312 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



the votary of " second sight," will net realise the possible conditions 

 of their own nervous acts, that such persons inflict upon the world 

 the tales of their mystic experiences, swaddled in the bonds and 

 trammels of the beliefs and mysteries which breed and grow only in 

 religions to which the light of scientific experience is not allowed to 

 penetrate. 



A scientific theory of ghosts is thus not merely possible, but in 

 the highest degree probable, as resting on a scientific basis. But 

 there are other matters to which a study like the present intimately 

 relates itself. The vitiation of testimony by the aberration of the 

 senses or even the variations between the evidence of one witness 

 and another, become explicable on the basis of varying sensations 

 thus laid down. Nor does the domain of religion escape physio- 

 logical attention. The mystic experiences of votaries and the 

 heroism of martyrs may alike be capable of explanation under the 

 belief of that exaltation of sense, and of the alteration of sensations 

 and feelings, which appear to affect every period of human history, 

 and which indeed often embody many of the peculiarities of each 

 individual epoch. No less intimately, however, does the present 

 subject concern that idealisation of material things in which the 

 highest genius of poet, painter, sculptor, and musician may be said 

 to reside. The creations of the brain are not wholly on the side of 

 phantasy ; and from the subjective side of human nature, the dis- 

 tilled and purified feelings of mankind may be evolved in thoughts 

 that live for aye. But the gradation betwixt the aesthetics of sensa- 

 tion and the abnormal play of impressions is still clearly marked 

 and plainly apparent. There are few higher missions or triumphs 

 than those of "star-eyed science," which, taking as its theme the 

 creatures and coinages of the brain, may show us the stern realities 

 and facts which beset and often underlie the veriest dreams and 

 phantoms of our life. 



ADDENDUM. The views offered in the preceding pages regarding 

 the real meaning of the " phantasms of the living/' are not likely to 

 meet with the approval of a certain section of philosophers, whose 

 anxiety to explain the ghostly visitations on a supernatural basis stands 

 apparently in inverse ratio to their knowledge of mental physiology. 

 We hear of psychical societies and other bodies, instituted, as far as 

 one can discover, not for the purpose of calmly and scientifically in- 

 vestigating cases of apparitions so-called, but in order to square the 

 stories of ghosts with the views of believers in a ghost-world. It is 

 very satisfactory to be able to meet delusions of this kind by a series 

 of hard and fast facts. Dr. Henry Maudsley, in his recently published 

 work entitled " Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings," gives a 

 very telling example, firstly, of the manner in which the apparition. 



