two. I cannot tell you why these phantasms thus partake of the nature of
an atmospheric epidemic; the fact remains incontestable. And strange as
may be the coincidence between your impressions of a mystic agency and
those of some other brains not cognizant of the chimeras of your own,
still, is it not simpler philosophy to say, 'They are coincidences of the
same nature which made witches in the same epoch all tell much the same
story of the broomsticks they rode and the sabbats at which they danced to
the fiend's piping,' and there leave the matter, as in science we must
leave many of the most elementary and familiar phenomena inexplicable as
to their causes,--is not this, I say, more philosophical than to insist
upon an explanation which accepts the supernatural rather than leave the
extraordinary unaccounted for?"

"As you speak," said I, resting my downcast face upon my hand, "I should
speak to any patient who had confided to me the tale I have told to you."

"And yet the explanation does not wholly satisfy you? Very likely: to
some phenomena there is, as yet, no explanation. Perhaps Newton himself
could not explain quite to his own satisfaction why he was haunted at
midnight by the spectrum of a sun; though I have no doubt that some later
philosopher whose ingenuity has been stimulated by Newton's account, has,
by this time, suggested a rational solution of that enigma.[8] To return
to your own case. I have offered such interpretations of the mysteries
that confound you as appear to me authorized by physiological science.
Should you adduce other facts which physiological science wants the data
to resolve into phenomena always natural, however rare, still hold fast to
that simple saying of Goethe: 'Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.'
And if all which physiological science comprehends in its experience
wholly fails us, I may then hazard certain conjectures in which, by
acknowledging ignorance, one is compelled to recognize the Marvellous (for