396 MAURY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 



gifted with the power of thus summoning spirits from 

 the dead. We put this in the simplest terms, because 

 the mere enunciation of it may well annul the gross 

 pretension it involves. And when examining further 

 into the methods employed to exhibit and attest these 

 spiritual appearances the puerile and pantomimic de- 

 vices of spirit-rapping, table turning, &c., and the 

 vulgar and ignorant talk which these revenans are 

 made to utter, we may be content to leave such things 

 to their own eventual refutation. Argument is of little 

 avail with those who can lend a facile faith to these 

 fantastic performances, rendered more suspicious by a 

 mercenary ingredient often mixed with them. The 

 contrivances employed we cannot always explain. 

 But exactly the same may be said of the performances 

 of the fair-dealing professional conjurer, who puzzles 

 and tells you that he means to do so. That some very 

 intelligent men should have given partial credit to 

 these illusions, is but another example of the incon- 

 gruities which are found even in minds of the highest 

 genius and culture. Human life abounds in such in- 

 stances. 



We have thus far been speaking of Sleep in its 

 more general characters, natural or anomalous ; con- 

 necting it, indeed, with that wonderful adjunct of 

 Dreaming, from which it can hardly be separated. 

 But some distinct consideration must be given to the 

 latter to those fleeting shadows, the /^t^/xara 0)779, 

 which so strangely divide, yet link together, the suc- 

 cessive portions of our lives. In writing on this sub- 



