were afterward only certain days in the month, when he had the good fortune to see him.

I knew at Gersbach, near Durlach, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, a curate, who was put in durance because he had likewise a familiar spirit. There is at Manheim, a man, who always thinks himself accompanied by several spirits. Sometimes they walk by the side of him, in visible forms; at other times, they accompany him only under ground. Pinel speaks of a very dangerous maniac, who was calm only during the day; but who, during the night, believed himself always surrounded by ghosts and phantoms; who converses in turn with good and evil angels, and who according to the character of his visions, is benevolent or dangerous, inclined to acts of kindness or to acts of barbarous cruelty.

History, both ancient and modern, furnishes a great number of examples of the same kind.

If it be ridiculous to admit the reality of apparitions, demons, and familiar spirits, it is also unjust to accuse of imposture, those who pretend to have had them. There are few persons in whom one can suppose address and wickedness enough, to counterfeit fraudulently those phenomena, which the observer alone knows in all their shades. I shall show, that these men are the sport of too energetic an activity of a part of the brain.

Organization which Disposes to Visions.

In the first fanatic whom I saw, I was struck with the rounded prominence of the superior part of the frontal bone. This prominence does not form in the middle of the head a lengthened protuberance, as the organ of benevolence; neither is it the elliptic protuberance of imitation. Here all the part of the frontal bone is prominent in the form of the segment of a sphere.

Between convolutions xxv. which constitutes poetical talent, and xxvI. formed by that of imitation, is placed another convolution, Pl. vIII. IX. X. of which the considerable development involves probably the disposition to visions. Does this convolution make part of the organ of imitation, and does its excessive development exalt the talent for imitation, so as to cause it to give to ideas of its own creation, an external existence, and make them appear as coming to us from without? Or does this convolution at the same time make part both of poetry and imitation? Or, in fine, does it constitute a particular organ? This is what further researches alone will be able to decide.

As it is very possible that visions are only the blended result of an exalted action of one of those two organs, or of the two together, I have not thought it necessary to consider it as a particular organ.

Now let the reader examine the heads of all those persons who, without being attacked with a mental malady, were peculiarly disposed to visions. Let him compare the portraits and the busts of Socrates, Pl. xcii. fig. 1; of Gabrino, Pl. xc. fig. 5; of Joan of Arc, of St. Ignatius, fig. 6; of Tasso, fig. 7; of Cromwell, Pl. xcv. fig. 4; of Swedenburg, &c.; the same organization, which they there remark, is found likewise in Jung Stilling, in Hallerau, in M. de F., and in Dr. W.

Till now I have mentioned only facts, and in what I have said, have had nature alone for my guide. I shall now give an explanation, the value of which the reader will judge.

Explanation of Visions and Inspirations.

The explanation which I have given of dreams, Vol. II. p. 506, opens to us the way for the explanation of visions and inspirations. During dreams, all that we see, all that we hear, as passing in the external

world, is in fact passing within us. The furious horses and the carriage, with which we are thrown over a precipice, the torrent which sweeps away our child, is ourself. That, which in the state of waking, would be a lively impression, a clear idea, becomes, during sleep, the very object which produces the impression, which gives rise to the idea. It is thus, that the man who dreams, becomes for himself the most perfect comedian. The animal and the man during waking, have the faculty of distinguishing the impression and the idea from the external object, which produces it. This faculty is lost during sleep. Now, as we cannot have the consciousness of these objects as existing within us, by virtue of a law of nature, we place them without ourselves. In this sense, every dream is a vision, an apparition.

Whenever, in health or disease, the sentiments and ideas are produced with such rapidity and vivacity, that we cannot distinguish them from the objects which produce them, (in consequence of the laws of our sentiments and our ideas,) we give to them external existence, or personify them and have a vision.

When this extreme activity of the internal senses is temporary, when the person has time to recollect himself, when other feelings and other ideas come to weaken the first, when certain movements which are performed involuntarily, give a different course to the circulation of the blood, and recall us to ourselves, the vision or apparition disappears; we again distinguish the sentiment or the idea, from the object which produces it; the dream we had ceases when we wake. In this case, this state is a temporary alienation which, however, for the most part, leaves such an impression, that it is very difficult to undeceive persons who have had such visions. In certain persons, these visions are periodical, and take place usually at the periods of an accession of irritability, of hemorrhoids, of the menstrual discharge, &c.

In others this state is more durable, in proportion to

the duration of the excitement. An habitual nervous excitement, an exertion of mind too long continued and fixed on the same object, fasts, prolonged watchings, plethora, suffice to excite it. Nervous or plethoric persons, endowed with the organization in question, are usually those who pretend to have a familiar spirit. As they do not feel themselves ill, it is very evident, that they place in the external world, what really exists only in themselves. They are in the same predicament with madmen, who seem to embrace the object of their affection, to fight against robbers or against the devil. And as it is impossible to convince a maniac that he is insane, so also is it impossible to make a visionary understand, that he is deranged.

Now it would appear, that an extreme development of the convolutions, placed between the organ of imitation and that of poetry, disposes to this excessive irritability. And what is there in fact more analogous than the poetical talent and the talent for imitation, and the tendency to visions? I am not far from believing that the exaltation of the organ of propensity to religion contributes, at least in many cases, very much to visions. These visions explain, why all visionaries carry in their outward demeanour, the impress of sanctitude, exaltation, inspiration, something in fact more than human.

It appears, that inspirations must not always be referred to the same source. In many cases, they are only the effect of the irregular and involuntary activity of a single organ, by means of which man feels a violent impulse, which seems to him to act independently of himself, an impulse which he attributes to a force without himself, and which, on that account, he must regard as an inspiration, an order, a command received from elsewhere. We must pardon the ignorance and superstition which seek, in the impulse of beneficent spirits or malicious demons, what the naturalist finds in the vicious action of an over-irritated organ,

Visions are not rare in mania. "Nothing is more common in hospitals," says M. Pinel," than the nightly or daily visions, experienced by certain women attacked with religious melancholy. One of them thinks she sees, during the night, the Holy Virgin descend into her cell in the form of tongues of fire. She asks to

have an altar built there, to receive in a worthy manner the sovereign of heaven, who comes to converse with her and console her for her sufferings. Another woman of a cultivated mind, whom the events of the revolution have thrown into profound melancholy and a maniacal delirium, goes constantly to walk in the garden of the hospital, advances gravely with her eyes fixed towards heaven, thinks she sees Jesus Christ with all the celestial court, march in order of procession in the upper air, and warble songs accompanied by melodious sounds; she herself advances with a grave step to accompany the procession; she points it out, fully convinced of its reality as if the object itself struck her senses. She gives herself up to violent passion against all those, who would persuade her to the contrary."*

This would be the place to treat of animal magnetism; but as this singular subject would be too long an interruption of the exposition of the organs, I shall defer it to the sixth volume of the work.

XXVI. God and Religion.

God and religion have always been objects so important to man, that all, which can be said on this subject, seems exhausted. There are no ideas relative to these subjects, from the grossest superstition to atheism, which ignorance or the different sects of philosophy, have not tried either to accredit or to refute. According to certain philosophers, it is man, terrified by the great phenom

* Of Mental Alienation, 2d, ed. p. 108, 109, § 122.