FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 575 



sorium being producible through the nerves of the internal and of the 

 external senses, and. the very same affection of the sensational con- 

 sciousness being thus called forth by impressions ab extra and ah intra. 

 Thus, individuals having a strong pictorial memory can reproduce 

 scenes from Nature, faces, or pictures, Avith such vividness that they 

 may be said to see with their " mind's eye" just as distinctly as with 

 their bodily eye ; and there is an instance on record (which Mr. Ruskin 

 fully accredits, as well from having seen the two pictures as from his 

 own similar experiences) in which a painter at Cologne accurately 

 reproduced from memory a large altar-piece by Rubens, which had 

 been carried away by the French. Those, again, who possess a strong 

 pictorial imagination, can thus create distinct visual images of what 

 they have never seen through their bodily eyes. And, although this 

 power of voluntary representation is comparatively rare, yet we are 

 all conscious of the phenomenon as occurring involuntarily in our 

 dreams. 



Now, there is a very numerous class of persons who are subject to 

 what may be termed " waking dreams," which they can induce by 

 placing themselves in conditions favorable to reverie ; and the course 

 of these dreams is essentially determined by the individual's prepos- 

 sessions, brought into play by suggestions conveyed from without. 

 In many who do not spontaneously fall into this state, fixity of the 

 gaze for some minutes is quite sufficient to induce it ; and the " mes- 

 meric mania" of Edinburgh in 1851 showed the proportion of such 

 susceptible individuals to be much lai-ger than was previously sup- 

 posed. Those who have had adequate opjDortunities of studying these 

 phenomena find no difficulty in referring to the same category many 

 of the " spiritualistic " performances of the present time, in which we 

 seem to have reproductions of states that were regarded in ancient 

 times, under the influence of religious prepossession, as results of 

 divine inspiration. I have strong reason to believe (from my convic- 

 tion of the honesty of the individuals who have themselves narrated 

 to me their experiences) that they have really seen, heard, and felt 

 what they describe, where intentional deception was out of the ques- 

 tion ; that is, that they had the same distinct consciousness, in states 

 of expectant reverie, of seeing, touching, and conversing with the 

 spirits of departed friends, that most of us occasionally have in our 

 dreams. And the difference consists in this that while one, in the 

 exercise of his common-sense, dismisses these experiences as the crea- 

 tion of his own brain, having no objective reality, the other, under the 

 influence of his prepossession, accepts them as the results of impres- 

 sions ab extra made upon him by " spiritual" agencies. 



The faith anciently placed, by the heathen as well as the Jewish 

 world, in dreams, visions, trances, etc., has thus its precise parallel in 

 the present day ; and it is not a little instructive to find a very intelli- 

 gent religious body, the Swedenborgians, implicitly accepting as au- 



