a patient similarly affected, who, being troubled with a diurnal vision of an unsightly hag, consulted the late Dr Gregory on the subject of this visitation, but, as appears from the narrative, without deriving any material benefit from the skill of that eminent and learned physician. As the spectre was very regular in its appearance, and always visited the patient at a stated hour, the doctor, on one occasion, exerted all his powers of conversation, which were very great, to engage the mind of this individual, and if possible beguile him into a forgetfulness of time, that the awful hour might pass unobserved—but, as it turned out, without effect; for scarcely had the clock struck the hour, when the patient screamed out that he beheld the apparition. Ordinary impressions, indeed, are never sufficient to control such as arc produced by an imagination excited as this man’s must have been. Hence, finding his expedient vain, Dr Gregory had recourse to his usual remedy of blood-letting, in order to relieve the plethoric or apoplectic affection under which he concluded that the patient must be labouring; but whether this antiphlogistic treatment had the effect of dismissing the phantom hag who had previously repeated her visits so regularly, Sir Walter has not informed us. Delusions of this sort, as Dr Ferriar observes, certainly admit of gradations short of actual insanity; but the difference, as we have already remarked, is one of degree only, not of kind; for, in all such cases, a little additional intensity of excitement is only wanting to deprive the mind of that power over its impressions generally which it has already lost over one set, and thus to overwhelm it at once under a hideous mass of morbid hallucinatiòns. The same observation is applicable to the partial illusions generated by hysteria, hypochondria, febrile affections, inflammations of the brain, delirium tremens, and other diseases which exert a disturbing influence over the nervous system, especially that part of it more immediately connected with sensation. The exciting causes may vary, and the particular illusions created may partake of this variation; yet it will be found that, the excitement once produced, the resulting phenomena observe invariably the same law, and that according as the degree of that excitement is greater or less, so will the morbid affection of the mind either amount to actual insanity, or fall short of it by some gradations. The true theory of apparitions, therefore, is essentially the same with that of insanity; nor, in determining the general principle which connects the one class of phenomena, can we fail, if we pursue the proper course of investigation, to ascertain that which regulates and consequently explains the other.^[18. The activity which the soul frequently displays during sleep, or, in other words, the phenomena of dreams, engaged the attention of metaphysicians at an early period, and gave rise to numerous learned and ingenious speculations, an exquisite summary of which, accompanied with many truly refined and subtile observations of his own, the reader will find in the chapter where Mr Dugald Stewart treats of this subject in his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. “Dreams,” says Mr Addison, “look like the relaxations and amusements of the soul when she is disencumbered of lier machine; her sports and recreations when she has laid her charge asleep. The soul is clogged and retarded in her operations when she acts in conjunction with a companion that is so heavy and unwieldy in its motions; but in dreams she converses with numberless beings of her own creation, and is transported into ten thousand scenes of her own raising. She is herself the theatre, the actor, and the beholder.” This is finely said, and not more beautiful than true. But the reader will not fail to observe, that as Mr Addison’s description, if somewhat heightened in its colouring and distorted in its features, would apply to insanity as well as to dreams, so the state of the soul which produces the one would, if highly excited, exhibit all the characteristic phenomena of the other. Dreams, indeed, are but faint adumbrations of that vivid phantasmagoria which madness presents to the eye of the mind, and which is also accompanied with an increased intensity in all the feelings and emotions of the soul, whether connected with the predominant hallucination, or otherwise. Hence Pinel has remarked, that, even during the intervals of comparative calmness and reason, he has nowhere met, except in romance, with fonder husbands, more affectionate parents, more impassioned lovers, or purer and more exalted patriots, than in an asylum for lunatics. . * ]

These observations, as the reader must have already perceived, apply only to that part of Sir Walter Scott’s work which relates to apparitions, and which, in fact, is greatly inferior in interest as well as importance to the masterly exposition he has given of the various systems of magic and demonology which have prevailed at different times and in different countries. Here he is evidently quite at home; and as his treasures of ghostly lore are unbounded, his judicious obseiwations are continually illustrated by the most apposite and striking narratives, frequently derived from sources which are not generally accessible. His remarks on the denunciation against witches contained in the Old Testament, as well as on the particular case of the sorceress of Endor, consulted by Saul, are exceedingly interesting; and we think the distinction he has drawn between Jewish witchcraft, which was connected with the abominations of idolatry, and that of modern times, which was the joint product of ignorance, credulity, fear, persecution, and imposture, perfectly sound. That the witch of Endor was a mere fortune-teller, to whom the unfortunate ∙ king of Israel had recourse in his despair, is beyond all question or doubt; and the only difficulty is to explain how it was so ordained that the spirit of the prophet Samuel should arise amidst the incantations of an impostor, and thus lend a [7:3:308] sort of countenance to the belief in magical charms and divinations, which was already but too generally and deeply rooted in the minds of the Israelites. This, however, is not the place to enter into the discussion of mat ters which properly fall to be treated of under different heads, and which involve principles totally different from those which are applicable to the case of apparitions alone. (a.)