All phenomena that depart from common laws should be subjected to severe examination, and rejected when they do not present evidences of truth; but when their occurrence is guaranteed by men of intelligence and integrity, whose morality is unquestioned, then skepticism is no longer possible; the difficulty lies only in their correct interpretation. There are doubtless a great number of cases of prevision which may be explained by the hallucinations of ecstasy; but there are some, also, which appear to belong to a different order of things; such is the account related by Josephus. There is, therefore, developed, in a manner unknown to us, a greater activity of the faculty of perception, just as we see, in certain diseases, the senses acquire an extraordinary delicacy on the approach of death, when the sick person astonishes those about him by the elevation of his thoughts, and the sudden lucidity of a mind which has been obscured during many long years, †

"Nothing is more surprising," observes Aretee, "than the observations sometimes made by patients, in the midst of their paroxysms, the propositions they advance, and the objects they behold. Their senses are exalted; their minds possess great subtlety, and an extraordinary power of penetrating into futurity. At first, they commence by presaging their own death; they then predict the future of those persons who may be present; and then their spirits are released from the coarse covering of clay. This event fills all who witness it with admiration.'‡

The same author observes: "It is interesting to listen to the occasional sayings and soliloquies of patients on the approach of an attack of apoplexy. All their senses seem healthy and perfect, and they appear to have acquired the power of prophecy. The first object of their thoughts is the fact that they are about to leave the world; they then announce the future by the present, and, the event justifying their predictions, they are looked upon as real prophets. I had one who predicted his death six days before the event took place. "*

* History of Lapland, written by John Scheffer, Professor of Law at Upsal, in Sweden. English Translation, published A. D. 1704.

† Brierre de Boismont, Du Retour de la Raison chez les Alienes Mour-ants; Memoire inedit. Gazette des Hopitaux, 1844 (Annal. Med. Psych.), torn. ii. 2d serie, p. 531.

‡ Aretee de Cappadooe, De signis et causis oculorum morborum, lib. ii. cap. v.

We will only extract one very curious passage from Cabanis: "I think it here necessary," says that physician, "to refer particularly to those singular acute maladies in which intellectual faculties suddenly become developed that have not previously existed. It is also observed, that in some spasmodic and ecstatic diseases, the organs of sense become susceptible of receiving impressions which were not perceptible in a normal state, and which may even be characterized as unnatural. I have frequently noticed the most singular effects arising from this susceptibility of sensation in women who would doubtless have distinguished themselves as excellent Pythonesses.

Some of these patients see the most microscopic objects with the naked eye; others see so clearly in the dark, as to move in perfect security. There are others, again, who follow persons by their scent, like a dog, and can distinguish such things as they have used or even only touched.

"I have seen some whose taste has acquired a peculiar delicacy, and who would demand or choose aliment and even remedies that would be really serviceable to them, with a sagacity ordinarily observable only in animals. Some have the power of looking within themselves during their paroxysms, and announcing the approach of certain crises, the occurrence of which soon proves the justness of their sensations; or they notice other organic modifications attested by the state of the pulse and other still more certain signs,"†

Is it a weakness to acknowledge that a number of phenomena pass in the profoundness of thought, which will forever remain unexplained? Had Dr. Charpignon read this paragraph, he would not have said, in pages 158 and 350, in his Physiologie du

* Bordeu, Recherches sur les Maladies chroniques, t. p. 325, et suiv. Edit, de l'an. iz.

† Cabanis 7e Memoire De l'Influence des Maladies sur la Formation des idees et des affections morales.

Magnetism, that I explain all cases of second sight by hallucination. My opinions on presentiments, foresight, apparitions, and the books of the saints, formally contradict this theory.*

Somnambulism. - The consideration of hallucinations in ecstasy and prevision, brings us naturally to speak of those observable in somnambulism. Natural somnambulism has many points of affinity with dreams, and really appears to differ from them only in the degree wherewith the bodily functions are affected. The mind, as in dreams, is fixed upon certain impressions, which it takes for so many real and actual external sensations; but the organs are more obedient to the mandates of the will, so that the individual speaks and acts under the influence of these erroneous conceptions.

"We must attribute," says Richard, "all that is inexplicable in somnambulism to the force of imagination, which presents images to the somnambulist with the same definiteness that they are presented in dreams. Undeniably, in dreams, we see objects as clearly as though it were bright day, because the light which has conveyed the illuminated objects to the brain, impresses them there.†

Somnambulism, as in other nervous conditions of which we have treated, is favorable to the production of hallucinations.