HALLOWEEN 



HALLUCINATIONS 



letter, lii Lou. Ion the assay year commences on 

 the :<nih Ma\, mill is indicated l.y one of twenty 

 l,-ttei> ui the alphabet, A t<> I', omitting' the. letter 

 .1. The question lias been raised whether tlie hall- 

 marking s\.st-ni oiiyht not to In.- discontinued. 



'I'll.- following table, (made up from Cripps) shows 

 specimens of tin- different alphabet used hy the 

 Goldsmiths' Company of London as date-letters 

 from 1478 ; variety in the shape of the shields being 

 also used as a further distinction : 



>1478 to 1498- Lombardlc, 



caps., i tin i Mr CUSpa. 



1488 to 1618- 



Black letter, small. 



1518 to 1638 - 

 Lombanlic, capitals. 



1638 to 1568 

 Roman and other caps. 



1658 to 1578- 

 Bluuk letter, small. 



] 1578 to 1598 



J Roman, capitals. 



l 1598 to 1618 Lombardic, 

 capitals, external cuspff. 



1618 to 1038 

 Italian, small. 



1638 to 1668 - 

 Court hand. 



1668 to 1678 

 ) Black letter, capitals. 



\ 1678 to 1696- 



Black letter, small. 



1606 to 1716 

 Cour 



f!498 to 1618- CRI 1710 to 1736 - 



Black letter, small. l^J Roman, capitals. 



K1618 to 1638 - QS( 1736 to 1766- 



Lombardic, capitals. ^^ Roman, small. 



I 1766 to 1776 t 



Black letter, capitals. 



I 1776 to 1796 

 Roman, smalL 



11796 to 1816 

 Roman, capitals. 



1 1816 to 1836- 

 I Roman, small. 



I 18:<6tolS56- 



Black letter, capitals. 



1856 to 1876 

 Black letter, small. 



? 1876 to 1896 

 Roman, capitals. 



1890 to 1910 

 Roman, small. 



The accompanying figure shows a Birmingham 

 silver plate-mark. 1, the maker's initials ; 2, the 

 standard mark ; 3, the 

 hall-mark of Birming- 

 ham ; 4, the duty-mark ; 5, the date-letter for the 

 year 1889. 



See Cripps, Old En/ilish Plate, its Makers and Marks 

 (1878; new edl 1889); and Gee, The HaU-markiny of 

 Jewellery practically considered (1889). 



Halloween, the name popularly given to the 

 eve or vigil of All Hallows, or festival of All 

 Saints, which being the 1st of November, Hallow- 

 een is the evening of the 31st of October. In 

 England and Scotland it was long consecrated 

 to harmless fireside revelries, with many cere- 

 monies for divining a future sweetheart. See 

 Burns's ' Halloween and Chambers 's Book of Days. 

 The similar Irish customs are illustrated in 

 Maclise's ' Drop-apple Night.' 



Ilallstatt, an Austrian village near Gmunden, 

 once a great Celtic capital. See IRON AGE. 



Hallucinations. To realise in any proper 

 way what memory is from the physiological point 

 of view, we must assume that every impression 

 HI the senses is conducted by molecular move- 

 ments through the nerves to the ultimate cells 

 of the brain, which then undergo a certain molec- 

 ular change that is revealed to consciousness 

 as the qualities of the thing seen or heard or felt. 

 By a process of instinctive reasoning the thing 

 itself is thus instantly realised in the grown man, 

 but not in the chihf. This molecular change in 

 the cells may be evanescent, or it may be lasting. 

 When lasting, the impression may be said to be 

 ' registered,' so that it can come before conscious- 

 ness again, and be 'remembered.' Each act of 

 memory of the same impression in a healthy brain 

 adds to the distinctness of the registration, and 

 it is thus more and more easily recalled or 

 suggested, either spontaneously or from without. 

 The millions of brain-cells 'contain an incon- 

 ceivable number of such registered impressions 

 of things seen, heard, touched, smelt, ana tasted, 

 besides the impressions of past states of feeling, 

 past trains of thought, and recombinations of 



tli. -in by meant) of the imagination. It It in no 

 way thought a strange thing that we can recall 

 all these in memory at any time, or that by un- 

 conscious processes of association they project 

 themselves across the field of consciousness irre- 

 spective of our wills. It is not thought so very 

 strange that, when we take a dose of opium or 

 cocaine, the registered images lying in the brain -eel In 

 rise up and come across our coii.-cioiisnesB so vividly 

 that we cannot distinguish between them and real 

 objects seen with the eyes. The same phenome- 

 non often occurs in conditions of half sleep. In 

 dreaming the impressions ap(>ear ierfectly real to 

 the half-consciousness existing at the time. 



Now there are certain very sensitive people, 

 who have an element of the morbid in their 

 brain condition or heredity similar to the morbid- 

 ness caused by a dose of cocaine. This being so, 

 what is the difficulty in believing that those regis- 

 tered brain images should stand out, and seem to 

 the consciousness as real as the original impression, 

 and so produce a hallucination, or a subjective 

 impression from an image already in the brain that 

 is practically the same to the consciousness as the 

 impression from a real object? This is in no way 

 more remarkable than memory itself. It is simply 

 more unusual. It is very questionable whether the 

 original acts of memory of the young child are not 

 all of the nature of hallucinations. The after recol- 

 lections of things seen and of things imagined are 

 certainly so real to some children that they confuse 

 them with things seen or experienced. If a man 

 can by using tests, and by the use of his reason, be 

 made to know that the thing that appears to be 

 seen and real is not so, and has no objective exist- 

 ence where he sees it, and that it is his brain that 

 is playing him a trick, lie has a sane hallucination. 

 If he cannot be made to do so, and thinks it a real 

 object, he is insane to this extent. The condition 

 of hypnotism illustrates the origin of hallucinations 

 better than almost anything else. Hypnotism ( o. v. ) 

 is a modified, artificially-induced sleep, in which 

 the consciousness is changed but not alwlished, 

 and the reasoning power much impaired. If a 

 person hypnotised is told that a piece, of ice is red- 

 hot, he will not touch it, and if he is made to do 

 so, he behaves as if he had touched hot iron. 

 His whole mental condition is one of temporary 

 hallucinations of every sort. Yet in the face of all 

 these scientific facts and reasonable hypotheses 

 and deductions we have persons calling in the aid 

 of imaginary forces, 'telepathy,' 'spirits, 1 'psychic 

 force,' &c., to explain hallucinations, and associa- 

 tions formed for ' psychical research,' evidently on 

 the theory that there can be a cause for hallucina- 

 tions other than the registered images in the brain 

 itself, together with altered conditions of con- 

 sciousness. Many religious leaders and others 

 in a state of intense brain excitement from 

 religious or other causes have had hallucinations, 

 after they had been sinning against nature's laws 

 by depriving themselves of sleep and of exer- 

 cise, and by exposing themselves to the contagion 

 of morbid feeling interspersed by reason or com- 

 mon sense. Luther's seeing the devil, and throw- 

 ing his ink-bottle at him, and Swedenborg's 

 seeing spiritual beings among the ministers at 

 the council lx>ard are certainly explicable on the 

 theory of suggestion and a temporary morbidness 

 of brain-working. 



But, say the telepathists, ' two people have 

 had the same hallucination at the same moment. 

 How can that be explained on brain-cell prin- 

 ciples?' If two people had been thinking of the 

 same thing for example, a dear friend or relative 

 of lM)th who was ill and supposed to be dying 

 and if both were sensitive persons, and their feelingjs 

 were very excited at the time, what marvel is it if 



