were accompanied with agonies of terror, we merely awake, or turn round
on the other side, and off fly both image and agony, which would be
impossible if the sensations were produced by the images. This has
always appeared to me an absolute demonstration of the true nature of
ghosts and apparitions--such I mean of the tribe as were not pure
inventions. Fifty years ago, (and to this day in the ruder parts of
Great Britain and Ireland, in almost every kitchen and in too many
parlours it is nearly the same,) you might meet persons who would assure
you in the most solemn manner, so that you could not doubt their
veracity at least, that they had seen an apparition of such and such a
person,--in many cases, that the apparition had spoken to them; and they
would describe themselves as having been in an agony of terror. They
would tell you the story in perfect health. Now take the other class of
facts, in which real ghosts have appeared;--I mean, where figures have
been dressed up for the purpose of passing for apparitions:--in every
instance I have known or heard of (and I have collected very many) the
consequence has been either sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania,
or a brain fever. Whence comes the difference? evidently from
this,--that in the one case the whole of the nervous system has been by
slight internal causes gradually and all together brought into a certain
state, the sensation of which is extravagantly exaggerated during sleep,
and of which the images are the mere effects and exponents, as the
motions of the weathercock are of the wind;--while in the other case,
the image rushing through the senses upon a nervous system, wholly
unprepared, actually causes the sensation, which is sometimes powerful
enough to produce a total check, and almost always a lesion or
inflammation. Who has not witnessed the difference in shock when we have
leaped down half-a-dozen steps intentionally, and that of having missed
a single stair. How comparatively severe the latter is! The fact really
is, as to apparitions, that the terror produces the image instead of the