HALLUCINATIONS OF THE SENSES. 711 



him with the words, " Hail to thee, messenger of God ! " He looked 

 round to the right and to the left,* but discovered nothing but stones 

 and trees. Soon after this the angel Gabriel appeared to him in a 

 vision on the mountain Hira, and announced to him the message of 

 God. The origin of the hallucination seems to have been in this wise: 

 While walking in the valley meditating in solitude on the degrading 

 idolatry of the people, and girding himself to the resolution to under- 

 take a great work of reform which might well seem beyond his strength, 

 and make him pause, the intense thoughts of his mental agony were 

 suddenly heard by him as a real voice, where there was no voice ; and 

 the vision which he saw when he next fell into an epileptic trance was 

 deemed to be the apparition of the angel Gabriel. 



If this be so, and much more if all the apparitions and visions which 

 mankind have seen at different times were really hallucinations, it is 

 startling to reflect what a mighty influence illusions have had on the 

 course of human history. One is almost driven to ask in despair 

 whether all in the world is not illusion, whether " all that we see and 

 seem is not a dream within a dream." But there are countervailing 

 considerations which may abate alarm. If a great work in the world 

 has been done in consequence of a vision which was not, as it. was 

 believed to be, a supernatural revelation, but an hallucination produced 

 in accordance with natural laws, the work done, were it good or bad, 

 was none the less real. And inasmuch as the hallucination, whatever 

 its character, is in accordance with the habit of thought and feeling of 

 the person to whom it occurs, and is interpreted, if it be not actually 

 generated, by his manner of thinking, we may put it out of sight as a 

 thing of secondary importance, as an incidental expression, so to speak, 

 of the earnest belief, and fix our minds on this belief as the primary 

 and real agent in the production of the effect. Had Mohammed never 

 seen the angel Gabriel, it is probable that the great mission which he 

 accomplished the overthrow of idolatry and polytheism and the weld- 

 ing of scattered tribes into a powerful nation would have been accom- 

 plished either by him or by some other prophet, who would have risen 

 up to do what the world had at heart at that time. Had any one else 

 who had not Mohammed's great powers of mind, and who had not pre- 

 pared himself, as he had done, by many silent hours of meditation and 

 prayer, to take up the reformer's cross, seen the angel Gabriel or any 

 number of angels, he would not have done the mighty work. Who 

 can doubt that the mission of Mohammed was the message of God to 

 the people at that time, as who can doubt that the thunder of the Rus- 

 sian cannon has been the awful message of God to the Mohammedan 

 Turks of this time? 



So much, then, for the nature of hallucinations and their principal 

 modes of origin. Although they sometimes originate primarily in 

 the sensory centres, and sometimes primarily in the higher centres of 

 thought, it is very probable that, in many instances, they have a 



