PART V. SLIGHT REMARKS ON THE MODIFICATIONS WHICH THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTY OFTEN UNDERGOES DURING INTENSE EXCITEMENTS OF THE MIND. "Hark, amid the wond'ring grove, Other harpings answer clear, Other voices meet our ear, Busy murmurs hum around, Rustling vestments brush the ground; Round, and round, and round they go, Through the twilight, through the shade, And gild the tufted mistletoe." MASON'S Caractacus. In the last part of this treatise, the research, as I observed at the time, was of a novel kind. Since apparitions are ideas equalling or exceeding in vividness actual impressions, there ought to exist some important and definite laws of the mind which have given rise to this undue degree of vividness. It was, chiefl therefore, for the purpose of investigating such laws that this dissertation was written. But I have here entered into a perfectly new field of research, where far greater difficulties were to be encountered than I anticipated. The extent of these can only be estimated by the metaphysician. The last object of this dissertation was to have established, that all the subordinate incidents connected with phantasms might be explained on the following general principle:-That, in every undue excitement of our feelings, (as, for instance, when ideas become more vivid than actual impressions,) the operations of the intellectual faculty of the mind sustain corresponding modifications, by which the efforts of the judgment are rendered proportionally incorrect. But here I must pause. In order to give a full rationale of the phenomena which we have been lately contemplating, certain principles of the mind, to which I have yet but slightly adverted, require the fullest consideration. I allude to the laws connected with the intellectual faculty, and to the obstacles which are opposed to the correctness of its operations, during the extreme degrees of intensity to which the states of the mind become liable from morbific causes.-But, can it be reasonably expected, that any individual would undertake an investigation of this kind, which demands the consideration of every phenomenon of the human mind as it is presented in health or disease, with the solitary object in view of explaining the subordinate incidents connected with apparitions? For such a purpose, it would be necessary to incorporate within this treatise a complete systematic view of the pathology of the human mind,— —a mark of attention, which, to the bugbears of popular superstition, I am not inclined to pay. Yet, not to avoid the question altogether, I shall in preference quote the opinion of other authors upon the subject, rather than submit to the reader any remarks of my own. This plan I prefer, because the explanation of my own views would comprehend the notice of many other mental principles, besides those which will now be quoted, that might require an extensive discussion. To any pneumatologist, therefore, who has more inclination than myself to persist in an investigation of this kind-who has the spirit to exclaim, with one of Dryden's heroes, "I'll face these babbling demons of the air, In spite of ghosts I'll on," the slight remarks and illustrations which appear in this part of the work are, with due deference, submitted. Dr Brown, in his Physiology of the Human Mind, remarks, "That the union of perception with conceptions that harmonize with it, does truly vivify those harmonizing conceptions, by giving a sort of mixed reality to the whole, is shewn by some of the most interesting phenomena of thought and emotion. It is, indeed, a law of the mind, which, though little heeded by metaphysical inquirers, seems to me far more important, and far more extensive, than many of those to which they have paid the greatest attention. Some of our most vivid emotions, those of beauty, for example,-derive their intensity chiefly from this circumstance; and many of the gay or sad illusions of our hopes and fears are only forms of this very illusion. To the superstitious, in the loneliness of twilight, many wild conceptions arise, that impress them with awe, perhaps not with terror; but if, in the moment of such imaginations, their eye turn on any objects of indistinct outline, that give as it were a body to the phantasms of their own mind; the phantasms themselves, in blending with them, become immediately, with spectral reality, external and terrifying objects of perception. How often, in gazing on a dim and fading fire, do we see, in the mixture of light and shade that plays before us, resemblances of wellknown shapes, that grow more and more like as we continue to gaze on them. There is at first, in such a case, by the influence perhaps of the slightest possible similarity, the suggestion of some form that is familiar to us, which we incorporate, while we gaze on the dim and shadowy film that flutters before us, till the whole seems one blended figure, with equal - reality of what we conceive and what we truly see." Such is the explanation which Dr Brown has given of some of the illusions that we have been just considering. Mr Coleridge, with no less acuteness, has adverted to the self-same principle, while proposing to account for Luther's apparitions. His words are the following:-" In aid of the present case I will only remark, that it would appear incredible to persons not accustomed to these subtle notices of selfobservation, what small and remote resemblances, what mere hints of likeness from some real external 1 object, especially if the shape be aided by colour, will suffice to make a vivid thought consubstantiate with the real object, and derive from it an outward perceptibility." This correct view cannot meet with a better illustration than in a German narrative, translated by Dr Crichton, to which I have before adverted. It is the case of a superstitious female, in whose mind the wellknown morbid symptoms which precede a fit of epilepsy, such as the aura epileptica,-the luminous sensations that are well known to occasionally impress the vision, the illusive impressions of touch felt on various parts of the body, suggested many remote resemblances connected with the angels and devils which formed the subject of her thoughts. These ideas had been recalled by the law of association, and having been rendered as intense as actual impressions, consubstantiated (to use Mr Coleridge's term) with the morbid impressions that were the result of her disease, and were intimately blended with them. "While the angels," says this female in the account which she has given of her illusions, "thus spoke to me, a light, like that reflected from the river Diele, seemed to shine in the apartment. It moved up and down, and then disappeared, upon which I felt as if some person had pulled out the hairs of my head. But the pain was to be borne. The light came again, and the pain left me entirely; it ceased to shine, and I felt as if the flesh on my back was torn from the bones by pincers. The light then returned, and I was better. It once more Friend, by S. T. Coleridge, Esq. vol. i. p. 246. |
