We have endeavored, as much as possible, to estimate the psychological phenomena which unite to produce hallucination. If this study has made the same impression on the mind of the reader as it has on our own, he will have arrived at this conclusion; that, in many cases, hallucination is nothing extraordinary, and may be considered almost as a normal phenomenon; that it is consistent with reason; whence it is easy to conceive how many celebrated men may have been hallucinists, under the influences described, without being at all insane.

* George Sand, Les Visions de la Nuit dans les Campagnes, Illustration, 13 Decembre, 1851, p. 371.

†The influence of false ideas on hallucinations in particular, and insanity in general, has long fixed our attention. We have made it the subject of a special paragraph in the ninth volume of the Bibliotheque des Me'decins praliciens (Maladies mentales, causes morales). This slight sketch, the original idea of which may be found in our Me'moires de l'influence de la civilisation sur le Developpement de sujet, will be the subject for a more complete work.

In order thoroughly to understand the coexistence of hallucinations with reason, we will review two orders of facts, the one relating to assemblages of persons, the other peculiar to celebrated characters, both drawn from history. The materials are so numerous that we shall find it difficult to make a selection. In order to avoid multiplying quotations, we will confine our-selves to one period - that of the Crusades. Few episodes offer so much interest in connection with the subject that engages us; it may be called a perpetual mirage. Kings, generals, and soldiers, were the daily witnesses of apparitions.

First Order. - Historical hallucinations relating to a multitude of persons. - Peter the Hermit, the glorious deliverer of Jerusalem, disgusted with men and the world, withdrew from them, to dwell amidst the most austere Cenobites. Fastings, prayer, and meditation excited his imagination. With the fervor of an apostle, and the courage of a martyr, his zeal acknowledged no obstacle, and all that he desired seemed easy. Nothing could resist the force of his eloquence, nor the fascination of his example. Such was the extraordinary man who gave the signal for the crusades; and who, without fortune or fame, succeeded, by the sole ascendency of his tears and prayers, in arousing the whole of the West, that it might precipitate itself on the East. With such dispositions of mind, full of his project, in the midst of the religious atmosphere in which he lived, is it surprising that his thoughts became imaged, that he maintained an habitual intercourse with heaven, and believed himself the instrument of its designs, and the depository of its will?

"In fact, Christianity," as Michaud remarks, "was mixed up, in the Middle Ages, with all civil law, recalled man to a sense of the duty he owed his country, and was blended in all the principles of social order. In the midst of the growing civilization of Europe, the Christian religion was united with all the interests of the people; it was in some measure the foundation of society; it was society itself. It is not, therefore, surprising that men grew passionately interested in its defence. The bonds of a Universal Church long contributed thus powerfully to entertain and favor enthusiasm, and the progress of the Holy wars. Whatever cause may have originated the crusades, it is certain that they never could have been undertaken without that union of religious feeling which doubled the strength of Christianity. The people, by the accordance of their sentiments and passions, showed to the world what could be accomplished by zeal and enthusiasm, which increases with communication, by a belief which attracted a hundred different nations towards the same object, and whose faith could, as it is expressed in the gospel, move mountains.

Everything then concurred to favor the production of hallucinations; religious sentiment, love of the marvellous, ignorance, anarchy, and the fear so recently entertained that the world was near to its close. Men were anticipating some great event, and were ready to welcome it with the more ardor because it suited the state of their minds. The voice of Peter the Hermit produced an electrifying sensation; the deliverance of the Holy Land became the universal object. The very word East possessed a magic which inflamed all imaginations; it was the land where all the prodigies of the Old Testament were performed, the miracles of the New, and from whence still issued a thousand fabulous histories.

The signal for the first crusade was hardly given, before apparitions commenced; every one related his visions, the words he had heard, the commands he had received. To the eyes of the people and soldiery, the air was filled with signs. But it was principally when the crusaders had penetrated into Asia that prodigies were multiplied.

At the battle of Dorylseum, Saint George and Saint Demetrius were seen fighting in the ranks.* In the midst of the melee at Antioch, a celestial troop, armed and led by the martyrs, Saint George, Saint Demetrius, and Saint Theodore, descended to earth, †

* Michaud, Higtoire des Croisades, 6th edition, vol. i. p. 178. † Ibid. vol. i. p. 276.

During the hottest of the fight, at the siege of Jerusalem, Godfrey and Raymond perceived a knight waving a buckler on the Mount of Olives, and giving a signal to the Christian army to enter the town. They cried out that Saint George had come to the succor of the Christians. Meanwhile, it was noised abroad in the army that Pope Adhemar and several other crusaders, who had fallen during the siege, had appeared at the head of the assailants and planted the standard of the Cross on the towers of Jerusalem. Tancred and the two Roberts, encouraged by this account, made renewed efforts and forced an entrance into the place.*