When hallucinations of hearing take place in those who speak several languages, the voices are more distinct in those with which they are most familiar; and become more confused if the foreign language is only slightly understood. Thus the prefect quoted by Esquirol, heard the Russian dialect less distinctly, because he was less acquainted with that language.

Possibly, the intellectual faculties receive a greater development in hallucination. This fact, which has been disputed, is evident in inspired persons and ecstatics. A lady one day observed to us: "Voices suggest expressions to me with which I am not familiar; they give me words much superior to those I have been in the habit of using, or which my education justifies. Their conversation often runs on geography, politics, and on domestic economy, questions to which I am a stranger, but which I perfectly comprehend when the voices suggest them." It is to this exaltation of mind, to enthusiasm, to the choice of words, eloquence, and the nature of the organization, that we must refer the great influence some hallucinated persons have exercised over their fellow-creatures.

To this cause, Mohammed, doubtless, owed his immense influence over a large portion of mankind. No, certainly, this man was neither mad, nor an impostor! The thought of reform, which engrossed his imagination, had the same effect on him, as the transformation into corporeity of some of Luther's habitual ideas. Persuaded of the truth of his mission, but inhabiting a country delighting in the belief of the wonderful, he finally believed that he held intercourse with a celestial messenger; whilst Luther, harassed, pursued, excommunicated, surrounded by adversaries, replying to them only in transports of rage, living in the North, in the midst of all the beliefs of the Middle Ages, saw his ruling idea take the form of the devil. But the reason of neither was overturned, and their actions were ever worthy of their respective missions.

We might, also, here repeat the hallucinations of Tasso: "The subjects on which he conversed," says Manso, "were so elevated, the style was so sublime and extraordinary, that surprise, in some measure, put me beside myself." In the library of Ferrara, we have seen poems by this great master, which prove that the hallucinations, of which Manso speaks, had not weakened his intellect. 27

Again, hallucinations may be the reproduction of former lively sensations.

M. Baillarger has published an interesting case of a female, who, having seen her husband struck by a ball in the midst of a riot, was, during subsequent insanity, tormented by the firing of guns, and a noise similar to the breaking of windows by balls, etc.

Sensorial phenomena, so called, in hallucinations of hearing, consist, according to our view, in a greater degree of intensity. Thus, deranged persons sometimes hear solemn and sonorous voices. Dr. Bland mentions a young lady, who suddenly heard, whilst at work in her parlor, a deep and solemn voice which repeatedly called to her. The same hallucination occurred three different times in the same month, and never afterwards."*

Hallucinations of hearing sometimes consist in noises, which the patients think they hear, such as the striking of clocks, the trotting of horses, as in the celebrated apparition of Ticinus to Mercatus. The young man, who heard the sound of the waves of the sea, entreated those about him to rescue him from the waters that rose around him.

We must also refer to hallucinations of hearing those numerous stories of plaintive sighs heaved by the victims of a great crime, of spirits from the other world come to give counsel, to announce an important event, or to recall the memory of a bad action, the rustling of garments, footsteps treading the room in the silence of midnight, doors opening, sighs, lamentations, etc.

In general, voices are either murmuring or whispering. The sound may suddenly entirely cease. The conversation of the hallucinated with the creations of their brain, appear to themselves so rapid, and so silent, that they explain it by a kind of intuition, an electric shock, a magnetic action, an intelligence of two beings, a conversation in thoughts. Blake, the celebrated seer of Bedlam, said to one who interrogated him on his communications with invisible beings: "We speak mind to mind." These are facts highly important to psychology, because they present numerous points of resemblance with the phenomena observed in the state described by mystic authors, and with those of magnetism, somnambulism, etc.

* Medical Review, May, 1842.

Sometimes the voices are close at hand, sometimes far off, and in different directions. They may be concealed above the head, under the floor, may come from a neighboring house, from the chimney, from a bedpost, a bureau, a bed, or anything. Madame D------hears voices far off in the fields; they are hidden under a tree; and she replies to them as if she had a speaking-trumpet. Voices may proceed from heaven. Lord Herbert, the greatest deist of the age, heard a sound from heaven, which decided him to publish his work against Christianity.

Sometimes the voices are only heard by one ear. The patient of whom Bodin speaks, and who, according to Guy Patin, must have been Bodin himself, heard sometimes with the right, sometimes with the left ear. M. Calmeil, in his article Hallucinations of the Dictionnaire de Medecine, in 25 vols., thus expresses himself: "Some subjects affirm that the sounds which they believe they hear, penetrate at times into the left, at others into the right ear." In the Traite des Apparitions et des Vampires, by Don Calmet (t. ii. p. 371), we read the case of a young man who, in his left ear, heard distinctly a voice proceeding from the corner of the cabinet, which seemed about a foot above his head, and which spoke very correctly to him for half a minute, desiring him to perform a certain action, on which it recommended secresy.