PART III.

PROOFS THAT THE OBJECTS OF SPECTRAL

ILLUSIONS ARE FREQUENTLY SUGGESTED BY THE FANTASTIC IMAGERY OF

SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEF.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

EXPLANATION OF THE MODE IN WHICH THE IDEAS WHICH ARE SUGGESTED BY VARIOUS POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS BECOME RECALLED IN A HIGHLY VIVIFIED STATE, SO AS TO CONSTITUTE THE IMAGERY OF SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.

"Each molehill-thought swells to a huge Olympus."-DRYDen.

In this department of our investigation an attempt will be made to show, that in well-authenticated ghoststories of a supposed supernatural character, ideas, which are rendered so unduly intense as to induce spectral illusions, may be traced to such fantastical objects of prior belief, as are incorporated in the various systems of superstition, which for ages have possessed the minds of the vulgar. But before this object can be satisfactorily accomplished, it will be necessary to take a brief review of the progress of our research. By this means we shall be better prepared to notice

an important law of the mind, by which past sensations may be recalled in various states of faintness or intensity.

This inquiry has hitherto proceeded upon the general view, that an undue sanguineous action imparts a disproportionate degree of vividness to our ideas. Nicolai, indeed, in the narrative read by him to the Royal Society of Berlin, from an attentive consideration of the phenomena which attended his illusions, could not refrain from expressing the same suspicion, namely, that they had some inexplicable connexion with the state of the circulating system. His words are these: "The natural vivacity of imagination renders it less wonderful, that after a violent commotion of the mind, a number of phantasms should appear for several weeks in succession. Their leaving me on the application of leeches, shews clearly that some anomaly in the circulation of the blood was connected with their appearance; though it may perhaps be too hasty a conclusion to seek for the cause in that alone. It seems, likewise, remarkable, that the beginning of the apparitions, after the disturbance in my mind was settled, as well as the alteration which took place, when they finally left me, happened exactly at the time when digestion commenced. And it is no less remarkable, that the apparitions, before they entirely ceased, lost their intensity of colours; and that they did not vanish or change as formerly, but seemed gradually to dissolve into air."

From the doctrine inculcated in this dissertation,

*Nicholson's Journal, vol. vi. p. 176.

the conjecture of Nicolai will not, perhaps, appear to be devoid of foundation. In the view which I took of the opposite effects of the nitrous oxide and febrile miasma, it was shewn, that the highly-vivid state of pleasurable feelings which the former was capable of exciting, corresponded to a dilating action of the blood exerted on the vascular system, the indication of which was an increasing diastole of the heart and fulness of the pulse; while the opposite effects of the latter agent were connected with an undue influence of the systole of the heart, with a hard pulse, and a constricting tendency of the capillaries.

Next, with regard to the action of morbific causes upon our various mental states, it was remarked, that we always distinguish between those feelings which are induced, when causes impressing our organs of sense are present, and those which occur as revivals of prior mental states; the former being termed sensations, the latter ideas, or, more correctly, renovated feelings.

When past feelings, therefore, are renovated, they are always in a less vivid state than actual impressions; and, in a healthy condition of the system, a definite degree of intensity may be supposed to subsist between sensations and ideas, the latter being proportionally less intense, less vivid, or fainter than the former. But, from the influence of disease, these ideas may be renovated in a state of vividness so great, as to nearly or altogether equal in intensity actual impressions. An ample proof of this fact is afforded in the case of Nicolai, whose imagination was liable to be rendered unduly vivid by the plethoric habit of body