Chapter V: Part 5

The protracted devotion of the thoughts to the memory of those whom the grave has severed from us, or from whom we are separated by distance, and which is induced by grief, gives also to the mental image great vividness. Exquisitely beautiful and true is the sentence placed in the mouth of Constance, when blamed for the grief she entertained on being separated from Prince Arthur:--

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief."

In direct proportion to the concentration of the mind in the contemplation of its own actions, is the brilliancy and distinctness of the ideas which pass athwart it; and in the state of abstraction or of reverie, when from intense meditation, or from mere inactivity, the sensations derived from surrounding objects are not attended to, the ideas are so defined that they differ but little from actual objects in the sensations they excite. So also in sleep, if, from any cause, physical or mental, we are roused into a state of semi-consciousness, as in dreaming, the phantasms of former events, stored up in the memory, and by certain sensations or trains of thought thrown to the surface, differ in no respect--light, colour, shade, or sound--from the sensations derived from the objects represented.

Should, therefore, the concentration of the mind upon any subject be such as to disturb the natural functions of the brain, the mental image is liable to excite sensations, and to be pourtrayed with a distinctness and "outness" which approximates to, or equals, that of a real object, and it is regarded as such.

In the majority of individuals the concentration and intensity of feeling necessary for the production of hallucinations is of rare occurrence, and it is found only under such conditions as profound grief caused by death under painful or peculiar circumstances; from terror, excited by causes bringing powerful superstitious feelings into play--under which circumstances the hallucinations induced are generally transitory--or by emotions inordinately protracted; hence it is that we find visions of the dead among the most common of the temporary hallucinations. In the studious, and men of powerful thought, the mind being habituated to absorption in its own ideas, it not unfrequently happens that hallucinations occur from a disordered state of the brain induced by continued mental labour. These hallucinations are generally very vivid, and may arise either voluntarily or involuntarily, and may become habitual without the health being seriously disturbed.

It will be seen, therefore, that the action of the mental powers alone is sufficient to give rise to sensations which are regarded as resulting from actual objects; and that from the simple vividness of the mental image, which is common to most persons, we may trace their effects, in a gradually ascending scale, in inducing mental conditions in which the brilliancy of the image is such that, for the time, it completely occupies the attention, and shuts out, as it were, the sensations derived from objects before the field of vision,--and in the formation of ideas so vivid and defined, that they take their position among surrounding, and excite the sensations proper to external, objects.

We have thus far spoken of the effects of the imagination on the healthy frame, but in certain disordered conditions of the nervous system, occurring either alone, or in connection with other and more general morbid alterations in the economy, hallucinations are more apt to occur than in health. The system in this state is more susceptible of the effects of emotion, and the images arising in the mind are more vivid than would happen from the same degree of excitement in health, and are readily converted into hallucinations. This is witnessed in certain forms of hysteria, febrile diseases, &c.; hence, in these disordered conditions of the system, the hallucinations are not to be attributed to the action of the mind, so much as to a morbid susceptibility to undergo those changes requisite to the production of hallucinations; and these are, consequently, induced by grades of emotion and by influences which would not have caused that in ordinary health.

On the other hand, the action of the mind in the development of hallucinations equally induces certain diseased states, either special or general. Even simple and temporary hallucination, in whatever manner caused, must be regarded as an indication that the changes going on in the nervous centres have passed the bounds of health; and according as the causes inducing hallucinations are more or less protracted, or the hallucinations are more or less persistent or frequent, so we may mark a greater or less deterioration in the mental powers, the nervous or the general system, or indications of more acute disease, to progress along with them, until the acme is reached in insanity, idiocy, or some more rapidly progressive and equally formidable disease.

To illustrate these remarks: Blake, the artist, who, after the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, enjoyed great fame as a portrait-painter, owed his celebrity, in great part, to the singular fact that he required but one or, at the most, two sittings, from those whose portraits he painted. He was accustomed to regard the person who sat to him attentively for about half an hour, sketching from time to time on the canvas, and he would then pass on to another subject. When he wished to continue the first portrait, on placing the canvas before him, he had the power of calling up so vivid a mental image of the personage, the outline of whose face was depicted upon it, that it assumed all the appearance of reality, and he perceived it in the position in which he required it to be. From this phantasm he painted, turning from the canvas and regarding it as he would have done had the representative of the phantom been there in person. By degrees he began to lose the distinction between the real and the imaginary objects, and at length a complete confusion of the mind occurred, rendering it necessary for him to be confined in an asylum. During his residence there, his insanity was marked by an exaggeration of that vivid power of imagination he had possessed previously; for he at will could summon before him the phantoms of any of the personages of history, and he held long and sensible conversations with Michael Angelo, Moses, Semiramis, Richard III, &c., all of whom appeared to him, when he desired, in the vivid hues and distinct outlines of reality.

Talma, the great French tragedian, had the power, when upon the stage, of causing the vestments of his audience to disappear, and of depicting them as skeletons. When the hallucination was complete, and he had filled the theatre with these ghastly auditors, he was enabled to give the fullest and most surprising force to his performance.

Examples of the influence of powerful and protracted emotions in inducing hallucinations are numerous. Dr. Conolly relates the case of a gentleman who, when at one time in great danger of being wrecked in a small boat on the Eddystone rocks, in the moment of greatest peril saw his family before him.

M. Boismont quotes the case of a world-known general who, when in a combat one day, was surrounded by the enemy, and in so great danger that escape seemed impossible. He, nevertheless, contrived to escape; but the impression made upon him was such, that afterwards, until a late period of life, he occasionally suffered from an hallucination in which the scene of danger was again presented before him and re-enacted; and when subsequently on a throne, sometimes the silence of the palace would be disturbed by his cries, as he struggled and fought with his phantom foes. The hallucination was momentary.

The intense emotion which Sir Richard Croft experienced on being summoned to attend the Princess Charlotte of Wales on her death-bed was such, that he saw her form, habited in white, glide along before his carriage.

A case is related by Boismont of a lady who, while suffering from the depression occasioned by receiving information that her daughter was seriously ill, heard a voice which addressed to her the words, "Lovest thou me?" The lady responded immediately, "Lord, thou knowest that I have placed all my confidence in thee, and that I love thee with all my soul." The voice then said, "Dost thou give her to me?" The lady trembled with fear, but summoning courage, she replied, "However painful the sacrifice may be, let Thy will be accomplished." This lady was deeply pious, and the hallucination arose from the powerful and painful emotion caused by the sudden news of her daughter's illness, inducing that disordered state of the nervous system, in which the thoughts naturally engendered in one who submitted everything to the Almighty, became audible.

The combined influence of love and sorrow has been a powerful source of hallucinations, and many of those wild and beautiful legends and tales which are scattered throughout the kingdom, recording the apparition of a deceased or distant lover to his betrothed, have been due to this cause.

Thus, as in the old ballad:--

"When it was grown to dark midnight,
And all were fast asleep,
In came Margaret's grimly ghost,
And stood at William's feet."

Or in the story of "Isabella," by Boccacio, so beautifully rendered by Keats:--

"It was a vision. In the drowsy gloom,
The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot
Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb
Had marr'd his glossy hair, which once could shoot
Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom
Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute
From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears
Had made a miry channel for his tears.

Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spoke;
For there was striving in its piteous tongue,
To speak as when on earth it was awake,
And Isabella on its music hung:
Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,
As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung;
And through it moaned a ghostly under-song,
Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briers among.

Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright
With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof
From the poor girl by magic of their light,
The while it did unthread the horrid woof
Of the late darken'd time--the murd'rous spite
Of pride and avarice--the dark pine roof
In the forest--and the sodden turfed dell,
When, without any word, from stabs it fell.

Saying moreover, "Isabel, my sweet!
Red whortle-berries droop above my head,
And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;
Around me beeches and high chesnuts shed
Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat
Comes from beyond the river to my bed:
Go shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
Upon the skirts of human nature dwelling
Alone: I chaunt alone the holy mass,
While little sounds of life are round me knelling,
And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,
Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,
And thou art distant in humanity."

Some of these apparitions have, in all probability, been illusions caused by an object indistinctly seen in the pale moonlight, or by an accidental arrangement of the furniture of the apartment, transformed by an imagination devoted to the subject of its own sorrows, or influenced by a vivid dream, into the idea at the moment most prominent in the mind.

The influence of remorse, or of those terrible emotions which accrue to the murderer on the perpetration of the foul deed, in causing hallucinations, is well known.

The ghost of Banquo (Macbeth, Act III, Scene 3) is a type of many wondrous histories:--

"Prythee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo!--How say you?
Why what can I? If thou canst nod, speak too.
If charnel-houses, and our graves, must send
Those that we bury, back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites."

Vanderkiste[64] relates the story of a convict who had murdered an overseer, and taken to the bush:--

"He lived in the woods, and came armed to the huts to demand provisions for some time, but imagined he was continually haunted by the spirit of the man he had murdered. At last he delivered himself up to the authorities, declaring his life a burden. He was seen for days, dogged, as he conceived, by the spectre of his victim, and escaping from tree to tree."

Sir Walter Scott records the story, that the captain of a slaver, in a fit of anger, shot at, and mortally wounded, one of his sailors. As the man was dying, he fixed his eyes upon the captain, and said, "Sir, you have done for me, but I will never leave you." The captain became grave and moody, and some time after he invited the mate into the cabin, and addressing him, said, "I need not tell you, Jack, what sort of hand we have got on board with us. He told me he would never leave me, and he has kept his word. You only see him now and then, but he is always by my side, and never out of my sight. At this very moment I see him. I am determined to bear it no longer, and I have resolved to leave you." Soon after this, the captain, watching an opportunity when he was unobserved, plunged into the sea: the mate rushed to the side of the ship, and the captain perceiving him, extended his hands upwards, exclaimed; "By ----, Bill is with me now!" and sunk.

One of the most remarkable examples of hallucination arising from the feelings excited by cold-blooded murder is recorded by Boismont:--

"A duellist, who had killed sixteen persons in single combat, was constantly accompanied by their phantoms; they never left him night or day."

The solitary hours of Charles IX were made frightful by the shrieks and cries which had reached him during the massacre of the Eve of St. Bartholomew, and he was haunted for many days subsequent to its occurrence by hideous and bloody faces. Taking Ambrose Paré aside, at one time, he remarked that he wished they had not comprised in the massacre the aged and children.

No cause is, however, so apt to engender hallucinations as religious enthusiasm, or an inordinate or rather fanatical occupation of the mind in the contemplation of religious subjects.

In the saint-visions which are so numerously scattered in the annals of Christian churches and which were so common under the self-denying and ascetic rules of some of the monastic orders, we have examples; and Spenser's "Hermit" furnishes the type of this species of hallucination:--

"Thence forward by that painfull way they pas
Forth to an hill, that was both steepe and hy;
On top whereof a sacred chapel was,
And eke a little hermitage thereby,
Wherein an aged holy man did lie,
That day and night said his devotion,
Ne other worldly busines did apply:
His name was Heavenly Contemplation;
Of God and goodness, was his meditation.

Great grace that old man to him given had;
For God he often saw from heavens hight:
All were his earthly eien both blunt and bad,
And through great age had lost their kindly sight,
Yet wondrous quick and persaunt was his spright,
As eagles eie, that can behold the sunne."

The Virgin appeared to Ignatius Loyola, and confirming his designs, urged him to the enterprise he had in view for the establishment of the Roman Catholic church on a surer basis. Satan came visibly to Luther and contended with him, sometimes worsting him in argument. Swedenborg beheld in visions the heavenly scenes which his imagination had pourtrayed; while Pascal wrote he beheld an abyss of flames beside his writing-table; and Symeon Stylites conceived that Satan had appeared to him under the form of Jesus Christ, and invited him to ascend to heaven in a chariot drawn by cherubim. Symeon put out his foot to enter the chariot, when the whole vanished; and, as a punishment for his presumption, the offending thigh was affected with an ulcer, which obliged him to rest upon one leg for the remainder of his life.

It is important to comprehend fully the influence of the imagination in developing visions of this nature, particularly in a disordered state of the health, from the important effects which they have exercised and still exercise upon mankind.

The following example is an interesting illustration of the nature and source of these hallucinations:

Some years ago considerable attention was excited in Germany by the publication of a series of visions which a lady of considerable literary attainments and high character had beheld, and for which she believed that she was indebted to divine favour.

The hallucinations which she experienced had first been noted in the fourth year of her age, when one day, as she was dressing a doll, and for greater convenience had placed a large folio Bible beneath her feet, she heard a voice exclaim: "Put the book where you found it!" She did not immediately obey the order, as she saw no one, but in a few moments the mandate was repeated, and she thought some one took hold of her face. This hallucination, according to Dr. Hibbert, is to be regarded as a renovated feeling arising from some prior remonstrances regarding the holy volume; and, we would add, together with the altered sensation experienced in the face, was evidently due to the earlier stages of a disease which occasioned the more fully developed visions. After this period, she devoted herself to the study of the Scriptures; and her labours, in this respect, were incessant and protracted. In her seventh year she saw, when playing, a vision of a clear flame which entered the chamber door, in the centre of which was a strong bright light, described as about the size of a child six years old. This vision endured about half an hour. No other vision is mentioned until the period of her marriage, which proved unfortunate, embittering her life and causing her constantly to meditate on death. It was in this state of mind that the principal visions to which she was subjected occurred. On one occasion, after receiving some ill-treatment from her husband, broken down in spirits, and thinking the Lord had forsaken her, she made a resolution to desist from prayer. On retiring to bed, she repented the decision she had made, and prayed fervently. She awoke in the morning before daybreak, and was surprised to find the room vividly illuminated, and that at the bedside was seated a heavenly figure, in the form of an old man. This phantom was dressed in a blueish robe, and had bright hair; and the countenance shone like the clearest red and white crystal. It regarded her benignantly, and said, "_Proceed, proceed, proceed!_" At first the words were unintelligible to her, but a young and beautiful angel, which appeared on the other side of the bed, exclaimed: "_Proceed in prayer, proceed in faith, proceed in trials!_" After this the devil appeared, pulled her by the hair, and tormented her in other ways, until the angel interfered, and drove him away. Satan in this case assumed his usual hideous garb. Subsequently one of the angels exclaimed, three times: "Lord, this is sufficient;" and while saying these words, the lady beheld large wings on his shoulders, and knew him to be an angel of God. The light and the angels then vanished, and the lady felt eased of her grief, and arose.

If the nature of the figures and the mode of action in these visions had not sufficed to show how completely they were dependent upon dominant ideas and a disordered state of the nervous system, the history of the case would demonstrate it. The early, protracted, and inordinate study of religious beliefs, similar to that which laid the basis of Swedenborg's visions; the painful state of the mind induced by her unhappy marriage, and disease, were the source of the hallucinations to which she was subject; for it was ascertained that when the visions occurred she always suffered from slight attacks of epilepsy.

Intense and protracted mental exertion frequently gives rise to hallucinations.

A medical gentleman in Edinburgh, while seated one evening in his library, after a period of excessive study, on raising his head, was startled by perceiving at the opposite side of the table the spectre of a gentleman who had died under melancholy circumstances some days previously, and at whose post-mortem examination he had assisted.

That excessive action of the imagination, and consequent absorption of the mind in its own workings, to exclusion of external sensations, which is common in men of genius, has been a fertile source of hallucinations.

In some instances the hallucinations have been "counterfeit presentments" of the ideas which have been most prominent in the mind; in others they have had no relation to that condition.

Spinello, who had painted the Fall of the Angels, thought that he was haunted by the frightful devils which he had depicted. He was rendered so miserable by this hallucination that he destroyed himself. One of our own artists, who was much engaged in painting caricatures, became haunted by the distorted faces he drew; and the deep melancholy and terror which accompanied these apparitions caused him to commit suicide. Müller, who executed the copper-plate of the Sixtine Madonna, had more lovely visions. Towards the close of his life the Virgin appeared to him, and thanking him for the affection he had shown towards her, invited him to follow her to heaven. To achieve this, the artist starved himself to death. Beethoven, who became completely deaf in the decline of life, often heard his sublime compositions performed distinctly.

It is related of Ben Jonson, that he spent the whole of one night in regarding his great toe, around which he saw Tartars, Turks, Romans, and Catholics climbing up, and struggling and fighting. Goëthe, when out riding one day, was surprised to see an exact image of himself on horseback, dressed in a light-coloured coat, riding towards him.

A similar kind of hallucination to this of Goëthe's has been observed as a precursor of certain forms of insanity, and in the delirium of fever.

Boismont records the case of a gentleman who was troubled with a spectral image of himself, which he had the power of calling before him voluntarily. This, for several years, was a source of amusement to him; but by degrees this phantom became more persistent, arose involuntarily, and addressed him. The hallucination then assumed a still graver character, for his double would dispute with him, and often foil him in argument; and coincidently with this phase of the disease the gentleman became melancholy, and he ultimately committed suicide.

The imagination rarely gives rise to hallucinations of the senses of touch, taste, or smell alone. The sweet-smelling odours which are stated to have been experienced during the visions of angels and saints; and the foul and sulphurous fumes which have accompanied apparitions of the infernals, are, however, to be attributed to this cause.

Thus far our illustrations and remarks have been confined to that class of hallucinations which are induced principally by the action of the imagination, mental emotion, or excessive exertion of the reasoning powers.

There is, however, another class of hallucinations dependent upon certain disordered states of the general health and nervous system, which have an important bearing upon the belief in the supernatural.

The simplest forms of hallucination of this class are those occasionally observed during the initiatory stages of some diseases, after the termination of exhausting affections, or during temporary morbid conditions of the brain.

The following examples will illustrate the nature of the hallucinations arising from these sources.

A lady, with whom we are acquainted, was walking early one morning in a lonely and unfrequented path, which was open to the eye for some distance. On approaching its termination, she was surprised to see a lady advancing towards her, dressed in deep mourning, and reading a book. Struck by the peculiar beauty of the lady's face, she turned round to gaze upon her as she passed; but, to her surprise, the figure vanished. Startled and alarmed, she hurried home, and almost immediately afterwards was seized with shiverings, and suffered from a violent attack of fever, characterised by severe cerebral disturbance. The hallucination in this case was caused by the changes induced in the nervous system by the initiatory stages of the disease.

A young lady recovering from a severe attack of fever, was left in charge of the house during a fine Sunday evening in autumn, the remainder of the family having gone to church. A thunder-storm came on, with heavy rain, and she became very anxious about her aged father. On going into the room generally occupied by the family, there, to her great astonishment, she beheld, as she thought, her father sitting in his usual position. Supposing that he must have returned from church unwell, she advanced, placed her hand upon the semblance, and found nothing. Although startled, she attributed the vision to its proper cause, anxiety and weakness; but though she went in and out of the room several times, the spectre persisted for a considerable period.

A merchant, while sitting in his counting-house, was annoyed by hearing voices outside the door conversing freely respecting his character, and speaking of him as a dishonoured man. Thinking it was some trick of his friends, he quietly opened the door, and was astonished to find no one. On closing it the voices again began in a similar strain; and on re-opening the door he still found no one. Alarmed, he left his office, and proceeded home, but the voices followed him, threatening punishment for imaginary crimes. This hallucination was accompanied by other signs of a disordered state of the brain, and it was not until after a period of entire relaxation from business, and a daily game at cricket, that the phantom-voices ceased.

There are certain formidable disorders of the nervous system in which hallucinations affect all the senses.

The following is an example of the diseases of this class, and it will show the influence which they are liable to exert in the development of certain forms of superstition.

A maiden lady, aged forty years, who from early youth had been of a very susceptible and restless disposition, suffered from hallucinations which persisted for many years.

At first the sight alone was affected, and she saw numerous persons of singular and fantastic form. Subsequently she heard voices, which professed to have taken up their abode in her stomach, and addressed her from thence. These voices tormented her; commanded all her actions; informed her of what took place within the body; gave her instructions upon diseases, and even prescribed for them. The voices gave her information respecting the characters of divers persons, and occasionally endowed her with the power of expressing herself in terms more florid and fluent than she was accustomed to. Often the voices conversed on geography, grammar, rhetoric, &c.; and they would reprove her when she had done amiss. They told her that she was possessed, and although she was not superstitious, and fully recognized the hallucinations she suffered from, she at this time sought a priest to exorcise her, thought much of eternity, and sometimes gave herself up to despair. At one time the voices told her she would become queen; often they conversed with her upon strange, and sometimes even abominable subjects; then they would say things extremely comical, and make her laugh. They would please, and then mock her, and then assail her more violently than ever, and spoil like harpies everything she touched or did. If she took a glass of water, the voices would call out that it was poisoned; and frequently they urged her to destroy herself. When she walked out, if she passed a female, the voices would cry out that she carried musk (the odour of which the lady abominated) and immediately she smelt this odour; if a man passed her, she was affected with the smell of tobacco. The voices often gave her no rest until she did what they liked, and they even ordered her to Paris, to place herself under the care of physicians there.

The visions she suffered from were very singular. Her apartment was filled with persons of all characters and descriptions; numerous processions defiled before her, and some of the figures had but one half the body, a profile, or one eye; they were large or small, and occasionally underwent singular and fantastic changes of form.

The food she took did not possess its natural taste, and the voices often gave unpleasant savours, to prevent her eating.

When she journeyed, she felt as if soaked with water, and she would attempt to wring her clothes.

Addressing one of her physicians, when the malady was fully developed, she said, "I know that it is monomania, but the voices are stronger than my will. I wish you to prescribe for me, it is impossible for me to remain in one place."[65]

This case is an interesting illustration of a form of disease, which, when developed in persons who are subject to religious enthusiasm, has given rise to the belief of possession with devils (_demonomania_). Instances of this disease are frequently met with in the French asylums.

Many other forms of hallucination occur in insanity, monomania, fever, hysteria, and other diseases, in dreams, and from the influence of certain poisonous substances taken into the system. Some of these hallucinations are of considerable interest, since they have been the prime cause of many superstitions.

In addition to the hallucinations of the hearing already mentioned, in certain diseases, words spoken in the right ear have been heard in the left, and _vice versâ_; and under the influence of opium or haschish (prepared from the Indian hemp), the sense becomes, occasionally, so developed, that a word pronounced low, or a slight movement, sounds like a peal of thunder. Hallucinations of the sight have occasionally presented figures of colossal stature, or of extreme diminutiveness; or the patient has conceived the idea that he was so tall that he was unable to walk erect in a lofty apartment, or so diminutive that he dreaded the movements of any near to him, lest they should do him harm. Pleasant or fetid odours are sometimes constantly present to the smell. Feuchtersleben states the case of a lady who was long haunted with the effluvia as of a charnel-house. The taste is subjected to hallucinations of exquisitely flavoured viands and wines; or the reverse, no food being taken; or everything taken presents one undeviating flavour, which may be pleasant or unpleasant, or it has no taste at all. A sensation of _flying_ is not uncommon. Boismont has a friend who frequently experiences this sensation, and it often occurs in dreams. A friend of ours is in the habit of dreaming that he is suspended about a foot above the surface of the earth, and is carried along by simple volition, without movement of the limbs; and St. Jerome states, that often in dreams he flew from the earth over mountains and seas. Our ideas of depth and space are sometimes increased in dreams to an extent that is inexpressible and almost bewildering; and the sensation of falling into an abyss is common to the dreamer. The idea of time is often extended indefinitely; in the space of a single night, days, weeks, years, and even ages, have appeared to elapse. Transformation of the figure is occasionally met with among the hallucinations of insanity; and in the state induced by haschish, the singular and fantastic forms which those under its influence, and the parties surrounding them, have appeared to undergo, are of great interest. "The eyelashes," writes one gentleman, "lengthened themselves indefinitely, and rolled themselves as threads of gold on little ivory bobbins, which turned unassisted, with frightful rapidity.... I still saw my comrades at certain moments, but _deformed_, half men, half plants, with the pensive airs of an ibis standing on one foot, of ostriches flapping their wings, &c."--"I imagined that I was the parroquet of the Queen of Sheba, and I imitated as well as I was able the cries of this praiseworthy bird."

In the state caused by haschish it occasionally also happens that the person under its influence may be caused to speak or act in any manner that is suggested to him. This phenomenon is also seen in dreams; in both conditions the half-awakened mind automatically pursues the train of thought which has been suggested to it either by the voice or by certain sensations.

Lastly, in certain disordered conditions of the system, the person has the power of looking, as it were, into himself, and ascertaining what is going on there, or of extending his sensual powers beyond the bounds of their ordinary sphere, and ascertaining what transpires in other places, or at a distance of many miles (_clairvoyance_). The gentleman from whose experience of the effects of haschish we have already quoted, thought he could look at will into his stomach, and that he saw there, in the form of an emerald, from which escaped millions of sparkles, the drug he had swallowed.

By a careful consideration of the illusions and hallucinations to which we are liable, we obtain a clue to unravel the wild fantasies which constitute the greater part of the most prominent superstitions.

If we reflect on the superstitious ideas which filled the minds of our forefathers, and follow them back, in their deepening intensity, into the middle ages, we can easily imagine how the irregular and fantastic figures which an indistinct and disordered vision gave rise to in the gloom of the night, were transformed into fiends and demons; how spectres, clothed in their horrid white and blue panoply, were seen stalking over the earth, and haunting the murder-stained castle, glade, and forest; how the dimly illuminated mists of the evening and morning shadowed forth the forms of the dead, and the spirits of the waters and the air; how in the mist of Killarney, an O'Donoghue, mounted on his milk-white steed, and attended by a host of fairy forms, swept over the beautiful lake; and a spectral array arose night after night from the bed of the rushing Moldau, and besieged the walls of Prague; how the moonbeams chequering the deep recesses of the woods, and the banks and meadows overhung with foliage, were metamorphised into fairies; how the wind howling among the rocks and mountains, sweeping through the valleys, or whispering amid the trees and about the nooks and corners of the turretted castle and ruinous mansion, bore on its bosom the sounds of spectre-horsemen, demon-hunters, and fiend-like hounds, or the wail and lamentations of wandering and lost spirits, and the shrieks of the infernals; and how the billows, rushing into the caverns and deep fissures in the cliffs of a rock-bound coast, filled the air with the mysterious and incomprehensible language of the spirits of the deep.

A clue also is obtained to other forms of superstition.

The power which the witch was supposed to possess of transporting herself from place to place, and which those self-deluded wretches themselves believed; and the orgies of the witch-sabbath, which were again and again deposed to, were hallucinations due to a form of insanity--for we may so call it--prevailing at the period, which was determined by the nature of the superstitious beliefs entertained. The real character of this superstition is well shown by an incident which is recorded by Jung-Stilling.

He writes:--"I am acquainted with a tale, for the truth of which I can vouch, because it is taken from the official documents of an old witch-process. An old woman was imprisoned, put to the torture, and confessed all that witches are generally charged with. Amongst others, she also denounced a neighbour of hers, who had been with her on the Blocksberg, the preceding Walpurgis night. This woman was called, and asked if it were true what the prisoner said of her? On which she stated that, on Walpurgis eve she had called upon this woman, because she had something to say to her. On entering her kitchen, she found the prisoner busy in preparing a decoction of herbs. On asking her what she was boiling, she said, with a smiling and mysterious mien, "Wilt thou go with me to the Brocken?" From curiosity, and in order to ascertain what there was in the matter, she answered, "Yes: I should like to go well enough." On which the prisoner chattered some time about the feast, and the dance, and the enormous goat. She then drank of the decoction, and offered it to her, saying: "There, take a hearty drink of it, that thou mayest be able to ride through the air:" she likewise put the pot to her mouth, and made as if she drank of it, but did not taste a drop. During this, the prisoner had put a pitchfork between her legs, and placed herself upon the hearth; that she soon sunk down, and began to sleep and snore: after having looked on for some time, she was at length tired of it, and went home.

The next morning, the prisoner came to her, and said, "Well, how dost thou like being at the Brocken? Sith, there were glorious doings." On which she had laughed heartily, and told her that she had not drunk of the potion, and that she, the prisoner, had not been at the Brocken, but had slept with her pitchfork upon the hearth. That the woman, on this, became angry, and said to her, that she ought not to deny having been at the Brocken, and having danced and kissed the goat."[66]

Gassendi relates an experiment to the same effect. He anointed some peasants with a pomade made of belladonna or opium, persuading them that the operation would convey them to the witch-sabbath. After a profound sleep, they awoke, and told how they had been present at the sabbath, and the pleasures they had enjoyed.

Stupifying and intoxicating drugs were, in all probability, freely used by sorcerers, and in the ancient mysteries, and to their use is to be attributed many of the illusions and hallucinations which are familiar in the details of the practice of the occult sciences.

Jung-Stilling quotes a singularly interesting example of a method of practising one of the most important processes of magic; and an examination of it satisfactory shows the manner in which some of the most striking of the deceptions of that art were brought about, and how it happened that the professor, as well as the student, was equally deluded.

In Eckhartshausen's "Key to Magic" there is an account of a young Scotsman "who, though he meddled not with the conjuration of spirits, and such like charlatanry, had learned, however, a remarkable piece of art from a Jew, which he communicated also to Eckhartshausen, and made the experiment with him,--which is surprising, and worthy of perusal. He that wishes to raise and see any particular spirit, _must prepare himself for it, for some days together, both spiritually and physically_. There are also particular and remarkable requisites and relations necessary betwixt such a spirit and the person who wishes to see it--relations which cannot otherwise be explained, than on the ground of the intervention of some secret influence from the invisible world. After all these precautions, a vapour is produced in a room, from certain materials which Eckhartshausen, with propriety, does not divulge, on account of the dangerous abuse which might be made of it, which visibly forms itself into a figure which bears a resemblance to that which the person wishes to see. In this there is no question of any magic-lantern or optical artifice; but the vapour really forms a human figure, similar to that which the individual desires to behold. I will now insert the conclusion of the story in Eckhartshausen's own words:--

"Some time after the departure of the stranger, that is, the Scotsman, I made the experiment for one of my friends. He saw as I did, and had the same sensations.

"The observations that we made were these. As soon as the ingredients were thrown into the chafing-dish, a whitish body forms itself, that seems to hover above the chafing-dish, as large as life.

"It possesses the likeness of the person whom we wished to see, only the visage is of an ashy paleness.

"On approaching the figure, one is conscious of a resistance, similar to that which is felt when going against a strong wind, which drives one back.

"If one speaks with it, one remembers no more distinctly what is spoken; and when the appearance vanishes, one feels as if awakening from a dream. The head is stupified, and a contraction is felt about the abdomen. It is also very singular that the same appearance presents itself when one is in the dark, or when looking upon dark objects.

"The unpleasantness of this sensation was the reason why I was unwilling to repeat the experiment, although often urged to do so by many individuals."[67]

It would be difficult to conceive any more powerful method of inducing hallucinations than that detailed in this instructive and interesting recital. The previous schooling of the imagination, in order thoroughly to imbue it with the train of ideas requisite for the full development of the phenomenon, and the subsequent intoxication induced by the inhalation of powerful narcotic vapours--an intoxication which, as we have already seen in the example of haschish, is peculiarly apt to the development of hallucinations--will sufficiently account for the illusion of the smoke of the chafing-dish presenting any figure which the mind desires to see. The difficulty which the experimenter experienced in approaching the phantom, and which he compares to the resistance which is felt when contending against a strong wind, was evidently due to the powerful emotion which he experienced depriving him of that control of the voluntary muscles, such as we find in a person paralyzed by fear or astonishment; or perhaps it was rather a feeling similar to that experienced in nightmare, when, whatever effort we may make, we feel almost incapable of motion.

The action of the narcotic vapour alone was sufficient to induce hallucinations; for, persuaded by a very experienced physician, who "maintained that the narcotic ingredients which formed the vapour must of necessity violently affect the imagination, and might be very injurious, according to circumstances," Eckhartshausen made the experiment on himself without previous preparation; "but," he writes, "scarcely had I cast the quantum of ingredients into the chafing-dish, when a figure presented itself. I was, however, seized with such a horror, that I was obliged to leave the room. I was very ill during three hours, and thought I saw the figure always before me. Towards evening, after inhaling the fumes of vinegar, and drinking it with water, I was better again; but for three weeks afterwards I felt a debility: and the strangest part of the matter is, that when I remember the circumstance, and look for some time upon any dark object, this ashy pale figure still presents itself very vividly to my sight. After this I no longer dared to make any experiments with it."

The use of intoxicating and stupifying drugs doubtless contributed also to the development of those ideas of strange and wonderful transformations and anomalies of form with which the legends and romances of Oriental and European nations teem. In the examples of hallucinations we have already given from this source, we find the key to the explanation of several of these transformations; and the elaborated supernatural framework of fairy tales, in which men are changed without compunction into inferior animals, trees, or vegetables, has probably had a similar origin.

The state of "clairvoyance," and that condition of the nervous system which is found in certain diseases, dreams, and under the influence of narcotic poisons, in which, by suggestions, in whatever manner given, certain actions and trains of thought may be excited at the will of the suggestor, is seen also, and may be induced at will in those conditions of the system which are summed up under the terms "mesmerism," "animal magnetism," "electro-biology," &c.; and the theories which have been invented to explain them, and which are expressed in the above names, are not only needless, but inconsistent with the facts observed. The so-called mesmeric and electro-biological trance is strictly allied to certain forms of dreaming; and the whole of the results witnessed may be explained by certain admitted physiological and physical laws of action, and are due to leading trains of thought which are excited by suggestions direct or indirect. As to the higher faculty of prevision claimed in this state, we are not aware that, as yet, a single trustworthy instance has been established.

There is a class of spectral apparitions which differ from those which we have already dwelt upon, inasmuch as they have appeared to foreshadow, or have occurred coincidently with, the death of an individual; or they have made known events occurring at a distance, or have brought to light things else hidden by the grave.

In the deepening gloom of twilight the seer of Scotland often witnessed the _wraiths_ of those who were about to die, wreathed in the ascending mists of the night, troop in ghostly silence before his horror-stricken vision; and the _Bodach Glas_ crossed the path of the death-laden Mac Ivor; the _Bodac au Dun_, or Ghost of the Hill, warned the Rothmurchan of approaching calamity; the spectre of the Bloody Hand scared the Kincardines; the _Bodach Gartin_ glided in significant horror through the gloomy passages of Gartnibeg House; and the Girl with the Hairy Left Hand--_Manch Monlach_--pointed to the death-bolt about to carry weeping and wailing into the halls of Tulloch Gorus.

The spectral _fetch_ shadowed forth in the sister isle the dark course of death; while the Banshee mourned with the frightful accents of the dead over the dying scions of the ancient families. Hovering near the sorrow-laden mansion, her robe flowing wide in the night air, and her tangled tresses borne upon the wind, she cried the keen of another world adown the vaulted passages, and sobbed in ghastly agony her bitter lamentations.

The _Gwrâch y Rhibyn_--Hag of the Dribble--when the night had covered the earth, spread out her leathern-like wings, and flitting before the house of the death-stricken Cambrians, shrieked in harsh, broken, and prolonged tones their names.

In our own land the spectres of all those who would die in the parish during the year might be seen walking in ghostly procession to the church, or entering its portals, by him who would watch, three years consecutively, during the last hour of the night and the first hour of the morning, in the porch, on the Eve of St. Mark, or would kneel and look through the keyhole of the door of the sanctuary at midnight on the Eve of St. John the Baptist.

The _White Lady_, who haunts the ancient castle of the celebrated Bohemian family of Rosenberg-Neuhaus, and who also appears from time to time in the castles of the allied families of Brandenburg, Baden, and Darmstadt,--Trzebon, Islubocka, Bechin, and Tretzen, and even has been seen in Berlin, Bayreuth, and at Carlsrhue is of historical notoriety. Tall of stature, attired in white, and wearing a white widow's veil adorned with ribbons, through the folds of which, and from within her, a faint light has been seen to glimmer, she glides with a modest air through the corridors and apartments of those castles and palaces in which the death of one of her family is about to occur; and she has been seen at other times, and oft, with the aspect and air as though the spirit had a melancholy pleasure in visiting and hovering about her descendants. It is said to be the ghost of one Perchta Von Rosenberg, who was born between A.D. 1420 and 1430, and subsequently married to John Von Lichtenstein, a rich and profligate baron, who so embittered her life that she was obliged to seek relief from her relatives, and she died borne down with the insults and indescribable distress she endured. Among the old paintings of the family of Rosenberg was found a portrait of this lady, attired after the fashion of the times, and bearing an exact resemblance to the "_White Lady_." In December, 1628, she appeared in Berlin, and was heard to exclaim, "Veni, judica vivos et mortuos: judicium mihi adhuc superest!"--"Come, judge the living and the dead; my fate is not yet decided."

The _Klage-weib_ (Mourning Woman) when the storm is driving the rift before it, and the moon shines fitfully and faintly on the earth, may be seen stalking along, her gigantic and shadowy form enveloped in dark flowing grave-clothes, her deathlike countenance and deep cavernous eyes freezing the unhappy spectator with horror, while, extending her vast arm, she sweeps it above the cottage marked out by death.

In the Tyrol also, the phantom of a white woman looks in at the window of a house where a person must die.

These are examples of spectral apparitions foreboding death and misfortune, which the lapse of ages and the influence of superstition have invested with a semblance of reality, approximating them in apparent truthfulness to historical facts.

It is a needless, and would be a thankless task, to show how these notions were the legitimate result of the ideas of the supernatural entertained at the period when they were developed; and how when the superstitions once assumed a definite form, the slightest illusion during the period of sickness or calamity, whether observed in the castellated mansion, pregnant generally with deeds of darkness or blood, or in the twilight or the storm of a moon-lit night, were converted into these phantoms;[68] or the imperfectly remembered dream, or its vivid depiction of the superstition, shadowed forth the same.

Scant of romance, and that wild and thrilling medium through which many of our old legends are seen, we have handed to us numerous business-like stories, some of very recent date, in which the same principles are involved as in the legends we have detailed, and which demand grave attention, from the honest truthfulness with which they are evidently detailed, and the events which they appear to have foreshadowed.

Let us examine some of these instances, and endeavour to ascertain whether they come under the character of illusions or hallucinations; or whether they are to be placed in another category, and to be regarded as the results of supernatural agency, as is most frequently done.

In "Blackwood's Magazine" for 1840, there is a letter which contains the following statement:--

"The 'Hawk' being on her passage from the Cape of Good Hope towards the island of Java, and myself having the charge of the middle watch, between one and two in the morning I was taken suddenly ill, which obliged me to send for the officer next in turn; I then went down on the gun-deck, and sent my boy for a light. In the meanwhile, I sat down on a chest in the steerage, under the after-grating, when I felt a gentle squeeze by a very cold hand; I started, and saw a figure in white; stepping back, I said, 'God's my life! who is that?' It stood and gazed at me a short time, stooped its head to get a more perfect view, sighed aloud, repeated the exclamation 'Oh!' three times, and instantly vanished. The night was fine, though the moon afforded through the gratings but a weak light, so that little of feature could be seen, only a figure rather tall than otherwise, and white-clad. My boy returning now with a light, I sent him to the cabins of all the officers, when he brought me word that not one of them had been stirring. Coming afterwards to St. Helena, homeward-bound, hearing of my sister's death, and finding the time so nearly coinciding, it added much to my painful concern; and I have only to thank God, that when I saw what I now verily believe to have been her apparition (my sister Ann), I did not then know the melancholy occasion of it."

The superstitious feelings which we find pervading the mind of the gentleman relating this incident, and which is evinced by its termination; the circumstances under which the apparition took place, namely, a dim uncertain light, that most favourable to illusion; an attack of indisposition leading to alteration of the natural sensations; and lastly, and most important of all, the after-conclusion arrived at on hearing of the sister's death, and under the influence of which the account was written, and which, it is evident from the nature of the details, gave rise to that definite statement which has been recorded,--all tend to the conclusion that the spectre was an illusion, and that its significance was a phase imparted to it by superstitious feelings alone.