422 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



apparitions as supernatural phenomena. They com- 

 monly regard the phantom as something really existent 

 in the place where it is apparently seen. The dead 

 person is there in some form ; some essential entity re- 

 presenting him has the power to transport itself from the 

 place of the departed into the presence of the living. 

 This ordinary idea of ghostly visions is aptly rendered in 

 Hamlet's address to the ghost. He does not speak of it 

 as a vision, but to it as something real, although not 

 understood : 



Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, 



Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, 



Be thy intents wicked or charitable, 



Thou comest in such questionable* shape, 



That I will speak to thee : I'll call thee Hamlet : 



King, father, royal Dane : 0, answer me ! 



Let me not burst in ignorance ; but tell 



"Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, 



Have burst their cerements ; why the sepulchre, 



Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd 



Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, 



To cast thee up again. 



Nor does the poet shrink from investing the ghost with 

 the garb of life. This had been already shown in the 

 first scene. ' Such,' says Horatio, ' was the very armour 

 he had on, when he the ambitious Norway combatted.' 

 And now Hamlet asks 



What may this mean, 



That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel, 

 Eevisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, 

 Making night hideous ; and we fools of nature 

 So horridly to shake our disposition 

 With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ? 

 Say, why is this ? Wherefore ? What should we do ? 



* Mistakenly understood generally to signify ' doubtful.' What is 

 meant is obviously ' a shape as of one to whom questions can be 

 addressed.' 



