"You cannot, my dear friend, be more conscious than I, that I am in the
course of dying under the oppression of the fatal disease which consumes
my vital powers; but neither can you understand the nature of my
complaint, and manner in which it acts upon me, nor, if you did, I fear,
could your zeal and skill avail to rid me of it."--"It is possible,"
said the physician, "that my skill may not equal my wish of serving you;
yet medical science has many resources, of which those unacquainted with
its powers never can form an estimate. But until you plainly tell me
your symptoms of complaint, it is impossible for either of us to say
what may or may not be in my power, or within that of medicine."--"I may
answer you," replied the patient, "that my case is not a singular one,
since we read of it in the famous novel of Le Sage. You remember,
doubtless, the disease of which the Duke d'Olivarez is there stated to
have died?"--"Of the idea," answered the medical gentleman, "that he was
haunted by an apparition, to the actual existence of which he gave no
credit, but died, nevertheless, because he was overcome and heart-broken
by its imaginary presence."--"I, my dearest doctor," said the sick man,
"am in that very case; and so painful and abhorrent is the presence of
the persecuting vision, that my reason is totally inadequate to combat
the effects of my morbid imagination, and I am sensible I am dying, a
wasted victim to an imaginary disease." The medical gentleman listened
with anxiety to his patient's statement, and for the present judiciously
avoiding any contradiction of the sick man's preconceived fancy,
contented himself with more minute inquiry into the nature of the
apparition with which he conceived himself haunted, and into the history
of the mode by which so singular a disease had made itself master of his
imagination, secured, as it seemed, by strong powers of the
understanding, against an attack so irregular. The sick person replied
by stating that its advances were gradual, and at first not of a
terrible or even disagreeable character. To illustrate this, he gave the
following account of the progress of his disease:--

"My visions," he said, "commenced two or three years since, when I found
myself from time to time embarrassed by the presence of a large cat,
which came and disappeared I could not exactly tell how, till the truth
was finally forced upon me, and I was compelled to regard it as no
domestic household cat, but as a bubble of the elements, which had no
existence save in my deranged visual organs or depraved imagination.
Still I had not that positive objection to the animal entertained by a
late gallant Highland chieftain, who has been seen to change to all the
colours of his own plaid if a cat by accident happened to be in the room
with him, even though he did not see it. On the contrary, I am rather a
friend to cats, and endured with so much equanimity the presence of my
imaginary attendant, that it had become almost indifferent to me; when,
within the course of a few months, it gave place to, or was succeeded
by, a spectre of a more important sort, or which at least had a more
imposing appearance. This was no other than the apparition of a
gentleman-usher, dressed as if to wait upon a Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland, a Lord High Commissioner of the Kirk, or any other who bears on
his brow the rank and stamp of delegated sovereignty.

"This personage, arrayed in a court dress, with bag and sword, tamboured
waistcoat, and chapeau-bras, glided beside me like the ghost of Beau
Nash; and, whether in my own house or in another, ascended the stairs
before me, as if to announce me in the drawing-room, and at sometimes
appeared to mingle with the company, though it was sufficiently evident
that they were not aware of his presence, and that I alone was sensible
of the visionary honours which this imaginary being seemed desirous to
render me. This freak of the fancy did not produce much impression on
me, though it led me to entertain doubts on the nature of my disorder
and alarm for the effect it might produce on my intellects. But that
modification of my disease also had its appointed duration. After a few
months the phantom of the gentleman-usher was seen no more, but was
succeeded by one horrible to the sight and distressing to the
imagination, being no other than the image of death itself--the
apparition of a _skeleton_. Alone or in company," said the unfortunate
invalid, "the presence of this last phantom never quits me. I in vain
tell myself a hundred times over that it is no reality, but merely an
image summoned up by the morbid acuteness of my own excited imagination
and deranged organs of sight. But what avail such reflections, while the
emblem at once and presage of mortality is before my eyes, and while I
feel myself, though in fancy only, the companion of a phantom
representing a ghastly inhabitant of the grave, even while I yet breathe
on the earth? Science, philosophy, even religion, has no cure for such a
disorder; and I feel too surely that I shall die the victim to so
melancholy a disease, although I have no belief whatever in the reality
of the phantom which it places before me."

The physician was distressed to perceive, from these details, how
strongly this visionary apparition was fixed in the imagination of his
patient. He ingeniously urged the sick man, who was then in bed, with
questions concerning the circumstances of the phantom's appearance,
trusting he might lead him, as a sensible man, into such contradictions
and inconsistencies as might bring his common-sense, which seemed to be
unimpaired, so strongly into the field as might combat successfully the
fantastic disorder which produced such fatal effects. "This skeleton,
then," said the doctor, "seems to you to be always present to your
eyes?" "It is my fate, unhappily," answered the invalid, "always to see
it." "Then I understand," continued the physician, "it is now present to
your imagination?" "To my imagination it certainly is so," replied the
sick man. "And in what part of the chamber do you now conceive the
apparition to appear?" the physician inquired. "Immediately at the foot
of my bed. When the curtains are left a little open," answered the
invalid, "the skeleton, to my thinking, is placed between them, and
fills the vacant space." "You say you are sensible of the delusion,"
said his friend; "have you firmness to convince yourself of the truth of
this? Can you take courage enough to rise and place yourself in the spot
so seeming to be occupied, and convince yourself of the illusion?" The
poor man sighed, and shook his head negatively. "Well," said the doctor,
"we will try the experiment otherwise." Accordingly, he rose from his
chair by the bedside, and placing himself between the two half-drawn
curtains at the foot of the bed, indicated as the place occupied by the
apparition, asked if the spectre was still visible? "Not entirely so,"
replied the patient, "because your person is betwixt him and me; but I
observe his skull peering above your shoulder."

It is alleged the man of science started on the instant, despite
philosophy, on receiving an answer ascertaining, with such minuteness,
that the ideal spectre was close to his own person. He resorted to other
means of investigation and cure, but with equally indifferent success.
The patient sunk into deeper and deeper dejection, and died in the same
distress of mind in which he had spent the latter months of his life;
and his case remains a melancholy instance of the power of imagination
to kill the body, even when its fantastic terrors cannot overcome the
intellect, of the unfortunate persons who suffer under them. The
patient, in the present case, sunk under his malady; and the
circumstances of his singular disorder remaining concealed, he did not,
by his death and last illness, lose any of his well-merited reputation
for prudence and sagacity which had attended him during the whole course
of his life.

Having added these two remarkable instances to the general train of
similar facts quoted by Ferriar, Hibbert, and other writers who have
more recently considered the subject, there can, we think, be little
doubt of the proposition, that the external organs may, from various
causes, become so much deranged as to make false representations to the
mind; and that, in such cases, men, in the literal sense, really _see_
the empty and false forms and _hear_ the ideal sounds which, in a more
primitive state of society, are naturally enough referred to the action
of demons or disembodied spirits. In such unhappy cases the patient is
intellectually in the condition of a general whose spies have been
bribed by the enemy, and who must engage himself in the difficult and
delicate task of examining and correcting, by his own powers of
argument, the probability of the reports which are too inconsistent to
be trusted to.

But there is a corollary to this proposition, which is worthy of notice.
The same species of organic derangement which, as a continued habit of
his deranged vision, presented the subject of our last tale with the
successive apparitions of his cat, his gentleman-usher, and the fatal
skeleton, may occupy, for a brief or almost momentary space, the vision
of men who are otherwise perfectly clear-sighted. Transitory deceptions
are thus presented to the organs which, when they occur to men of
strength of mind and of education, give way to scrutiny, and their
character being once investigated, the true takes the place of the
unreal representation. But in ignorant times those instances in which
any object is misrepresented, whether through the action of the senses,
or of the imagination, or the combined influence of both, for however
short a space of time, may be admitted as direct evidence of a
supernatural apparition; a proof the more difficult to be disputed if
the phantom has been personally witnessed by a man of sense and
estimation, who, perhaps satisfied in the general as to the actual
existence of apparitions, has not taken time or trouble to correct his
first impressions. This species of deception is so frequent that one of
the greatest poets of the present time answered a lady who asked him if
he believed in ghosts:--"No, madam; I have seen too many myself." I may
mention one or two instances of the kind, to which no doubt can be
attached.

The first shall be the apparition of Maupertuis to a brother professor
in the Royal Society of Berlin.

This extraordinary circumstance appeared in the Transactions of the
Society, but is thus stated by M. Thiebault in his "Recollections of
Frederick the Great and the Court of Berlin." It is necessary to premise
that M. Gleditsch, to whom the circumstance happened, was a botanist of
eminence, holding the professorship of natural philosophy at Berlin, and
respected as a man of an habitually serious, simple, and tranquil
character.

A short time after the death of Maupertuis,[2] M. Gleditsch being
obliged to traverse the hall in which the Academy held its sittings,
having some arrangements to make in the cabinet of natural history,
which was under his charge, and being willing to complete them on the
Thursday before the meeting, he perceived, on entering the hall, the
apparition of M. de Maupertuis, upright and stationary, in the first
angle on his left hand, having his eyes fixed on him. This was about
three o'clock, afternoon. The professor of natural philosophy was too
well acquainted with physical science to suppose that his late
president, who had died at BГўle, in the family of Messrs. Bernoullie,
could have found his way back to Berlin in person. He regarded the
apparition in no other light than as a phantom produced by some
derangement of his own proper organs. M. Gleditsch went to his own
business, without stopping longer than to ascertain exactly the
appearance of that object. But he related the vision to his brethren,
and assured them that it was as defined and perfect as the actual person
of Maupertuis could have presented. When it is recollected that
Maupertuis died at a distance from Berlin, once the scene of his
triumphs--overwhelmed by the petulant ridicule of Voltaire, and out of
favour with Frederick, with whom to be ridiculous was to be
worthless--we can hardly wonder at the imagination even of a man of
physical science calling up his Eidolon in the hall of his former
greatness.

[Footnote 2: Long the president of the Berlin Academy, and much favoured
by Frederick II., till he was overwhelmed by the ridicule of Voltaire.
He retired, in a species of disgrace, to his native country of
Switzerland, and died there shortly afterwards.]

The sober-minded professor did not, however, push his investigation to
the point to which it was carried by a gallant soldier, from whose mouth
a particular friend of the author received the following circumstances
of a similar story.

Captain C---- was a native of Britain, but bred in the Irish Brigade. He
was a man of the most dauntless courage, which he displayed in some
uncommonly desperate adventures during the first years of the French
Revolution, being repeatedly employed by the royal family in very
dangerous commissions. After the King's death he came over to England,
and it was then the following circumstance took place.

Captain C---- was a Catholic, and, in his hour of adversity at least,
sincerely attached to the duties of his religion. His confessor was a
clergyman who was residing as chaplain to a man of rank in the west of
England, about four miles from the place where Captain C---- lived. On
riding over one morning to see this gentleman, his penitent had the
misfortune to find him very ill from a dangerous complaint. He retired
in great distress and apprehension of his friend's life, and the feeling
brought back upon him many other painful and disagreeable recollections.
These occupied him till the hour of retiring to bed, when, to his great
astonishment, he saw in the room the figure of the absent confessor. He
addressed it, but received no answer--the eyes alone were impressed by
the appearance. Determined to push the matter to the end, Captain C----
advanced on the phantom, which appeared to retreat gradually before him.
In this manner he followed it round the bed, when it seemed to sink down
on an elbow-chair, and remain there in a sitting posture. To ascertain
positively the nature of the apparition, the soldier himself sate down
on the same chair, ascertaining thus, beyond question, that the whole
was illusion; yet he owned that, had his friend died about the same
time, he would not well have known what name to give to his vision. But
as the confessor recovered, and, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "nothing came
of it," the incident was only remarkable as showing that men of the
strongest nerves are not exempted from such delusions.

Another illusion of the same nature we have the best reason for vouching
as a fact, though, for certain reasons, we do not give the names of the
parties. Not long after the death of a late illustrious poet, who had
filled, while living, a great station in the eye of the public, a
literary friend, to whom the deceased had been well known, was engaged,
during the darkening twilight of an autumn evening, in perusing one of
the publications which professed to detail the habits and opinions of
the distinguished individual who was now no more. As the reader had
enjoyed the intimacy of the deceased to a considerable degree, he was
deeply interested in the publication, which contained some particulars
relating to himself and other friends. A visitor was sitting in the
apartment, who was also engaged in reading. Their sitting-room opened
into an entrance-hall, rather fantastically fitted up with articles of
armour, skins of wild animals, and the like. It was when laying down his
book, and passing into this hall, through which the moon was beginning
to shine, that the individual of whom I speak saw, right before him, and
in a standing posture, the exact representation of his departed friend,
whose recollection had been so strongly brought to his imagination. He
stopped for a single moment, so as to notice the wonderful accuracy with
which fancy had impressed upon the bodily eye the peculiarities of dress
and posture of the illustrious poet. Sensible, however, of the delusion,
he felt no sentiment save that of wonder at the extraordinary accuracy
of the resemblance, and stepped onwards towards the figure, which
resolved itself, as he approached, into the various materials of which
it was composed. These were merely a screen, occupied by great-coats,
shawls, plaids, and such other articles as usually are found in a
country entrance-hall. The spectator returned to the spot from which he
had seen the illusion, and endeavoured, with all his power, to recall
the image which had been so singularly vivid. But this was beyond his
capacity; and the person who had witnessed the apparition, or, more
properly, whose excited state had been the means of raising it, had only
to return into the apartment, and tell his young friend under what a
striking hallucination he had for a moment laboured.

There is every reason to believe that instances of this kind are
frequent among persons of a certain temperament, and when such occur in
an early period of society, they are almost certain to be considered as
real supernatural appearances. They differ from those of Nicolai, and
others formerly noticed, as being of short duration, and constituting no
habitual or constitutional derangement of the system. The apparition of
Maupertuis to Monsieur Gleditsch, that of the Catholic clergyman to
Captain C----, that of a late poet to his friend, are of the latter
character. They bear to the former the analogy, as we may say, which a
sudden and temporary fever-fit has to a serious feverish illness. But,
even for this very reason, it is more difficult to bring such momentary
impressions back to their real sphere of optical illusions, since they
accord much better with our idea of glimpses of the future world than
those in which the vision is continued or repeated for hours, days, and
months, affording opportunities of discovering, from other
circumstances, that the symptom originates in deranged health.

Before concluding these observations upon the deceptions of the senses,
we must remark that the eye is the organ most essential to the purpose
of realizing to our mind the appearance of external objects, and that
when the visual organ becomes depraved for a greater or less time, and
to a farther or more limited extent, its misrepresentation of the
objects of sight is peculiarly apt to terminate in such hallucinations
as those we have been detailing. Yet the other senses or organs, in
their turn, and to the extent of their power, are as ready, in their
various departments, as the sight itself, to retain false or doubtful
impressions, which mislead, instead of informing, the party to whom they
are addressed.

Thus, in regard to the ear, the next organ in importance to the eye, we
are repeatedly deceived by such sounds as are imperfectly gathered up
and erroneously apprehended. From the false impressions received from
this organ also arise consequences similar to those derived from
erroneous reports made by the organs of sight. A whole class of
superstitious observances arise, and are grounded upon inaccurate and
imperfect hearing. To the excited and imperfect state of the ear we owe
the existence of what Milton sublimely calls--

The airy tongues that syllable men's names,
On shores, in desert sands, and wildernesses.

These also appear such natural causes of alarm, that we do not
sympathize more readily with Robinson Crusoe's apprehensions when he
witnesses the print of the savage's foot in the sand, than in those
which arise from his being waked from sleep by some one calling his name
in the solitary island, where there existed no man but the shipwrecked
mariner himself. Amidst the train of superstitions deduced from the
imperfections of the ear, we may quote that visionary summons which the
natives of the Hebrides acknowledged as one sure sign of approaching
fate. The voice of some absent, or probably some deceased, relative was,
in such cases, heard as repeating the party's name. Sometimes the aerial
summoner intimated his own death, and at others it was no uncommon
circumstance that the person who fancied himself so called, died in
consequence;--for the same reason that the negro pines to death who is
laid under the ban of an Obi woman, or the Cambro-Briton, whose name is
put into the famous cursing well, with the usual ceremonies, devoting
him to the infernal gods, wastes away and dies, as one doomed to do so.
It may be remarked also, that Dr. Johnson retained a deep impression
that, while he was opening the door of his college chambers, he heard
the voice of his mother, then at many miles' distance, call him by his
name; and it appears he was rather disappointed that no event of
consequence followed a summons sounding so decidedly supernatural. It is
unnecessary to dwell on this sort of auricular deception, of which most
men's recollection will supply instances. The following may he stated as
one serving to show by what slender accidents the human ear may be
imposed upon. The author was walking, about two years since, in a wild
and solitary scene with a young friend, who laboured under the infirmity
of a severe deafness, when he heard what he conceived to be the cry of a
distant pack of hounds, sounding intermittedly. As the season was
summer, this, on a moment's reflection, satisfied the hearer that it
could not be the clamour of an actual chase, and yet his ears repeatedly
brought back the supposed cry. He called upon his own dogs, of which two
or three were with the walking party. They came in quietly, and
obviously had no accession to the sounds which had caught the author's
attention, so that he could not help saying to his companion, "I am
doubly sorry for your infirmity at this moment, for I could otherwise
have let you hear the cry of the Wild Huntsman." As the young gentleman
used a hearing tube, he turned when spoken to, and, in doing so, the
cause of the phenomenon became apparent. The supposed distant sound was
in fact a nigh one, being the singing of the wind in the instrument
which the young gentleman was obliged to use, but which, from various
circumstances, had never occurred to his elder friend as likely to
produce the sounds he had heard.

It is scarce necessary to add, that the highly imaginative superstition
of the Wild Huntsman in Germany seems to have had its origin in strong
fancy, operating upon the auricular deceptions, respecting the numerous
sounds likely to occur in the dark recesses of pathless forests. The
same clew may be found to the kindred Scottish belief, so finely
embodied by the nameless author of "Albania:"--

"There, since of old the haughty Thanes of Ross
Were wont, with clans and ready vassals thronged,
To wake the bounding stag, or guilty wolf;
There oft is heard at midnight or at noon,
Beginning faint, but rising still more loud,
And louder, voice of hunters, and of hounds,
And horns hoarse-winded, blowing far and keen.
Forthwith the hubbub multiplies, the air
Labours with louder shouts and rifer din
Of close pursuit, the broken cry of deer
Mangled by throttling dogs, the shouts of men,
And hoofs, thick-beating on the hollow hill:
Sudden the grazing heifer in the vale
Starts at the tumult, and the herdsman's ears
Tingle with inward dread. Aghast he eyes
The upland ridge, and every mountain round,
But not one trace of living wight discerns,
Nor knows, o'erawed and trembling as he stands,
To what or whom he owes his idle fear--
To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend,
But wonders, and no end of wondering finds."[3]

It must also be remembered, that to the auricular deceptions practised
by the means of ventriloquism or otherwise, may be traced many of the
most successful impostures which credulity has received as supernatural
communications.

[Footnote 3: The poem of "Albania" is, in its original folio edition, so
extremely scarce that I have only seen a copy belonging to the amiable
and ingenious Dr. Beattie, besides the one which I myself possess,
printed in the earlier part of last century. It was reprinted by my late
friend Dr. Leyden in a small volume entitled "Scottish Descriptive
Poems." "Albania" contains the above, and many other poetical passages
of the highest merit.]

The sense of touch seems less liable to perversion than either that of
sight or smell, nor are there many cases in which it can become
accessary to such false intelligence as the eye and ear, collecting
their objects from a greater distance and by less accurate enquiry, are
but too ready to convey. Yet there is one circumstance in which the
sense of touch as well as others is very apt to betray its possessor
into inaccuracy, in respect to the circumstances which it impresses on
its owner. The case occurs during sleep, when the dreamer touches with
his hand some other part of his own person. He is clearly, in this case,
both the actor and patient, both the proprietor of the member touching,
and of that which is touched; while, to increase the complication, the
hand is both toucher of the limb on which it rests, and receives an
impression of touch from it; and the same is the case with the limb,
which at one and the same time receives an impression from the hand, and
conveys to the mind a report respecting the size, substance, and the
like, of the member touching. Now, as during sleep the patient is
unconscious that both limbs are his own identical property, his mind is
apt to be much disturbed by the complication of sensations arising from
two parts of his person being at once acted upon, and from their
reciprocal action; and false impressions are thus received, which,
accurately enquired into, would afford a clew to many puzzling phenomena
in the theory of dreams. This peculiarity of the organ of touch, as also
that it is confined to no particular organ, but is diffused over the
whole person of the man, is noticed by Lucretius:--

"Ut si forte manu, quam vis jam corporis, ipse
 Tute tibi partem ferias, reque experiare."

A remarkable instance of such an illusion was told me by a late
nobleman. He had fallen asleep, with some uneasy feelings arising from
indigestion. They operated in their usual course of visionary terrors.
At length they were all summed up in the apprehension that the phantom
of a dead man held the sleeper by the wrist, and endeavoured to drag him
out of bed. He awaked in horror, and still felt the cold dead grasp of a
corpse's hand on his right wrist. It was a minute before he discovered
that his own left hand was in a state of numbness, and with it he had
accidentally encircled his right arm.

The taste and the smell, like the touch, convey more direct intelligence
than the eye and the ear, and are less likely than those senses to aid
in misleading the imagination. We have seen the palate, in the case of
the porridge-fed lunatic, enter its protest against the acquiescence of
eyes, ears, and touch, in the gay visions which gilded the patient's
confinement. The palate, however, is subject to imposition as well as
the other senses. The best and most acute _bon vivant_ loses his power
of discriminating betwixt different kinds of wine, if he is prevented
from assisting his palate by the aid of his eyes,--that is, if the
glasses of each are administered indiscriminately while he is
blindfolded. Nay, we are authorized to believe that individuals have
died in consequence of having supposed themselves to have taken poison,
when, in reality, the draught they had swallowed as such was of an
innoxious or restorative quality. The delusions of the stomach can
seldom bear upon our present subject, and are not otherwise connected
with supernatural appearances, than as a good dinner and its
accompaniments are essential in fitting out a daring Tam of Shanter, who
is fittest to encounter them when the poet's observation is not unlikely
to apply--

"Inspiring bauld John Barleycorn,
What dangers thou canst make us scorn!
Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil,
Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil.
The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle,
Fair play, he caredna deils a bodle!"

Neither has the sense of smell, in its ordinary state, much connexion
with our present subject. Mr. Aubrey tells us, indeed, of an apparition
which disappeared with a curious perfume as well as a most melodious
twang; and popular belief ascribes to the presence of infernal spirits a
strong relish of the sulphureous element of which they are inhabitants.
Such accompaniments, therefore, are usually united with other materials
for imposture. If, as a general opinion assures us, which is not
positively discountenanced by Dr. Hibbert, by the inhalation of certain
gases or poisonous herbs, necromancers can dispose a person to believe
he sees phantoms, it is likely that the nostrils are made to inhale such
suffumigation as well as the mouth.[4]

[Footnote 4: Most ancient authors, who pretend to treat of the wonders
of natural magic, give receipts for calling up phantoms. The lighting
lamps fed by peculiar kinds of medicated oil, and the use of
suffumigations of strong and deleterious herbs, are the means
recommended. From these authorities, perhaps, a professor of legerdemain
assured Dr. Alderson of Hull, that he could compose a preparation of
antimony, sulphur, and other drugs, which, when burnt in a confined
room, would have the effect of causing the patient to suppose he saw
phantoms.--See "Hibbert on Apparitions," p. 120.]

I have now arrived, by a devious path, at the conclusion of this letter,
the object of which is to show from what attributes of our nature,
whether mental or corporeal, arises that predisposition to believe in
supernatural occurrences. It is, I think, conclusive that mankind, from
a very early period, have their minds prepared for such events by the
consciousness of the existence of a spiritual world, inferring in the
general proposition the undeniable truth that each man, from the monarch
to the beggar, who has once acted his part on the stage, continues to
exist, and may again, even in a disembodied state, if such is the
pleasure of Heaven, for aught that we know to the contrary, be permitted
or ordained to mingle amongst those who yet remain in the body. The
abstract possibility of apparitions must be admitted by every one who
believes in a Deity, and His superintending omnipotence. But imagination
is apt to intrude its explanations and inferences founded on inadequate
evidence. Sometimes our violent and inordinate passions, originating in
sorrow for our friends, remorse for our crimes, our eagerness of
patriotism, or our deep sense of devotion--these or other violent
excitements of a moral character, in the visions of night, or the rapt
ecstasy of the day, persuade us that we witness, with our eyes and ears,
an actual instance of that supernatural communication, the possibility
of which cannot be denied. At other times the corporeal organs impose
upon the mind, while the eye and the ear, diseased, deranged, or misled,
convey false impressions to the patient. Very often both the mental
delusion and the physical deception exist at the same time, and men's
belief of the phenomena presented to them, however erroneously, by the
senses, is the firmer and more readily granted, that the physical
impression corresponded with the mental excitement.

So many causes acting thus upon each other in various degrees, or
sometimes separately, it must happen early in the infancy of every
society that there should occur many apparently well-authenticated
instances of supernatural intercourse, satisfactory enough to
authenticate peculiar examples of the general proposition which is
impressed upon us by belief of the immortality of the soul. These
examples of undeniable apparitions (for they are apprehended to be
incontrovertible), fall like the seed of the husbandman into fertile and
prepared soil, and are usually followed by a plentiful crop of
superstitious figments, which derive their sources from circumstances
and enactments in sacred and profane history, hastily adopted, and
perverted from their genuine reading. This shall be the subject of my
next letter.




LETTER II.

    Consequences of the Fall on the Communication between Man and the
    Spiritual World--Effects of the Flood--Wizards of Pharaoh--Text in
    Exodus against Witches--The word _Witch_ is by some said to mean
    merely Poisoner--Or if in the Holy Text it also means a Divineress,
    she must, at any rate, have been a Character very different to be
    identified with it--The original, _Chasaph_, said to mean a person
    who dealt in Poisons, often a Traffic of those who dealt with
    familiar Spirits--But different from the European Witch of the
    Middle Ages--Thus a Witch is not accessary to the Temptation of
    Job--The Witch of the Hebrews probably did not rank higher than a
    Divining Woman--Yet it was a Crime deserving the Doom of Death,
    since it inferred the disowning of Jehovah's Supremacy--Other Texts
    of Scripture, in like manner, refer to something corresponding more
    with a Fortune-teller or Divining Woman than what is now called a
    Witch--Example of the Witch of Endor--Account of her Meeting with
    Saul--Supposed by some a mere Impostor--By others, a Sorceress
    powerful enough to raise the Spirit of the Prophet by her own
    Art--Difficulties attending both Positions--A middle Course adopted,
    supposing that, as in the Case of Balak, the Almighty had, by
    Exertion of His Will, substituted Samuel, or a good Spirit in his
    Character, for the Deception which the Witch intended to
    produce--Resumption of the Argument, showing that the Witch of Endor
    signified something very different from the modern Ideas of
    Witchcraft--The Witches mentioned in the New Testament are not less
    different from modern Ideas than those of the Books of Moses, nor do
    they appear to have possessed the Power ascribed to
    Magicians--Articles of Faith which we may gather from Scripture on
    this point--That there might be certain Powers permitted by the
    Almighty to Inferior, and even Evil Spirits, is possible; and in
    some sense the Gods of the Heathens might be accounted Demons--More
    frequently, and in a general sense, they were but logs of wood,
    without sense or power of any kind, and their worship founded on
    imposture--Opinion that the Oracles were silenced at the Nativity
    adopted by Milton--Cases of Demoniacs--The Incarnate Possessions
    probably ceased at the same time as the intervention of
    Miracles--Opinion of the Catholics--Result, that witchcraft, as the
    Word is interpreted in  the Middle Ages, neither occurs under the
    Mosaic or Gospel Dispensation--It arose in the Ignorant Period, when
    the Christians considered the Gods of the Mahommedan or Heathen
    Nations as Fiends, and their Priests as Conjurers or
    Wizards--Instance as to the Saracens, and among the Northern
    Europeans yet unconverted--The Gods of Mexico and Peru explained on
    the same system--Also the Powahs of North America--Opinion of
    Mather--Gibb, a supposed Warlock, persecuted by the other
    Dissenters--Conclusion.


What degree of communication might have existed between the human race
and the inhabitants of the other world had our first parents kept the
commands of the Creator, can only be subject of unavailing speculation.
We do not, perhaps, presume too much when we suppose, with Milton, that
one necessary consequence of eating the "fruit of that forbidden tree"
was removing to a wider distance from celestial essences the beings who,
although originally but a little lower than the angels, had, by their
own crime, forfeited the gift of immortality, and degraded themselves
into an inferior rank of creation.

Some communication between the spiritual world, by the union of those
termed in Scripture "sons of God" and the daughters of Adam, still
continued after the Fall, though their inter-alliance was not approved
of by the Ruler of mankind. We are given to understand--darkly, indeed,
but with as much certainty as we can be entitled to require--that the
mixture between the two species of created beings was sinful on the part
of both, and displeasing to the Almighty. It is probable, also, that the
extreme longevity of the antediluvian mortals prevented their feeling
sufficiently that they had brought themselves under the banner of
Azrael, the angel of death, and removed to too great a distance the
period between their crime and its punishment. The date of the avenging
Flood gave birth to a race whose life was gradually shortened, and who,
being admitted to slighter and rarer intimacy with beings who possessed
a higher rank in creation, assumed, as of course, a lower position in
the scale. Accordingly, after this period we hear no more of those
unnatural alliances which preceded the Flood, and are given to
understand that mankind, dispersing into different parts of the world,
separated from each other, and began, in various places, and under
separate auspices, to pursue the work of replenishing the world, which
had been imposed upon them as an end of their creation. In the meantime,
while the Deity was pleased to continue his manifestations to those who
were destined to be the fathers of his elect people, we are made to
understand that wicked men--it may be by the assistance of fallen
angels--were enabled to assert rank with, and attempt to match, the
prophets of the God of Israel. The matter must remain uncertain whether
it was by sorcery or legerdemain that the wizards of Pharaoh, King of
Egypt, contended with Moses, in the face of the prince and people,
changed their rods into serpents, and imitated several of the plagues
denounced against the devoted kingdom. Those powers of the Magi,
however, whether obtained by supernatural communications, or arising
from knowledge of legerdemain and its kindred accomplishments, were
openly exhibited; and who can doubt that--though we may be left in some
darkness both respecting the extent of their skill and the source from
which it was drawn--we are told all which it can be important for us to
know? We arrive here at the period when the Almighty chose to take upon
himself directly to legislate for his chosen people, without having
obtained any accurate knowledge whether the crime of witchcraft, or the
intercourse between the spiritual world and embodied beings, for evil
purposes, either existed after the Flood, or was visited with any open
marks of Divine displeasure.

But in the law of Moses, dictated by the Divinity himself, was announced
a text, which, as interpreted literally, having been inserted into the
criminal code of all Christian nations, has occasioned much cruelty and
bloodshed, either from its tenor being misunderstood, or that, being
exclusively calculated for the Israelites, it made part of the judicial
Mosaic dispensation, and was abrogated, like the greater part of that
law, by the more benign and clement dispensation of the Gospel.

The text alluded to is that verse of the twenty-second chapter of Exodus
bearing, "men shall not suffer a witch to live." Many learned men have
affirmed that in this remarkable passage the Hebrew word CHASAPH means
nothing more than poisoner, although, like the word _veneficus_, by
which it is rendered in the Latin version of the Septuagint, other
learned men contend that it hath the meaning of a witch also, and may be
understood as denoting a person who pretended to hurt his or her
neighbours in life, limb, or goods, either by noxious potions, by
charms, or similar mystical means. In this particular the witches of
Scripture had probably some resemblance to those of ancient Europe, who,
although their skill and power might be safely despised, as long as they
confined themselves to their charms and spells, were very apt to eke out
their capacity of mischief by the use of actual poison, so that the
epithet of sorceress and poisoner were almost synonymous. This is known
to have been the case in many of those darker iniquities which bear as
their characteristic something connected with hidden and prohibited
arts. Such was the statement in the indictment of those concerned in the
famous murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, when the arts of Forman and other
sorcerers having been found insufficient to touch the victim's life,
practice by poison was at length successfully resorted to; and numerous
similar instances might be quoted. But supposing that the Hebrew witch
proceeded only by charms, invocations, or such means as might be
innoxious, save for the assistance of demons or familiars, the connexion
between the conjurer and the demon must have been of a very different
character under the law of Moses, from that which was conceived in
latter days to constitute witchcraft. There was no contract of
subjection to a diabolic power, no infernal stamp or sign of such a
fatal league, no revellings of Satan and his hags, and no infliction of
disease or misfortune upon good men. At least there is not a word in
Scripture authorizing us to believe that such a system existed. On the
contrary, we are told (how far literally, how far metaphorically, it is
not for us to determine) that, when the Enemy of mankind desired to
probe the virtue of Job to the bottom, he applied for permission to the
Supreme Governor of the world, who granted him liberty to try his
faithful servant with a storm of disasters, for the more brilliant
exhibition of the faith which he reposed in his Maker. In all this, had
the scene occurred after the manner of the like events in latter days,
witchcraft, sorceries, and charms would have been introduced, and the
Devil, instead of his own permitted agency, would have employed his
servant the witch as the necessary instrument of the Man of Uzz's
afflictions. In like manner, Satan desired to have Peter, that he might
sift him like wheat. But neither is there here the agency of any
sorcerer or witch. Luke xxii. 31.

Supposing the powers of the witch to be limited, in the time of Moses,
to enquiries at some pretended deity or real evil spirit concerning
future events, in what respect, may it be said, did such a crime deserve
the severe punishment of death? To answer this question, we must reflect
that the object of the Mosaic dispensation being to preserve the
knowledge of the True Deity within the breasts of a selected and
separated people, the God of Jacob necessarily showed himself a jealous
God to all who, straying from the path of direct worship of Jehovah, had
recourse to other deities, whether idols or evil spirits, the gods of
the neighbouring heathen. The swerving from their allegiance to the true
Divinity, to the extent of praying to senseless stocks and stones which
could return them no answer, was, by the Jewish law, an act of rebellion
to their own Lord God, and as such most fit to be punished capitally.
Thus the prophets of Baal were deservedly put to death, not on account
of any success which they might obtain by their intercessions and
invocations (which, though enhanced with all their vehemence, to the
extent of cutting and wounding themselves, proved so utterly unavailing
as to incur the ridicule of the prophet), but because they were guilty
of apostasy from the real Deity, while they worshipped, and encouraged
others to worship, the false divinity Baal. The Hebrew witch, therefore,
or she who communicated, or attempted to communicate, with an evil
spirit, was justly punished with death, though her communication with
the spiritual world might either not exist at all, or be of a nature
much less intimate than has been ascribed to the witches of later days;
nor does the existence of this law, against the witches of the Old
Testament sanction, in any respect, the severity of similar enactments
subsequent to the Christian revelation, against a different class of
persons, accused of a very different species of crime.

In another passage, the practices of those persons termed witches in the
Holy Scriptures are again alluded to; and again it is made manifest that
the sorcery or witchcraft of the Old Testament resolves itself into a
trafficking with idols, and asking counsel of false deities; in other
words, into idolatry, which, notwithstanding repeated prohibitions,
examples, and judgments, was still the prevailing crime of the
Israelites. The passage alluded to is in Deuteronomy xviii. 10,
ii--"There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or
his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an
observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer." Similar
denunciations occur in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of
Leviticus. In like manner, it is a charge against Manasses (2 Chronicles
xxxviii.) that he caused his children to pass through the fire, observed
times, used enchantments and witchcraft, and dealt with familiar spirits
and with wizards. These passages seem to concur with the former, in
classing witchcraft among other desertions of the prophets of the Deity,
in order to obtain responses by the superstitious practices of the pagan
nations around them. To understand the texts otherwise seems to confound
the modern system of witchcraft, with all its unnatural and improbable
outrages on common sense, with the crime of the person who, in classical
days, consulted the oracle of Apollo--a capital offence in a Jew, but
surely a venial sin in an ignorant and deluded pagan.

To illustrate the nature of the Hebrew witch and her prohibited criminal
traffic, those who have written on this subject have naturally dwelt
upon the interview between Saul and the Witch of Endor, the only
detailed and particular account of such a transaction which is to be
found in the Bible; a fact, by the way, which proves that the crime of
witchcraft (capitally punished as it was when discovered) was not
frequent among the chosen people, who enjoyed such peculiar
manifestations of the Almighty's presence. The Scriptures seem only to
have conveyed to us the general fact (being what is chiefly edifying) of
the interview between the witch and the King of Israel. They inform us
that Saul, disheartened and discouraged by the general defection of his
subjects, and the consciousness of his own unworthy and ungrateful
disobedience, despairing of obtaining an answer from the offended Deity,
who had previously communicated with him through his prophets, at length
resolved, in his desperation, to go to a divining woman, by which course
he involved himself in the crime of the person whom he thus consulted,
against whom the law denounced death--a sentence which had been often
executed by Saul himself on similar offenders. Scripture proceeds to
give us the general information that the king directed the witch to call
up the Spirit of Samuel, and that the female exclaimed that gods had
arisen out of the earth--that Saul, more particularly requiring a
description of the apparition (whom, consequently, he did not himself
see), she described it as the figure of an old man with a mantle. In
this figure the king acknowledges the resemblance of Samuel, and sinking
on his face, hears from the apparition, speaking in the character of the
prophet, the melancholy prediction of his own defeat and death.

In this description, though all is told which is necessary to convey to
us an awful moral lesson, yet we are left ignorant of the minutiæ
attending the apparition, which perhaps we ought to accept as a sure
sign that there was no utility in our being made acquainted with them.
It is impossible, for instance, to know with certainty whether Saul was
present when the woman used her conjuration, or whether he himself
personally ever saw the appearance which the Pythoness described to him.
It is left still more doubtful whether anything supernatural was
actually evoked, or whether the Pythoness and her assistant meant to
practise a mere deception, taking their chance to prophesy the defeat
and death of the broken-spirited king as an event which the
circumstances in which he was placed rendered highly probable, since he
was surrounded by a superior army of Philistines, and his character as a
soldier rendered it likely that he would not survive a defeat which must
involve the loss of his kingdom. On the other hand, admitting that the
apparition had really a supernatural character, it remains equally
uncertain what was its nature or by what power it was compelled to an
appearance, unpleasing, as it intimated, since the supposed spirit of
Samuel asks wherefore he was disquieted in the grave. Was the power of
the witch over the invisible world so great that, like the Erictho of
the heathen poet, she could disturb the sleep of the just, and
especially that of a prophet so important as Samuel; and are we to
suppose that he, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord was wont to descend,
even while he was clothed with frail mortality, should be subject to be
disquieted in his grave at the voice of a vile witch, and the command of
an apostate prince? Did the true Deity refuse Saul the response of his
prophets, and could a witch compel the actual spirit of Samuel to make
answer notwithstanding?

Embarrassed by such difficulties, another course of explanation has been
resorted to, which, freed from some of the objections which attend the
two extreme suppositions, is yet liable to others. It has been supposed
that something took place upon this remarkable occasion similar to that
which disturbed the preconcerted purpose of the prophet Balaam, and
compelled him to exchange his premeditated curses for blessings.
According to this hypothesis, the divining woman of Endor was preparing
to practise upon Saul those tricks of legerdemain or jugglery by which
she imposed upon meaner clients who resorted to her oracle. Or we may
conceive that in those days, when the laws of Nature were frequently
suspended by manifestations of the Divine Power, some degree of juggling
might be permitted between mortals and the spirits of lesser note; in
which case we must suppose that the woman really expected or hoped to
call up some supernatural appearance. But in either case, this second
solution of the story supposes that the will of the Almighty
substituted, on that memorable occasion, for the phantasmagoria intended
by the witch, the spirit of Samuel in his earthly resemblance--or, if
the reader may think this more likely, some good being, the messenger of
the Divine pleasure, in the likeness of the departed prophet--and, to
the surprise of the Pythoness herself, exchanged the juggling farce: of
sheer deceit or petty sorcery which she had intended to produce, for a
deep tragedy, capable of appalling the heart of the hardened tyrant, and
furnishing an awful lesson to future times.