ences- vague terrors coming we know | mind finds, indeed, a strange significance not whence, and refusing to be exorcised in the words "the outer darkness." Now, by reason; the feeling not momentary one can understand that any circumstanthough transient that a sight or sound ces recalling those feelings of childhood is not of this world; and other sensations would bring with them a thrill, relieved conveying to us a sense of the supernat- from pain because reason tells us no real ural which we can neither analyze nor un- danger is present, and conveying somederstand, and in which the reason has no thing of pleasure much as the idea of real belief. warmth and comfort is suggested by the roar of distant winds, or the sound of rain, when we are sitting in a cozy room. And in like manner one can understand how a bright still day in spring may bring back "in sweet and bitter fancy" the feelings of childhood. Perhaps the consideration of this very difficulty may throw some light on our subject, for it often happens that the key to an enigma is indicated by the more perplexing circumstances of the problem. If we dismiss for the moment all those superstitions which may fairly be regarded as derived from early impressions, or as resulting from mere ignorance, and consider the case of well educated, carefully trained, and not weak-minded persons, who nevertheless at times experience superstitious tremors, we may perhaps find some circumstances pointing to the very origin of the superstition now so widely entertained. One well marked feature of these emotions is their occurrence in the hours of darkness. I am not speaking here of the feeling of discomfort and fear which many experience when in the dark. This feeling is itself well worth inquiring into. But I now speak of the circumstance that even those who have no unpleasant sensations when in darkness, are nevertheless only exposed to certain emotions of superstitious terror at such times. Who, for instance, thoroughly enjoys a ghost story if it is told in a well-lighted room? I use the word "enjoy," because, as a matter of fact, the sensation I am now considering is not by any means a painful one, except in extreme cases, or with persons of weak nerves. It is a mysterious, indefinable thrill, with about the same proportion of pain and pleasure as in the feeling of melancholy experienced on certain still, bright days in spring; and it is as difficult to understand why darkness and stillness should be as essential to one feeling as brightness and stillness to the other. There is a commonplace explanation which ascribes both these feelings to the unconscious recalling of the emotions of childhood. To the child darkness conveys the idea of discomfort. All that is enjoyable to him after darkness has come on, is in the light and warmth of the room where he sits or plays. Cold and gloom are without in the long passages, in the unused rooms, and in a yet greater degree, outside the house. The childish - Yet there is more in either sensation than the mere unconscious remembrance of childhood. Something much farther back in our natures, if I may so speak, is touched, when the soul thrills with unintelligible fears. The proof of this is found in the fact that the feeling exists in childhood—nay, is more marked among children than with grown persons. "This kind of fear," says Charles Lamb, who knew better than most men what it is, "predominates in the period of sinless infancy." And I think that in the same essay he touches the real solution of the mystery, or rather he presents that higher mystery from which this one takes its origin, when he says, "these terrors are of older standing-they date beyond body." There is a curious story in Darwin's latest work, which he uses as an illustration of a theory yet more singular. "My daughter," he says, "poured some water into a glass close to the head of a kitten, and it immediately shook its feet." "It is well known," he had before said, "that cats dislike wetting their feet, owing, it is probable, to their having aboriginally inhabited the dry country of Egypt." This explanation may not be the true one; but even if not, the real explanation we may be sure is quite as singular. Now the fact to be explained is analogous to the circumstance we are dealing with. We see in young creatures, like Kittens, habits which cannot have been acquired from observation. These habits depend (almost certainly) on inherited peculiarities of the brain's conformation. May it not be that it is so with the superstitious tremors we have been considering? Those fears which affect children too young to know what fear is, those fears which in after life are but partially under the control of reason, may indicate a condition of the brain inherited not from parents or grandparents, but through to understand, on waking again in full day-light, how the mind can possibly have entertained the feelings which had made night hideous or distressing. In remembrance, the matter seems like an experience of another person. long lines of descent-even, perhaps, has been of an impressive nature, the from the ages when to our savage progen- mind seems exposed to ideas of the suitors every unexplained sight or sound pernatural. One often finds it impossible might indicate the presence of a lurking enemy. During long ages of savage life the conformation of the brain must have become permanently affected by the mental action resulting from the necessity for continual watchfulness against brute and human enemies. In the dark, particularly, such watchfulness was at once more requisite and more difficult; and it seems by no means unlikely that the anxious feelings which many experience constantly in the dark, as well as those peculiar tremors which are occasionally experienced in the hours of darkness, depend on mental peculiarities inherited from our gloom-fearing savage ancestors. In passing it may be noticed that we perhaps owe to dreams many of the common ideas about spiritual agencies. Mr. Herbert Spencer accounts for the earliest belief in the supernatural "by man being led through dreams, shadows, and other causes to look at himself as a double essence, corporeal and spiritual." And "the spiritual being is supposed to exist after death, and to be powerful." Mr. As respects the ordinary feeling of Tylor also has shown how dreams may dread in darkness, although there can be have given rise to the notion of spirits; no doubt that it is sometimes engendered “for savages," says Darwin (stating Tyby the talk of foolish nurses to young lor's views), "do not readily distinguish children (and, by the way, what an un-between subjective and objective impreshappy thing it is that so many must pass sions. When a savage dreams, the figthrough the mischievous ordeal of train- ures which appear before him are believed ing by foolish and ignorant persons), yet to have come from a distance, and to it is a mistake to suppose that this is the stand over him, or the soul of the dreamsole or even the main cause. Some chil- er goes out on its travels, and comes dren fear to be in darkness who have home with a remembrance of what it has never heard of ghost or goblin. "It is seen.'" "Nevertheless," says Darwin not book or picture," says Lamb very just-presently, "I cannot but suspect that ly, "or the stories of foolish servants, which create these terrors in children. They can at most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all children has been brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint of superstition who was never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read or hear of any distressing story-finds all this world of fear from which he has been so rigidly excluded ab extra in his own 'thickcoming fancies;' and from his little midnight pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity. Gorgons and Hydras and Chimæras dire -stories of Celano and the Harpies may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition; but they were there before. They are transcripts, types - the archetypes are in us, and eternal." there is a still earlier and ruder stage, when anything which manifests power or movement is thought to be endowed with some form of life, and with mental faculties analogous to our own." Another circumstance which seems to have considerable effect in preparing the mind to entertain superstitious emotions is intense or long-continued brooding on sorrows, and especially on the loss of one dear to us. Mingled with our thoughts at such times, the idea is always more or less consciously entertained that our lately lost friend is near to us, and knows our thoughts. The reason may be convinced No spirit ever brake the band, That stays him from his native land, Where first he walk'd when claspt in clay; while nevertheless something within us teaches (wrongly or rightly, who knows?) that the spirit itself May come Another remarkable circumstance in When all the nerve of sense is numb, Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost. the superstitious impressions which affect those who have no real belief in ghosts Surely it is not the weak and ignorant and goblins, is the singular intensity of alone who have this experience. The such impressions when aroused (in what- mind of strongest mould need not be ever way) immediately on waking. Es- ashamed to have entertained the thought, pecially after dreaming, when the dream to have even prayed the prayer,— Descend, and touch, and enter; hear The wish, too strong for words to name, That in this blindness of the frame My Ghost may feel that thine is near. Under the influence of emotions such as these the mind is prepared to be deceived. It is at such times that visions of the departed have been seen. I do not here speak of visions called up out of nothing the healthy mind cannot be so far betrayed - but of visions none the less imaginary. The mind has no creative power to form such visions, except when there is diseased and abnormal action; but it possesses a power to combine real objects so as to form pictures of the unreal, and this power is singularly active in the time of sorrowing for a near and dear friend. in hard reading. But hard reading, in my case, had come to an end on my mother's death. I had so far accustomed myself to associate college successes with the idea of pleasure given to her that I now looked with aversion on my former studies. They could no longer gain the prize I had alone cared for. I ought, no doubt, to have had quite other feelings, but I speak of the effects 1 actually experienced. Now, whether the breaking up of my old plans for work had upset me, or in whatever way it happened, I certainly had never found college lite so lonely and unpleasant as during the first term of my second year. And it seems to me likely that the low spirits from which I then suffered may have had something to do with the singular instance It is probable that the experience of of self-deception I have now to relate:every reader of these lines will supply in- I had on one evening been particularly, stances in point. Sometimes the decep- I may say unreasonably low-spirited. I tion of the mind is singularly complete, had sat brooding for hours over dismal insomuch that it is only by the determin- thoughts. These thoughts had followed ation to approach the seeming vision that me to bed, and I went to sleep still under the ghost-seer is able to remove the im- their influence. I cannot remember my pression. I will cite an instance which dreams—I did dream, and my dreams occurred to myself, as somewhat aptly il- were melancholy-but although I had a lustrating the principal circumstances perfectly clear remembrance of their tentending to make such illusions effective :- our on first waking, they had passed My mother died during the long vaca- altogether from my recollection the next tion of my first year at Cambridge. It morning. It is to be noted, however, that chanced that I was in Germany at the I was under the influence of sorrowful time, and I suffered much distress of dreams when I woke. At this time the mind from the thought that I had been light of a waning moon was shining into enjoying a pleasure-tour during the days the room. I opened my eyes, and saw, of her last illness. Letters had followed without surprise or any conscious feeling me from place to place, but it was only of fear, my mother standing at the the circumstance of my staying my jour-foot of the bed. She was not in ber ney one Sunday at Heidelberg which en- habit as she lived," but "clothed in white abled me to receive news from England; samite, mystic, wonderful." Her face and I only reached home in time to at- was pale, though not with the pallour of tend her funeral. Yet the full effect of life, her expression sorrowful, and tears these circumstances was only experienced when I found myself again settled in my rooms at Cambridge. There is a singular mixture of society and solitude in university life, which at times of trouble produces unpleasant feelings. Throughout the day there is abundant opportunity for intercourse with friends; but although amongst one's college friends are some who will be friends for life, yet at the time the interchange of ideas even with these special friends relates almost wholly to college work or college interests. There is nothing homelike in social arrangements at college. So scon as the "oak is sported" for the evening a lonely feeling is apt to come on, which affects even some of those who have no recent sorrows to brood over. There is a refuge One of the most singular facts connected with the There is a condition of the brain during and directly after sleep, is 3 ghost." And in this way, I doubt little, many veracious persons have been led to add their evidence in favour of the common notions about ghosts and visions. It is a singular circumstance, however, that sometimes several persons may be deceived by an illusion such as we have been considering. There is an instance of this kind in a book on the supernatural which I read many years ago. I cannot at the moment recall the name. It dealt with all forms of mental deception, which glistened in the moonlight stood in pletely when the latter has been painfully her eyes. And now a strange mental con- affected and is in an unhealthy condition. dition followed. My reason told me that I When this is the case, and a vision of was deceived by appearances, that the fig- some departed friend is conjured up out ure I saw was neither my mother's spirit of realities indistinctly seen, the effect on nor an unreal vision. I felt certain I was the mind will depend greatly on the ideas not looking at "a phantom of the brain entertained by the victim of the illusion which would show itself without ;" and I on the subject of ghosts and visions genfelt equally certain that no really existent erally. A believer in ghosts will be too spirit was there before me. Yet the startled to inquire further. If (as happens longer I looked, the more perfect ap-in many instances of the kind) he can repeared the picture. Iracked my memory treat from the dread presence, he will to recall any objects in my bed-room commonly do so, and remain satisfied which could be mistaken for a shrouded ever after that he at least has "seen a ghost; but my memory was busy recalling the features of the dead, and my brain (against the action of my will) was tracing these features in the figure which stood before me. The deception grew more and more complete until I could have spoken aloud as to a living person. Meantime my mind had suggested and at once rejected the idea of a trick played me by one of my college-friends. I felt a perfect assurance that whatever it was which stood before me, it was not a breathing creature self-restrained into absolute - mesmerism, witchcraft, necromancing stillness. How long I remained gazing and so on. In the part relating to visions, at the figure I cannot remember; but I it cited the case of Sir Walter Scott, who know that I continued steadfastly looking soon after the death of Byron and while at it until I had assured myself that (to his mind was dwelling on the painful cirmy mind in its probably unhealthy con- cumstances of that event, saw in the dusk dition) the picture was perfect in all re- of a large room a vision of the poet which spects. At last I raised my head from presently resolved itself into furniture. the pillow, intending to draw nearer to Then came the case I have in my the mysterious figure. But it was quite thoughts. As nearly as I can remember, unnecessary. I had not raised my head the story ran thus: A gentleman who three inches before the ghost was gone, had lately lost his wife, looking out of and in its place, or rather, not in its window in the dusk of evening, saw her place, but five or six feet farther away, sitting in a garden chair. He called one hung my college surplice. It was quite of his daughters and asked her to look out impossible to restore the illusion by re- into the garden. "Why," she said, suming my former position. The mind" mother is sitting there." Another which a moment before had been so completely deceived, rejected completely even the idea of resemblance. There was nothing even in the arrangement of the folds of the surplice to justify in the slightest degree an illusion which nevertheless had been perfect while it lasted. Only one feature of the apparition was I know of a more curious instance, accounted for. I have said that the eyes where no explanation was ever found, shone with tears: the explanation was simply because the deceived persons were rather commonplace; over my surplice I too frightened to seek for one. In a had hung a rowing belt and the silvered house in Ireland a girl lay dying. Her buckles (partly concealed by the folds of mother and father were with her; and her the surplice) shone in the moonlight. five sisters were praying for her in a The event here narrated suggests neighbouring room. This room was well the explanation of many ghost stories lit, but overhead there was a skylight and which have been related with perfect the dark sky beyond. One of the sisters good faith. I believe the imagination looking up towards the skylight, saw there only acts so as to deceive the mind com- the face of her dying sister looking sor daughter was called and she experienced the same illusion. Then the gentleman went out into the garden, and found that a garden-dress of his wife's had been placed over the seat in such a position as to produce the illusion which had deceived himself and his daughters. rowfully down upon them. She seized | apparitions as either due to a diseased another sister by the hand and pointed to the skylight; and one after another the sisters looked where she pointed. They spoke no word; and in a few moments their father and mother called them to the room where their sister had just died; but when afterwards they talked together about what had happened that night, it was found that they had all seen the vision of the sorrowful face. A remarkable circumstance in these and many other instances of supposed visions, is the utterly unreasonable nature of the supposition actually made in the mind of the ghost-seer. In the stories where a ghost appears for some useful purpose, as to show where treasure has been concealed or to reveal the misdeeds of some person still living, the mind does not reject the event as altogether unreasonable though the circumstances may be (and commonly are) sufficiently preposterous. But one can conceive no reason whatever why a departed wife and mother should make her appearance in a gardenchair on a dusky evening, and still less why the vision of a dying sister should look down through a skylight. It is singular that on this account alone the mind does not reject the illusion in such cases. Among the most perplexing circumstances in the common belief about ghosts, are the accepted ideas about ghostly habiliments. For instance, why should so many ghosts be clothed in white? If the answer is that graveclothes are white, we may inquire what a ghost wants with grave-clothes? It might as well refuse to appear without a coffin. And then, many ghosts have appeared in their habit as they lived. If we inquire what is the real conception in the ghostseer's mind as to the nature of the vision, we find a difficulty in understanding what idea is formed by the real believer in ghosts respecting the vestments in which spirits make their appearance. This is an old difficulty. In fact, it has probably occurred to every one who has thought over a ghost story. So soon as we come to the description of the ghost's vestments there is always a hitch in the story. For my own part, I must have been a very small child indeed, when I first pondered over the question, Who made the ghost's clothes? action of the brain or to the power of fancy in forming from real objects, indistinctly seen, the picture of a departed friend; but of those who look on visions of the dead as produced by supernatural impressions on the brain. Those who think that at the will of the dead a vision may be caused to appear, can of course understand that this vision would either be clothed in the garb which had been worn during life, or in graveclothes, or in such other dress as suited the circumstances under which the vision appeared. But this view is not ordinarily adopted by those who regard apparitions as supernatural phenomena. They commonly regard the phantom as something really existent in the place where it is appar ently seen. The dead person is there in some form; some essential entity representing him has the power to transport itself from the place of the departed into the presence of the living. This ordinary idea of ghostly vision is aptly iendered in Hamlet's address to the ghost. He does not speak of it as a vision, but to it as something real, although not understood: Be thou a spirit of health or goblin dam.n'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, let: What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel, Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do? Of course there is no difficulty in the case of those who believe only in ghostly apparitions as phantoms of the brain. Mistakenly understood generally to signify “doubtHere a distinction must be drawn. What is meant is obviously a shape as of one not speaking of those who regard such to whom questions can be addressed." I am ful." |