NOTES ON GHOSTS AND GOBLINS. 409 



The childish mind finds, indeed, a strange significance 

 in the words ' the outer darkness.' Now, one can 

 understand that any circumstances recalling those 

 feelings of childhood would bring with them a thrill, 

 relieved from pain because reason tells us no real 

 danger is present, and conveying something of pleasure 

 much as the idea of warmth and comfort is suggested 

 by the roar of distant winds, or the sound of rain, 

 when we are sitting in a cozy room. And in like 

 manner one can understand how a bright still day in 

 spring may bring back ' in sweet and bitter fancy ' the 

 feelings of childhood. 



Yet there is more in either sensation than the mere 

 unconscious remembrance of childhood. Something 

 much farther back in our natures, if I may so speak, is 

 touched, when the soul thrills with unintelligible fears. 

 The proof of this is found in the fact that the feeling 

 exists in childhood nay, is more marked among 

 children than with grown persons. ' This kind of 

 fear,' says Charles Lamb, who knew better than most 

 men what it is, ' predominates in the period of sinless 

 infancy.' And I think that in the same essay he 

 touches the real solution of the mystery, or rather he 

 presents that higher mystery from which this one 

 takes its origin, when he says, ' these terrors are of 

 older standing they date beyond body.' 



There is a curious story in Darwin's latest work, 

 which he uses as an illustration of a theory yet more 

 singular. ' My daughter,' he says, ' poured some water 

 into a glass close to the head of a kitten, and it 



