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"When the

always hitherto assumed an agreeable form. doctor left me,” he continues, "my relaxed attention returned to the phantasms, and some time afterwards, instead of a pleasing face, a visage of extreme rage appeared, which presented a gun at me, and made me start; but it remained the usual time, and then gradually faded away. This immediately showed me the probability of some connexion between my thoughts and these images; for I ascribed the angry phantasm to the general reflection I had formed in conversation with Dr. C." (at which time a visual idea of some object of dread had doubtless passed through his mind). "I recollected some disquisitions of Locke, in his Treatise on the Conduct of the Mind, where he endeavours to account for the appearance of faces to persons of nervous habits. It seemed to me as if faces, in all their modifications, being so associated with our recollections of the affections of passions, would be most likely to offer themselves in delirium; but I now thought it probable that other objects could be seen if previously meditated upon. With this motive it was that I reflected upon landscapes and scenes of architectural grandeur, while the faces were flashing before me; and after a certain considerable interval of time, of which I can form no precise judgment, a rural scene of hills, valleys, and fields appeared before me, which was succeeded by another and another in ceaseless succession, the manner and time of their respective appearance, duration, and vanishing, being not sensibly different from those of the faces. All the scenes were calm and still, without any strong lights or glare, and delightfully calculated to inspire notions of retirement, of tranquillity, and happy meditation."-The narrator tells us how he followed up this experiment by other similar ones. He thought of books, and anon he saw books. He continues, "I was now so well aware of the connexion of thought with their appearances, that by fixing my mind on the consideration of manuscript instead of printed type, the papers appeared, after a time, only with manuscript writing; and afterwards, by the same process, instead of being erect, they were all inverted, or appeared upside down."

Our doctrine is, as our readers have seen, that spectral, acoustic, and tactual illusions are occasioned by ideal impressions being made more vivid than actual sensations. This vivification is caused by disease of body, or powerful mental excitement, which, in fact, operates by occasional physical disease. Visual ideas, being the most numerous and impressive, are the oftenest excited; acoustic deceptions are more common than tactual; and ideas of smell and taste, being comparatively few and weak, afford no materials for morbid impressions. Whether the deception at first arise from physical or moral causes, it acts by means of the bodily organs; and therefore physical methods of counteraction should always be employed, whether moral influences be or be not also exerted. The physician did his patient more good by placing himself on the spot where the skeleton was believed to stand than by any reasoning he could have used, or any exertions to make his patient turn his attention to something else. The nerves are the medium of illusion, and the nerves therefore should be treated. The mind is the thing deceived, and not the deceiver; and the way to dispel the illusion is to rectify the instrument of deception.

Various circumstances have for some time been working together to effect a complete elucidation of the subject of which we are treating. The publication of Nicolai's case was the first advantage afforded. Dr. Ferriar, of Manchester, directed public attention to it in England; and the materials he afforded were improved upon by Dr. Hibbert, in his work on the Philosophy of Apparitions. To this work we are indebted for some of the ideas we have offered, and for the suggestion of more. Sir Walter Scott too has studied it, studied it from beginning to end, but with no other apparent advantage than gleaning some interesting cases, and presenting his readers with some hints which it

is to be hoped they will amplify, as he has declined the task. What an opportunity has he lost of illustrating a dark region of life! The subject of supernatural appearances has for ages been treated poetically, and of late, medically and philosophically. Sir Walter Scott, by uniting the philosophy and the poetry as we expected he would, might have produced a work of singular interest and beauty, instead of doing what in him lay to set back the world which he has such mighty power to roll onward. This is the more mischievous as it is certain that very gross superstition not only lurks among the ignorant classes of society, but is countenanced by some who ought to know better. We are still told that the belief of supernatural agency has been so useful in the world that it is an injury to society to loosen the restraints of hope and fear which it has imposed. We are still plied with stories (true and interesting, we allow) of the detection of guilt and the reformation of the guilty, of consolation to the oppressed and support to the innocent, imparted by means of dreams and omens. We are asked what we think of the conversion of Colonel Gardiner, and of the discovery of murder which took place in the case of Corder, and in many similar instances. is strange that the influences which operated in these cases should not be recognised, and that it should be forgotten how much misery has been caused by the superstition such persons would perpetuate. For one man who has been converted like Colonel Gardiner, hundreds have been impelled to crimes which they would not have perpetrated but from a belief that they were destined to do so. The intellects of thousands have been cramped by irrational fears, their energies perverted by degrading conceptions of the nature of Deity, their peace broken, and their tempers soured by wrong notions of the purposes and modes of religious obedience. Every reader of history knows this;

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and if a record could be exhibited of the cases of suicide, of madness, of martyrdom, of death from terror which have been occasioned by popular superstitions, there would be an end of all argument for the maintenance of superstition through concern for the public good.

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We have some sympathy with those who lament the approaching loss of the associations which are connected with popular superstitions. We are glad that they have lingered till our poets and novelists, Sir Walter Scott especially, could render them permanent as a matter of taste. As long as superstitions are linked with truth, as long as they preserve any thing of the character of allegory, they must be permanent. The Grecian mythology, ancient as it is, is not worn out; but it remains, not as a system of superstition, but as a reservoir of beauty whence the imagination may draw refreshment, perhaps for ever. As far as the superstitions of our country subserve the same purpose, let them abide; but not as superstitions. Let fairies and goblins impart something of spirituality to natural objects, even in the eyes of the laborer; but without engaging his belief; without causing one pang of terror to the most sensitive of his children. Let us exercise our imaginations by personifying our conceptions of a spiritual state; but not so as to make the most timid afraid of crossing a churchyard by moonlight. Let us mark all coincidences between ideal impressions and subsequent events, without fostering a belief in presentiments and omens.

It should be borne in mind that if, in the progress of society, some excitements of the imagination are lost, higher and better are substituted. As the aggregate experience of mankind accumůlates, truth is developed, and the faculties of the mind approximate to a harmonious action, The imagination becomes more disposed to exercise itself on forms which have truth for their essence, and are there

fore immortal, than on those which are inspired with a capricious and transient life. In the infancy of society, the imagination can find the elements of its creations in nature alone; and therefore its action is, for a time, pure. In a more advanced state, its elements are chosen from the dreams of a preceding age, and its illegitimate exercise gives birth to superstition. But the result of a further discipline of the universal mind is to make the imagination again subservient to truth; while the fuller development of truth expands and exalts the imagination. Higher and purer excitements are at length administered by truth than ever sprang from delusion, however poetical. The thoughts and feelings suggested by the exercise of the abstract powers on real objects are more influential and permanent than any which originate in superstition. The associations which cluster around realities, in themselves insignificant, afford a greater variety of excitements than the machinery of pure fiction. The ignorant man observes an omen which intimates that a ship is lost at sea. He believes, and laments, and watches for tidings, and finds, perhaps, that the intimation accords with the fact; but his concern is more for the omen than the ship. His ideas and feelings are employed, not upon the interests of humanity which are involved, but on the observation and comparison of presentiments and arbitrary signs. The enlightened mind, in the mean time, is exercised by suggestions which imply no superhuman interference. If the shattered mast of a vessel, covered with seaweed, is seen drifting with the waves, a host of associations is summoned in an instant. Without the intervention of form or sound from above, tidings are conveyed of wreck and destruction: the scene is beheld the farewell of companions about to be separated for a moment (but what a moment!)—the last bitter sympathy with those at home, the manly resignation of some,

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