100 NATURAL HISTORY. 



gination, yet it is highly probable that they might ap- 

 pear to the eye, in every different respect described to 

 us. This remark will be allowed to be more probable, 

 when we consider, that whenever we cannot .judge of 

 an object but by the angle which it forms in the eye, 

 this object is magnified according to its propinquity. 

 And that, if it seemed at first to the spectator, who is 

 equally incapable of distinguishing what he sees, and 

 of judging at v;hat distance he sees it, when at the dis- 

 tance of twenty or thirty paces from it, a few feet high, 

 it must look to him, when within a jew feet of it, of a 

 size stupendously increased. At this he must natur- 

 ally be terrified, till he touches and distinguishes the 

 seemingly gigantic object, for, in the very instant that 

 he has an actual perception of what it is, the object 

 will diminish, and appear to him what it really is. If, 

 on the other hand, he is afraid to approach it, and he 

 flies from the spot with precipitation, the only idea 

 he will form of what had presented itself to him, will be 

 that of an image, gigantic in its size, and dreadful in 

 its form. This prejudice about spectres, therefore, 

 originates from nature ; and such visions depend not, 

 as philosophers have supposed, upon the imaginatiou 

 only. 



We have several reasons for supposing that such 

 persons as are short-sighted see objects larger than 

 others ; and yet it is a certain fact that they see them 

 less. 



Deception is not, however, confined to one sense ; 

 so that hearing is liable to similar mistakes with sight. 

 By this sense no distinct intelligence is conveyed of the 

 distance whence a sounding body is heard. A great 

 noise, if distant, and a small one, very near, produce 

 the same feeling ; and unless we receive information 



