416 USE OF INVERSE VISION. 



some of his most grateful recollections ; and what other conclusion can 

 he possibly derive from these unreal pictures than that they are the fore- 

 shadowings of another land beyond that in which his lot is cast ? Like 

 us, he is visited at intervals by the resemblances of those whom he has 

 loved or hated while they were alive ; nor can he ever be so brutalized as 

 not to discern in such manifestations suggestions which to him are in- 

 controvertible proofs of the existence and immortality of the soul. Even 

 in the most refined social conditions we are never able to shake off the 

 impression of these occurrences, and are perpetually drawing from them 

 the same conclusions as did our uncivilized ancestors. Our more ele- 

 vated condition of life in no respect relieves us from the inevitable con- 

 sequences of our own organization any more than it relieves us from in- 

 firmities and disease. In these respects, all over the globe, we are on an 

 equality. Savage or civilized, we carry about within us a mechanism in- 

 tended to present us with mementoes of the most solemn facts with which 

 we can be concerned, -and the voice of history tells us that it has ever been 

 true to its design. It wants only moments of repose or of sickness, when 

 the influence of external things is diminished, to come into full play, and 

 these are precisely the moments when we are best prepared for the truths 

 it is going to suggest. Such a mechanism is in keeping with the man- 

 ner in which the course of nature is fulfilled, and bears in its very style 

 the impress of invariability of action. It is no respecter of persons. It 

 neither permits the haughtiest to be free from the monitions, nor leaves 

 the humblest without the consolation of a knowledge of another life. 

 Liable to no mischances, open to no opportunities of being tampered with 

 by the designing or interested, requiring no extraneous human agency for 

 its effect, but always present with each man, wherever he may go, it 

 marvelously extracts from vestiges of the impressions of the past over- 

 whelming proofs of the reality of the future, and, gathering its power from 

 what would seem to be a most unlikely source, it insensibly leads us, 

 no matter who or where we may be, to a profound belief in the immortal 

 and imperishable, from phantoms which have scarcely made their appear- 

 ance before they are ready to vanish away. 



It is scarcely necessary for me to do more than barely refer to the as- 

 sertions of those who would have it believed that they look upon all 

 these appearances as fictions and deliberate impostures. What is to be- 

 come of all history if such a doctrine could be maintained ? Human ev- 

 idence must be regarded as utterly worthless. Moreover, no one denies 

 the existence of dreams, and the phenomena we have been here treating 

 of are philosophically of the same order. 



