We have never attempted to deny the action which a sickly condition of the organs exerts over the will; and, on this subject, we think with M. Cerise, that they may be influenced by a fit of the spleen, or a disordered stomach. Does it follow that these two circumstances should interpose, like superior elements in the philosophy of history? "I should imagine," says the author quoted, "that care would be taken to describe the influence of the character, or, in other words, the temperament of certain men on their actions in the aggregate; but that has been done by the greater number of historians and biographers, and I do not think that the least scientific revolution remains to be made, in that respect, which will benefit the philosophy of history. It is for the science of the harmony of physics and moral law to furnish the elements of a deeper appreciation, and it is this science which should be enlarged and perfected. To enter into a detailed account of individual infirmities, in order to throw light upon the course of human affairs, the rise and fall of nations, and to hail, under this pretext, the introduction of physiology (under the name of pathology) into history, would be to mutilate that great and noble study, and lower it from the eminence, on which it has ever stood, to a most degraded position.*

The action attributed to disease on the determinations of the will has been made, by M. Carriere, the subject of the following reflections: "Let a man depart ever so little from the common road, he Trill be called diseased; let him have a rich imagination, which strives to bring before his mental vision the scenes of an unknown world, he will be called visionary and mad. Nothing will be perfect but vulgarity, nor any one be considered in health but vulgar men.

* Analyse par M. S. Cerise (Annal. Med, Psych,), t. vi. 1846. De la premiere edition de cet ouvrage.

"Such a conclusion as this will, before long, be mistrusted by sound medical sense, and will soon be rejected."*

Thus, to attempt to make doctrines, belief, and convictions, depend on the sickly state of the body, is to advance a proposition which may be true of the character and disposition, but is entirely false as it relates to the phenomena of consciousness which passes in the mind. Psychological facto do not act like those of physiology; but, like them, they have their own laws. If they are mysteriously united by certain points of affinity, they differ completely in their nature; the one being impalpable, the other tangible.

The decided influence, then, of a morbid organic state in the production of hallucinations is, in substance, the doctrine of those who desire the introduction of physiology into history; whilst, on the contrary, the integrity of reason in the hallucinations of many celebrated characters, the secondary influence of the organs in limited cases, is our philosophical point of view; and to the elucidation of which we consecrate the following pages.

In the chapter of hallucinations as compatible with reason, we collected cases suitable to form a foundation for this part of our work; it now remains for us to interpret their signification, and describe their results.

Sensorial impressions are incessantly reaching the brain through the nerves, which act as conductors; they there accumulate in numbers surpassing all possible calculation. At the moment when these sensations touch the organ, and cause perception, a change occurs in their nature; they are absorbed by the cerebral substance, and appear to lose their sensible signs. The mind may evoke them from the first moment of their appearance until the latest period of life, and reproduce them with the greatest fidelity, by means of phonetic and graphic signs; but the eye will not perceive them with those brilliant colors and lively characters which they at first exhibited.

* Le1ut, de l'Atnulette de Pascal, analy. par M. E. Carriere. Gazette Medicale, 1847, p. 269.

There are, however, exceptions to this rule. Some men have the capacity of extracting animated sensations from the brain, and of seeing things as if they were really before them. Several physiological or pathological conditions, reveries, dreams, concentrations of thought, prolonged meditations, the intermediate time between waking and sleeping, fever, or insanity, may revivify sensations, and give to them the force of reality.

The silent transformation of sensations was too essential for us not to press a consideration of the subject. We will now commence the psychological study of the causes, which at times may give to sensations the appearance of reality.

If the principal fact, the production of the image of the sensible sign, be everywhere the same, its mode must necessarily vary in individuals, and according to circumstances. We cannot consider as identical, the hallucinations of the madman and the child, the dreamer, the poet, the thinker, the man powerfully preoccupied or engrossed, he who recognizes their falsity, and does not allow them to influence his conduct, or he who yields to them as to the prevalent belief of the age, as the action of certain substances, etc. etc. No man who believes in that religion which has performed such wonders, rendered such important services,* given birth to so many prodigies, and which is daily a thousand times more useful than all the united efforts of philanthropy, but will reject the opinion that prophets, apostles, and saints were hallucinated madmen. There is no philosopher or partisan of those beautiful doctrines, often marked, it is true, with error, but which have no less proved of what the human intellect is capable, who consents to rank the greatest minds of antiquity with mad hallucinists.

The material part of an idea, its image, is very early manifested in man. It is a fact that many children, perhaps all, have the faculty of imagining phantoms in the dark. With some this power is simply passive, but others have the will, or semi-will to call up or excite these singular effects. "A child whom