Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/593

Rh being producible through the nerves of the internal and of the external senses, and. the very same affection of the sensational consciousness being thus called forth by impressions ab extra and ab intra. Thus, individuals having a strong pictorial memory can reproduce scenes from Nature, faces, or pictures, with such vividness that they may be said to see with their "mind's eye" just as distinctly as with their bodily eye; and there is an instance on record (which Mr. Ruskin fully accredits, as well from having seen the two pictures as from his own similar experiences) in which a painter at Cologne accurately reproduced from memory a large altar-piece by Rubens, which had been carried away by the French. Those, again, who possess a strong pictorial imagination, can thus create distinct visual images of what they have never seen through their bodily eyes. And, although this power of voluntary representation is comparatively rare, yet we are all conscious of the phenomenon as occurring involuntarily in our dreams.

Now, there is a very numerous class of persons who are subject to what may be termed "waking dreams," which they can induce by placing themselves in conditions favorable to reverie; and the course of these dreams is essentially determined by the individual's prepossessions, brought into play by suggestions conveyed from without. In many who do not spontaneously fall into this state, fixity of the gaze for some minutes is quite sufficient to induce it; and the "mesmeric mania" of Edinburgh in 1851 showed the proportion of such susceptible individuals to be much larger than was previously supposed. Those who have had adequate opportunities of studying these phenomena find no difficulty in referring to the same category many of the "spiritualistic" performances of the present time, in which we seem to have reproductions of states that were regarded in ancient times, under the influence of religious prepossession, as results of divine inspiration. I have strong reason to believe (from my conviction of the honesty of the individuals who have themselves narrated to me their experiences) that they have really seen, heard, and felt what they describe, where intentional deception was out of the question; that is, that they had the same distinct consciousness, in states of expectant reverie, of seeing, touching, and conversing with the spirits of departed friends, that most of us occasionally have in our dreams. And the difference consists in this—that while one, in the exercise of his common-sense, dismisses these experiences as the creation of his own brain, having no objective reality, the other, under the influence of his prepossession, accepts them as the results of impressions ab extra made upon him by "spiritual" agencies.

The faith anciently placed, by the heathen as well as the Jewish world, in dreams, visions, trances, etc., has thus its precise parallel in the present day; and it is not a little instructive to find a very intelligent religious body, the Swedenborgians, implicitly accepting as