In reference to the same law of consciousness, may be explained the illusions of many spectral impressions which occur during our waking hours. That principle in our nature by which mental feelings of various degrees of vividness suggest a notion of the present and of the past, is continually influencing the mind; hence, the moment that ideas become more vivid than sensations, they are contemplated as present, or as actual impressions; while the least vivid feeling suggests the notion of past time.

The partial resemblance of spectral impressions to dreams will now, I trust, be sufficiently apparent. There is still a difference to be noticed in the circumstances under which they are severally produced. Before spectral impressions can arise, the vivid ideas of our waking hours must be raised to an unusually high degree of intensity; but during our moments of mental repose, a very slight degree of vividness imparted to the faint ideas of perfect sleep is sufficient to excite a similar illusion. Hence the images of spectral impressions differ from those of dreams, in being much more vivid.

CHAPTER V.

PHANTASMS MAY ARISE FROM IDEAS OF WHICH THE MIND MIGHT OTHERWISE HAVE BEEN EITHER CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS.

"The difficulty is this:-Consciousness being interrupted always by forgetfulness, there being no moment of our lives wherein we have the whole train of our past actions before our eyes in one view; but even the best memories losing the sight of one part while they are viewing another." LOCKE.

I SHALL now attempt to explain other laws of consciousness, which are materially involved in the circumstances under which phantasms arise. The investigation, however, is difficult; a proof of which is, that, from not prosecuting it, considerable disturbance seems to have been given to the speculations of those who have endeavoured to explain, upon established metaphysical principles, the origin of apparitions.

Nicolai, the philosophical seer of Berlin, who was long under the influence of spectral impressions, offers the following remarks on his own case :—

"I observed these phantasms of the mind with great accuracy, and very often reflected on my previous thoughts, with a view to discover some law in

the association of ideas by which exactly these or other figures might present themselves to the imagination. Sometimes I thought I had made a discovery, especially in the latter period of my visions; but, on the whole, I could trace no connexion which the various figures that thus appeared and disappeared to my sight, had either with my state of mind, or with my employment and the other thoughts which engaged my attention. After frequent accurate observations on the subject, having fairly proved and maturely considered it, I could form no other conclusion on the cause and consequence of such apparitions, than that, when the nervous system is weak, and at the same time too much excited, or rather deranged, similar figures may appear in such a manner as if they were actually seen and heard; for these visions in my case were not the consequence of any known law of reason, of the imagination, or of the otherwise usual association of ideas."*

Such were the difficulties that pressed themselves upon the mind of Nicolai, in endeavouring to account for the mysterious introduction of the fantastic visitants, by whom he was almost hourly surrounded. In the attempt, therefore, which I shall make to obtain some satisfaction on this head, it will be first necessary to inquire how far we are entitled, on every occasion, to seek for an explanation of such phenomena in the well-known law of the association of ideas.

It has been before shewn, that when a number of sensations occur in succession, the repetition of any

* Nicholson's Journal, vol. vi. p. 167.

one of them would recall in their original order, yet in a less vivid state, the feelings by which they were followed. To this law was affixed the usual term of the association of ideas. But a question now arises, If ideas, of which we are at any one moment of time totally unconscious, be still liable to recur agreeably to the law of association? The hypothetical answer which I should be disposed to give is this, That past feelings, even should they be those of our earliest moments of infancy, never cease to be under the operation of this principle, and that they are constantly liable to be renovated, though they should not be the object of consciousness, at the latest period of our life. According to this view, any past impression of the mind never becomes, as it were, extinct. Yet, amidst the incalculable quantity of ideas which are rapidly succeeding to each other, the amount of those that are vivified to such a degree as to be the object of consciousness, must fall far short of the actual number of such, as, from their extreme faintness, are no longer recognised.

After these remarks, I shall advert to another principle of the mind deserving consideration, which is this: Feelings of any particular description or subject are liable to be frequently renovated, and there is a natural tendency in the same feelings, on each occasion of their renewal, to become gradually more and more faint. The law which partially counteracts this tendency will be explained in the next chapter.

* A tendency of this kind differs in degree in different individuals. Thus, in the Psychological Magazine of Germany, there

I shall now suppose, that certain sensations have been induced sufficiently vivid to excite mental consciousness; and that the renovated feelings, named ideas, which correspond to them, sustain, upon each occasion of their renewal, a gradual diminution from their original degree of vividness. The result which, agreeably to the general doctrine I have inculcated, will ensue, may be readily anticipated. Any train of ideas must, in the course of its undisturbed depression, be eventually reduced to states far too faint to be the object of our consciousness.

In order, however, to render this law as intelligible as possible, I subjoin the following tabular view, in which the lower numbers in the scale represent the more faint or least vivid of our feelings, and the higher numbers the more excited states of the mind.

is the narrative of a girl, whose ideas must have declined very slowly from their original state of vividness. After having listened but once to the longest song, she could repeat it verbatim, and with equal accuracy could not only rehearse the whole of any sermon she might hear at church, but was even found to preserve the recollection of it after the interval of a year had expired.-The memory of Bishop Jewel was very remarkable. It is stated in Clark's Mirror, that "he could readily repeat any thing that he had penned after once reading: and therefore, usually, at the ringing of the bell, began to commit his sermons to heart, and kept what he had learned so firmly, that he used to say, That if he were to make a speech premeditated, before a thousand auditors, shouting or fighting all the while, yet could he say whatsoever he had provided to speak. Sir Francis Bacon, reading to him only the last clauses of ten lines in Erasmus his paraphrase in a confused and dismembered manner, he, after a small pause, rehearsed all those broken parcels of sentences the right way, and the contrary, without stumbling."