Hallucinations appearing with mental diseases, of which they are signs, the complication, development, termination, epiphenomena, etc., a priori, the division into moral and physical causes should be equally applicable to them.

A fact noticed in our Memoire sur l'Influence de la Civilisa-tion, appears to decide the question in favor of moral causes. In fact, epidemic hallucinations, such as vampirism, ecstasies, and visions seen in the plague, are not capable of any other explanation. Hallucinations were transmitted in this case, by the influence of educational and social ideas, by the force of example, by an actual moral contagion, absolutely in the same way that thousands of men rush to battle at the voice of a celebrated chief, or that numbers massacre a defenceless one, urged on by the energetic appeal of some infuriate madman.

The double action of the moral over the physical proves that hallucinations cannot escape the common law, but the seat of their action and their nature betokens the predominance of one of these influences; thus, from the commencement of our researches, we have maintained that profound preoccupation and prolonged concentration of thought on a single object are eminently favorable to the production of hallucinations. Examples given of philosophers, poets, and founders of religions, decide the point; but we have insisted on the difference of these hallucinations from those observable in insanity.

Men who, by an ill-directed education, are in a state of constant excitement, whose organization has become very impressible, and who have given unbounded license to their imaginations, are subject to hallucinations. Certain imaginations, says a modern author, are necessarily superstitious; they are usually among the rich and high-born; they are less willing to admit truth than fable; nature is too vulgar for them, attracted as they are, by their instincts, towards the impossible, or, at least, towards the ideal. It is therefore that they take delight in a rich dark wood, because its gloomy arches may bo peopled with phantoms and genii. The ancients, who were such great poets, dreamed of these things by day. Their heated imaginations were to them as the sun, a focus of intense light, inspiring them with images of larvae and phantoms, laughing dryads, etc. Thus it is with those who allow their minds to dwell incessantly on chimerical projects and fanciful creations.

The general desire to be fed with chimeras, which has given birth to the just observation: Man is ice for wisdom, and fire for falsehood - appears to us a fruitful source of hallucinations. Having passed ten, fifteen, or twenty years in dreaming, it requires but a slight addition of color to deepen the tint, when the panorama stops at the favorite subject, and that which has caused the deepest impression. Sufficient attention has not been bestowed on this misty phantasmagoria in which we live. Those undecided forms, which approach and retire unceasingly, with a thousand tantalizing smiles, and after which we run with so much ardor, travel through our brains, emerge from their clouds, and become clearer and clearer; then the moral or physical point is reached; thought revived, colored, and represented, suddenly appears in a material form, and is transformed into an hallucination.

Wonderful and frightful stories, and menaces, so long the accompaniments of childhood, would naturally dispose impressible minds to collect all the fantastic creations of the age. In these days, it may be argued, the system is completely changed; children are taught to ridicule the old-fashioned credulity. This argument would be unanswerable, if schools and colleges only were in question; but what shall be said of the mercenaries to whom the earliest infancy of children is confided? This is the nursery of folly, terror, and dreadful tales, in the belief of which they grow up. I will content myself with the example of one of the greatest poets of England, Robert Burns. "I owed much in my infancy," says he, "to an old woman who lived near to us, and who was unusually ignorant, credulous, and superstitious. No one in the whole country had so great a collection of stories and songs of devils, fairies, spirits, sorcerers, magicians, will-o'-the-wisps, hobgoblins, phantoms, apparitions, charms, giants, dragons, etc. Not only did these recitals cultivate in me the germs of poetry, but they had such an effect on my imagination that even now, in my nocturnal rambles, I often, in despite of myself, keep my eye upon certain suspicious places; and although no one can be more skeptical in such matters, it nevertheless, sometimes, requires an effort of philosophy to chase away these vain terrors."*

Darkness, gloom, the silence of night, and solitude, contribute powerfully to develop the sentiment of terror, so unhappily instilled into the minds of children. They easily imagine frightful objects which look at them menacingly; they see assassins, robbers, devils, and monsters of all kinds.

* Poesies complete de Robert Burns, translated from the English, by Leon de Wailly. Notice sur Burns. Paris, 1843, edit. Charpentier.

This effect of obscurity is very sensibly exhibited in the frenzied. At the first, their incoherences and wanderings only occur when they are in a dark room, or when they close their eyes; they then see a multitude of horrible figures, which approach them with menaces and grimaces. So soon as they open their eyes, or light is admitted into the room, the phantoms vanish.

Complete solitude or long imprisonment, is each a fruitful cause of hallucinations.

The wife of a condemned politician, whose husband was a madman in Bicetre, told us that the prisoners who were sentenced with him, and had been for many years imprisoned, were tormented by visions.

M. Leon Faucher speaks of a prisoner who told MM. de Beaumont et Tocqueville, that, during the first months of his solitude, he was often visited by strange visions; for several succeeding nights, he saw an eagle perched on the foot of his bed. In 1840, in the penitentiary in Philadelphia, there were ten out of twelve cases of hallucinations, and from 1837 to 1841, eighty-six prisoners went mad. What commentator would not grow pale at the simple enumeration of these facts?*

M. Gosse also says that several persons in a penitentiary in Switzerland, having no predisposition to insanity before their incarceration, almost all became hallucinated under the influence of solitary confinement.

We have already related an anecdote of Benvenuto Cellini; and Silvio Pellico, who was incarcerated at Spielburg, thus describes the effect of solitude upon himself: -

"During these horrible nights, my imagination was so highly excited, that, although quite awake, it appeared to me that I heard sometimes sighs, sometimes stifled laughter. In childhood, I had never believed in magicians and sorcerers, but now these sighs and laughter filled me with terror. I could not explain it, and was obliged to ask myself if I was not the sport of some mysterious and evil power.

* De la Reforme des Prisons. Revue des Deux Mondes Fevrier, 1841.

"I several times took my lamp, with a trembling hand, to examine if some person was not hidden beneath my bed. At table, it seemed as if some one palled my coat, or drew away the book, which I saw fall to the earth, or came behind me to blow out my light. I would then start up, look around, stride defiantly up and down, and ask myself if I was or was not mad.

"In the morning these phantoms vanished, and whilst daylight remained, my heart felt so courageous that it seemed impossible that I could again be assailed by such terrors. But at sunset, my fears recommenced, and each night brought but a repetition of the fearful visions of the preceding one.

"These nocturnal apparitions, which by day I called foolish illusions, became at night terrible realities."*

Some of Silvio Pellico's companions in misfortune endured similar sensations. The greatest anxiety of Gonfalonieri, at Spielberg, was the fear of losing his reason, which, to use his own expression, appeared always on the point of taking flight.

The Abbe Langlet Dufresnay remarks, that apparitions seldom appear excepting in deserts, solitudes, monasteries, or other secluded situations.

We will make no comment on cellular imprisonment, excepting that we believe, if carried out in all its rigor, it would have a decided influence on the volatile and impressible organization of the French.

When the mind is thus prepared to receive these illusions, any accidental circumstance, such as an unusual sound, a particular disposition of the light, a shadow, or a certain arrangement of the draperies in the room are sufficient to produce all the effects of reality; and hence have originated a number of curious facts. Sir Walter Scott, whose mind was powerfully excited by the account of the death of the illustrious Byron, saw, on entering his dining-room, the image of his friend before him. Struck with the minute accuracy with which his imagination had reproduced every peculiarity of dress, with the manner of the great poet, he stood still a few moments; then advancing,

* Silvio Pellico, Mes prisons, traduction de M. Antoine Latour, p. 127, et seq., 1840. - Alex. Andryane, Memoires d'un Prisonier d'Etat, 2 vols. in 8vo. Paris, 1840. 19 he perceived that this vision was owing to the accidental arrangement of a piece of drapery on a screen.