elly placed before it. In the time of the American Revolution, as the transaction was related by an officer who was present, a soldier, who had committed some crime, was condeinned to be shot. He was finally pardoned, without a knowledge of the pardon being communicated to him, since it was thought advisable that he should be made to suffer as much as possible from the fear of death. In accordance with this plan, he was led at the appointed time to the place of execution; the bandage was placed over his eyes; and the soldiers were drawn out, but were privately ordered to fire over his head. At the discharge of their muskets, although nothing touched him, the man fell dead on the spot.-" A criminal was once sentenced in England to be executed, when a college of physicians requested liberty to make him the subject of an experiment connected with their profession. It was granted. The man was told that his sentence was commuted, and that he was to be bled to death. On the appointed day several physicians went to the prison, and made the requisite preparations in his presence; the lancet was displayed, bowls were in readiness to receive the blood, and the culprit was directed to place himself on his back, with his arm extended, ready to receive the fatal incision. When all this was done, his eyes were bandaged. In the mean time, a sufficient quantity of lukewarm water had been provided; his arm was merely touched with the lancet, and the water, poured slowly over it, was made to trickle down into the bowl below. One of the physicians felt his pulse, and the others frequently exchanged such remarks as, He is nearly exhaustedcannot hold out much longer-grows very pale,' &c.; and in a short time the criminal actually died from the force of imagination."* § 334. This doctrine of use in explaining mental phenomena. These illustrations of the connexion existing between the body and mind, and of their influence on each other, are brought together here in order to prevent the necessity of hereafter interrupting our examination of other * As the statement is given in the Work entitled Popular Superstitions. are not restricted to that part of the human system where they first show themselves. The mind also is unfavoura bly affected at the same time, and through the influence of the same causes. These results, it is true, are not experienced to a great extent in the Internal Intellect, or that division of the intellect which operates in the discovery of truth, independent in a great measure of the outward senses; but they are seen and felt, perhaps we may say without a single exception, and in a high degree, in that department of the mind which we have proposed to designate, in consequence of its depending in its action on the external senses, as the External Intellect. As the senses one after another are prostrated, this portion of the intellective nature, which, as was noticed in the last section, was brought into action through their instrumentality, seems to fall and lie prostrate with them. It seems to be hardly less deaf and blind, hardly less sensible to the intimations of touch and taste, and to stand less in need of crutches to support it, than the bowed and superannuated body which it had formerly employed as the medium of its activity. The higher departments of the soul, as has been intimated, remain essentially firm and unshaken; but this, which has a particularly close connexion with the bodily nature, and is based, as it were, upon a foundation of materiality, is necessarily blunted and disordered in its action by the dislocation and breaking up of the earthy materials. 331. The connexion of the bodily system with the mental shown from the effects resulting from diseases. In addition to what has been said, it may be remarked further, in confirmation of the same general views, that violent corporeal diseases in youth and manhood, before any decays take place from age, often affect the powers of thought. Persons have been known, for instance, after a violent fever or violent attacks of some other form of disease, to lose entirely the power of recollection. Thucydides, in his account of the plague of Athens, makes mention of some persons who had survived that disease; but their intense bodily sufferings had affected heir mental constitution so much, that they had forgoten their families and friends, and had lost all knowledge f their own former history. It is a singular fact, also, hat the result of violent disease is sometimes quite the everse of what has now been stated. While in one case the memory is entirely prostrated, we find in others hat, under the influence of such attacks, the memory is suddenly aroused, and restores the history of the past with a minuteness and vividness unknown before. But both classes of cases confirm what we are now attempting to show, viz., the existence of a connexion between the mind and body, and a reciprocal influence between them. 332. Shown also from the effects of stimulating drugs and gases. If there be not a close connexion between the body and mind, and if there be not various influences propagated from one to the other, how does it happen that many things of a stimulating nature, such as ardent spirits and opium, strongly affect the mind when taken into the system in considerable quantities? But, without delaying upon the effects of drugs of this description, which, unhappily, can hardly fail to be noticed every day, we would instance particularly the results which are found to follow from the internal use of the nitrous oxide gas. This gas, when it is received into the system, operates, in the first instance, on the body. The effect is a physical one. In particular, it quickens the circulation of the blood; and also, as is commonly supposed, increases the volume of that fluid. But its effects, which are first felt in the body, are afterward experienced in the mind, and generally in a high degree. When it is inhaled in a considerable quantity, the sensations are more acute, the conceptions of absent objects are more vivid, associated trains of thought pass through the mind with increased rapidity, and emotions and passions, generally of a pleasant kind, are excited, corresponding in strength to the increased acuteness of sensations and the increased vividness of conceptions. There is another gas, the FEBRILE MIASMA, which is found, on being inhaled, to affect the mind also, by first subjects by a particular recurrence to this. There might be a much more extended narration of facts, all tending to the same conclusion; but we take it for granted that it is unnecessary. We shall accordingly hereafter regard it as a settled principle, whenever a particular effect in the mind is ascribed to an influence from the body, that such bodily influence is at least possible. We may perhaps mistake, in a given case, in assigning the true corporeal cause; but this will not imply that there is no such thing as corporeal causes of mental action, or that such causes are inadequate to great effects. If we would understand the mind, we must also understand the body, not because they are identical, but because they are related. And for the same reason, if we would possess a sound mind, a mind capable of exertion corresponding to its capacity, we must endeavour to possess soundness of body. In another and future state of being, where the connexion which now exists will be broken, and the spiritual will be divorced from the material, it is possible that mental philosophy may be predicated on other principles; but, as matters now are, to attempt to explain the phenomena of the soul without a recognition of its relationship to the body, is a violation of fact and an absurdity in reason. CHAPTER II. EXCITED CONCEPTIONS OR APPARITIONS. § 335. Of excited conceptions and of apparitions in general. HAVING prepared the way by what has been said on the connexion existing between the mind and body, we shall now proceed in the examination of the painfully interesting subject before us, by giving some instances and explanations of EXCITED CONCEPTIONS or APPARITIONS. Conceptions, the consideration of which is to be resumed in the present chapter, are those ideas which we have of any absent object of perception. In their ordinary form they have already been considered in a former part of this Work. (See Chapter X., Part I.) But they are found to vary in degree of strength; and hence, when they are at the highest intensity of which they are susceptible, they may be denominated vivified or EXCITED CONCEPTIONS. They are otherwise called, particularly when they have their origin in the sense of sight, appa RITIONS. Apparitions, therefore, are appearances which seem to be external and real, but which, in truth, have merely an interior or subjective existence; they are merely vivid or excited conceptions. Accordingly, there may be apparitions not only of angels and departed spirits, which appear to figure more largely in the history of apparitions than other objects of sight; but of landscapes, mountains, rivers, precipices, festivals, armies, funeral processions, temples; in a word, of all visual perceptions which we are capable of recalling.-Although there are excited conceptions both of the hearing and the touch, and sometimes, though less frequently, of the other senses, which succeed in reaching and controlling our belief with unreal intimations, those of the sight, in consequence of the great importance of that organ and the frequency of the deceptions connected with it, claim especial attention. § 336. Of the less permanent excited conceptions of sight. Excited conceptions, which are not permanent, but have merely a momentary, although a distinct and real existence, are not uncommon. In explanation of these there are two things to be noticed.-I. They are sometimes the result of the natural and ordinary exercise of that power of forming conceptions which all persons possess in a greater or less degree. We notice them particularly in children, in whom the conceptive or imaginative power, so far as it is employed in giving existence to creations that have outline and form, is generally more active than in later life. Children, it is well known, are almost constantly projecting their inward conceptions into outward space, and erecting the fanciful creations of the mind amid the realities and forms of matter, beholding houses, men, towers, flocks of sheep, clusters of trees, and varieties of landscape in the changing clouds, in the |