EFFECT OF THESE ILLUSIONS. 403 



present themselves by day, it is not likely that they should be better 

 borne in memory ; but of the thousands of objects we encounter every 

 day of our lives, how few there are that we can distinctly recollect at its 

 close. We think we explain this wonderful forgetfulness by saying we 

 have paid no attention to them ; and, in like manner, the dreams we re- 

 member are perhaps only a very insignificant proportion of those which 

 have been presented to the mind. 



It has been said that a belief in apparitions is natural to every man. 

 However much we may dissent from the correctness of such a T heir moral 

 general assertion, there can be no doubt that it has a founda- effecfc - 

 tion in truth. The faith of a child in this particular is only gradually 

 sapped as he grows up to be a man. Nay, even in mature life there may 

 always be found those who have an unwavering confidence in the reality 

 of these illusions, and many of these are persons characterized by their 

 moral courage and love of truth. I have just remarked that few things 

 have exerted a greater influence on the career of the human race than a 

 firm belief in these spiritual visitations. The visions of the Arabian 

 prophet have ended in tincturing the daily life of half the people of Asia 

 and Africa for a thousand years. A spectre that came into the camp at 

 Sardis unnerved the heart of Brutus, and thereby put an end to the po- 

 litical system that had made the great republic the arbiter of the world. 

 Another, that appeared to Constantine, strengthened his hand to the ac- 

 complishment of that most difficult of all the tasks of a statesman, the 

 destruction of an ancient faith. 



But these were all impostures, it may be said. Not so ; they were 

 no impostures of the persons to whom they are reported to have occurred, 

 and who assuredly firmly believed in the real existence of what they 

 thought they saw. To the two or three instances mentioned above, 

 scores of a like kind might be added, which have issued in the commit- 

 ting of men to the most earnest kind of work. So often do historians 

 notice an element of this kind mingling in the career of those who have 

 made the deepest mark on our race, that some are to be found who as- 

 sert the necessity of such a condition to any widespread and permanent 

 political event. Whatever we may think of such a conclusion, the prem- 

 ises on which it is founded are well worthy of our consideration. The 

 physiologist is not at liberty to deny that lunatic and delirious men have 

 faith in what they see. Their senses may deceive them, but they are 

 not impostors. It is for him to consider how phantoms may arise in 

 conditions of apparent health as well as in states of disease ; in the tran- 

 quillity of the solitary man as well as in the feverish excitement of the 

 enthusiast. 



Visual hallucinations are of two kinds, those which are seen when the 

 eyes are open, and those perceived when they are closed. To the for- 



