278 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



fectly they agree together, and the apparition stands 

 out with more vivid distinctness. This will be the 

 experience of every one to whom such a phenomenon 

 appears, and a dispassionate analysis of all the phases 

 of this fact must fully confirm our theory. 



Such a fact, which is implicitly included in the 

 general law we have laid down for" the origin of myth, 

 will also as I think throw further light on the origin 

 of many hallucinations, both in normal conditions of 

 mind and in the abnormal state of nervous disorders. 

 The different appearances of objects, animals, and 

 men, the voices, words, songs, and conversations 

 seen and heard in these hallucinations, are produced, 

 by an internal impulse as well as by a stimulus 

 from without ; they are internal in the images and 

 sensation already unconsciously impressed upon the 

 memory, and they are external in the accidentally 

 modified form in which they occur in sensible objects, 

 so that they act reciprocally as an incentive and 

 impulse to each other. 



If in normal hallucinations the vividness of the 

 internal image is in certain physiological conditions 

 projected outwardly, the configuration and accidental 

 form of the external objects contribute to complete 

 the composition in accordance with the nature and 

 design of this internal image. Sometimes the 

 physiological conditions of hallucination are so power- 

 ful that it is at once produced by the appearance of 

 an object which has some analogy with the mental 



