CHAP. 10. 2. SUPERSTITIONS, &c. 329 



toms. The habit of constantly dwelling on the 

 images of saints and crosses, has done the same 

 thing in Christian Europe, which the fables of 

 Jupiter, Venus, and other deities, did in 

 ancient Greece and Rome, and which the fairy 

 mythology of the northern nations had effected 

 in the septentrional parts of Europe and Asia. 

 But when we have developed their physical 

 causes, we have not done all that seems requisite 

 to found the history of what are called super- 

 natural apparitions. Some such remarkable 

 coincidences between these phantoms, and cer- 

 tain real events to which they professedly 

 related, have occurred from time to time, and 

 are recorded with such accuracy of testimony, 

 that they seem to deserve a larger share of 

 attention than has usually been bestowed on 

 them by philosophers. As far as their physical 

 history goes, dreams, nightmares, and many 

 other familiar phaenomena are referable to a 

 common origin, and depend on established 

 laws in the animal economy.* But the most 



* A fallacious argument was attempted by Baxter, in plea 

 of his doctrine that dreams and visions were presented to 

 us by external agents, founded on the fact that we feel 

 surprise in our dreams at the strange appearances which 

 present themselves, which could not be the case if the mind 

 itself of the dreamer produced the images. This circumstance, 



