Does not the view of great minds contending with madness, and which offer a constant subject for meditation, induce a ceaseless examination of those high spiritual questions which are declared useless in medicine? Truly has a modern author said: "The day when philosophy shall descend with her torch to the study of mental affections, she will find an ample range for novel observations. As in a ruined city, monuments are here and there discovered, which show traces of the genius of an extinct nation; so in the great ravages of madness, evidences are everywhere perceived amidst the ruin of the faculties, of that immortal principle which animates them." To this authority we can add that of Descartes, who asserts that to medicine we shall owe discoveries destined to extend the domain of philosophy.

Since the fundamental condition of a serious book is to be complete in itself, it can easily be understood why we have boldly approached philosophical problems. Had we been content simply to state facts, and thence timidly draw conclusions, we might have been placed on firmer ground, and have created more certain advantages; but we are convinced that our book would have presented numerous hiatuses, if we had not grappled unhesitatingly with the exigencies of our subject. We are aware that men who are accustomed to close their eyes to whatsoever is not a material fact, will condemn this attempt, and will even go as far as to assert that imagination has driven reason off the road. We appeal to enlightened physicians, who see beyond that first step which forms the material part of science. These will perhaps say that we are deceived; but they will at least do us the justice to acknowledge that we have not been prevented by the fear of error from seeking truth wherever it might be found.

This preamble was necessary to initiate the reader in the intention of this work. Destined to exhibit one of the most curious phenomena of human psychology, mentioned in many sacred and profane authors, it could not, in our opinion, be composed only of a series of medical observations.

In fact, the question of hallucinations, medically considered, offers a large field of research; but we do not think that it should be confined within these limits. This subject verges on all that is most elevated in the world. Religious dogmas, his-story, philosophy, morality, are intimately connected with its study. If all hallucinations were to be ranked as mere flights of delirious imagination, the sacred books would be but an error; Christianity, that powerful mainspring of social and individual perfection, an error; the belief of our fathers, our own, that of our children, all errors. "And yet," says a celebrated writer, "there are problems in human nature, whose solution is not of this world - problems which must defy the mind that strives to explain them; there is a morality that seeks a sanction, an origin, and an end; so many fruitful sources to prove that religion is a necessity, not a simple form of sensibility, a transport of imagination, or a poetic fantasy.

The religious side of the question could no more escape criticism than the philosophical view of it; so that we have also been attacked on that point. We will make but one observation; we have never had the singular notion of making this book one of theology; but full of respect for the creeds which have thrown so bright a refulgence on the world, to which humanity owes its greatest conquests, and which can alone save it from the abyss, we cannot keep silence when we hear them loudly proclaimed as the lucubrations of diseased brains. All is united in the edifice of religion and morality; one brick cannot be displaced, without overthrowing the whole building. Wo have therefore been particular in affirming that a very decided line of separation ought to be established between the apparitions of Holy Writ, and the hallucinations of profane writers, and even of many Christian characters; the former, in our opinion, can only be referred to divine power, whilst a number of the latter are consequent on a particular state of the brain, on the prevailing ideas of the time, or on the derangement of the cerebral functions.

In support of the doctrine we advocate on the character of the sacred books, we will make a quotation from a discourse, delivered by M. Guizot, at a public meeting of the Bible Society: -

"What is the grand question, the chief question that just now occupies all minds? It is a question lying between those who recognize, and those who deny a supernatural order, certain and sovereign, although impenetrable to human reason; the question being (to call things by their right names), between supernaturalism and rationalism. On the one side the incredulous, pantheists, skeptics of all degrees, pure rationalists; on the other side Christians.

"Amongst the former, the better kind allow the existence in the world and in the soul of a statue of God, if such an expression may be permitted, but a statue only, an image in marble. God himself is not there; the Christian alone has a living God.

"It is a living God that we need. It is necessary for our present and future salvation, that faith in the supernatural, respect and submission to the supernatural should live in the world and in the human soul; in great, as in simple minds; in the highest, as in the lowliest stations. The real, efficacious, and regenerating influence of religious creeds, rests on this condition; without it, they are superficial, and wellnigh useless.

"The sacred books are the sources whence this sublime truth is received and its empire established. They are the history of the supernatural order; the history of Deity in man and in the world.

"And be not disturbed at the difficulty of the work, the small number of actual believers, nor at the vast number of those who neither believe nor care. The difficulty and the number of adversaries was still greater when Christianity first appeared on earth. There is more power in one grain of faith, than in mountains of doubt and indifference."*

The actual doctrine of hallucinations is, besides, in direct opposition to a sentiment innate in man, which makes him fling away an hypothesis, the principle of which is that, for six thousand years, he has been the puppet of illusions. Truth is eternal; it has shone since the appearance of man on earth, and ceases not at this moment to enlighten him. Scientific systems may change; but there are ideas and principles fixed on the immovable basis of immutability.

The doctrine of hallucinations is not less afflicting in a human point of view. What more painful and distressing, in fact, than to pretend that the sublimest opinions, the greatest enterprises, the noblest acts, have been taught or done by madmen under hallucinations, adding, as a corrective, what matters the means, so the end he obtained? Will not history and reason agree, in protesting against the madness of Socrates, of Luther, of Joan of Arc, of George Fox, and of many others?

* Debats, of the 1st of May, 1851.

Of what nature, then, it may be asked, were the hallucinations of these celebrated personages? They depended on a complex influence; they proceeded at once from the tribute paid by these choice spirits to the beliefs of the times, to that ecstatic character which the struggles of the soul impart to ideas, and, finally, to the natural organization; for, as M. de Saint Beuve justly remarks, it is too frequently forgotten that every one has his peculiar humor in his philosophy and in his theology. Pascal had an unquiet and melancholy humor, thence his visionary views. Bossuet had a calm humor, thence partly arose the serenity of his views; and that independently of the greatness of their minds, and the nature of their ideas.*

No serious comparison can be made between the hallucinations of those famous men and those of the visionaries of our day. There, enterprises conceived, carried out, consummated with all the power of reason, the train of facts, the force of genius, and with whom the hallucination was but an auxiliary; here, projects without connection, without aim, without fact, and always stamped with insanity.

But it may be said, How does it happen that this species of hallucination has disappeared in our day? Here is a reply to the query: to be hallucinated in this manner needs profound conviction, intense belief, extreme love of humanity; to live in the midst of a society partaking of the same belief, and willing, in case of necessity, to die for it. Then they walked with the age. Where are new creeds? Where are the martyrs? What voice governs the world? Every one lives for himself and in himself. Skepticism has gained all classes. Generous devotedness excites a smile. Material happiness is the motto. It will be allowed that such a disposition of mind is little favorable to enthusiasm and great enterprises. †

We know that there have been in religion, in morals, and in history, men, dupes of their imaginations and their ignorance, who have desired to impose their reveries on others. It is one of the accidents of humanity, which is too easily drawn into error; amongst these, many were deceived without being madmen. It was with them, as with thousands of men, who, in the most civilized countries, adopted superstitious ideas, without being less capable of regulating their lives.

* Of Saint Bevue, Pascal's Thoughts. Thoughts on Two Worlds, July, 1844.

† From not having a proper understanding of the value of words, men attribute opinions to others which they do not hold.

Ambition has doubtless made blamable use of hallucinations. Who would deny it? That visions and apparitions have been feigned by impostors is incontrovertible. But to all who have studied the question, the fraud is so easily discovered that we shall not even attempt a refutation.

In following out these researches, we have had two objects; the one, to protest against the doctrines we believe are contrary to truth; the other, to write an historical and medical history of hallucinations.

It would appear impossible that such a programme should be otherwise than favorably noticed by the critic, or not meet with general sympathy.

We have but one word to add; it relates to particular facts; we have deduced them from our own practice, or borrowed them from the most reliable authors, always being careful to acknowledge their source, to translate them ourselves from the originals, and to select amongst them the most interesting and the least known. Their authenticity has been generally proved as many of them have been made public. Little inclined to unite in a spirit of rivalry, or in the conspiracy of silence against modern authors, we have not hesitated to borrow for this new edition such remarks and observations as have appeared to us to throw new light on our subject, and we believe that the choice we have made will add greatly to the interest of the book.