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heard, but a wrong interpretation is placed upon it. A 
delusion is the same thing, but the term is generally employed 
to denote an illusion which is constant and persistent, a false 
opinion about a matter of fact which has taken possession of the 
mind. Whilst we are defining our terms, we may as well add 
that a hallucination is a mental perception in which there is 
absolutely no corresponding material object. It is purely sub- 
jective, wholly manufactured from the internal consciousness, 
or, as some would have it, the external factor is ridiculously 
disproportionate. ‘This would class all as illusions. 
The important position which belief occupies in life can hardly 
be over stated. We classify and label every new thing presented 
to us under some pre-existent belief, and cannot rest until we 
have fitted it into its place, which place is, in teco many cases, 
either totally unsuited to its reception, or inadequate to contain 
it. Few of us can make new mental compartments to accommo- 
date new visions, but we alter or curtail the vision to force it into 
the already existing pigeon hole of the mind. As Charles 
Kingsley says, with his usual fearless and faithful allegiance to 
the truth, however unpalatable, ‘‘ Men clip the truth to match 
their doctrine.’ ‘There is an everlasting struggle in every mind, 
between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to 
renovate, its ideas. From the very earliest infancy we begin our 
efforts to classify under known heads. The baby of two years 
calls an orange a ball, a sheep a dog, so difficult is it for him to 
make new compartments of mind. As years advance, most of us 
become more and more enslaved to the stock conceptions with 
which we have once become familiar, and less and less capable of 
assimilating impressions in any but the old ways. ‘‘ Old fogeyism 
in short, is the inevitable terminus to which life sweeps us on.” 
We lose that keen appreciation of a new fact, demanding a new 
adjustment of belief, the extatic feeling of a Columbus or a 
Cortez, of whom it was said, as for the first time he gazed across 
the narrow Isthmus of Panama, upon the broad waters of the 
Pacific :— 
‘«Then felt I like some watcher in the night, 
When a new planet swims into his ken.’ 
is denied us, we have no place in our mental cosmos for a new 
planet, and therefore we either quietly ignore it, or boldly deny 
its existence. The finest definition of genius*I know is ‘ the 
faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” 
On the other hand, nothing is more congenial, from babyhood 
to the end of life, than to be able to assimilate the new to the 
old, to meet each threatening violator or burster of our well 
known series of concepts, as it comes in, see through its un- 
wontedness, and ticket it off as an old friend in disguise, ‘This 
