280 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



formed by primitive experience, habit and education 

 are the chief factors. 



Hallucinations, in the cases observed above, are 

 due to an external impulse ; and this is especially the 

 case in madness and other nervous disorders ; since a 

 critical observation and clear discernment of things is 

 wanting, some object of vision, a voice, phrases, or 

 sounds are much more apt to act as a stimulus to a 

 vast field of visual hallucinations, or to a long succes- 

 sion of sentences and speeches. It is not, therefore, 

 wonderful that in an ecstasy, for instance, in which 

 all the faculties are concentrated on very few ideas 

 and images, or perhaps on one only, every external 

 sign, whether obvious to sight or hearing, com- 

 bined with the mnemonic effort already explained, 

 is modified to correspond with these vivid and 

 exalted images ; thus constituting the wonderful 

 phenomenon of ecstasy. In such a case the ecstatic 

 phenomenon in persons subject to these nervous 

 affections is often invested with fresh wonders by the 

 additional sensations of light and subjective colours ; 

 this is not uncommon even in persons of a sane mind 

 and body, but undoubtedly it is more frequently the 

 case in those whose mental and physical conditions 

 are abnormal. It is not rare to hear an ecstatic 

 person recount divine visions, suffused with extra- 

 ordinary light and glory. 



In order to contribute to the researches of others 

 into the nature of this phenomenon, I must be 



