246 NATURE AND MAN. 



and the course of these dreams is essentially determined by the 

 individual's prepossessions, brought into play by suggestions con- 

 veyed from without. In many who do not spontaneously fall 

 into this state, fixity of the gaze for some minutes is quite sufficient 

 to induce it; and the "mesmeric mania" of Edinburgh in 185 1, 

 showed the proportion of such susceptible individuals to be much 

 larger than was previously supposed. Those who have had 

 adequate opportunities of studying these phenomena, find no 

 difficulty in referring to the same category many of the " spiritual- 

 istic " performances of the present time, in which we seem to have 

 reproductions of states that were regarded in ancient times, under 

 the influence of religious prepossession, as results of divine 

 inspiration. I have strong reason to believe (from my conviction 

 of the honesty of the individuals who have themselves narrated to 

 me their experiences) that they have really seen, heard, and felt 

 what they describe, where intentional deception was out of the 

 question ; that is, that they had the same distinct consciousness, 

 in states of expectant reverie, of seeing, touching, and conversing 

 with the spirits of departed friends, that most of us occasionally 

 have in our dreams. And the difference consists in this — that 

 whilst one, in the exercise of his common sense, dismisses these 

 experiences as the creation of his own brain, having no objective 

 reality, the other, under the influence of his prepossession, accepts 

 them as the results of impressions ab extra made upon him by 

 " spiritual " agencies. 



The faith anciently placed, by the Heathen as well as the 

 Jewish world, in dreams, visions, trances, etc., has thus its precise 

 parallel in the present day ; and it is not a little instructive to 

 find a very intelligent religious body, the Swedenborgians, im- 

 plicitly accepting as authoritative revelation the visions of a man 

 of great intellectual ability and strong religious spirit, but highly 

 imaginative disposition, the peculiar feature of whose mind it was 

 to dwell upon his own imaginings. These he seems to have so 

 completely separated from his worldly life, that the Swedenborg 

 who believed himself to hold intercourse with the spiritual world, 

 and Swedenborg the mechanician and metallurgist, may almost be 

 regarded as two distinct personalities. 



If, then, the high scientitic attainments of some of the 



