tion of the destiny of mankind, can fail to|ed by toil for the life of observation, have perceive that positive science must be at misstated the least complicated phenomeleast one of our guides in the renewed in- na, Nor would the intelligent public not vestigation of all this difficult and myste- be amused, as well as astonished, if they rious class of subjects. Not a step must only knew how very few of the noisy be taken without it. It is because we la- host of professing men of science, in ment to see this great principle wholly even this matter-of-fact country, ever dismisunderstood among the mesmerists, one- cover a single new fact; ever describe with irologists and pneumatologists of Germany, irreversible fidelity a new phenomenon of France, America, and Great Britain, that any significance; ever add one true word we propose to devote a few pages to the to the written science of the world. discussion of the subject of ghosts and If, however, it be one of the hardest of ghost-seers. It will furnish the reader problems to make observations with unbiwith a clue to the method in which alone assed simplicity, and useful accuracy on all such researches must be carried on, if inorganic nature, the difficulty is greatly they are to lead to satisfactory results; enhanced when there are superadded the and it may also forewarn and forearm his phenomena of vitality to those of chemimind against the rambling and unprinci- cal affinity, mechanical cohesion and celespled speculations of scientific fanatics. tial gravitation, as is the case in the sciSince, then, the inquiry is to be inexo-ence of physiology. Mechanics is the scirably conducted on the inductive principle, ence which was first brought to something let us begin with the facts of the case. like perfection; and the reason is obvious, Here it is once for all to be premised that for the phenomena with which it is converthe accurate and sufficient observation of sant are not only the nearest to the senses the constituent facts of the universe is a of the observer, but they are the least most difficult, as it is an all-important de- complicated ones in creation. Then folpartment of science. Few people are aware of the extreme difficulty of the art of simple observation. That art consists not only in the ability to perceive the phenomena of nature through uncolored eyes, but also of the talent to describe them in unobstructed and transparent words. To observe properly in the very simplest of the physical sciences requires a long and severe training. No one knows this so feelingly as the great discoverer. Faraday once said that he always doubts his own observations. Mitscherlich, on one occasion, remarked to a man of science of our acquaintance that it takes fourteen years to discover and establish a single new fact in chemistry. An enthusiastic student one day betook himself to Baron Cuvier with the exhibition of a new organ, we think it was a muscle, which he supposed himself to have discovered in the body of some living creature or other; but the experienced and sagacious naturalist kindly bade the young man return to him with the same discovery But there is a science more intricate still in six months. The Baron would not even than the physiology of organization. The listen to the student's demonstration, nor phenomena of thought, emotion and pasexamine his dissection, till the eager and sion fall within the reach of positive obyouthful discoverer had hung over the observation in the direct proportion in which ject of inquiry for half-a-year; and yet these phenomena are connected with the that object was a mere thing of the senses! nervous system, or cerebro-spinal axis, of In a word, the records of physical science those organisms in which they transpire. are full of instances in which genuine re- Not to intermeddle with the question of searchers, men formed by nature and train-phrenology, and to unite the most diverse

lowed astronomy in the process of time; and then chemistry, the phenomena of which are still more complicated than those of the science of stars; and it is clear to every thoughtful and competent mind that physiology is now awaiting the consummation of chemistry. When the vast complexity of the science of physiology is considered with thoughtfulness, and when it is remembered that chemistry is still so far from perfection that the chemist cannot construct a particle of sugar, or any other organic substance, although he knows the exact quantities of charcoal and water of which it is composed, the reader will not be astonished to find that M. Comte, the amplest yet the most severe representative of positive science that European influences have yet produced, speaks of the former department of knowledge as hardly yet within the bounds of positive science. He characterizes it as just emerging into that sphere.

systems, we shall for the meantime call this [tricacies, which are absolutely indispensapossible science by the name of physio- ble for anything like a successful inquiry in psychology. Its object is, or shall be to these perilous shades of nature, must be investigate psychological or spiritual phe- equally rare and extraordinary. It was nomena, in so far as such phenomena are quite impossible even to enter this field of dependent on the physiological condition of research till the present age, in the course the brain, spinal cord and nervous systems. of which the inferior sciences, as they may Something has already been done in this be denominated for the moment, have fifth or five-fold science already, something reached something like a consummation. in the way of facts by the medical psycho- Indeed it is probable, if not certain, that logists, something by the phrenologists, and the physiology of the nervous system is not something in the way of formula by the yet sufficiently advanced for the purpose metaphysicians; but very little after all. under discussion; although it may be time Still more than mere physiology, it is a to be collecting instances, and classifying science of the future. It is the most inex- them for ulterior methodization, just as tricable of all the physical departments; physiology was begun long before chemistry for not only are its phenomena complicated approached perfection. The tenor of the with those of all the other physical scien- foregoing observations is at any rate utterces,-physiology, chemistry, astronomy ly to destroy the value of all former obserand mechanics; but it also stretches to- vations, that is of all ghost-stories, in so wards, and lies in the light of another world far as anything like science is concernthan that of atoms. To make accurate and profitable observations in this sphere of inquiry must be the most difficult of all earthly tasks of the sort. If the observer in chemistry or botany requires to be a man of long experience, great patience, precision and freedom, the observer in this high domain must be one of extraordinary extent and profundity of knowledge, entirely liberated from the dominion of hypothesis and opinion, calm, clear and belonging to the present day. It must be evident that this last requisite is essential. The names of Plato, Aristotle, Bacon or Newton are of no authority in this region, for it actually did not exist to the scientific consciousness of the times in which they lived. In fact, every past observation or narrative that may seem to belong to this science, but which cannot be repeated to-day, must go for nothing. This is the rule in all the other sciences; or rather they have needed no rule about it, but the heroes of these sciences have instinctively begun anew, as soon as these sciences have become the definite objects of conscious methodical inquiry. Now, it is precisely in this elevated and exceedingly complicated province of investigation that the question of ghosts and ghost-seers is involved. It is in this shadowy border-land betwixt physiology proper and pure psychology that apparitions wander, be these apparitions what they may. This is the sole haunt and region of all such questionable shapes. The amount of acquaintance with all the inferior strata of science, and the degree of skill in the disentangling of scientific in

ed. It is highly creditable to the author of the third of those works, which have suggested these remarks, that this principle is distinctly recognised in it; and that even in connexion with the contemporaneous cases which are there related. Nor was this confession unnecessary, for this large and interesting collection of physiopsychological wonders is not a whit better than its predecessors in this particular respect. Its merit consists in the vivid, forcible, idiomatic and memorable way in which it is written. It contains a fund of lively and somewhat impressive reading, and it will be very extensively read. But its scientific value is nothing. It wants dates, names, medical observations, circumstances, analyses of the physical and spiritual characters of the seers, as well as those of the narrators, and all those searching details which are necessary to a methodical comparison of instances. There is not a single point of solidity for the man of induction to plant his foot upon for the purpose of taking his first step. The whole fabric sinks away from him like clouds.

It is not to be concluded, however, that books of this sort are totally without value of any kind, although they are possessed of no utility whatever in relation to science. They may conduce to make the unscientific but profound impression on the mind of the reader, that there is some actual basis in nature for such things as they record; such things as presentiments, warningdreams, wraith-seeing and ghost-seeing. The multitude of the cases narrated, their constant recurrence in all times and places,

their extreme similarity in all sorts of local | his separate supposition the mind of each and temporary circumstances, and the fact understands the remote appearance, and he published in the works now under review may guide himseli accordingly. Both of that the enormities of the kind are quite them, however, may be wrong. It may be as rife in our own days, and in our own neither a lighthouse nor a beacon-fire; it houses, and among our own friends, as ever may be one of many other things. It is they were, combine to indicate the great, precisely the same with the unusual apbroad, common under-ground of some vast pearances at present under suppositious disand complicated order of neglected and cussion. They may be neither popular misunderstood phenomena. ghosts nor medical spectres. In these cirAlthough our rigor concerning the col- cumstances it may be neither uninteresting lecting of facts in this ambiguous science of nor unprofitable to question both of these physio-psychology cannot well be exceeded, opinions somewhat closely; it will at least and although as men of science we cannot amuse the spirits, and exercise the specurelax our demands an iota in that respect, lative intellect of our patient readers. In we are willing, with the help of faith and deference to the science of the day, and fancy as well as charity, to suppose that courteously presuming that they are the every word in such ghost-books is not only more likely to be near the truth, the medimorally, but also scientifically true: we shall cal spectres fall to be examined first. voluntarily labor under this illusion, until In the healthy condition of the eye, the we shall have said whatever else is neces-optic nerve and the brain, the phenomenon sary to the understanding of the question of sight may be represented in parts. that lies beyond the so-called facts. The There is first the visible object, say a tree, reader will observe, upon the very thres- sending green and other rays of light to the hold of this second department of the sub-surface of the cornea or first glass of the ject, that the mere fact of all these seemings eyeball; there is then that light so refractor phenomena does by no means imply the ed within the eye, by its glasses, humors theory either of spectral illusions or of and lenses, as to form an image of the tree ghosts. The conception of spectral illu- upon the retina, precisely like that which is sions on one hand, and that of ghosts on the caught upon the white table of a camera other, are devices of the human mind, con- obscura; and, in the third place, this image trived for the purpose of explaining the ap- is invariably followed by the perception of pearances in question. The vast majority a tree. It is particularly to be observed of those who read such books as the Invisi- that we do not see the image; we do not susble World Displayed, are no doubt accus-pect its existence till science discovers it; tomed to think that, if the truth of the and even after it is found out by anatomists stories be established, there is no longer and opticians, it is in vain that we endeavor any room to doubt the visitation of spirits. to descry its tiny form. It is the tall pine, They leap at once from the wonder to the or the enormous oak alone that we behold. ghost, not observing that the ghost is only It can only be stated as an ultimate fact, one way among many possible ones of ex- that such a picture in miniature of a great plaining the wonder. The medical mind of tree upon the sound retina of an eye is the this age, again, being acquainted with the cause of the perception of the tree by the fact of sensuous illusions in deliriums and creature that owns the eye. To borrow other cerebral disorders, refers it as instinc- from Hartley, and accept a hint from all tively and as instantaneously to the illusion the physical sciences of which anything is of the senses. The ghost of the vulgar and known, the process by which this stupendous the spectre of the medical theorists are result is effected, may meanwhile be formuequally hypothetical. Neither of them is lated as a vibratory movement instituted in the phenomena; they are both inven- among the fibrils of the optic nerve and tions of the mind perplexed by extraordi- brain by the image on the retina, propanary appearances; they are rival hypothe-gated from without inwards. This is not ses of the same fact. Two night wanderers an explanation. It is not meant even as a see a high and glimmering light in the distance; one of them thinks it is on the top of a tower at sea, the other that it is upon the summit of an inland hill; the tower and the hill are the things they severally put under the flame in order to hold it up; by

hypothesis. It is employed solely as a formula, as a symbol, as x, y or z is used in algebra. All that is positive in it is contained in the words propagated from without inwards; that phrase resembles the little figure two or three in x or y'; and

no one can object to it, for certainly, be the image's influence on the retina what it may, it is at least shed inwards.

and several of the heroes of antiquity stood before him while he painted their portraits with equal innocence, enthusiasm and poetical fidelity. There is a poet in Edinburgh, who not unfrequently awakes with the remnant image of some scene from dreamland in his eye, and it is some time till it evanesces. In fact, everybody has experienced this sort of thing, if not in health, at least in delirium: if not awake, at least asleep. There is a state of nervous system brought on by the long and in

Nor will this be thought a useless commonplace, when it is remembered that memory can reproduce the perception of the tree as well as light; memory whether voluntary or associative. The eye shut, one can see the tree a second time. That second sight of anything formerly seen with the help of light is, in some circumstances, so vivid and lifelike as to puzzle the will. In the case of painters, and such as are pos-ordinate use of alcohol, in which the unfortusessed of delicate optical organizations, the lucidity of these secondary images is one of the inferior secrets of power. In truth, the second-seeing sensibility, of which this is a species, is the bodily essential of every kind of artist, from the poet round to the sculptor; and indeed of the man of genius in general. Now, as little is known of the mechanism of this wonderful process as of that of the first sight of things. Yet it seems very clear that it consists in part of the inversion of the latter one. It depends, in its physical contingency, on a vibratory motion (to speak algebraically again) propagated from within outwards: and, in the instance of any one object, first seen then remembered, on the same vibratory motion, that is the same x, y or z. The condition which seems to limit these images of the memory, at least among men as we find them, is a degree of clearness much inferior to that of direct sight. The tree of memory, the tree of the association of ideas, is generally but a faint reflection of that which the eye saw. The nearer they come to one another, there is the more of one element of the artist, for the poet is the "lightly moved" as well as the "all-conceiving" man. In following out these hints concerning the physical nature of the poct, the reader must generalize for himself; for the present argument does not permit a digression from the organs of sense, and the remembrance or reproduction of their products. In Blake, the painter and mystic poet, this propagation from within outwards was so intense as to paint the absent and the dead visibly be fore him. Whatever images he remembered in whole, or constructed out of parts drawn from memory, reached the retina from within with outlines so clear, light and shade so unmistakable, and colors so true that he could not but believe that he saw them face to face. It was in this way that Sir William Wallace, King Robert Bruce, VOL. XV. No. III.

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nate victim cannot disentangle himself from these images of the associative principle or the involuntary memory. He cannot distinguish between the real objects around him and those second-sights of his; and he is actually more loyal to the latter, as might be expected in a morbidly self-sensitive frame of body. The case of the maniac needs scarcely be added to these illustrations of the inverted identity of second and first sensations of things in their purely physical contingencies; for it is only of these contingencies that there is any question at present. Lastly, there is that peculiar condition of the system, in which a person apparently in good health, but in reality disordered, however obscurely, is visited by what are more ordinarily called spectral illusions. There are innumerable cases of this sort on record. Abercrombie and Hibbert, Ferriar and Macnish, Feuchterleben and Combe, and in fact the medical psychologists of every age and country are full of them. Every reader is familiar with them. Suffice it in this place, then, that these illusions are different in no essential respect from those of mania, delirium tremens, common delirium and dream. Nor do any of them differ materially from the landscapes of the Edinburgh poet, or the unwearied sitters of the happy Blake. There is in reality no difference in kind between all of them together, on one hand, and the dimmest instance of second sight or remembered sensation that ever transpired in the brain of a clodpole on the other. The latter could be converted into the like of any one of the former by the modification or intensification, in this degree and in that, of the x, y or z, propagated from within outwards. In a word, let x, y or z be exalted in tension to such a degree as to equal the vividness of an actual image in an ordinary and healthy man, and there is furnished the physical condition of a sensuous hallucination; and that whether the