Case CXL

" When very young, I was sent to a town seven leagues distant from my native place. My father's object was to wean me from home, and to have me taught to write. Five or six months afterwards, I was taken to the house of a relative, where my father, who had just returned from the army, sent for me to join him. He examined my copy-books, and finding them very well done, expressed some doubts as to their authenticity. As he was about to pass the afternoon out in company with the mistress of the house, he desired me to write ten or twelve lines in his absence, to relieve his suspicions. Immediately after the departure of my father, I went up to the room which was prepared for me; and having all my materials, I sat down before an arm-chair, on which I placed my paper and ink.

"Whilst I was engaged in writing, I thought I heard persons on the staircase carrying corn into the loft; I quitted my seat, and, raising one corner of the tapestry, I saw a little open room, and there was my father engaged in conversation with the mistress of the house. Having seen them get into the carriage, and leave the chateau, I was very much surprised to see them there. Terror was added to my astonishment; I let the tapestry fall, and, leaving the room, ran rapidly down stairs.

* Psychological Magazine, vol. iv. part i. p. 70. V. Crichton.

"The housekeeper, whom I met, noticing my altered looks, inquired the cause. I related all that had passed. She told me that I had been dreaming, for that the Marchioness and my father would not yet be back for an hour. I remained near the room-door, until I saw them. The sight of them contributed not a little to increase my distress; however, I said nothing to my father; after supper, he desired to send me to bed before him, but I had only courage to leave the room, and wait outside until I could go up stairs with him. He was much astonished to find me there, and inquired the cause. After some frivolous excuses, I was obliged to confess that I had seen spirits in the room. He ridiculed me, and asked where I had learned such tales. I related my adventure; no sooner had he heard it, than, in order to undeceive me, he took me into the loft. I was then convinced that it was not intended for corn; that there neither was any in it nor had there ever been.

"My father then took me back to the chamber, and desired me to point out where I had raised the tapestry and seen the room; I searched for it in vain; nor could I find any other door to our room than that which opened on to the staircase. Such very different arrangements to what I had imagined alarmed me still more, and I concluded, from what I had heard of goblins, that it was they who had thus deceived me. My father used every endeavor to persuade me that all that was said of those beings was purely fabulous, and that the fact was I had gone to sleep over my work. 'You dreamed,' said he, 'all that you thought you saw and heard; the influence of surprise and fear on your imagination produced the effect of reality. I had much difficulty in acknowledging this reasoning, but was finally obliged to confess that it was just. I frankly own that the impression of this dream was so strong that, had not the falsity of the apparition been demonstrated by all the circumstances I have related, I should still believe it to have been reality."

There is no doubt that this was not a dream, but an hallucination. I could mention several similar cases, which have been produced by vivid preocupation, by terror, by the fear of reproof, and alarm caused by darkness and the silence of night.

Hallucinations have often been observed, in children, in epidemic ecstasies. Authors, who have written the history of the Shakers of the Cevennes and the preachers of Sweden, agree in saying that very young children, of five, six,and seven years had visions, saw angels, and heard celestial voices. May not this morbid disposition be a consequence of the natural excitability of that age, augmented by a Protestant religious education, and favored by external impressions?

Since the publication of these remarks concerning the hallucinations of childhood, Dr. Sharp, the younger, has published observations upon the hallucinations of children only eighteen months old.

We have not sufficient information to enable us to judge how much temperament has to do with actual hallucinations; but on consulting the biography of celebrated men, who have exhibited this remarkable phenomenon, we have observed that, in the majority of cases, the bilious temperament was the prevailing type. The ancients considered the melancholic temperament to be one of the attributes of genius. Aristotle enumerates among melancholic temperaments, Hercules, Bellerophon, Ajax, Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato himself,* which, in our opinion, implies that great men of this temperament, by the tension of their minds, and the fixedness and tenacity of their ideas, are disposed to have their thoughts highly colored and to take them for realities; to them, they are the luminous cloud, which guided the Israelites in the desert. "Everything," says M. Lelut, "in the intellectual acts of the melancholic, is pictured out and takes a distinct form. Sentiments and ideas are transformed into real external sensations, as distinct as the objects themselves; thought appears to be materialized, pictured, made a representative sign, a sound, an odor, a taste, a tangible sensation."

The professions do not offer anything very precise. A priori, those which the most develop imagination appear the most favorable to hallucinations. In support of this opinion, we could name several poets who are hallucinists, and whose delirium is evidently the result of their works. The action of civil society, hygienic habits and seasons, not having been sufficiently studied, we content ourselves with a slight mention of them.

* See the translation of the CEuvres completes de Platon, by M. Cousin. This is the finest amonument that has been raised to the glory of this philosopher.