NOTES ON GHOSTS AND GOBLINS. 



of the widespread belief in supernatural agencies, we 

 find ourselves beset with difficulties ; and these are 

 only preliminary to the great difficulty of all that of 

 determining how far it is reasonable or likely that any 

 of the common ideas about the supernatural have any 

 basis of fact whatever. 



But the first difficulty to be encountered resides in 

 oneself. I who write have my superstitions. If I 

 simply had them and believed in them, there would be 

 little difficulty. But I do not believe in them. I 

 know that they exist, because on certain occasions 

 I have felt them in operation. Every reader of these 

 lines must have had similar experiences vague terrors 

 coming we know not whence, and refusing to be 

 exorcised by reason ; the feeling not momentary 

 though transient that a sight or sound is not of this 

 world ; and other sensations conveying to us a sense of 

 the supernatural which we can neither analyse nor 

 understand, and in which the reason has no real 

 belief. 



Perhaps the consideration of this very difficulty may 

 throw some light on our subject, for it often happens 

 that the key to an enigma is indicated by the more 

 perplexing circumstances of the problem. If we dismiss 

 for the moment all those superstitions which may 

 fairly be regarded as derived from early impressions, or 

 as resulting from mere ignorance, and consider the 

 case of well-educated, carefully trained, and not weak- 

 minded persons, who nevertheless at times experience 

 superstitious tremors, we may perhaps find some cir- 



