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PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS

[b]ESSAY ON SPIRIT SEEING AND EVERYTHING CONNECTED THEREWITH

[quote]Und lass dir rathen, habe

Die Sonne nicht zu lieb und nicht die Sterne.

Komm, folge mir ins dunkle Reich hinab!

-- Goethe.

['Take counsel, cherish not the sun and stars; come, follow me down into the realm of gloom!'][/quote]

[b]Essay on Spirit Seeing and everything connected therewith[/b]

THE apparitions in the past century, over-wise and all-too knowing in spite of all previous ones-apparitions that were everywhere not so much exorcized as outlawed, have during the last twenty-five years been rehabilitated in Germany as was magic a short time before. Perhaps not without good reason; for the proofs against their existence were partly metaphysical, resting as such on uncertain grounds, and partly empirical, proving only that in those cases where no accidental or intentionally arranged deception had been discovered, there also existed nothing that could have acted on the retina by means of the reflection of light-rays, or on the ear-drum by means of vibrations of the air . Yet this argues merely against the presence of bodies whose presence, however, no one had asserted, indeed whose demonstration in the aforesaid physical manner would abolish the truth of a ghostly apparition. For the notion of a spirit or spectre really consists in its presence becoming known to us in a way quite different from that in which we know the presence of a body. What a spirit seer who really knew his own mind and was able to express himself would assert is merely the presence in his intuitively perceiving intellect of a picture perfectly indistinguishable from that caused in his intellect by bodies through the medium of light and his eyes, and yet without the actual presence of such bodies. Similarly in respect of something audibly present, noises, tones, and sounds, exactly like those produced in his ear by vibrating bodies and air, yet without the presence or movement thereof. Here lies the source of the misunderstanding which pervades all that is said for and against the reality of ghostly apparitions, namely that the spirit apparition presents itself wholly like a bodily phenomenon, yet is not and cannot be such. This distinction is difficult and requires special knowledge, indeed philosophical and physiological. For it is a question of understanding that an impression, like that made by a body, does not necessarily presuppose the presence of such.

First of all, then, we must here recall and in all that follows bear in mind what I have often demonstrated in detail (especially in the second edition of my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 21, and also in my work On Vision and Colours, § 1, Theoria Colorum, Pt. II, World as Will and Representation, vol. i, § 4; vol. ii, chap. 2), namely that our intuitive perception of the external world is not merely a question of the senses, but is mainly intellectual, in other words, is (objectively expressed) cerebral. The senses never give us more than a mere sensation in their organ and thus a material in itself extremely inadequate. From this the understanding first builds up this corporeal world through the application of the law of causality that is known to it a priori and of the forms of space and time that are just as a priori inherent in it. The stimulation of this act of intuitive perception in the waking and normal state definitely starts from sensation since this is the effect to which the understanding refers the cause. But why should it not for once be possible for a stimulation that starts from quite another direction and thus from within, from the organism itself, to reach the brain and there be elaborated like the other by means of the brain's peculiar function and in accordance with the mechanism thereof? But after this elaboration it would no longer be possible to detect the difference in the original material, just as in chyle it is no longer possible to recognize the food from which it has been made. In any actual case of this kind, the question would then arise whether even the remoter cause of the phenomenon thus brought about could never be sought farther than within the organism; or whether with the exclusion of all sensation it could nevertheless be an external cause which naturally in this case would not have acted physically or corporeally; and if so, what relation the given phenomenon could have to the nature of so remote an external cause; and thus whether it contained evidence of this, or indeed whether the real essence thereof were expressed in it. Accordingly, as in the corporeal world, we should here be brought to the question concerning the relation between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself. But this is the transcendental standpoint the result of which might possibly be that ideality attached to the spirit apparition neither more nor less than to the bodily phenomenon which, as we know, is inevitably subject to idealism and can, therefore, be traced back to the thing-in-itself, in other words, to the truly real, only in a roundabout way. Now as we have recognized the will to be this thing-in-itself, this enables us to suppose that perhaps such a will underlies both spirit and bodily phenomena. All previous explanations of spirit phenomena have been spiritualistic; precisely as such, they are the subject of Kant's criticism in the first part of his Traume eines Geistersehers. Here I am attempting an idealistic explanation.

After this comprehensive and anticipatory introduction to the investigations that now follow, I take the more leisurely course that is appropriate to them. Here I merely observe that I assume the reader to be acquainted with the facts to which they refer. For my business is not to state or expound the facts, but to theorize about them. Moreover, I should have to write a bulky volume if I were to repeat all the cases of magnetic sickness, dream visions, spirit apparitions, and the like that form the basic material of our theme and are already dealt with in many books. Finally, it is not my business to combat the scepticism of ignorance whose over-wise gestures are daily falling out of favour and will soon be current only in England. Whoever at the present time doubts the facts of animal magnetism and its clairvoyance should be called not a sceptic but an ignoramus. But I must take for granted something more, namely an acquaintance with at least some of the works which exist in large numbers on ghostly apparitions, or a knowledge of them that has been acquired in some other way. Even the quotations that refer to such books are given by me only when it is a question of special statements or debatable points. For the rest, I assume on the part of the reader, who, I imagine, is already acquainted with me in some other way, confidence in me, so that when I assume something to be founded on fact, it is known to me from reliable sources or my own experience.

First, then, is the question: whether images or pictures of intuitive perception can actually arise in our intuitively perceiving intellect or brain, complete and indistinguishable from those caused therein by the presence of bodies that act on the external senses, and yet without such influence. Fortunately, a very familiar phenomenon, the dream, removes all doubt on this point.

To try to pretend that dreams are mere thought-play, mere pictures of the imagination, testifies to a want of sense or honesty for it is obvious that they are specifically different from these. Pictures of the imagination are feeble, colourless, incomplete, one-sided, and so fleeting that we are barely able to retain for more than a few seconds the picture of one who is absent, and even the most vivid play of the imagination bears no comparison with that palpable reality that is presented to us in the dream. Our graphic ability in the dream far and away surpasses our power of imagination. In the dream every object of intuitive perception has a truth, perfection, completeness, and consistent universality down to its most accidental properties, like reality itself, from which the imagination is infinitely remote. And so, if only we could select the object of our dreams, reality would furnish us with the most marvellous spectacles. It is quite wrong to attempt to explain this from the fact that pictures of the imagination would be disturbed and enfeebled by the simultaneous impression of the external world of reality, for even in the deepest silence of the darkest night the imagination is incapable of producing anything that could in any way approach that objective clearness and vivid reality of the dream. Moreover, pictures of the imagination are always produced by the association of ideas or by motives and are attended by an awareness of their arbitrary nature. The dream, on the other hand, stands out as something wholly foreign and extraneous which, like the outside world, forces itself on us without our intervention and even against our will. The totally unexpected nature of its events, even the most insignificant, impresses them with the stamp of objectivity and reality. All its objects appear to be definite and distinct, like reality itself, and to be given not merely in reference to us and thus superficially and from one point of view, or only in the main and in general outline, but worked out exactly down to the smallest and most accidental particulars and attendant circumstances that stand in our path and obstruct us. For every object casts its shadow, every body falls with a heaviness that corresponds exactly to its specific weight, and every obstacle must first be set aside precisely as in real life. Its thoroughly objective nature is further seen in the fact that its events often turn out contrary to our expectation and frequently against our wish and at times even excite our astonishment. The actors in the dream behave towards us with a shocking want of consideration, and in general the objective nature of the dream is seen in the purely objective, dramatic accuracy of the characters and their actions, which has given rise to the pleasant remark that while dreaming everyone is a Shakespeare. For the same omniscience in ourselves, which enables every natural body in the dream to act exactly in accordance with its essential properties, also enables every man to act and speak in complete accord with his character. In consequence of all this, the illusion that is engendered by the dream is so strong that reality itself which stands before us when we wake up often has to struggle at first and needs time before it can put in a word, in order to convince us of the deceptive nature of the dream that now no longer exists. Also/as regards memory, we are-in the case of unimportant incidents -sometimes in doubt whether they were dreamed or actually took place. If, on the other hand, anyone doubts whether something took place or was merely imagined by him, he is suspected of madness. All this shows that the dream is a thoroughly characteristic function of our brain and is entirely different from the mere power of the imagination and its rumination. Even Aristotle says: [x] (Somnium quodammodo sensum est): [1] De somno et vigilia, c. 2. He also makes the fine and correct observation that in the dream itself we still picture to ourselves absent things through the imagination. But from this it may be inferred that during the dream the imagination is still available and is, therefore, not itself the medium or organ of the dream.

On the other hand, the dream bears an undeniable resemblance to madness; for what mainly distinguishes dreaming from waking consciousness is a lack of memory or rather of coherent, sensible recollection. In dreams we see ourselves in strange and even impossible situations and circumstances, and it would never occur to us to examine their relations to the absent person and the causes of their appearance. In the dream we do absurd things because we are unmindful of that which opposes them. In our dreams people long since dead figure again and again as living persons because in the dream we do not remember that they are dead. We often see ourselves again in the circumstances of our early years, surrounded by those who were alive at that time and with everything as of old because all the changes and transformations that have since occurred are forgotten. It actually seems, therefore, that in the dream, in spite of the activity of all the mental powers, memory alone is not really available. Its resemblance to madness is due precisely to this, for madness, as I have shown (in the World as Will and Representation, vol. i, § 36, and vol. ii, chap. 32), is traceable essentially to a certain derangement of the faculty of recollection. From this point of view, therefore, the dream may be characterized as a brief madness, madness being looked upon as a long dream. On the whole, the intuitive perception of the present reality in the dream is, therefore, absolutely perfect and even minute. On the other hand, our intellectual horizon therein is very limited, in as much as the absent and the past, and even the fictitious, enter consciousness only to a small extent.

Just as in the real world every change can occur solely in consequence of another that preceded it as its cause, so too is the entry of all thoughts and conceptions in our consciousness subject to the principle of sufficient ground or reason in general. Therefore such thoughts must always be called into existence either by an external impression on the senses, or by an idea that precedes them in accordance with the laws of association (see chapter 14 of the second volume of my chief work); otherwise they could not occur. Now, as regards their occurrence, dreams must also be subject in some way to that principle of sufficient reason, for it is the principle of the dependent and conditional nature of all objects existing for us and is without exception. But it is very difficult to determine in what way they are subject to it, for the characteristic of the dream is the condition of sleep essential thereto, in other words, the cessation of the normal activity of the brain and senses. Only when such activity is at rest can the dream occur, just as the pictures of a magic lantern can appear only after the lights of the room have been extinguished. Accordingly, the occurrence and consequently the material of the dream are not brought about in the first instance by external impressions on the senses. Isolated cases, where during light dozing external sounds and even odours have penetrated the sensorium and influenced the dream, are special exceptions which I here disregard. Now it is very remarkable that dreams are not brought about through the association of ideas; for they arise either during deep sleep when the brain is really at rest, a repose which we have every reason to assume is complete and therefore entirely unconscious; accordingly even the possibility of the association of ideas here falls to the ground; or again they arise while we are passing from waking consciousness to sleep and thus while we are falling asleep. Here they never entirely fail to appear, and in this way they afford us an opportunity of becoming fully convinced that they are not connected through any association of ideas with the mental pictures we have when awake, but leave the thread of these untouched in order to take their material and motive from somewhere quite different, we know not where. These first dream-images of the man who falls asleep are always without any relation to the thoughts he had when falling asleep, as may easily be observed. In fact, they are so strikingly different therefrom that it looks as if, from all the things in the world, they had intentionally selected the very thing about which we thought least of all. And so the man who thinks it over is forced to ask himself in what way their selection and nature could be determined. Moreover, they have the distinctive characteristic (finely and correctly observed by Burdach in the third volume of his Physiologie) of not presenting us with any connected event, and in most cases we ourselves do not as actors appear in them as we do in other dreams; on the contrary, they are a purely objective spectacle that consists of isolated pictures suddenly arising when we fall asleep, or they are very simple events. As we often reawake with a start, we can fully convince ourselves that these dreams never have the slightest resemblance, the remotest analogy, or any other relation to the thoughts that existed in our minds just a moment previously, but that they rather surprise us by the wholly unexpected nature of their contents. These are just as foreign to our previous train of thought as is any object of real life which in our state of wakefulness suddenly enters our perception through the merest chance and is indeed fetched from afar and selected so strangely and blindly, as if it had been determined by fate or by the throwing of dice. Thus the thread that is put into our hands by the principle of sufficient reason here seems to be cut off at both ends, the inner and the outer; but this is impossible and inconceivable. Some cause must necessarily exist which produces and fully determines those dream-forms so that from this it must be possible to explain exactly why, for example, there suddenly appears to me, who up to the moment of dozing off was occupied with quite different thoughts, a tree in blossom swaying gently in the breeze and nothing else, at another time, however, a girl with a basket on her head, or again a line of soldiers, and so on.

Now with the origin of dreams, either when we are falling or have already fallen asleep, the brain, that sole seat and organ of all representations or mental pictures, is cut off from the external excitation through the senses as well as from the internal through ideas. And so we are left with no other assumption than that the brain receives some purely physiological excitation from within the organism. Two paths to the brain are open to the influence of this, namely that of the nerves and that of the blood-vessels. During sleep, that is, during the cessation of all animal functions, the vital force is centred entirely on organic life and, with some reduction of breathing, pulse, warmth, and almost all secretions, it is there mainly concerned with slow reproduction, the reparation of all waste, the healing of all injuries, and the elimination of deep-rooted disorders. Sleep is, therefore, the time during which the vis naturae medicatrix [2] produces in all illnesses the beneficial crises wherein it then gains a decisive victory over the existing malady. With the certain feeling of approaching restoration to health, the patient then wakes up with joy and a sense of relief. But even in the case of the healthy man, this force operates in the same way, although to an incomparably lesser degree, at all points where it is necessary; and so he too on waking up has a feeling of restored vitality. It is especially during sleep that the brain receives its nutrition, which is not feasible when we are awake; and a consequence of this is a restored clearness of consciousness. All these operations are under the guidance and control of the plastic nervous system and thus of all the large ganglia which in the whole length of the trunk are connected with one another by leading nerve-cords and constitute the great sympathetic nerve or inner nerve-centre. This is completely separated and isolated from the outer nerve-focus, the brain, which is exclusively concerned with the direction of external relations and therefore has an outwardly directed nervous apparatus and representations or mental pictures occasioned thereby. Thus in the normal state, the operations of the inner nerve-centre do not enter consciousness and are not felt. However, it has an indirect and feeble connection with the cerebral system through long, attenuated, and inosculating nerves. By way of these that isolation is to some extent broken down in the case of abnormal states or even internal injuries which therefore force their way into consciousness as a dull or distinct pain. In the normal or healthy state, on the other hand, the sensorium receives on this path only an extremely feeble and faint echo of the events and movements in the very complicated and active workshop of organic life, only a stray echo of the easy or difficult development thereof. When we are awake, the brain is fully occupied with its own operations, with receiving external impressions, with intuitive perception when these occur, and with thinking, and that echo is not noticed at all. On the contrary, it has at most a mysterious and unconscious influence, whence arise those changes of disposition whereof no account on objective grounds can be given. Yet when we fall asleep, when the external impressions cease to operate and the activity of ideas gradually dies away in the interior of the sensorium, those feeble impressions that spring in an indirect way from the inner nerve-centre of organic life are then noticed in the same way as every slight modification of the blood circulation is communicated to the brain-cells. This is like the candle that begins to shine when the evening twilight comes, or the murmuring of the spring which is heard at night but was rendered inaudible by the noises of the day. Impressions far too feeble to affect the alert and active brain can, when its own activity is completely suspended, produce a faint stirring of its individual parts and of their powers of representation; just as a harp, while being played, does not re-echo a strange tone, but possibly does when it is not played. Here, then, must be found the cause of the origin and also, by means thereof, the general and fuller determination of those dream-forms that appear when we fall asleep, and likewise the cause of those dreams that spring from the absolute mental calm of deep sleep and have dramatic association. As, however, these occur when the brain is already in a state of profound peace and is wholly taken up with its own nutrition, an appreciably stronger excitation from within is necessary for them. And so it is only these dreams that in isolated and very rare cases have a prophetic or fatidical significance, and Horace rightly says:

[quote]post mediam noctem, cum somnia vera. [3][/quote]

For in this respect, the last dreams of morning are related to those when we fall asleep in so far as the rested and restored brain is again capable of being easily stimulated.

Therefore it is those feeble echoes from the workshop of organic life which penetrate into the brain's sensory activity (an activity that lapses into or is already in a state of apathy), and which feebly stimulate it, moreover in an unusual way and from a direction different from that when the brain is awake. Nevertheless, as access to all other stimulations is barred, that activity must for its dream-forms seize the occasion and substance from those echoes, however different those forms may be from such impressions. Thus the eye through mechanical shock or internal nervous convulsion may receive sensations of brightness and luminosity exactly like those that are caused by light from without; in consequence of abnormal events taking place in its interior, the ear occasionally hears sounds of all kinds; the olfactory nerve receives quite specifically definite odours without any external cause; and the gustatory nerves are affected in a similar manner. And so sensory nerves can also be stimulated to their characteristic sensations from within as well as from without. In the same way, the brain can be influenced by stimuli coming from the interior of the organism to perform its function of intuitively perceiving forms that fill space. For phenomena that have originated in this way will be quite indistinguishable from those that are occasioned by sensations in the sense-organs which were produced by external causes. Thus, just as the stomach forms chyme from everything it can assimilate and from this the intestines form chyle wherein no traces of its original substance are seen, so too does the brain react to all the stimulations that reach it by its carrying out the function that is peculiar to it. This consists first in tracing out pictures in space in all three dimensions, space being the brain's form of intuitive perception; then in moving these pictures in time and on the guiding line of causality, time and causality being likewise functions of the brain's own peculiar activity. For the brain will always speak only its own language; and so in this it interprets those feeble impressions that reach it from within while we are asleep, just as it does the strong and definite impressions coming to it from without in the regular way while we are awake. Thus the former impressions furnish it with the material for pictures that are exactly like those arising from an excitation of the external senses, although between the two kinds of impressions that cause the pictures there may be scarcely any similarity. But here its mode of action is comparable to that of a deaf man who from several vowels that reach his ear composes a complete yet false sentence; or it is comparable even to that of one mentally deranged who, in keeping with his fixed idea, is brought to a state of wild ravings by the chance use of some word. In any case, it is those feeble echoes of certain events in the interior of the organism which disappear right up into the brain and give rise to its dreams. These, then, are more specially determined by the nature of those impressions in that they have at any rate obtained the cue therefrom. In fact, however much they may differ from those impressions, they will nevertheless in some way correspond to them analogously or at least symbolically, and indeed most exactly to impressions that are capable of stimulating the brain during deep sleep, for, as I have said, these must already be considerably stronger. Further, as these internal events of organic life also act on the sensorium, regulated as it is for the apprehension of the external world, after the manner of something strange and external to it, the intuitive perceptions arising in it on such an occasion will be quite unexpected forms, wholly foreign to and different from its train of thought that probably still existed just previously. We have an opportunity for observing this when we fall asleep and again quickly wake up.

At the moment, the whole of this discussion tells us nothing more than the immediate cause or occasion for the appearance of the dream. Such a cause, it is true, must influence the substance of the dream; yet in itself it is bound to be so different therefrom that the nature of its relationship remains a mystery to us. Even more mysterious is the physiological process in the brain itself, in which dreaming really consists. Thus sleep is the resting of the brain, yet the dream is a certain activity thereof; and so to avoid a contradiction, we must declare the former to be merely a relative activity and the latter to be in some way limited and only partial. Again, we do not know in what sense it may be so, whether in accordance with the parts of the brain, with the degree of its excitation, or with the nature of its internal movement, or in what way it really differs from the state of wakefulness. There is no mental power that never proves to be active in the dream; yet the course of the dream as well as our own conduct therein often shows an extraordinary lack of power of judgement as well as of memory, as I have already discussed.

As regards our principal subject, the fact remains that we have a capacity for intuitively representing objects that fill space and for distinguishing and understanding sounds and voices of every kind, both without the external excitation of the sense impressions. These, on the other hand, furnish the occasion, the material, or the empirical basis of our intuitive perception when we are awake; yet they are certainly not for that reason identical therewith, for intuitive perception is entirely a matter of the intellect and not merely of the senses, as I have often shown and have mentioned above the main relevant passages. Now we must stick to this fact that is not open to any doubt, for it is the primary and fundamental phenomenon to which all our further explanations refer, since they will demonstrate only the extensive activity of the faculty we have described. To give it a name, the most descriptive expression would be that very appropriately selected by the Scots for a particular form of its manifestation or application, for they were guided by that correct judgement that is vouchsafed by one's own experience; it is called second sight. For the ability to dream, here discussed, is indeed a second faculty of intuitive perception and is unlike the first that is brought about through the medium of the external senses. Yet the objects of that second faculty are the same in kind and form as those of the first and the conclusion to be drawn from this is that, like the first, it is a function of the brain. That Scottish term would, therefore, be the most suitable for describing the entire species of phenomena here considered, and for attributing them to a fundamental faculty. As, however, its authors have used it for denoting a particular, rare, and extremely remarkable manifestation of that faculty, I cannot make use of it, much as I would like to, for denoting the whole species of those intuitive perceptions, or more precisely the subjective faculty that manifests itself in all of them. And so for this I am left with no more suitable term than that of dream-organ which describes the entire mode of intuitive perception we are discussing by that manifestation of it which is well known and familiar to everyone. I shall, therefore, use it to describe the faculty of intuitive perception which has been shown to be independent of the external impression on the senses.

The objects which this faculty presents to us in the ordinary dream are usually regarded by us as quite illusory, for they vanish when we wake up. This, however, is not always the case and, with regard to our theme it is very important to become acquainted with the exception to this from our own experience. Possibly everyone could do this if he gave adequate attention to the matter. Thus there is a state in which we certainly sleep and dream; yet we dream only the reality itself that surrounds us. We then see our bedroom with everything therein; we become aware of people entering the room; and we know that we are in bed and that everything is correct and in order. And yet we are asleep with our eyes shut; we dream; only what we dream is true and real. It is just as if our skull had then become transparent so that the external world now entered the brain directly and immediately instead of by an indirect path and through the narrow portal of the senses. This state is much more difficult to distinguish from wakefulness than is the ordinary dream because, when we wake up from it, there occurs no transformation of the surroundings and hence no objective change at all. But now waking up is the sole criterion between wakefulness and the dream (see World as Will and Representation, vol. i, § 5), which accordingly is here abolished as regards its objective and principal half. Thus when we wake up from a dream of the kind we are discussing, there occurs merely a subjective change which consists in our suddenly feeling a transformation of the organ of our perception. Yet this is only slightly perceptible and since it is not accompanied by any objective change it may easily remain unnoticed. For this reason, acquaintance with those dreams that present us with reality will in most cases be made only when forms have been interposed which do not belong to reality and so vanish when we wake up; or again when such a dream has received an even greater intensification about which I shall speak in a moment. The kind of dream we are describing is that which has been called sleep-waking,· not so much because it is an intermediate state between sleeping and wakefulness, but because it can be described as becoming awake in the sleep itself. I should, therefore, prefer to call it a dreaming of reality. [5] It is true that in most cases we shall observe it only in the early morning as also in the evening some time after falling asleep. This is due merely to the fact that, only when the sleep was not deep, did the waking up occur sufficiently easily to leave behind a recollection of what was dreamed. This dreaming certainly occurs much more frequently during deep sleep, according to the rule that the somnambulist becomes the more clairvoyant the more deeply she sleeps; but then no recollection of this is left behind. On the other hand, that such a recollection sometimes occurs when the dreaming has taken place during lighter sleep can be explained from the fact that, even from magnetic sleep, if it was quite light, a recollection can pass over into wakeful consciousness by way of exception, and an example of this is to be found in Kieser's Archiv fur thierischen Magnetismus, vol. iii, Pt. II, p. 139. And so according to this, the recollection of such directly and objectively true dreams remains only when they have occurred in light sleep, in the morning for example, when we can immediately wake up from them.

Now this kind of dream, whose peculiarity consists in our dreaming the most immediately present reality, is occasionally enhanced in its mysterious character by the fact that the range of the dreamer's vision is somewhat extended so that it goes beyond the bedroom. Thus the curtains or shutters cease to be obstacles to vision and the dreamer then perceives quite distinctly what lies behind them, the yard, the garden, or the street with the houses opposite. Our astonishment at this will grow less if we bear in mind that here no physical vision takes place, but a mere dreaming; yet it is a dreaming of that which actually exists now and consequently a dreaming of what is real, and so perception through the dream-organ, which as such is naturally not tied to the condition of the uninterrupted passage of rays of light. As I said, the skull covering was itself the first diaphragm through which this strange kind of perception at first remained unimpeded. Now if it is enhanced still more, then even curtains, doors, and walls no longer act as barriers to it. But how this happens is a profound mystery; all we know is that here the dreamer dreams what is real and consequently that a perception through the dream-organ takes place. Thus far does this elementary fact take us for our consideration. What we can do to explain it, in so far as this is possible, is first to compile and classify properly by grades all the phenomena connected therewith, with the object of discovering their mutual relationship and in the hope of thus one day arriving at a closer insight into it.

However, even for the man who in this matter has no experience of his own, the above-mentioned perception through the dream-organ is irrefutably confirmed by spontaneous somnambulism proper or sleep-walking. It is quite certain that the victims of this malady are fast asleep and do not see at all with their eyes; yet they perceive everything in their immediate vicinity, avoid every obstacle, go long distances, climb up to the most dangerous precipices on the narrowest paths, and perform long jumps without missing their mark. In sleep some of them accurately carry out their daily domestic affairs while others draw and write without making mistakes. In the same way, somnambulists who are artificially put into a magnetic sleep also perceive their surroundings and, when they become clairvoyant, even the remotest object. Further, the perception certain people in a trance have of everything that goes on around them while they lie rigid and unable to move a limb is undoubtedly of the same nature. They too dream of their present surroundings and thus bring them to their consciousness on a path different from that of the senses. Great efforts have been made to obtain a clue to the physiological organ or seat of this perception; but so far without success. It is incontestable that, when the state of somnambulism is complete, the external senses have entirely suspended their functions; for even the most subjective of these, namely bodily feeling, has so completely disappeared that the most painful surgical operations have been performed during magnetic sleep without the patient's having betrayed any sensation of them. Here the brain appears to be in a state of the deepest sleep and thus of complete inactivity. This and certain utterances and statements of somnambulists have given rise to the hypothesis that the state of somnambulism consists in the complete removal of the brain's power and in the accumulation of the vital force in the sympathetic nerve. According to this hypothesis, the larger reticula of this nerve, especially the plexus solaris, would now be transformed into a sensorium and so, acting as deputy, would take over the functions of the brain which they would now exercise without the aid of external sense-organs and yet with incomparably greater perfection than would the brain. This hypothesis, first advanced by Rei! I believe, is not without plausibility and has since been much in vogue. Its mainstay is the statements of almost all clairvoyant somnambulists that their consciousness now has its seat entirely in the pit of the stomach where their thinking and perceiving are carried on as they were previously in the head. Most of them also arrange for objects they wish to examine closely to be laid on the epigastric region. Nevertheless, I consider that the thing is impossible. We have only to look at the solar plexus, this so-called cerebrum abdominale, to see how very small is its bulk and how extremely simple its structure, consisting as it does of rings of nerve substance together with some slight protuberances! If such an organ were capable of fulfilling the functions of intuitively perceiving and thinking, then the law natura nihil facit frustra [6] which is everywhere else borne out would be overthrown. For what then would be the purpose of the bulk of the brain, weighing usually three pounds and in isolated cases over five, as elaborate as it is protected, with the extremely ingenious structure of its parts? These are so complicated and intricate that it requires several entirely different methods of analysis frequently repeated merely in order to obtain some idea of the structural relation of this organ and to be able to form a tolerably clear picture of the wonderful form and connection of its many parts. Again it must be borne in mind that the steps and movements of a sleep-walker conform with the greatest promptness and precision to the immediate surroundings that are perceived by him through the dream-organ, so that he at once avoids most adroitly every obstacle in a way in which no one could do so in wakefulness; and he also hurries with the same skill towards the goal he has in view. But now the motor nerves spring from the spinal cord that is connected through the medulla oblongata with the cerebellum, the regulator of movements, this again is connected with the cerebrum, the seat of the motives that are representations or mental pictures. In this 'way it then becomes possible for movements to conform with the greatest promptitude even to the most fleeting perceptions. Now if the representations that, as motives, have to determine movements were shifted to the abdominal ganglionic network for which a difficult, feeble, and indirect communication with the brain is possible only by devious paths (hence in the healthy state we feel absolutely nothing of all the activities that occur so vigorously and restlessly in our organic life); how could the representations or mental pictures there originating guide the perilous footsteps of the sleep-walker and indeed with such lightning speed?* Incidentally, the sleep-walker runs faultlessly and fearlessly along the most perilous paths as he could never do if he were awake, and this is explained by the fact that his intellect is not wholly and positively but only partially active, namely in so far as it is required to guide his footsteps. In this way, reflection and with it all hesitation and irresolution are eliminated. Finally, with regard to the fact that dreams are at any rate a function of the brain, the following fact of Treviranus (Uber die Erscheinungen des organischen Lebens, vol. ii, sect. 2, p. 117), quoted according to Pierquin, gives us even absolute certainty: 'There was a girl the bones of whose skull were partially destroyed by caries so that her brain was quite exposed. It swelled up when she woke up, and subsided when she fell asleep. During peaceful sleep the depression was at its greatest and with vivid dreaming turgescence took place.' But it is obvious that somnambulism differs only in degree from the dream; its perceptions also occur through the dream-organ; it is, as I have said, an immediate dreaming of what is real.*

However, the hypothesis here in dispute could be modified to the extent of saying that the abdominal ganglionic network would not itself become the sensorium, but would take over only the role of the external organs thereof, and thus of the sense-organs that have here likewise become powerless, and consequently that it would receive impressions from without which it would then transmit to the brain. This would then elaborate them in accordance with its function and would now shape and build up from them the forms of the external world, as it otherwise does from the sensations in the organs of sense. But here too the difficulty recurs of the lightning transmission of the impressions to the brain that is so completely isolated from this inner nerve-centre. Then, according to its structure, the solar plexus is just as unfit to be the organ of sight and sound as it is to be that of thought; moreover, it is entirely shut off from the impression of light by a thick partition of skin, fat, muscle, peritoneum, and intestines. Therefore, although most somnambulists (like v. Helmont in the passage, quoted by several, Ortus medicinae, Leiden, 1667, demens idea, § 12, p. 171) state that their seeing and thinking take place in the epigastric region, we have no right at once to assume that this is objectively valid, the less so as several somnambulists expressly deny it. For instance, the well-known Auguste Muller in Karlsruhe states (in the report on her, pp. 53 ff.) that she sees not with the pit of the stomach but with her eyes. She says, however, that most of the other somnambulists see with the pit of the stomach. To the question whether the power of thought can also be transplanted to the pit of the stomach, she replies that it cannot, but that the power of seeing and hearing can. In keeping with this, is the statement of another somnambulist in Kieser's Archiv, vol. x, Pt. II, p. 154; asked whether she thinks with the whole of her brain or with only a part thereof, she replies that she thinks with the whole of it and becomes very tired. The real conclusion from all somnambulistic statements seems to be that the stimulation and material for the intuitively perceiving activity of their brain comes not from without and through the senses as it does when we are awake, but, as was previously explained in connection with dreams, from the interior of the organism whose director and controller are, as we know, the great reticula of the sympathetic nerve. And so with regard to nervous activity, these act on behalf of and represent the whole organism with the exception of the cerebral system. Those statements can be compared with the remarks we make when we imagine we feel the pain in the foot which we actually feel only in the brain and which, therefore, ceases as soon as the nervous connection thereto is interrupted. It is, therefore, an illusion when somnambulists imagine they see and even read with the epigastric region, or assert that in rare cases they can perform this function even with their fingers, toes, or the tips of their noses (for instance the boy Arst in Kieser's Archiv, vol. iii, Pt. 11; further the somnambulist Koch, vol. x, Pt. UI, pp. 8-21; also the girl in Just Kerner's Geschichte zweier Somnambulen, 1824, pp. 323-30, who, however, adds that' the seat of this vision is the brain as in wakefulness'). For although we may try to think of the nervous sensibility of such parts as so greatly enhanced, vision in the real sense, that is, by means of rays of light, remains absolutely impossible in organs that are deprived of every optical apparatus, even if they were not, as is the case, covered with thick coats, but were accessible to light. Indeed it is not merely the high sensibility of the retina which enables it to see, but likewise the extremely ingenious and complicated optical apparatus in the pupil. In the first place, physical vision requires a surface that is sensitive to light; but then the dispersed light-rays outside must again be collected and concentrated on this surface by means of the pupil and of the light-refracting, diaphanous media that are combined with infinite ingenuity so that a picture, or more correctly a nerve impression exactly corresponding to the external object, arises by which alone the delicate data are furnished for the understanding. From these the understanding then produces intuitive perception in space and time through an intellectual process that applies the law of causality. On the other hand, the pit of the stomach and the tip of the finger could in any case receive only isolated reflections of light, even if skin, muscle, and so on were transparent. And so it is just as impossible to see with them as it is to make a daguerreotype in an open camera obscura without a convex lens. A further proof that it is not really these alleged sense-functions of paradoxical parts and that here there is no seeing by means of the physical effect of light-rays, is furnished by the circumstance that the above-mentioned boy of Kieser read with his toes, even when he was wearing thick woollen stockings, and saw with the tips of his fingers only when he expressly willed this; otherwise he groped round the room with his hands in front. The same thing is confirmed by his own statement about these abnormal perceptions (ibid., p. 128): 'He never called this vision, but to the question how he knew what was going on there, he replied that he just knew it to be something new.' In the same way, a somnambulist in Kieser's Archiv, vol. vii, Pt. I, p. 52. describes her perception as 'a seeing that is no seeing, an immediate vision'. In the Geschichte der hellsehenden Auguste Muller, Stuttgart, 1818, it is reported on p. 36 that 'she sees perfectly clearly and perceives all persons and objects in the most impenetrable darkness where it would be impossible for us to see in front of us our own hand.' The same thing bears out Kieser's statement with regard to the hearing of somnambulists (Tellurismus, vol. ii, p. 172, 1st edn.) that woollen cords are particularly good conductors of sound, whereas wool is known to be the worst of all conductors of sound. On this point, however, the following passage from the above-mentioned work on Auguste Muller is particularly instructive: 'It is remarkable and yet it is also observed in the case of other somnambulists that she hears absolutely nothing at all that is said by people in the room even when they are quite close to her, if the talking is not definitely directed to her. On the other hand, every word addressed to her, however softly, even when several persons are talking together. is definitely understood and answered. It is much the same when she is read to; if the person reading to her thinks of something different from what he is reading. she does not hear him'. p. 40. Again on p. 89; 'Her hearing is not hearing in the ordinary way through the ear. for this can be tightly closed without her hearing being impeded.' Similarly in the Mittheilungen aus dem Schlafleben der Somnambule Auguste K. in Dresden, 1843, it is repeatedly stated that at times she hears solely through the palm of her hand and indeed the silent word that is expressed through the mere movement of the lips. On page 32 she herself warns us not to regard this as a hearing in the literal sense.

Accordingly, with somnambulists of all kinds it is certainly not a question of sensuous perceptions in the real meaning of the word; but their perceiving is an immediate dreaming of what is real [Wahrtraumen] and therefore takes place through the very mysterious dream-organ. The fact that the objects to be perceived are placed on her forehead or the pit of her stomach, or that, in the individual cases quoted, the somnambulist directs on to them her outstretched finger-tips, is merely an expedient for guiding the dream-organ on to these objects through contact with them in order that they may become the theme of its dreaming of the real. And so this is done merely to direct her attention definitely to them or, in technical language, to put her in closer touch with these objects; whereupon she then dreams of them and indeed not merely of their visibility, but also of their audibility, their language, and even their odour. For many clairvoyants state that all their senses are transferred to the pit of the stomach. (Dupotet, Traite complet du magnitisme, pp. 449-52.) Consequently, it is analogous to the use of the hands in magnetizing where these do not really act physically, but that which operates is the will of the magnetizer. But it is just this that obtains its direction and determination through the application of the hands. For only the insight that is derived from my philosophy can lead to an understanding of the magnetizer's complete influence through all kinds of gestures, with and without contact, even from a distance and through partitions; namely the view that the body is wholly identical with the will and thus is nothing but the will's image arising in the brain. The vision of somnambulists is not one in our sense of the word and is not physically caused through the medium of light. This already follows from the fact that, when enhanced to clairvoyance, it is not impeded by walls; in fact it extends sometimes to distant countries. We are afforded a special illustration of this by the inwardly directed intuitive self· perception that occurs in the higher degrees of clairvoyance. In virtue of it, such somnambulists clearly and precisely perceive all the parts of their own organism, although all the conditions for physical vision are here entirely wanting not only on account of the absence of all light, but also by reason of the many diaphragms that lie between the intuitively perceived part and the brain. Thus we can infer from this the nature of all somnambulistic perception, and so of that which is directed outwards and to a distance, and accordingly of all intuitive perception generally by means of the dream-organ and consequently of all somnambulistic vision of external objects, all dreaming, all visions while we are awake, second sight, the bodily apparition of those who are absent, especially of the dying, and so on. For it is evident that the above-mentioned vision of the internal parts of one's own body results only through an influence on the brain from within, probably through the agency of the ganglionic system. Now, true to its nature, the brain elaborates these inner impressions just as it does those that come to it from without, moulding, as it were, a foreign material into forms that are peculiar and habitual to it. From them just such intuitive perceptions arise similar to those that result from impressions on the external senses, and the former like the latter then correspond in degree and meaning to the things intuitively perceived. Accordingly, every case of vision through the dream-organ is the activity of the intuitively perceiving brain-function that is stimulated by inner instead of outer impressions as previously.* That such an activity, however, can have objective reality and truth, even when it relates to external and indeed remote things, is a fact whose explanation could be attempted only in a metaphysical way, from the restriction of all individuation and separation to the phenomenon in contrast to the thing-in-itself; and to this we shall revert. That the connection between somnambulists and the outer world is in general fundamentally different from that which we have when we are awake is proved in the clearest manner by the circumstance, frequently occurring in the higher degrees, that, whereas the clairvoyante's own senses are inaccessible to any impression, she feels with those of the magnetizer. For example, she sneezes when he takes a pinch of snuff, tastes and determines exactly what he is eating, and hears even the music that is ringing in his ears in a distant room of the house (Kiesers' Archiv, vol. i, Pt. I, p. 117.)

The physiological course of events in somnambulistic perception is a difficult riddle to whose solution, however, the first step would be a genuine physiology of the dream, that is, a clear and certain knowledge of the nature of the brain's activity therein, of the way in which this really differs from the activity during wakefulness, and finally of the source of the stimulation to it, consequently a closer definition of the course it takes. So far only this much may be assumed with certainty as regards the whole intuitively perceiving and thinking activity in sleep; first that its material organ, notwithstanding the brain's relative repose, cannot be anything but this brain; and secondly that the stimulation to such intuitive dream perception must take place from the interior of the organism, for it cannot come from without through the senses. But as regards the correct and precise relation, unmistakable in somnambulism, of that intuitive dream perception to the outside world, it remains a riddle to us whose solution I am not undertaking; but later on I shall give only a few general suggestions concerning it. On the other hand, I have worked out in my mind the following hypothesis as the basis of the above-mentioned physiology of the dream and thus for explaining the whole of our intuitive dreaming perception; and in my view this hypothesis is highly probable.

Since during sleep the brain receives its stimulation to the intuitive perception of spatial forms from within, as we have stated instead of from without, as during wakefulness, this impression must affect it in a direction the opposite of the usual one that comes from the senses. In consequence of this, its whole activity and so the inner vibration or agitation of its filaments assume a tendency which is the opposite of the usual one; it begins to move antiperistaltically, so to speak. Thus instead of taking place, as previously, in the direction of the sense impressions and thus from the sense nerves to the interior of the brain, it now occurs in the reverse direction and order; but in this way it is sometimes carried out by different parts. Thus it may not be the lower surface of the brain instead of the upper, but possibly the white medullary substance instead of the grey cortical matter which must function, and vice versa. Thus the brain now works the other way round. In the first place it is clear from this why no recollection of the somnambulistic activity passes over into wakefulness, as this is conditioned by a vibration of the brain-filaments in the opposite direction which obliterates every trace of that which previously existed. Incidentally, as a special confirmation of this assumption, the very common but strange fact might be mentioned that, when we at once reawake from the first dozing off, we often experience a complete absence of direction. It is of such a nature that we are forced to look at everything in the reverse sense and thus to imagine that what is on the right of the bed is on the left and what is behind is in front. Moreover, we are so positive about this that in the dark even rational deliberation that things may be the other way round is incapable of obliterating that false imagination, for which purpose touching and feeling are necessary. But in particular, that remarkable liveliness of intuitive dream perception, the above-mentioned apparent reality and corporeality of all objects that are perceived in the dream, is easy to understand from our hypothesis, namely that the stimulation of the brain's activity that comes from the interior of the organism and starts from the centre in a direction contrary to the normal, finally forces its way through and extends ultimately as far as the nerves of the sense-organs, which now become really active, stimulated as they are from within as they previously were from without. Accordingly, we actually have in the dream sensations of light, colour, sound, smell, and taste, only without the external causes that previously stimulated them, merely in virtue of an inner excitation and in consequence of an impression in the opposite direction and in the reverse order of time. Hence from this is explained that corporeality of dreams whereby they differ so powerfully from mere fantasies. The picture of the imagination (in wakefulness) is always merely in the brain; for it is only the reminiscence, although modified, of a previous material excitation of the brain's intuitively perceiving activity that occurs through the senses. On the other hand, the dream apparition is not merely in the brain, but also in the nerves of the senses and has arisen in consequence of a material, actually effective excitation of those nerves which comes from the interior and penetrates the brain. Accordingly, since we actually see in the dream, what Apuleius represents the Grace as saying when she is about to put out the eyes of the sleeping Thrasyllus, is extremely apt, fine, and indeed profoundly conceived: vivo tibi morientur oculi, nec quidquam videbis, nisi dormiens [7] (Metamorphoses, VIII, p. 172, ed. Rip.). The dream-organ is, therefore, the same as the organ of conscious wakefulness and intuitive perception of the external world, only grasped, as it were, from the other end and used in the reverse order. The nerves of the senses which function in both can be rendered active from their inner as well as from their outer end, somewhat like a hollow iron globe which can be made red-hot from within as well as from without. Since, when this occurs, the nerves of the senses are the last to become active, it may happen that such activity has only just begun and is still in progress when the brain is already waking up, in other words, when ordinary intuitive perception is taking the place of intuitive dream perception. Having just woken up, we shall then hear sounds, such as voices, knocks on the door, rifleshots, and so on, with a clearness and objectivity that perfectly and completely resemble reality. We shall then firmly believe that it was sounds of reality, from without, which in the first instance woke us up; or in rarer instances we shall also see forms with complete empirical reality, as is mentioned by Aristotle in De insomniis, c. 3 at the end. Now, as I have already adequately explained, it is the dream-organ, here described, whereby somnambulistic intuitive perception, clairvoyance, second sight, and visions of all kinds are brought about.

From these physiological observations, I now return to the previously discussed phenomenon of dreaming what is real. This can occur in ordinary sleep at night where it is then at once confirmed by our merely waking up, namely when, as in most cases, it was direct, in other words, extended only to the immediate vicinity, although in rarer instances it goes a little beyond this, to the other side of the nearest partition walls. This extension of the range of vision can, however, go very much farther not only in respect of space, but even of time. The proof of this is given by clairvoyant somnambulists who in the period of the extreme climax of their condition can at once bring into their intuitive dream perception any locality whatsoever to which they are led and can give a correct account of the events there. But occasionally they can even predict that which does not yet exist but still lies hidden in the womb of the future and only in the course of time comes to be realized by means of innumerable intermediate causes that come together by chance. For all clairvoyance in somnambulistic sleep-waking (Sehlafwachen], both artificially produced and naturally induced, all perception therein that has become possible of the hidden, the absent, the remote, or even the future, is simply nothing but a true dreaming thereof whose objects are thus presented to the intellect palpably and plainly like our dreams; and so somnambulists speak of seeing them. Meanwhile, we have in these phenomena as also in spontaneous sleep-walking positive proof that that mysterious intuition which is conditioned by no impression from without and is familiar to us through the dream, can stand to the external world of reality in the relation of perception, although the connection with that perception which facilitates this remains to us a mystery. What distinguishes the ordinary dream at night from clairvoyance or sleep-waking generally is first the absence of that relation to the outside world and hence to reality, and secondly the fact that very often a recollection of it passes over into wakefulness, whereas such a recollection does not take place from somnambulistic sleep. But these two characteristics might well be connected and related to each other. Thus the ordinary dream leaves behind a recollection only when we have immediately woken up from it. And so it is probably due simply to the fact that waking up results very easily from natural sleep which is not nearly so deep as somnambulistic. For this reason, an immediate and therefore rapid waking up from the latter cannot occur, but a return to conscious wakefulness is possible only by means of a gradual transition. Thus somnambulistic sleep is only one that is incomparably deeper, more highly effective, and more complete in which, therefore, the dream-organ is able to develop its fullest capacity whereby the correct relation to the external world and hence the continuous and coherent dreaming of what is real becomes possible for it. Probably such a dreaming occasionally occurs in ordinary sleep, but precisely only when such sleep is so deep that we do not immediately wake therefrom. On the other hand, the dreams from which we wake up are those of lighter sleep; in the last resort, they have sprung from merely somatic causes that appertain to one's own organism and thus have no reference to the outside world. Yet we have already seen that there are exceptions to this in the dreams that present the immediate environment of the person who is sleeping. Nevertheless, even of dreams that make known the distant or future event, there is, by way of exception, a recollection; and indeed this depends mainly on our immediately waking up from such a dream. For this reason, at all times and among all peoples, it has been assumed that there are dreams of real objective significance and in the whole of ancient history dreams are taken very seriously so that in it they play an important part. However, of the vast number of empty and merely illusory dreams the fatidical have always been regarded only as rare exceptions. Accordingly, Homer tells (Odyssey, XIX, 560) of two portals of entry for dreams, one of ivory by which insignificant dreams enter, and one of horn for fatidical dreams. An anatomist might perhaps feel tempted to interpret this in terms of the white and grey matter of the brain. Those dreams that relate to the dreamer's state of health most frequently prove to be prophetic; and indeed in most cases these will predict illnesses and even fatal attacks. (Instances of these have been collected by E. Fabius, De somniis, Amsterdam, 1836, pp. 195 ff.) This is analogous to the case where clairvoyant somnambulists foretell with the greatest frequency and certainty the course of their own illness together with its crises and so on. Again external accidents, such as conflagrations, powder explosions, shipwrecks, but particularly deaths, are sometimes presaged through dreams. Finally, other events, sometimes fairly trivial, are dreamed in advance and in minute detail by some people, and of this I am convinced from an unquestionable experience of my own. I will record it here for it also puts in the strongest light the strict necessity of all that happens, even of the most accidental. One morning I was preoccupied with writing a long and very important business letter in English. When I had finished the third page, I picked up the ink-bottle instead of the writing-sand and poured all over the letter ink which flowed from the desk on to the floor. The maid who appeared when I rang the bell fetched a pail of water and scrubbed the floor to prevent the stains from soaking in. While doing this she said to me: 'Last night I dreamed that I was here rubbing out ink-stains from the floor.' Whereupon I said: 'That is not true', but she again said: 'It is true and when I woke up I mentioned it to the other maid who was sleeping with me.' At this moment the other maid aged about seventeen happened to enter to call away the one who was scrubbing. I went up to her and asked: 'What did she dream last night?' Her reply was 'I do not know'. But I said ' Yes you do, she told you about it when she woke up.' And the young girl said: 'Oh yes, she dreamed that here she would scrub inkstains from the floor.' This story which puts theorematic dreams beyond all doubt, since I vouch for its absolute truth, is no less remarkable from the fact that what was dreamed beforehand was the effect of an action that might be called involuntary or automatic in so far as I performed it without any intention whatever and it depended on the most trivial slip of my hand. Yet this action was determined beforehand with such strict necessity and inevitability that its effect existed several hours earlier as a dream in the consciousness of another person. Here we see most clearly the truth of my proposition that all that happens necessarily happens. ( The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, 'Freedom of the Will', Pt. III.) For tracing prophetic dreams back to their immediate cause, we have, as we all know, the circumstance that no recollection either of natural or magnetic somnambulism and its events occurs in conscious wakefulness, but that such occasionally passes over into the dreams of natural ordinary sleep and these are subsequently remembered when the person wakes up. And so the dream becomes the connecting link, the bridge, between somnambulistic and waking consciousness. According to this, we must, therefore, first attribute prophetic dreams to the fact that in deep sleep dreaming is enhanced to a somnambulistic clairvoyance. Now since from dreams of this kind no immediate waking up and thus no recollection as a rule take place, those dreams that form an exception to this, and therefore prefigure the coming event directly and sensu proprio and have been called theorematic, are the rarest of all. On the other hand, a man will often be able to retain a recollection of a dream of this kind, when its contents are of great importance to him, by his carrying it over into the dream of lighter sleep from which he may immediately wake up. Yet this cannot be done directly, but only by means of a translation of the contents into an allegory. Clad in this garment, the original prophetic dream now reaches conscious wakefulness where it still requires interpretation and explanation. This, then, is the other and more frequent form of fatidical dreams, the allegorical. In his Oneirocriticon, the oldest book on dreams, Artemidorus drew a distinction between the two kinds, and called the first theorematic. Man's natural tendency, by no means accidental or artificial, to brood over the meaning of his dreams has its root in the consciousness of the ever-present possibility of the abovementioned course of events. When this tendency is cultivated and methodically perfected, it gives rise to oneiromancy. But this adds the assumption that the events in the dream had a fixed meaning valid once for all about which a lexicon could therefore be made. But such is not the case; on the contrary, the allegory is expressly and individually suited to each and every object and subject of the theorematic dream that forms the basis of the allegorical. For this reason, the interpretation of allegorical fatidical dreams is for the most part so difficult that in most cases we understand them only after their prediction has come true. But then we are bound to admire the utterly strange and demon-like cunning of the wit which is otherwise quite foreign to the dreamer and with which the allegory has been constructed and worked out. But till then we retain these dreams in our memory, and this can be attributed to the fact that they are through their outstanding clearness and even vivid reality more deeply impressed than the rest. Practice and experience will certainly conduce to the art of interpreting dreams. It is not Schubert's well-known book, however, which contains nothing of any use except the title, but old Artemidorus from whom we can really become acquainted with the 'symbolism of the dream', especially from his last two books. Here in hundreds of examples he renders intelligible the mode, manner, method, and humour that are employed by our dreaming omniscience in order, where possible, to impart something to our lack of knowledge when we are awake. This can be far better learnt from his examples than from his previous theorems and rules on the subject.* That Shakespeare had also perfectly understood the above-mentioned humour [8] of the thing is seen in Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Sc. 2, where at the quite unexpected news of the Duke of Gloucester's sudden death, the villainous Cardinal Beaufort who knows best how matters are exclaims:

[quote]God's secret judgement:- I did dream tonight

The duke was dumb, and could not speak a word.[/quote]

Here, then, is the place to introduce the important remark that, in the utterances of the ancient Greek oracle, we again find exactly the above-mentioned relation between the theorematic and allegorical fatidical dream that reproduces it. Thus those utterances, like the fatidical dreams, very rarely make a direct statement sensu proprio, but veil it in an allegory which requires interpretation and indeed is understood often only after the oracle has come true, like allegorical dreams. I quote from numerous examples merely to illustrate the point; thus, for instance, in Herodotus, lib. III, c. 57 the oracular utterance of Pythia warned the Siphnians of the wooden host and the red herald by which they were to understand a Samian ship painted red and bearing a messenger. The Siphnians, however, did not at once understand this or even after the ship's arrival, but only when it was too late. Further in the fourth book, chapter 163, the oracle of Pythia forewarned King Arcesilaus of Cyrene that, if he should find the kiln full of amphorae, he should not bake these, but send them away. But only after he had burnt the rebels together with the tower to which they had fled did he understand the meaning of the oracle and then became alarmed. The many instances of this kind definitely point to the fact that the utterances of the Delphic oracle were based on ingeniously produced fatidical dreams and that these could sometimes be enhanced to the most distinct clairvoyance. The result was then a direct utterance that spoke sensu proprio. This is testified by the story of Croesus (Herodotus, lib. I, cc. 47, 48) who put the Pythia to the test by his envoys having to ask what he was doing far away in Lydia at that very moment on the hundredth day after their departure, whereupon the Pythia stated precisely and accurately what no one but the king himself knew, namely that with his own hands he was cooking turtles and mutton in a brazen cauldron with a brazen lid. It is in keeping with the suggested source of the oracular utterances of Pythia that they were consulted medically on account of bodily ailments; Herodotus, lib. IV, c. 155, gives an instance of this.

From what has been said, theorematic fatidical dreams are the highest and rarest degree of prophetic vision in natural sleep, allegorical dreams the second and lower degree. Now in addition, there is yet the final and feeblest emanation from the same source, namely mere presentiment or foreboding. This is more often of a melancholy than a cheerful nature, just because there is in life more misery than mirth. A morose disposition, an uneasy expectation of the coming event, has without any apparent cause taken possession of us after sleep. According to the above description, this can be explained from the fact that that translation of the theorematic true dream, existing in deepest sleep and foreboding evil, into an allegorical dream of lighter sleep was not successful. Therefore nothing of that theorematic dream was left behind in consciousness except its impression on the disposition, that is, the will itself, that real and ultimate kernel of man. That impression now re-echoes as a presentiment or gloomy foreboding. Yet this will occasionally take possession of us only when the first circumstances that are connected with the misfortune seen in the theorematic dream appear in reality; for example, when a man is on the point of embarking on a ship that is going to founder; or he approaches a powder-magazine that is going to blow up. Many a man has been saved by obeying the evil presentiment that suddenly occurs to him, or the inner apprehension that comes over him. We have to explain this from the fact that, although the theorematic dream is forgotten, there is nevertheless left over from it a feeble reminiscence, a dull recollection. It is true that this cannot enter clear consciousness, but its clue is renewed by the sight in real life of the very things that affected us so terribly in the forgotten dream. Also of the same nature was the daimon of Socrates, that inner warning voice that dissuaded him from anything disadvantageous as soon as he resolved to undertake it; yet it always advised against never in favour of a thing. A direct confirmation of the theory of presentiments here expounded is possible only by means of magnetic somnambulism which divulges the secrets of sleep. And so we find such a confirmation in the well-known Geschichte der Auguste Muller zu Karlsruhe, p. 78. 'On 15 December in her nocturnal (magnetic) sleep, the somnambulist became aware of an unpleasant event concerning her which greatly depressed her. At the same time, she remarked that all the next day she would be anxious and uneasy without knowing why.' Further, a confirmation of this case is given by the impression, described in the Seherin von Prevorst (1st edn., vol. n, p. 73; 3rd edn., p. 325), which certain verses, relating to somnambulistic events, made during wakefulness on the clairvoyante who knew nothing of them. Also in Kieser's Tellurismus, § 271, we find facts that throw light on this point.

As regards all that has been said so far, it is very important to understand and bear in mind the following fundamental truth. Magnetic sleep is only an enhancement of natural sleep, or perhaps a higher potential thereof; it is an incomparably deeper sleep. In keeping with this, clairvoyance is only an enhancement of dreaming; it is a continuous dreaming of the real [Wahrtraumen]; but here such dreaming can be guided from without and directed to what we want. Thirdly, the directly wholesome effect of magnetism, which is verified in so many cases of illness, is also nothing but an enhancement of the natural healing power of sleep in all of them. Indeed sleep is the true and great panacea, for in the first place, by means of it, the vital force is relieved of the animal functions and becomes wholly free, now to appear with all its strength as the vis naturae medicatrix, [9] and in this capacity to remove all the disorders that have taken root in the organism. Thus a complete absence of sleep rules out any recovery. Now this is achieved in a much higher degree by the incomparably deeper magnetic sleep; and so when it occurs of itself for the purpose of curing grave illnesses that have become chronic, it sometimes lasts for several days, as for instance in the case published by Count Szapary (Ein Wort uber den animalischen Magnetismus, Leipzig, 1840). Once in Russia a consumptive somnambulist in the omniscient crisis ordered her doctor to put her into a trance for nine days. During that time her lung had the benefit of complete rest and was thus restored so that she woke up with health completely recovered. Now the essence of sleep consists in the inactivity of the cerebral system and even its wholesomeness comes precisely from the fact that that system with its animal life no longer absorbs and consumes any vital force so that this can now be devoted entirely to organic life. Yet it might appear to be inconsistent with its main purpose that precisely in magnetic sleep there sometimes emerges an exceedingly enhanced power of knowledge which by its nature must in some way be an activity of the brain. But first we must remember that this case is only a rare exception. Of twenty patients affected generally by magnetism, only one becomes a somnambulist, in other words, understands and talks in sleep; and of five somnambulists barely one becomes clairvoyant (according to Deleuze, Histoire critique du magnitisme, Paris, 1813, vol. I, p. 138). When magnetism acts beneficially without producing sleep, it does so merely by rousing the healing power of nature and directing it to the injured part. But in addition, its effect primarily is only an extremely deep sleep that is dreamless; in fact the cerebral system is reduced in power to such an extent that neither sense-impressions nor injuries are felt at all. It has, therefore, been used with the greatest benefit in surgical operations, although for this purpose it has been supplanted by chloroform. Nature really lets it reach clairvoyance, whose preliminary stage is somnambulism or talking in sleep, only when her blindly operating healing power does not suffice to remove the disease, but remedies from without are needed which the patient himself in the clairvoyant stage now correctly prescribes. Thus for this purpose of self-prescription, nature brings about clairvoyance, for natura nihil facit frustra. [10] Here her method is analogous and akin to that followed by her on a large scale with the first production of creatures when she took the step from the plant to the animal kingdom. Thus for plants movement on mere stimuli had sufficed; but now the more special and complicated needs, whose objects had to be sought, selected, subdued, or even duped, rendered necessary movement on motives and therefore knowledge in all its many degrees. Accordingly, this is the peculiar characteristic of animal existence, that which is not accidental but really essential to the animal and which we necessarily think under the concept of animal. On this point I refer to my chief work, vol. i, § 27; also to my Ethics, 'On the Freedom of the Will', Pt. III; and to On the Will in Nature, 'Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of Plants'. And so in the one case as in the other, nature kindles for herself a light in order to be able to seek and procure the help that is required by the organism from without. Turning the now developed gift of the somnambulist's second sight to things other than her own state of health is merely an accidental use, or really an abuse, thereof. It is also an abuse if we arbitrarily bring on through long-continued magnetization somnambulism and clairvoyance, contrary to nature's purpose. On the other hand, where these are really necessary, nature produces them quite automatically after a brief magnetization indeed sometimes as spontaneous somnambulism. They then appear, as I have said, as a dreaming of what is real [Wahrtraumen], first only of the immediate environment, then in ever-widening circles, until in the highest degrees of clairvoyance such dreaming can reach all the events on earth to which its attention is directed; and occasionally it penetrates even into the future. The capacity for pathological diagnosis and therapeutic prescription, first for oneself and then by way of abuse for others, is in keeping with these different stages.

With somnambulism in the original and proper sense and hence with morbid sleep-walking, such a dreaming of the real occurs, yet here only for direct use and thus extending merely to the immediate surroundings just because in this case nature's end is already attained. In such a state, therefore, the vital force, as vis medicatrix, [11] has not suspended animal life as in magnetic sleep, spontaneous somnambulism, and catalepsy in order to be able to apply its whole strength to organic life and to eliminate the disorders that have taken root therein. On the contrary, vital force appears here as an abnormal excess of irritability by virtue of a morbid depression to which the age of puberty is most exposed. Nature now endeavours to free herself from this excess and, as we know, in sleep this is done by walking, working, climbing to the most dangerous heights and most perilous leaps. At the same time, nature calls forth that mysterious reality-dreaming as the attendant of those perilous steps. But such dreaming here extends only to the immediate environment, for this suffices to prevent accidents that the released irritability would inevitably cause if it acted blindly. Here, then, this dreaming has only the negative object of preventing harm, whereas in clairvoyance it has the positive one of finding help from without; hence the great difference in the range of vision.

Mysterious as is the effect of magnetization, it is nevertheless clear that it consists primarily in the suspension of animal functions in that the vital force is diverted from the brain, that mere pensioner or parasite of the organism, or rather is driven back to organic life as its primitive function; for now its undivided presence and effectiveness as vis medicatrix are required there. But within the nervous system and thus the exclusive seat of all sensuous life, organic life is represented and replaced by the guide and governor of its functions, the sympathetic nerve and its ganglia. Thus the event can also be regarded as a repression of the vital force from the brain to the sympathetic nerve; but generally the two can also be looked upon as mutually opposite poles; and so the brain, with the organs of movement attached thereto, can be regarded as the positive and conscious pole, and the sympathetic nerve, with its ganglionic networks, as the negative and unconscious. Now in this sense, the following hypothesis could be given concerning the course of events in magnetization. It is an action of the magnetizer's brain-pole (and hence of his external nerve-pole) on the homonymous pole of the patient; and so it acts on the latter by repulsion in accordance with the universal law of polarity, whereby the nervous force is driven back to the other pole of the nervous system, to the inner, the gastric ganglionic system. Therefore men in whom the brain-pole prevails are best fitted for magnetizing, whereas women in whom the ganglionic system predominates are most susceptible to being magnetized and to the consequences thereof. Ifit were possible for the female ganglionic system to be capable of acting in just the same way on the male and so also by repulsion, then through the reverse process an abnormally enhanced cerebral life, a temporary genius, would inevitably result. This is not feasible because the ganglionic system is not capable of acting outwards. On the other hand, the magnetizing bucket might well be regarded as an attracting magnetization through the action on each other of heteronymous or unlike poles, so that the sympathetic nerves of all the patients sitting round the bucket which are connected thereto by iron rods and woollen cords running to the pit of the stomach and which operate with united force enhanced by the inorganic mass of the bucket, would draw to themselves the individual brainpole of each of the patients, and so lower the potential of animal life, causing it to be submerged in the magnetic sleep of all. This could be compared to the lotus that is submerged every evening in the flood. In keeping also with this is the fact that, when the ladder of the bucket had once been laid on the head instead of on the pit of the stomach, violent congestion and headache were the result (Kieser, Tellurismus, 1st edn., Vol. i, p. 439). In the sidereal bucket, the bare unmagnetized metals exert the same force. This appears to be connected with the fact that metal is the simplest and most original thing, the lowest grade of the will's objectification, and consequently the very opposite to the brain as being the highest development of that objectification; and hence that it is the thing remotest from the brain. Moreover, metal offers the maximum mass in the minimum space. Accordingly, it recalls the will to its original nature and is related to the ganglionic system as, conversely, light is to the brain, and so somnambulists shun the contact of metals with the organs of the conscious pole. The sensitivity to metals and water of those so disposed can also be explained in this way. With the ordinary magnetized bucket, what operate are the ganglionic systems, connected thereto, of all the patients who are assembled round it and with their united force draw down the brain-poles. This also helps to explain the contagion of somnambulism generally as also the communication, akin to it, of the present activity of second sight through the mutual contact of those endowed with it, and the communication and consequently the communion of visions generally.

But if we wished to venture on an even bolder application of the above hypothesis which concerns the course of events in magnetization and starts from the laws of polarity, then it might be deduced from this, although only schematically, how, in the higher degrees of somnambulism, the relation can go to such lengths that the somnambulist shares all the ideas, knowledge, manners of speaking, and even the sensations of the magnetizer. She is thus present in his brain, whereas his will, on the other hand, has a direct influence on her and he is so completely her master that he can fix her by his spell. Thus with the galvanic apparatus, now most commonly used, where the two metals are immersed in two kinds of acids that are separated by earthenware partitions, the positive current flows through these liquids from the zinc to the copper, and then externally in the electrode from the copper back to the zinc. Hence by analogy, the positive current of vital force, as the will of the magnetizer, would flow from his brain to that of the somnambulist, controlling her and driving back to the sympathetic nerve and thus to the epigastric region, to her negative pole, her vital force that produces consciousness in the brain. But then the same current would again flow from here back into the magnetizer, to his positive pole, his brain, where it meets his ideas and sensations; and then in this way does the somnambulist share them. These, of course, are very bold assumptions, but with the extremely obscure matters that here constitute our problem every hypothesis is admissible which leads to some understanding, although such may be only schematic or analogical.

The extremely marvellous and positively incredible feature of somnambulistic clairvoyance, difficult to believe until it was corroborated by the consistency of hundreds of cases of the most trustworthy evidence-a clairvoyance to which are revealed the hidden, the absent, the remote, and even that which still slumbers in the womb of the future-loses at any rate its absolute incomprehensibility if we reflect that, as I have so often said, the objective world is a mere phenomenon of the brain. For the order and conformity to law thereof which are based on space, time, and causality (as brain-functions), are to some extent set aside in somnambulistic clairvoyance. Thus in consequence of the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of space and time, we see that the thing-in-itself, that which alone is the truly real in all phenomena as being free from those two forms of the intellect, knows no distinction between near and remote, between present, past, and future. Therefore the separations that are due to those forms of intuitive perception prove to be not absolute; on the contrary, they no longer offer any insuperable barriers to the method of cognition here discussed which is essentially changed by the transformation of its organ. On the other hand, if time and space were absolutely real and appertained to the essence-in-itself of things, then that prophetic gift of somnambulists, as well as all distance-vision and prevision generally, would certainly be an absolutely incomprehensible miracle. On the other hand, even Kant's doctrine to a certain extent obtains positive confirmation from the facts here discussed. For if time is not a determination of the real nature of things, then, in respect thereof, before and after are without meaning; accordingly, it must be possible for an event to be known just as well before it has happened as after. The art of soothsaying, whether in the dream, somnambulistic prophetic vision, second sight, or anything else, consists only in discovering the path to the freedom of knowledge from the condition of time. The matter can also be made clearer by the following simile. Thing-in-itself is the primum mobile [12] in the mechanism that imparts motion to the whole complicated and variegated plaything of this world. By its nature and constitution the former must, therefore, be different from the latter. We indeed see the connection of the separate parts of the plaything in the levers and wheels (time-sequence and causality) that are purposely revealed; but that which imparts the first motion to all these we do not see. Now when I read how clairvoyant somnambulists foretell the future so far in advance and so accurately, it seems to me as if they had reached that mechanism which is hidden in the background, and from which everything originates. And so that which is seen externally, that is, through our optical lens of time, as merely something that will come in the future, is already at this moment present in that mechanism.

Moreover, the same animal magnetism to which these marvels are due, has for us testified to a direct action of the will on others and at a distance. But such a thing is precisely the fundamental characteristic of what is described by the notorious name of magic. For this is a direct action of our will itself which is freed from the causal conditions of physical action and hence of contact in the widest sense of the word. I have discussed this in a special chapter in my work On the Will in Nature. Magical action is, therefore, related to physical as the art of soothsaying is to rational conjecture. It is a real and complete actio in distans,13 in the same way as genuine soothsaying, for example somnambulistic clairvoyance, is passio a distante. [14] Just as in the latter the individual isolation of knowledge is abolished, so in the former is the individual isolation of the will. Therefore in both, independently of the limitations imposed by space, time, and causality, we achieve what we can otherwise and ordinarily do only under these limitations. Therefore in them our innermost being, or the thing-in-itself, has cast off those forms of the phenomenon and emerges free therefrom. And so the trustworthiness of the art of soothsaying is akin to that of magic and doubt about both has always come and gone at the same time.

Animal magnetism, sympathetic cures, magic, second sight, dreaming the real, spirit seeing, and visions of all kinds are kindred phenomena, branches of one stem. They afford certain and irrefutable proof of a nexus of entities that rests on an order of things entirely different from nature. For her foundation nature has the laws of space, time, and causality, whereas that other order is more deep-seated, original, and immediate. Therefore the first and most universal (because purely formal) laws of nature are not applicable to it. Accordingly, time and space no longer separate individuals and their separation and isolation, which are due to those very forms, no longer place insuperable barriers in the way of the communication of thoughts and the direct influence of the will. Thus changes are brought about in a way quite different from that of physical causality with the continuous chain of its links; in other words, they are produced merely by virtue of an act of will that is brought to light in a special manner and thereby intensified to a higher potential beyond the individual. Accordingly, the peculiar characteristic of all the animal phenomena here considered is visio in distans et actio in distans, [15] both as regards time and space.

Incidentally, the true conception of actio in distans is that the space between the causative and the caused, whether full or empty, has absolutely no influence on the effect, but it is quite immaterial whether it amounts to an inch or a billion times the orbit of Uranus. For if the effect is in any way diminished by the distance, then it is either because a matter that already fills space has to transmit it and therefore, by virtue of the constant counter-effect of that matter, the effect is diminished by it in proportion to the distance; or it is because the cause itself consists merely in a material emanation which disperses in space and thus becomes the more attenuated the greater the distance. On the other hand, empty space itself cannot in any way offer resistance to and invalidate causality. And so where the effect grows less in proportion to its distance from the starting-point of the cause, like the effect of light, gravitation, the magnet, and so on, there is no actio in distans; and just as little is there where the effect is merely delayed through distance. For matter alone is that which is movable in space; and so it would have to be the bearer of such an effect and cover the distance. Accordingly, it would be compelled to act only after it arrived, consequently first on contact and so not in distans.

On the other hand, the phenomena that are here discussed, and were previously enumerated as the branches of one stem, have as their specific characteristic, as I have said, precisely actio in distans and passio a distante. [16] But in this way, as already mentioned, they first afford a confirmation, as unexpected as it is certain and factual, of Kant's fundamental doctrine of the contrast between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself and of the antithesis between the laws of both. Thus according to Kant, nature and her order are mere phenomenon. As the opposite thereof, we see all the facts that are here considered and can be called magical, rooted directly in the thing-in-itself and in the world of appearance giving rise to phenomena that can never be explained in accordance with the laws thereof. They were, therefore, rightly denied until the experience of hundreds of cases no longer allowed this. Not only Kant's philosophy, however, but mine also obtains on a closer investigation of these facts important corroboration, namely that in all these phenomena the will alone is the real agent, whereby it proclaims itself as the thing-in-itself. Accordingly, touched in his own empirical way by this truth, Count Szapary, a well-known Hungarian magnetizer, apparently knowing nothing of my philosophy and possibly not much about any other, called the very first essay' Physical Proofs that the Will is the Principle of all Spiritual and Physical Life' in his work Ein Wort uber den animalischen Magnetismus, Leipzig, 1850.

Now in addition to and quite apart from this, the abovementioned phenomena furnish in any case an effective and perfectly certain refutation not only of materialism but also of naturalism. In chapter 17 of the second volume of my chief work, I have described materialism as physics installed on the throne of metaphysics. These phenomena show that the order of nature, which materialism and naturalism would have us believe to be the absolute and only one, is a purely phenomenal, and therefore merely superficial, order that is based on the essence of things-in-themselves, an essence that is independent of the laws of that order. But the phenomena we are discussing are, at any rate from the philosophical point of view, incomparably the most important of all the facts that are presented to us by the whole of experience. It is, therefore, the duty of every scholar and man of science to become thoroughly acquainted with them.

The following more general observation may help to elucidate this discussion. Belief in ghosts and apparitions is inborn in man; it is found at all times and in all countries, and perhaps no man is entirely free from it. Indeed the great majority at all times and in all countries distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, as being two fundamentally different orders of things which nevertheless exist simultaneously. They unhesitatingly attribute to the supernatural miracles, predictions, ghosts, and magic; yet in addition they admit that generally in the last resort there is nothing absolutely natural through and through, but that nature herself rests on something supernatural. It is, therefore, easy to understand ordinary people when they ask whether this or that happens naturally or not. Now this popular distinction coincides essentially with the Kantian between phenomenon and thing-in-itself, only that this defines the matter more precisely and accurately. Thus the natural and supernatural are not two different and separate kinds of being, but are one and the same which, taken in itself, should be called supernatural since only while it appears, in other words, comes into the perception of our intellect and thus enters the forms thereof, does it manifest itself as nature; and it is precisely nature's merely phenomenal conformity to law which we understand by the term natural. Now for my part I have again elucidated Kant's expression, for I have called the 'phenomenon' [Erscheinung] in plain terms representation or mental picture [Vorstellung]. And now, if we bear in mind that, whenever in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena Kant's thing-in-itself appears even only occasionally from the obscurity in which he keeps it, it makes itself known at once as the morally accountable within us and hence as the will, we shall see also that, by showing the will to be the thing-in-itself, I have merely elucidated and sustained Kant's idea.

Considered, of course, not from the economical and technological, but the philosophical, point of view, animal magnetism is the most significant and pregnant of all the discoveries that have ever been made, although for the time being it propounds rather than solves riddles. It is really practical metaphysics, as magic was defined by Bacon; to a certain extent it is an experimental metaphysics. For the first and most universal laws of nature are set aside by it and hence it renders possible what was deemed impossible even a priori. Now if even in mere physics the experiments and facts are still far from showing us a correct insight, but for this purpose their explanation is required which is very often difficult to discover, how much more will this be the case with the mysterious facts of that empirically appearing metaphysics! Rational or theoretical metaphysics will therefore, have to keep abreast with it so that the treasures here discovered may be unearthed. However, a time will come when philosophy, animal magnetism, and natural science, that has made unparalleled progress in all its branches, will shed so bright a light on one another that truths will be discovered at which we could not otherwise hope to arrive. In this connection, we should not pay any attention to the metaphysical utterances and theories of somnambulists, for they are often paltry views which have sprung from the dogmas that were learnt by the somnambulist and are an admixture of these with what she happens to find in the mind of the magnetizer; they are, therefore, not worth considering.

Through magnetism we see also the way opened up to information concerning spirit apparitions which have at all times been just as obstinately affirmed as they have been persistently denied. Nevertheless, it will not be easy to come across this path, although it must lie midway between the credulity of our Justin Kerner, so estimable and meritorious in other respects, and the view, still prevalent in England, which admits of no other order of nature than a mechanical, so that everything going beyond this can be brought into line and concentrated the more certainly in a personal being who is quite different from the world and arbitrarily governs it. By opposing with incredible insolence and impudence every form of scientific knowledge so that the matter has gradually become a scandal to our continent, obscurantist English parsondom is mainly guilty of injustice through its encouraging and cherishing all prejudices that favour the 'cold superstition that it calls its religion' [17] and through its hostility to truths that are opposed thereto. Animal magnetism must have suffered such an injustice in England where, after it had been acknowledged in theory and practice in Germany and France for forty years, it was still untested and, with the confidence of ignorance, laughed at and condemned as a clumsy fraud. 'Whoever believes in animal magnetism cannot believe in God' was a remark made to me by a young English parson even in 1850; hinc illae lacrimae! [18] Yet even in the island of prejudices and priestly imposture, animal magnetism has at last raised its standard, to the repeated and glorious confirmation of the saying magna est vis veritatis et praevalebit, [19] that fine passage from the Bible at which the heart of every Anglican parson rightly quakes for his benefices. On the whole, it is high time that missions of reason, enlightenment, and anti-clericalism were sent to England with v. Bohlen's and Strauss's biblical criticism in the one hand and the Critique of Pure Reason in the other in order to stop the business of those self-styled reverend parsons, the most arrogant and impudent in the world, and to put an end to the scandal. In this respect, however, we may hope for the best from steamships and railways that are just as favourable to the exchange of ideas as to that of goods, whereby they greatly imperil the vulgar bigotry which is nurtured in England with such cunning solicitude and sways even the upper classes. Thus few read but all chatter, and for this purpose those institutions afford opportunity and leisure. That by the crudest bigotry those parsons degrade the most intelligent nation, which is in almost every respect the first in Europe, to the lowest level and thus make it an object of contempt is something that should no longer be tolerated, at any rate if we consider the means whereby they attained that end, namely by arranging the education of the masses entrusted to them so that two-thirds of the English nation are unable to read. Here their impudence goes to the length of attacking with wrath, sneers, and shallow ridicule in newspapers even the positive and universal results of geology. For they are anxious in all seriousness to uphold the Mosaic myth of creation, oblivious of the fact that in such attacks they are merely hitting an iron pot with an earthenware.* Moreover, the law of primogeniture is the real source of that scandalous English obscurantism that hoaxes the people, namely the law that makes it necessary for the aristocracy (taken in the widest sense) to provide for younger sons. If these are not fit for the Navy or Army, the' Church Establishment' (characteristic term) with its revenue of five millions a year affords them a charitable institution. Thus for the young country gentleman a 'living' is procured (also a very characteristic expression), either through favour or for money. Such livings are very often offered for sale in the newspapers and even for public auction,** although for decency's sake they do not sell the actual living, but the right of bestowing it once ('the patronage'). But as this transaction must be completed before the actual vacation of the living, appropriate padding is added to the effect that the present incumbent, for instance, is seventy-seven years of age. Also one never fails to praise the fine opportunities for hunting and fishing that attach to the living, and the well-appointed vicarage. It is the most shameless simony in the world. From this it is easy to see why in good, one might say genteel, English society all ridicule of the Church and its cold superstition is regarded as bad taste and rather unseemly, in accordance with the maxim quand le bon ton arrive, le bon sens se retire. [20] For this reason, the influence of the parsons in England is so great that, to the lasting disgrace of the English nation, Thorwaldsen's statue of Byron, her greatest poet after the incomparable Shakespeare, was not allowed to be set up in Westminster Abbey, her national Pantheon, with other great men. This was simply because Byron had been honest enough not to make any concessions to Anglican parsondom, but went his own way unhampered by them; whereas the mediocre Wordsworth, the frequent target of his ridicule, had his statue suitably installed in Westminster Abbey in 1854. By such baseness do the English write themselves down' as a stultified and priest-ridden nation'. Europe quite properly laughs at them. Yet it will not always be so; a future and wiser generation will carry Byron's statue in triumph to Westminster Abbey. Voltaire, on the other hand, who wrote against the Church a hundred times more than ever Byron did, gloriously reposes in the French Pantheon, the church of Sainte Genevieve. He was fortunate in belonging to a nation that does not allow itself to be led by the nose and ruled by parsons. The demoralizing effects of this priestly imposture and bigotry naturally are bound to appear. The effect must be demoralizing when parsons tell the people a pack of lies by saying that half the virtues consist in spending Sundays in idleness and blabbing in church, and that one of the greatest vices, paving the way to all the others, is 'Sabbath-breaking', that is, not spending Sundays in idleness. And so in those papers that often give accounts of criminals under sentence of death, they explain that their whole career of crime arose from that shocking vice of 'Sabbath-breaking'. On account of the above-mentioned charitable institution, unhappy Ireland, thousands of whose inhabitants die of starvation, must, in addition to her own Catholic clergy voluntarily paid for from her own resources, maintain an idle army of Protestant clergy with an archbishop, twelve bishops, and a host of deans and rectors, although not directly at the expense of the people, but from Church property.

I have already drawn attention to the fact that the dream, somnambulistic perception, clairvoyance, vision, second sight, and possibly spirit seeing are closely related phenomena. Their common feature is that when we lapse into them, we obtain an intuitive perception that objectively presents itself through an organ quite different from that used in the ordinary state of wakefulness, that is to say, not through the external senses, but yet wholly and exactly as if by means thereof. I have accordingly called such an organ the dream-organ. On the other hand, what distinguishes them from one another is the difference of their relation to the empirically real external world that is perceivable through the senses. Thus in the dream that relation is, as a rule, not direct at all, and even in the rare fatidical dreams, it is in most cases only indirect and remote, very rarely direct. On the other hand, in somnambulistic perception and clairvoyance, as also in sleep-walking [Nachtwandeln], that relation is direct and quite real; in the vision and possibly in spirit seeing it is problematical. Thus the seeing of objects in the dream is acknowledged to be illusory and hence one that is merely subjective, like that in the imagination. But the same kind of intuitive perception in sleep-waking [Schlafwachen] and somnambulism becomes wholly and really objective; in fact, in clairvoyance it even obtains a range of vision that is incomparably greater than that of a man who is awake. Now ifit extends here to the phantoms of the departed, it will again be acknowledged as merely a subjective seeing. Yet this does not conform to the analogy of that progressive development, and only this much can be asserted, that objects are now seen whose existence is not verified by the usual intuitive perception of someone who happens to be present and awake; whereas at the immediately preceding stage there were such objects for which the person awake first has to search at a distance or bide his time. Thus from this stage we know clairvoyance to be an intuitive perception which extends also to what is not immediately accessible to the brain's waking activity, but which nevertheless really and actually exists. Therefore we have no right at any rate forthwith to deny objective reality to those perceptions that the waking intuition is unable to follow even by covering a distance of space or an interval of time. Indeed by analogy, we might even suppose that a faculty of intuitive perception which extends to what is actually in the future and does not yet exist, might well be capable also of perceiving as present what once existed and now no longer exists. In addition, it is still not certain that the phantoms in question cannot reach even conscious wakefulness. They are perceived most frequently in the state of sleep-waking [Schlafwachen], and thus when we correctly see the immediately present environment, although we are dreaming; now as everything that we see is here objectively real, the phantoms appearing therein are presumed to be real primarily per se.

Moreover, experience now teaches that the function of the dream-organ, which as a rule has as the condition of its activity lighter ordinary sleep or deeper magnetic sleep, can also, by way of exception, be exercised when the brain is awake and hence that that eye with which we see dreams may well be capable of opening once when we are awake. There then stand before us forms so deceptively like those that enter the brain through the senses that they are confused with and mistaken for these, until it is seen that they are not links in the concatenation of experience which connects all those objects, consists in the causal nexus, and is what we understand by the term corporeal world. Now this comes to light either at once by reason of their nature, or only subsequently. A form thus showing itself will now be given the name of hallucination, vision, second sight, or spirit apparition, according to that in which it has its remoter cause. For its nearest cause must always reside in the interior of the organism since, as was previously shown, it is an impression coming from within which stimulates the brain to an activity of intuitive perception. It wholly permeates the brain and extends as far as the nerves of sense whereby the forms thus manifesting themselves then acquire even the colour and lustre as well as the tone and voice of reality. Nevertheless, in the case where this occurs imperfectly, those forms will appear only feebly coloured, pale, grey, and almost transparent; or by analogy when they exist for hearing, their voice will be abortive and sound hollow, scarcely audible, husky, or squeaky. If anyone who sees these looks at them with keener attention, they usually vanish because the senses that now turn with effort to the external impression actually receive this and, as the stronger that takes place in the opposite direction, it overpowers and represses that entire brain activity that comes from within. Just to avoid this collision, it sometimes happens that with visions the inner eye projects the forms as far as possible to where the outer eye sees nothing, into dark recesses, behind curtains that suddenly become transparent, and generally into the darkness of night which merely for this reason is the time of ghosts and spirits. For darkness, silence, and solitude eliminate external impressions and allow full scope to that brain activity that starts/rom within. And so in this respect, it can be compared to the phenomenon of phosphorescence which is also conditioned by darkness. Midnight in noisy company with the light of many candles is not the hour for ghosts or spirits, but only the midnight of darkness, silence, and solitude, since here we are instinctively afraid of the appearance of phenomena that manifest themselves as wholly external, although their immediate cause lies within ourselves; accordingly we are really afraid of ourselves. Thus whoever fears the appearance of such phenomena takes someone with him.

Now although experience teaches that the phenomena of the whole class we are considering certainly take place in wakefulness and are thereby distinguished from dreams, I am still doubtful whether this wakefulness is complete in the strictest sense. For the necessary division of the brain's power of representation seems to require that, when the dream-organ is very active, this cannot occur without a deduction from the normal activity, and so only under a certain lowering of the power of the waking outwardly directed sense-consciousness. Accordingly, I suspect that, during such a phenomenon, the consciousness that is certainly awake is veiled, as it were, with an extremely light gauze whereby it acquires a certain yet feeble dreamlike tinge. In the first place, it might be explained from this why those who have actually had such phenomena have never died of fright, whereas false and artificially produced spirit apparitions have sometimes had a fatal effect. Indeed actual visions of this kind do not, as a rule, cause any fear at all; but it is only afterwards when we reflect on them that we begin to feel a shudder. This, of course, may be due to the fact that, while they last, they are taken for living persons and only afterwards is it obvious that they could not be. I believe, however, that the absence of fear, which is even a characteristic of actual visions of this kind, is due mainly to the above-mentioned reason since, although we are awake, we are lightly veiled by a kind of dream consciousness. Thus we find ourselves in an element to which the fear of spiritual apparitions is essentially foreign just because in it the objective is not so abruptly separated from the subjective as in the workings of the corporeal world. This is confirmed by the easy and artless way in which the clairvoyante of Prevorst cultivates her spiritual acquaintances, for example, vol. ii, p. 120 (1st edn.), where she quite calmly lets a spirit stand and wait until she has had her soup. J. Kerner himself also says in several places (for example, vol. i, p. 209) that she seemed to be awake, but yet never entirely. At all events it might be possible to reconcile this with her own statement (vol. ii, p. II, 3rd edn., p. 256) that, whenever she sees spirits she is wide awake.

Of all such intuitive perceptions that occur in the state of wakefulness by means of the dream-organ and present us with wholly objective phenomena similar to intuitive perceptions through the senses, the immediate cause, as I have said, must always lie in the interior of the organism. Here, then, it is some unusual change which acts on the brain by means of the vegetative nervous system that is already related to the cerebral system and hence through the sympathetic nerve and its ganglia. Now through this impression the brain can always be stimulated only to the activity that is natural and peculiar to it, namely objective intuitive perception that has space, time, and causality as its forms, precisely as happens through action on the senses that comes from without. And so here also the brain now exercises its normal function. But its perceiving activity that is now stimulated from within even reaches as far as the nerves of sense which accordingly are likewise stimulated to their specific sensations from within as previously they were from without; and they endow the appearing forms with colour, tone, odour, and so on and thus invest them with the complete objectivity and corporeal reality of what is sensuously perceived. This theory obtains a noteworthy corroboration from the following statement of a clairvoyant somnambulist named Heinekens concerning the origin of somnambulistic intuitive perception: 'In the night after a quiet and natural sleep it at once became clear to her that the light develops from the occiput, thence flows to the sinciput and after this comes to the eyes and now renders visible the surrounding objects. Through this light that resembles twilight she clearly saw and recognized everything round her.' (Kieser's Archiv fur den thierischen Magnetismus, vol. ii, Pt. III, p. 43). The immediate cause of such intuitive perceptions that are stimulated in the brain from within must itself again have one which is accordingly its remoter cause. Now if we should find that this is not always to be looked for merely in the organism, but sometimes outside, then in the latter case that brain-phenomenon which hitherto manifested itself just as subjectively as mere dreams, indeed as a mere day-dream, would again be assured of real objectivity, that is, of actual causal connection with something existing outside the subject, from an entirely different direction and thus again come in through the back-door, so to speak. Accordingly, I shall now enumerate the remoter causes of that phenomenon in so far as they are known to us. In the first place, I here mention that, so long as these reside only within the organism, the phenomenon is given the name of hallucination; yet it discards this and receives others when a cause lying outside the organism is to be demonstrated, or at least must be assumed.

(1) The brain phenomenon in question is most frequently caused by grave and acute illnesses, especially high fevers that bring on delirium, where the aforesaid phenomenon is universally known by the name of fever hallucinations. Obviously this cause resides merely in the organism, although the fever itself may be brought on by external causes.

(2) Madness is sometimes, though by no means always, accompanied by hallucinations. Their cause is to be regarded as the morbid states that give rise to madness in the first instance and frequently exist in the brain, but often in the rest of the organism as well.

(3) In rare cases, fortunately completely verified, hallucinations occur without the presence of fever or any other acute illness not to mention madness, and these appear as human forms that bear a deceptive resemblance to real ones. The best-known case of this kind is that of Nicolai, for in 1799 he lectured on it at the Berlin Academy and had the lecture specially printed. A similar case is found in the Edinburgh Journal of Science by Brewster, vol. iv, No.8, October-April 1831; others are furnished by Brierre de Boismont, Des hallucinations, 1845, second edition, 1852, a very useful book for the entire subject of our investigation, to which I shall therefore frequently refer. Of course, it does not by any means give a thorough and detailed explanation of the phenomena in question; unfortunately, it is not even really systematically arranged, but is so only apparently. Nevertheless, it is a very copious compilation, carefully and critically prepared, of all the cases that in some way refer to our theme. In particular, observations 7, 13, 15, 29, 65, 108, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 132 relate to the special point we are now considering. But it must be assumed and borne in mind that, of the facts relevant to the whole subject of our present discussion, one that is officially recorded suggests a thousand like it news of which, for various reasons easily understood, has never got beyond the narrow circle of their immediate environment. And so the scientific consideration of this subject has dragged on for hundreds or even thousands of years with a few isolated cases, reality dreams, and spirit narratives, the like of which have since occurred hundreds of thousands of times, but which have not been officially made known and thus incorporated in literature. As instances of those cases that have become typical through endless repetition, I mention merely the reality dream recorded by Cicero in De divinatione, 1, 27, the ghost in Pliny's Epistola ad Suram, and the spirit apparition of Marsilius Ficinus, according to the stipulation with his friend Mercatus. But as regards the cases considered under the present number of which Nicolai's illness is typical, they all seem to have arisen from purely corporeal abnormal causes that are situated entirely within the organism itself, not only by virtue of their trifling contents and the periodical nature of their recurrence, but also through the fact that they always yielded to therapeutic remedies, in particular to blood-letting. And so they too come under the category of hallucinations and, properly speaking, should be so called.

(4) After these come certain phenomena (incidentally similar to them) of objectively and externally existing forms which are nevertheless distinguished by a significant and often sinister character that is intended for the person who sees them; and their real significance is frequently placed beyond doubt by the shortly ensuing death of the person to whom they appeared. As an example of this kind, we can consider the case, recorded by Sir Walter Scott in letter 1 of his On Demonology and Witchcraft, and also repeated by Brierre de Boismont. It is that of a law-officer who for months always vividly saw first a cat, then a master of ceremonies, and finally a skeleton, whereupon he wasted away and ultimately died. Of exactly the same nature is the vision of Miss Lee to whom her mother's apparition accurately foretold the day and hour of her death. It is narrated first in Beaumont's Treatise on Spirits (German translation by Arnold, 1721), then in Hibbert's Sketches of the Philosophy on Apparitions, 1824, again in Horace Welby's Signs before Death, 1825, likewise in J. C. Henning's Von Geistern und Geistersehern, 1780, and finally also in Brierre de Boismont. A third example is furnished by the story of Mrs. Stephens on p. 156 of Welby's above-mentioned book, who on waking saw a corpse lying behind her chair and died a few days later. Also in this category are the cases of self-vision in so far as they occasionally, though certainly not always, augur the death of the person who sees himself. Dr. Formey of Berlin recorded a very remarkable and unusually well-verified case of this kind in his Heidnischer Philosoph. It is found fully reproduced in Horst's Deuteroskopie, vol. i, p. I 15, and also in his Zauberbibliothek, vol. i. It should, however, be observed that here the apparition was really seen, not by the man himself who unexpectedly died very soon afterwards, but only by his relations. Of self-vision proper Horst reports a case, guaranteed by himself, in the second part of Deuteroskopie, p. 138. Even Goethe relates (Aus meinem Leben, eleventh book) that he saw himself on horseback and in a riding habit in which he actually rode at that very spot eight years later. Incidentally, this apparition really had the object of consoling him since it allowed him to see himself riding in the opposite direction to visit once more after eight years his beloved to whom he had just bidden a very poignant farewell. Thus for a moment it lifted the veil of the future in order to predict for him in his grief a reunion. Apparitions of this kind are now no longer mere hallucinations, but visions; for they present us either with something real or refer to actual events in the future. And so they are in the waking state what fatidical dreams are in sleep which, as I have said, refer most frequently to the dreamer's own state of health especially when this is bad; whereas mere hallucinations correspond to the ordinary insignificant dreams.

The origin of these momentous visions is to be sought in the fact that that mysterious faculty of knowledge which is concealed within us and is not restricted by relations of space and time and is to that extent omniscient and yet never enters ordinary consciousness, but is for us veiled in mystery-yet casting off its veil in magnetic clairvoyance-that that faculty of knowledge has once espied something of great interest to the individual. Now the will, as the kernel of the whole man, would like to acquaint cerebral knowledge with this matter of interest; but then this is possible only by means of the operation in which it rarely succeeds, namely of once allowing the dream-organ to arise in the state of wakefulness and so of communicating this its discovery to cerebral consciousness in the forms of intuitive perception either of direct or allegorical significance. It had succeeded in this in the above briefly mentioned cases. Now all these related to the future; yet even something happening just now can be revealed in this way; however, it naturally cannot concern one's own person, but that of another. For example, the death of my distant friend that takes place at this very moment can become known to me through the sudden appearance of his form, as realistic as that of a living person, without it being necessary for the dying man himself to contribute to this in any way through his vivid thoughts of me. On the other hand, this actually does take place in cases of another kind which will be discussed later. Here I have also introduced this merely by way of illustration, for under this number I am really speaking only of those visions which relate to the man himself who sees them, and which correspond to the fatidical dreams analogous to them.

(5) Again corresponding to those fatidical dreams that relate not to one's own state of health but to quite external events, are certain visions that stand nearest to the above. They presage not dangers that spring from the organism, but those that threaten us from without and naturally often pass over our heads without our being in any way aware of them. In this case, we are unable to establish the external connection of the vision. To be visible, visions of this sort require conditions of many kinds, the chief being that the subject in question is peculiarly susceptible to them. On the other hand, if this is the case only in the lower degree, as in most instances, then the declaration will prove to be merely audible and will then manifest itself by sounds of different kinds, most frequently by tapping. This usually occurs at night, especially in the early hours of the morning, and it is such that we wake up and immediately afterwards hear a very loud knocking on the bedroom door which has all the distinctness and clearness of reality. It will come to visions that can be seen, and indeed in allegorically significant forms that are indistinguishable from those of reality, only when a very grave danger threatens our lives or we have fortunately escaped such a peril, frequently without knowing this for certain. They then congratulate us, so to speak, and announce that we have still many years to 'live. Finally visions of this kind will also occur for making known an inevitable misfortune. Of the latter kind was the well-known vision of Brutus before the battle of Philippi that manifested itself as his evil genius, as also the very similar vision of Cassius Parmensis after the battle of Actium which is narrated by Valerius Maximus (lib. I, c. 7, § 7). In general, I imagine that the visions of this category have been a main reason for the myth of the ancients concerning the genius that is assigned to everyone, and also for the spiritus familiaris of Christian times. In the Middle Ages the attempt was made to explain them by astral spirits, as is testified by the passage of Theophrastus Paracelsus quoted in the previous essay: 'To understand fatum properly, it is that every man has a spirit that dwells outside him and has its seat in the stars above. He uses the bosses' (fixed types for works in high relief, from which we have the word emboss) 'of his master; it is he who presages and shows him forebodings, for they continue to exist after him. These spirits are called fatum.' In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the other hand, the words spiritus vitales were used to explain these and many other phenomena and, as ideas were lacking, these words appeared at the right time. The actual remoter causes of visions of this kind obviously cannot reside simply within the organism, when their relation to external dangers is established. Later on I shall investigate how far we are able to understand the nature of their connection with the external world.

(6) Visions which no longer concern at all the man who sees them and which nevertheless directly present exactly and often in all their details future events occurring soon or some time after them, are peculiar to that rare gift called second sight or deuteroscopy. A comprehensive collection of accounts of them is contained in Horst's Deuteroskopie, two volumes, 1830. More recent facts of this kind are also found in the different volumes of Kieser's Archiv fur thierischen Magnetismus. The strange faculty for visions of this kind is by no means to be found exclusively in Scotland and Norway, but occurs also in our country, especially with reference to cases of death. Accounts of it are found in Jung-Stillings' Theorie der Geisterkunde, §§ 153 ff. The famous prophecy of Cazotte seems also to depend on something of this kind. Even among the Negroes of the Sahara Desert second sight is frequently met with (see James Richardson's Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa, London, 1853). Indeed even in Homer (Odyssey, xx, 351-7) we find a description of actual deuteroscopy that bears a strange resemblance to the story of Cazotte. A perfect case of deuteroscopy is likewise reported by Herodotus, lib. VIII, c. 65. Thus in this second sight, the vision that here first springs as always from the organism, attains the highest degree of real objective truth and thereby discloses in us a connection with the external world of a kind entirely different from the usual physical one. As a condition of wakefulness, it runs parallel to the highest degrees of somnambulistic clairvoyance. It is really a complete dreaming of the real in wakefulness or at any rate in a state that occurs for a few moments at the height of wakefulness. Like the reality-dreams, the vision of second sight is also in many cases not theorematic, but allegorical or symbolical, yet, what is most remarkable, in accordance with fixed symbols that occur to all clairvoyants with equal significance and are found specified in the above-mentioned book by Horst, vol. i, pp. 63-9, as well as in Kieser's Archiv, vol. vi, Pt. 01, pp. 105-8.

(7) Now as a contrast to the visions that are directed to the future and have just been discussed, there are those that bring before the dream-organ appearing in wakefulness the past, especially the forms of those who were once alive. It is pretty certain that they can be brought about by the presence in the vicinity of the deceased person's remains. This very important experience, to which a whole host of spirit apparitions are attributable, has its most solid and certain confirmation in a letter of Professor Ehrmann, son-in-law of the poet Pfeffel, which is given in extenso in Kieser's Archiv, vol. x, Pt. 01, pp. 151 ff. But extracts are found in many books, for example in F. Fischer's Somnambulismus, vol. i, p. 24-6. Moreover, this experience is confirmed by many cases that are attributable to it, and of these I will here quote only a few. First there is that of Pastor Lindner which is mentioned in that very letter and also comes from a good source and which has likewise been repeated in many books, among others the Seherin von Prevorst (vol. ii, p. 98 of the first, and p. 356 of the third edition.) Then there is the narrative of this kind, given by Fischer himself in his abovementioned book (p. 252) from eyewitnesses, which he records for the purpose of correcting a short account of it found in the Seherin von Prevorst (p. 358 of the third edition). Then in G. I. Wenzel's Unterhaltungen uber die auffallendesten neuern Geistererscheinungen, 1800, we find, in the very first chapter, seven such stories of apparitions all of which have their origin in the remains of deceased persons found in the vicinity. The Pfeffel story is the last of them, but the others too are wholly characterized by the stamp of truth and certainly not of invention. They all state only a mere appearance of the form of the deceased person without any further development or even dramatic sequence. And so as regards the theory of these phenomena, they merit every consideration. The rational explanations for them that are given by the author may help to put the utter inadequacy of such solutions in a clear light. Further, the fourth observation in the above-mentioned book of Brierre de Boismont is to the point, as are also many of the spirit stories that are handed down to us from some authors of antiquity, for example, that of the younger Pliny (lib. VII, epist. 27), which is remarkable for its bearing entirely the same character as that borne by innumerable stories from modern times. Exactly like it, and possibly only a different version thereof, is the story given by Lucian in Philopseudes, 31. Then of the same nature is the narrative of Damo in the first chapter of Plutarch's Cimo, and also what Pausanias (Attica, I. 32) says of the battlefield of Marathon, which should be compared with what Brierre says on page 590; finally, there are the statements of Suetonius in Caligula, chap. 59. In general, almost all the cases might be attributable to the experience in question, where spirits appear always in the same place, and the ghost or apparition is confined to a definite locality such as churc~es, churchyards, battlefields, places where murders have been committed, central criminal courts, and those houses which for that reason have acquired an evil reputation and which no one will inhabit. From time to time one comes across such places, and I too in the course of my life have met with several. Such localities were the theme of a book by the Jesuit Petrus Thyraeus De infestis, ob molestantes daemoniorum et defunctorum spiritus, locis, Cologne, 1598. But possibly Brierre de Boismont's 77th observation furnishes the most remarkable fact of this kind. The vision of a somnambulist, mentioned in Kerner's Blatter aus Prevorst, tenth compilation, p. 6I, is to be regarded as a confirmation, well worth considering, of the explanation here given of so many spirit apparitions, in fact as a middle term leading to it. Thus this somnambulist suddenly saw a domestic scene which she described exactly and which might have taken place there more than a hundred years earlier; for the persons described by her were like existing portraits, although she had never seen these.

But the important and fundamental experience itself, here considered, to which all such events are attributable and which I call 'retrospective second sight', must remain as the primary phenomenon because till now we still lack the means to explain it. However, it can be closely associated with another phenomenon which is admittedly just as inexplicable. Yet in this way much is gained for we then have only one unknown quantity instead of two. This is an advantage, analogous to the well-known one we gain by referring mineral magnetism to electricity. Thus a somnambulist in a high state of clairvoyance is not limited in her perception even by time; but occasionally she foresees events actually in the future, and indeed such as occur entirely by chance. The same thing is achieved even more strikingly by those who have second sight and see corpses. And so events that have certainly not yet entered our empirical reality can nevertheless act on such persons and come within their perception out of the darkness of the future. In the same way, events and people, at one time real although no longer so, can act on certain persons who are specially disposed thereto and so can express an after-effect just as those others can express an effect in advance. In fact, this case is less incomprehensible than the other especially when such a perception is initiated and brought about by something material, such as for instance the mortal remains of the perceived persons which still actually exist, or by things that were more specifically connected with them, such as their clothes, the room they occupied, or what they set their heart on, the hidden treasure. Analogous to this is the highly clairvoyant somnambulist who simply through some physical connecting link with the distant persons, such as a piece of cloth worn by the patient on his bare body for a few days (Kieser's Archiv, vol. iii, Pt. III, p. 24-), or a lock of hair cut off, is said to report on the state of their health, is put in touch with them, and thus obtains their picture or image. This case is closely related to the one under discussion. As a result of this view, the spirit apparitions that are associated with definite localities, or the mortal remains of those who died there, would be only the perceptions of a reversed deuteroscopy which is thus turned to the past-a 'retrospective second sight'. Accordingly, they would be really what the ancients called them (for their whole conception of the realm of shades probably arose from spirit apparitions; see Odyssey, He. XXIV), namely shades, umbrae, [x], [21] manes (from manere, remnants, vestiges, traces, so to speak), and thus lingering echoes of departed phenomena of this appearance-world of ours which manifests itself in time and space, becomes perceivable to the dream-organ in rare cases during the state of wakefulness,  more readily in sleep as mere dreams, but most easily, of course, in deep magnetic sleep when the dream therein has been raised to sleep-waking [Schlafwachen] and this to clairvoyance. But they become perceivable also in natural sleep-waking which was mentioned at the very beginning and described as the sleeper's reality dreaming of his immediate surroundings and which precisely through the appearance of such heterogeneous forms first makes itself known as a state different from that of wakefulness. In this sleep-waking the forms of persons, who have just died and whose bodies are still in the house, will most frequently manifest themselves, just as generally, according to the law that this retrospective second sight is initiated by the mortal remains of the dead, the form of a deceased person can appear most easily to one so disposed, even in the state of wakefulness, so long as that deceased person has not yet been buried, although the form is then perceived only by the dream-organ.

From what has been said, it is obvious that the immediate reality of an actually existing object is not to be imputed to a ghost that appears in this way, although indirectly a reality does underlie it. Thus what we see there is certainly not the deceased man himself, but a mere [x], a picture of him who once existed which originates in the dream-organ of a man attuned to it and is brought about by some remnant or relic, some trace that was left behind. And so this has no more reality than has the apparition of the man who sees himself, or is perceived by others in a place where he does not happen to be. Cases of this kind, however, are known on reliable evidence and some are to be found in Horst's Deuteroskopie, vol. ii, Sect. 4. Goethe's case, already mentioned, is also relevant to what we are saying. Similarly, there is the not infrequent case of patients who at death's door imagine that they exist doubly in bed. A doctor recently asked one of his seriously ill patients how he was. 'Better now since we two are in the bed' was the reply; the patient died soon afterwards. Accordingly, a spirit apparition of the kind we are here considering certainly does stand in objective relation to the former state of the person who appears, but certainly not to his present state, for it does not take any active part therein, and so from this the continued individual existence of the person cannot be inferred. The explanation given is also supported by the fact that the deceased persons appearing in this way are as a rule seen in the clothes they usually wore, and also that a murdered man appears with his murderer, a horse and his rider, and so on. In all probability, most of the ghosts seen by the clairvoyante of Prevorst are also to be reckoned among visions of this kind. But the conversations she carried on with them are to be regarded as the work of her own imagination that furnished the text for this dumb show from its own resources and thus supplied its explanation. Thus by nature man attempts in some way to explain everything that he sees, or at any rate to introduce some connection and sequence and in fact to turn it over in his mind. Therefore children often carry on a dialogue even with inanimate things. Accordingly, without knowing it, the clairvoyante herself was the prompter of those forms that appeared to her. Here her power of imagination was in the same kind of unconscious activity with which we guide and connect the events in the ordinary insignificant dream, indeed with which we sometimes seize the opportunity for this from objective accidental circumstances, such as a pressure felt in bed, or a sound reaching us from without, an odour, and so on, in accordance with which we then dream long stories. To explain this dramaturgy of the clairvoyante, we must see what Bende Bendsen says in Kieser's Archiv, vol. xi, Pt. I, p. 121 about his somnambulist to whom her living acquaintances sometimes appeared in magnetic sleep when she then in a loud voice carried on long conversations with them. It says there that 'of the many conversations she had with absent persons, the following is characteristic. While the alleged answers were coming through, she was silent and appeared to be very attentive. During this time, she raised herself in bed and turned her head in a definite direction to listen to the answers of the others, and then put forward her objections to them. She here pictured to herself old Karen with her maid and spoke alternately to the one and to the other.-- The apparent splitting of her own personality into three different ones, as is usual in the dream, here went to such lengths that at the time I was quite unable to convince the sleeping woman that she herself created all three.' Therefore, in my opinion, the spirit conversations of the clairvoyante of Prevorst are also of this nature; and this explanation finds strong confirmation in the unutterable absurdity of the text of those dialogues and dramas that are alone in keeping with the intellectual outlook of an ignorant girl from the hills and with the popular metaphysics that has been drilled into her. To attribute to them an objective reality is possible only on the assumption of a world-order that is so boundlessly absurd and revoltingly stupid that we should have to blush at belonging thereto. Yet if the very prejudiced and gullible Justin Kerner had not secretly had a faint notion of the origin here stated of those spirit conversations, he would not have omitted always and everywhere with such irresponsible levity seriously and zealously to look for the material objects that are made known by the spirits, for example writing materials in church vaults, gold chains in castle vaults, children buried in stables, instead of allowing himself to be deterred from this by the most trifling obstacles. For this would have thrown some light on the facts.

I am generally of the opinion that most of the apparitions of deceased persons which are actually seen belong to this category of visions and that accordingly there corresponds to them a past reality, but certainly not one that is present and positively objective; thus, for instance, the apparition of the President of the Berlin Academy, Maupertuis, that was seen in the hall of the Academy by the botanist Gleditsch. Nicolai mentions this in his lecture, already alluded to, which he gave to that same Academy. Similarly, Sir Walter Scott's narrative in the Edinburgh Review and repeated by Horst in the Deuteroskopie, vol. i, p. 113, of the bailiff in Switzerland who, on entering the public library, caught sight of his predecessor sitting in the president's chair at a special council meeting and surrounded only by persons who were dead. It also follows from some relevant narratives that the objective cause of visions of this kind is not necessarily bound to be the skeleton or other remnant of a corpse, but that other things, at one time in close contact with the deceased, are also capable of this. Thus, for example, of the seven narratives in the above-mentioned book by G. I. Wenzel, six were concerned with the corpse, but there was one in which the mere coat that was always worn by the deceased was packed away immediately after his death; when after some weeks it was fetched out, it gave rise to his living apparition before his startled widow. Accordingly, it might happen that even slight traces, hardly perceptible to our senses, such as drops of blood long since soaked into the floor, or possibly even the mere locality enclosed by walls where someone under great fear or despair died a violent death, sufficed to evoke such a retrospective second sight in the person predisposed to them. The opinion of the ancients, mentioned by Lucian (Philopseudes, 29), that only those who died a violent death could make an appearance, may be connected with this. A buried treasure which was always anxiously guarded by the deceased and on which his last thoughts were fixed, might equally well provide the objective cause in question for such a vision, and perhaps the vision might then prove to be even lucrative. With this knowledge of the past that is brought about by means of the dream-organ, the above-mentioned objective causes fulfil to some extent the role which the nexus idearum assigns to its objects in the case of normal thinking. Moreover, it is equally true of the perceptions here in question, as of all possible perceptions in wakefulness through the dream-organ, that they enter consciousness more easily in the audible form than in the visible. Hence the accounts of sounds that are sometimes heard in one place or another are much more frequent than those of visible apparitions.

Now if in the case of the few examples of the kind we are considering it is reported that the apparitions of the dead had revealed to the man beholding them certain facts hitherto unknown, this is in the first place to be accepted only on the most certain evidence and till then should be regarded as doubtful. But then in any case, it could still be explained through certain analogies with the clairvoyance of somnambulists. Thus in isolated cases, many somnambulists have told patients who were brought to them how entirely by chance they had contracted the disease from which they had long been suffering and thereby have recalled to their memory an almost entirely forgotten incident. (Instances of this kind are in Kieser's Archiv, vol. iii, Art. 3, p. 70, the terror of falling from a ladder and, in J. Kerner's Geschichte zweier Somnambulen, p. 189, the remark made to the boy that he had previously been sleeping with an epileptic.) It is also worth noting here that some clairvoyants have correctly recognized the patient and his condition from a lock of hair or a piece of material worn by him, although they have never seen him. In Merck's Reiseerinnerungen aus London und Paris, Hamburg, 1852, it is related how Alexis accurately knew from a letter the present position of the writer and from an old needle-case the fate of the deceased donor. And so even revelations do not give positive proof of the presence of a deceased person.

Similarly, the fact that the apparition of a dead man has at times been seen and heard by two people may be attributed to the well-known infectious nature not only of somnambulism but also of second sight.

Accordingly, in the present number we have at any rate explained the great majority of authenticated apparitions of dead persons in so far as we have traced them to a common ground, to retrospective second sight, which in many such cases, particularly in those mentioned at the beginning of this number, cannot very well be denied. On the contrary, it is itself an extremely odd and inexplicable fact; but in many things we must be content with an explanation of this kind as, for example, where the whole edifice of the theory of electricity consists merely of a subordination of many different phenomena to a primary phenomenon that remains wholly unexplained.

(8) Another's lively and anxious thought of us can stimulate in our brain the vision of his form not as a mere phantasm, but as something vividly standing before us and indistinguishable from reality. In particular there are those on the point of dying who display this faculty and therefore at the hour of death appear before their absent friends, even to several in different places at the same time. The case has been narrated and verified so often and from such different sources, that I accept it without hesitation as founded on fact. A very fine example, vouched for by distinguished people, is found in Jung-Stilling's Theorie der Geisterkunde, § 198. Again, two particularly striking cases are the story of Frau Kahlow in the above-mentioned book by Wenzel, p. II, and that of the court chaplain in the previously mentioned work by Hennings, p. 329. The following case may here be mentioned as a very recent one. A short time ago, a girl patient died one night at the Jewish hospital here in Frankfurt. Early the following morning, her sister and niece, one living here and the other about five miles away, arrived on her instructions to inquire after her since in the night she had appeared to both of them. The superintendent of the hospital, on whose report this statement is based, declared that such cases frequently occurred. The Geschichte der Auguste Muller in Karlsruhe, previously mentioned, relates that a clairvoyante somnambulist who, during the highest degree of her clairvoyance, invariably fell into a catalepsy resembling a trance appeared before her friend as if in the flesh. It is repeated in Kieser's Archiv, vol. iii, Pt. m, p. 118. Another intentional apparition of the same person is communicated from a thoroughly reliable source in Kieser's Archiv, vol. vi, Pt. I, p. 34. On the other hand, it is much rarer for people in perfect health to be able to produce this effect; yet even here there is no lack of trustworthy accounts. The oldest is given by St. Augustine, admittedly at second hand, although he assures us that it is from a very reliable source, De civitate dei, XVIII. xviii. 2 in continuation of the words: Indicavit et alius se domi suae etc. Thus what one dreams here appears to another in wakefulness as a vision which he regards as reality. The Spiritual Telegraph of 23 September 1854, appearing in America, furnishes a case that is wholly analogous to this (apparently without knowing St. Augustine's) and Dupotet gives a French translation of it in his Traite complet du magnetisme, 3rd edn., p. 561. A recent case of the kind is added to the last-mentioned account in Kieser's Archiv, (vol. vi, Pt. I, p. 35). A wonderful story, bearing on this point, is related by Jung-Stilling in his Theorie der Geisterkunde, § 101, yet without stating the source. Several are given by Horst in his Deuteroskopie, vol. ii, sect. 4. But a most remarkable instance of the faculty for such appearance, transmitted moreover from father to son and very frequently practised by both even without their intending to do so, is to be found in Kieser's Archiv, vol. vii, Pt. ill, p. 158. However, there is an older instance, exactly like it, in Zeibich's Gedanken von der Erscheinung der Geister, 1776, p. 29, and repeated in Hennings' Von Geistern und Geistersehern, p. 746. As it is certain that the two were independently recorded, they serve to confirm each other in this very remarkable matter. Also in Nasse's Zeitschrift fur Anthropologie, vol. iv, Pt. II, p. 111, such a case is recorded by Professor Grohmann. Likewise in Horace Welby's Signs before Death, London, 1825, we find several instances of apparitions of living people in places where they were present only in their thoughts e.g., pp. 45, 88. Cases of this kind, narrated in Kieser's Archiv, vol. viii, Pt. III, p. 120 under the heading 'Second Self' by the thoroughly reliable Bende Bendsen, appear to be particularly trustworthy. Corresponding to the visions which are here considered and take place in wakefulness, are the sympathetic dreams in the state of sleep, that is, dreams that are communicated in distans and are accordingly dreamed by two persons at the same time and entirely in the same way. Instances of these are sufficiently well known; a good collection is found in E. Fabius, De somniis, § 21, of which there is a particularly good one in Dutch. Further, in Kieser's Archiv, vol. vi, Pt. u, p. 135, there is a very remarkable article by H. M. Wesermann who records five cases where, through his will, he deliberately produced in others precisely determined dreams. Now as the person concerned in the last of these cases had not yet gone to bed, she and another who was close to her had the intended apparition in wakefulness and it was exactly like reality. Consequently, in such dreams, as also in waking-visions of this class, it is the dream-organ that is the medium of intuitive perception. The above-mentioned narrative given by St. Augustine can be regarded as the connecting link between the two kinds in so far as here there appears to one man in wakefulness what another merely dreams he is doing. Two of these cases are of exactly the same nature and are found in Horace Welby's Signs before Death, p. 266 and p. 297; later ones are taken from Sinclair's Invisible World. Therefore however strikingly lifelike the person appears in visions of this kind, they obviously do not occur at all through an impression on the senses from without, but by virtue of a magic effect of his will, whence they emanate, on another person, and thus on the being-in-itself of another's organism that therefore undergoes a change from within. Now by acting on his brain, such change there stimulates just as vivid a picture of the person who acts in such a manner as could be produced only through an impression by means of light-rays reflected from the body of the one on to the eyes of the other.

The 'second selves' or 'doubles' here mentioned wherein the person appearing is obviously alive but absent and, as a rule, does not know of his apparition, suggest to us the correct point of view for the apparitions of the dying and the dead and hence for spirit apparitions proper, in that they teach us that an immediate actual presence, like that of a body acting on the senses, is by no means their necessary assumption. But this very presupposition is the fundamental error of all previous interpretations of spirit apparitions, whether they have been asserted or disputed. Again, that presupposition rests on our having taken up the standpoint of spiritualism instead of that of idealism. [22] Thus according to spiritualism, a start was made from the wholly unjustified assumption that man consists of two fundamentally different substances, a material substance, the body, and an immaterial substance, the so-called soul. After the severance of the two that occurs at death, the soul, although immaterial, simple, and unextended, was still said to exist in space, thus to move, to go about, and moreover to act on bodies and their senses from without precisely as does a body and accordingly to manifest itself exactly like this. Here, of course, the condition is the same real presence in space which a body seen by us has. All rational denials of spirit apparitions and also Kant's critical elucidation of the matter which constitutes the first or theoretical part of his Traume tines Geistersehers, erlautert durch Traume der Metaphysik, apply to this utterly untenable spiritualistic view of such apparitions. And so that view, that assumption of an immaterial yet mobile substance, which moreover acts on bodies as does matter and consequently on their senses as well, has to be entirely given up so that a correct view of all the relevant phenomena may be reached. Instead, we have to gain the idealistic standpoint whence we look at these things in quite a different light, and to obtain quite different criteria as to their possibility. To lay down the basis for this is precisely the purpose of the present essay.

(9) The last case coming under review is where the magic influence that was described under the previous number might still be exercised even after death. In this way, a spirit apparition proper would then take place by means of direct action and so to a certain extent the actual personal presence of someone already dead would occur which would also admit of a retrospective effect on him. The a priori denial of every possibility of this kind and the ridicule, in accord therewith, of the opposite statement can be due to nothing but the conviction that death is man's absolute annihilation, unless it is based on the belief of the Protestant Church. According to this, spirits cannot appear because, in conformity with the belief or unbelief that was cherished during the few years of earthly existence, they were for ever consigned immediately after death either to heaven with its eternal joys or to hell with its eternal torments, but they cannot come out to us from either. Therefore according to the Protestant belief, all such apparitions come from devils or angels, but not from human spirits, as has been thoroughly and adequately explained by Lavater, De spectris, Geneva, 1580, Pars II, c. 3 et 4. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, especially through Gregory the Great, in the sixth century had very prudently rectified this absurd and revolting dogma by interposing Purgatory between these desperate alternatives. It permits the apparition of spirits which temporarily reside in Purgatory and, by way of exception, that of others as well. This can be seen in detail in the book, already mentioned, De locis infestis, Pars I, cap. 3, seqq., by Petrus Thyraeus. Through the above dilemma, the Protestants saw themselves compelled in every way to maintain the existence of the devil merely because they could not possibly dispense with him when trying to explain those undeniable spirit apparitions. And so even at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the deniers of the devil were called adaemonistae with almost the same pious horror as are the atheistae even at the present time. Accordingly, at the same time, for example, in C. F. Romanus, Schediasma polemicum, an dentur spectra, magi et sagae, Leipzig, 1703, ghosts were from the very beginning defined as apparitiones et territiones DIABOLI externae, quibus corpus, aut aliud, quid in sensus incurrens sibi assumit, ut homines infestet. [23] The fact that trials for witchcraft which, as we know, presuppose a compact with the devil, were much more frequent with Protestants than with Catholics, may possibly have something to do with this. Yet, taking no account of such mythological views, I said just now that the a priori rejection of the possibility of an actual apparition of the dead could rest only on the conviction that through death a human being becomes absolutely nothing. For as long as such a conviction is absent, it is impossible to see why one being, in some way still existing, should not also manifest itself somehow and be capable of acting on another, although this other exists in a different state. Therefore, it is as logical as it is naive when Lucian, after narrating how Democritus had not for one moment allowed himself to be led astray by a spiritual mummery that was arranged to terrify him, added [x]. [24] Philopseudes, 32. On the other hand, if there is still in man something indestructible besides matter, then it is at any rate a priori inconceivable that that something which gave rise to the marvellous phenomenon of life should, after the termination thereof, be absolutely incapable of any influence on those still living. Accordingly, the matter could be decided only a posteriori through experience. But this is so much more difficult as, apart from all the intentional and unintentional deceptions of reporters, even the actual vision wherein a dead man reveals himself can quite well belong to one of the eight kinds so far enumerated by me; and so perhaps this may always be the case. In fact, even in the case where such an appearance has revealed things that no one could know, this could, in consequence of the explanation given at the end of number 7, still be taken as the form that the revelation of a spontaneous somnambulistic clairvoyance had here assumed. Of course, the occurrence of such a clairvoyance in wakefulness, or even only with perfect recollection from the somnambulistic state, is not positively demonstrable, but such revelations, as far as I know, have at all events come only through dreams. Yet there may be circumstances that also render impossible such an explanation. Therefore today, when things of this sort are viewed with much more frankness than ever before and are in consequence communicated and discussed with greater confidence, we have a right to hope that positive empirical information on this subject will be forthcoming.

Such, indeed, is the nature of many spirit stories that all explanations of a different kind have great difficulty as soon as they are regarded as not entirely false and untrue. But against this there is in many instances to some extent the character of the original narrator and partly the stamp of honesty and sincerity borne by his description, yet most of all the perfect resemblance in the wholly characteristic course of events and the nature of the alleged apparitions, however widely separated the times and countries may be from which the reports originate. This becomes most striking when it concerns very special circumstances that have been recognized only in recent times in consequence of magnetic somnambulism and of the more precise observation of all these things, such as occasionally takes place in visions. An instance of this kind is to be found in the extremely captious spirit story of 1697 which Brierre de Boismont relates in his 120th observation. It is the circumstance where invariably only the upper half of his friend's spirit was visible to a youth, although he spoke to him for three-quarters of an hour. This partial appearance of human forms has in our time been verified as a peculiarity that sometimes occurs in visions of such a nature. Hence on pages 454 and 474 of his book and without reference to that story Brierre mentions this peculiarity as a not infrequent phenomenon. Kieser (Archiv, vol. iii, Pt. II, p. 139) also reports the same circumstance of the boy Arst; yet he attributes it to the alleged seeing with the tip of the nose. Accordingly, this circumstance in the above-mentioned story furnishes proof that that youth at any rate had not invented the apparition. But then it is difficult to explain this in any other way than as arising from the action, previously promised to him and now carried out, of his friend who the day before was drowned in a remote district. Another circumstance of this kind is the disappearance of apparitions as soon as we deliberately fix our attention on them. This is found in the passage of Pausanias, already mentioned, concerning the audible apparitions on the battlefield of Marathon. These were heard only by those who by chance happened to be there, not by those who had gone there by design. Analogous observations from most recent times are found in several passages of the Seherin von Prevorst (e.g. vol. ii, p. 10 and p. 38) where it is explained from the fact that what was perceived through the ganglionic system is again argued away at once by the brain. According to my hypothesis, it could be explained from the sudden reversal in the direction of the vibration of the brain-filaments. Incidentally, I would here like to draw attention to a very striking agreement of that kind. Photius in his article Damascius says: [x]. [25] Inconceivable as it may be, exactly the same thing is reported from the Seherin von Prevorst, page 87 of the third edition. The character and type of spirit apparitions are so absolutely fixed and peculiar that anyone who is versed in the reading of such a narrative can judge whether the vision is invented, rests on an optical illusion, or is really genuine. It is hoped and desired that we shall soon obtain a collection of Chinese ghost-stories, so that we may see whether they too have essentially the very same type and character as our own and show a close agreement even in the attendant circumstances and details. And so this generally would afford strong corroboration of the phenomenon in question, in spite of such a fundamental difference between their customs and dogmas and ours. That the Chinese have exactly the same notion concerning a dead man's apparition and the communications emanating from him as we have, is evident from the spirit apparition in the Chinese tale Hing-Lo-Tu, ou la peinture mysterieuse, although here it is only fictitious. It was translated by Stanislas Julien and given in his Orphelin de la Chine, accompagne de nouvelles et de poesies, 1834. In this respect, I also draw attention to the fact that most of the phenomena that constitute the characteristic of the spirit phantom, as described in the above-mentioned works of Hennings, Wenzel, Teller, and others, and later of Justin Kerner, Horst, and many more, are to be found just as readily in very old books, for example, in three of the sixteenth century which I have before me, namely Lavater, De spectris, Thyraeus, De locis infestis, and De spectris et apparitionibus, Book two, Eisleben, 1597, anonymous, 500 pages in four volumes. For instance, such phenomena are knocking or tapping; the apparent attempt to force closed doors and also those that are not closed at all; the crashing of a heavy weight on the floor of a room; the noisy flinging about of all the kitchen-utensils, or of wood on the floor which is afterwards found to be at rest and in perfect order; the banging of wine-casks; the distinct nailing of a coffin when someone in the house is about to die; shuffling or fumbling footsteps in a dark room; tugging at the counterpane; the odour of mustiness; the great desire for prayer of the spirits that appear, and many others. On the other hand, it is hardly to be supposed that the authors of these modern statements, who are often very illiterate, had read those rare and ancient works in Latin. Among the arguments for the reality of spirit apparitions, the tone of incredulity is also worth mentioning wherein the learned narrators express themselves at second hand. For, as a rule, this tone bears so clearly the stamp of stiffness, affectation, and hypocrisy that the secret belief behind it can be faintly discerned. I wish to take this opportunity to draw attention to a spirit story of very recent date which merits closer investigation and better acquaintance than is given to it in its description by a very indifferent pen in the Blatter aus Prevorst, eighth compilation, p. 166. For, on the one hand, the statements concerning it are judicially recorded and, on the other, there is the very remarkable circumstance that the spirit which appears for several nights was not seen by the person to whom it related and before whose bed it revealed itself because she was asleep, but only by two fellow-prisoners, and then subsequently by her. She was then so greatly perturbed by this that of her own free will she confessed to seven poisonings. The account is in a brochure entitled Verhandlungen des Assisenhofes in Mainz uber die Giftmorderin Margeretha Jager, Mainz, 1835. The summary of the verbal statements is printed in Didascalia, a Frankfurt daily paper of 5 July 1835.

I have now to take into consideration the metaphysical aspect of the subject, for as regards the physical (here physiological) all that is necessary has already been given. What really stimulates our interest in the case of all visions, that is, of intuitive perceptions through the arising of the dream-organ in wakefulness, is their eventual relation to something empirically objective, that is to say, something that is situated outside and different from us. For only through such a relation do they obtain an analogy and a dignity equal to our ordinary waking intuitive sense-perceptions. Therefore of the nine possible causes of such visions which I have enumerated, it is not the first three resulting merely in hallucinations that are of interest, but rather those that follow. For the perplexity attaching to the consideration of visions and spirit apparitions springs really from the fact that, with these perceptions, the boundary between subject and object, as being the first condition of all knowledge, becomes doubtful, indistinct, and indeed quite blurred. 'Is that outside or inside me?' is asked by everyone-as it was by Macbeth when a dagger floated before him [26] - by everyone who is not deprived of caution and reflectiveness by a vision of such a nature. If one man alone has seen a ghost, it will be declared to be merely subjective, however objectively it stood before him. If, on the other hand, two or more saw or heard it, the reality of a body is at once attributed to it because empirically we know only one cause by virtue whereof several persons must necessarily have at the same time the same representation of intuitive perception, and this is where one and the same body, reflecting light in all directions, affects the eyes of them all. But besides this very mechanical cause, there might well be others of simultaneous origin of the same intuitive representation in different persons. Just as sometimes two persons simultaneously dream the same dream (see above under number 8), and therefore while asleep perceive the same thing through the dream-organ, so in wakefulness the dream-organ of two (or more) can enter the same activity, whereby a ghost, seen by them simultaneously, then objectively appears like a body. But generally speaking, the difference between subjective and objective is at bottom not absolute, but always relative. For everything objective is again subjective in so far as it is still always conditioned by a subject in general, in fact exists really only in this. And so in the last resort idealism is right. We often imagine we have abolished the reality of a spirit apparition when we show that it was subjectively conditioned. But what weight can this argument have with the man who knows from Kant's doctrine how large a share the subjective conditions have in the appearance of the corporeal world? Thus that doctrine shows how this world, together with the space in which it exists, the time in which it moves, and the causality in which the essence of matter consists, and hence in accordance with its who!!':form, is merely a product of the brain-functions, after these have been brought into play by a stimulus in the nerves of the organs of sense, so that here we are left only with the question concerning the thing-in-itself. The material reality of bodies acting on our senses from without naturally belongs as little to the spirit apparition as to the dream through whose organ it is in fact perceived; and so, at all events, it can be called a waking dream, insomnium sine somno; (cf. Sonntag, Sicilimentorum academicorum Fasciculus de Spectris et Omnibus morientium, Altdorf, 1716, p. 11); but at bottom, it does not in this way forfeit its reality. Like the dream, it is, of course, a mere mental picture or representation [Vorstellung] and as such exists only in the knowing consciousness. But the same thing may be said of our real external world, for this too is given to us in the first instance and immediately as representation and, as I have said, is a mere brain-phenomenon that has arisen through nerve stimulation and in accordance with the laws of subjective functions (forms of pure sensibility and of the understanding). If we demand for it a further reality, then this is the question of the thing-in-itself which was raised and prematurely settled by Locke, but'was then demonstrated by Kant in all its difficulty, in fact was given up by him as insoluble; yet it was answered by me, though under a certain restriction. But just as in any case the thing-in-itse1fwhich manifests itse1fin the phenomenon of an external world is toto genere different therefrom, so by analogy may it be related to that which manifests itself in the spirit apparition; in fact, what reveals itself in both may perhaps be ultimately the same thing, namely will. In keeping with this view, we find that, in regard to the objective reality of both the corporeal world and spirit apparitions, there is a realism, an idealism, and a scepticism, but finally also a criticism in whose interests we are now concerned. Indeed a positive confirmation of the same view is given even by the following utterance of the most famous and carefully observed clairvoyante, namely of Prevorst (vol. i, p. 12): 'Whether the spirits can render themselves visible only under this form, or whether my eye can see them only under this form, or my sense take them in only in this way; whether they would not be more spiritual for a more spiritual eye, I cannot assert this definitely, but almost divine it.' Is this not entirely on all fours with the Kantian doctrine: 'What things-in-themselves may be we know not, but we know only their phenomenal appearances' --?

The whole demonology and spirit lore of antiquity and the Middle Ages, and also the view of magic associated with them, have as their basis the still undisputed realism that was finally overthrown by Descartes. Only idealism, which has gradually matured in recent times, leads to the standpoint from which we can arrive at a correct judgement concerning all these things and so also as regards visions and spirit apparitions. On the other hand, on the empirical path, animal magnetism has at the same time brought to light magu that previously was always shrouded in obscurity and nervously concealed; and in this way it has made spirit apparitions the subject of dispassionate and searching observation and impartial criticism. In everything criticism always devolves on philosophy, and I hope that, just as mine from the sole reality and omnipotence of the will in nature has represented magic as at least conceivable and, when it exists, as intelligible, [27] so has it paved the way to a more correct view even of visions and spirit apparitions through the definite surrender of the objective world to ideality.

The positive incredulity with which every thinking man first learns of the facts of clairvoyance on the one hand and of magic, vulgo magnetic, influence on the other, and which is only tardily yielding to our own experience or to hundreds of cases of trustworthy evidence, is due to one and the same reason, to the fact that both of them, clairvoyance with its knowledge in distans and magic with its action in distans, run counter to the laws of space, time, and causality which are known to us 4 priori and in their complex determine the course of events in possible experience. And so in any account of the facts that relate to them, people say not merely 'it is not true', but 'it is not possible' (a non posse ad non esse); [28] yet on the other hand, the retort is 'but it is so' (ab esse ad posse). Now this difference of opinion is due to, and indeed again furnishes a proof of, the fact that those laws, known to us a priori, are not absolutely the unconditioned veritates aeternae of the Scholastics, are not determinations of things-in-themselves, but spring from mere forms of intuitive perception and understanding and consequently from brain-functions. But the intellect itself, consisting of these, has arisen merely for the purpose of pursuing and attaining the aims and ends of individual phenomena of will, not for grasping and comprehending the absolute nature and constitution of things-in-themselves. Therefore, as I have shown in the World as Will and Representation, vol. ii, chaps. 17 and 22, the intellect is a mere superficial force, essentially and everywhere touching only the outer shell, never the inner core of things. The reader who really wants to understand my meaning here, should again read those passages. Now since we ourselves also form part of the inner essence of the world, we succeed for once, by eluding the principium individuationis, in getting at things from quite a different direction and on quite a different path, namely directly from within instead of merely from without, and thus in getting possession of them through knowledge in clairvoyance and action in magic. Just for that cerebral knowledge we then have a result which it was actually unable to reach on its own path and which it is, therefore, determined to dispute. For an effect of this kind can be understood only metaphysically; physically it is an impossibility. On the other hand, a consequence of this is that clairvoyance is a confirmation of the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of space, time, and causality, but that, in addition, magic is also a confirmation of my doctrine of the sole reality of the will as the kernel of all things. In this way, Bacon's statement is again confirmed that magic is practical metaphysics.

We now recall once again the explanations given above and the physiological hypothesis there advanced, in consequence whereof all the intuitive perceptions that are carried out by the dream-organ differ from ordinary perception that constitutes wakefulness by the fact that in the latter the brain is stimulated from without through a physical impression on the senses, whereby it simultaneously receives the data and, in accordance therewith, brings about empirical intuitive perception by applying its functions, namely causality, time, and space. On the other hand, with intuitive perception through the dream-organ, the stimulation starts from the interior of the organism and is transmitted from the plastic nervous system to the brain that is thereby induced to make an intuitive perception which wholly resembles that produced in the ordinary way. Since, however, the stimulation to this perception comes from the opposite side and therefore takes place in the opposite direction, it must be assumed that the vibrations or inner movements generally of the brain-filaments also take place in the reverse direction and accordingly in the end extend to the nerves of the senses. These, then, are the last to be stirred here into activity, instead of being the very first as in the case of ordinary intuitive perception. Now if, as is assumed in dreams of reality, prophetic visions, and spirit apparitions, an intuitive perception of this kind is to be related to something actually external, empirically existing and hence wholly independent of the subject, accordingly to something that would to this extent be known through that perception, then this something must have come into some communication with the interior of the organism from which the intuitive perception is produced. Yet such a communication cannot possibly be demonstrated empirically; in fact, as it is assumed not to be a spatial one that comes from without, it is not even conceivable empirically, that is to say, physically. And so if it does take place, this must be understood only metaphysically. Accordingly, it must be thought of as a communication that is independent of the phenomenon and of all the laws thereof, as something that occurs in the thing-in-itself and is afterwards perceivable in the phenomenon, such thing-in-itself, as the inner essence of things, being everywhere the root of their phenomenal appearance. Now it is such a communication that we understand by the name of a magic influence.

If it is asked what is the path of this magic effect, the like of which is given to us in the sympathetic cure as well as in the influence of the distant magnetizer, then I say that it is that covered by the insect that dies here and again emerges full of vitality out of every egg that has hibernated. It is the path whereby, in a given population, a rise in the number of births follows an unusual increase in the number of deaths. It is the path that does not pass through time and space on the leading string of causality. It is the path through the thing-in- itself.

Now from my philosophy, we know that this thing-in-itself and thus also man's inner being is his will, and that everyone's entire organism, as it manifests itself empirically, is merely the objectification of the will, or more precisely the picture or image of this his will that arises in the brain. But the will as thing-in-itself lies outside the principium individuationis (time and space) whereby individuals are separated; and so the limits that result from that principle do not exist for the will. Now so far as our insight can reach when we step into this region, we can thus explain the possibility of a direct influence of individuals on one another, irrespective of their proximity or remoteness in space. Such influence proclaims itself as a fact in some of the nine previously enumerated kinds of waking intuitive perception through the dream-organ and often in sleeping perception. In the same way, from this immediate communication that is grounded in the being-in-itself of things we can explain the possibility of dreaming the real, of our becoming conscious of our immediate environment in somnambulism, and finally of clairvoyance. Since the will of one man is not impeded by any limits of individuation and thus acts on the will of another directly and in distans, it has, therefore, operated on the organism of the other man which is only his will itself intuitively perceived in space. Now if such an influence which on this path arrives at the interior of the organism extends to the guide and governor thereof, to the ganglionic system, and thence is transmitted up to the brain by breaking through the isolation, it can be elaborated by that organ, yet always only in a cerebral manner, in other words, it will produce intuitive perceptions exactly like those that come from an external stimulation of the senses. Hence it will produce pictures or images in space in its three dimensions, with movement in time, according to the law of causality, and so on. For the one, like the other, is just the product of the intuitively perceiving brain-function, and the brain is able to speak only its own language. However, an influence of this kind will still always bear the character and stamp of its origin and thus of the person from whom it has come; and it will accordingly impress this stamp on the form that it produces in the brain after so wide a detour, however different its being-in-itse1f may be from that form. If, for instance, through keen desire or other intention of the will, a dying man affects another at a distance, then, if this influence is very energetic, the form of the dying man will manifest itself in the brain of the other, that is to say, will appear to him exactly like a body in reality. But such influence that occurs through the interior of the organism, will obviously take place in the other man's brain more readily when this is asleep than when it is awake. For in the former case, the filaments of the brain have no opposite movement at all, whereas in the latter they have a movement the opposite of the one they are now to assume. Accordingly, a weaker influence of the kind we are considering will be able to make itself felt only in sleep through the stimulation of dreams. In wakefulness, however, it will possibly rouse ideas, sensations, and restlessness, yet everything always in accordance with its origin and bearing the stamp thereof. Thus, for example, it may produce an inexplicable longing or irresistible impulse to look for the man from whom it has come and, conversely, through a desire not to see him, to frighten away from the threshold of the house the man who wants to come, even when he was summoned and sent for (experto crede Roberto). [29] The well-known fact of the contagious nature of visions, second sight, and spirit seeing is also due to this influence which has its ground in the identity of the thing-in-itself in all phenomena. Such contagiousness produces an effect similar in result to that exercised by a corporeal object simultaneously on the senses of several individuals, in that on the strength of it, several at the same time see the same thing which is then quite objectively formed. The frequently observed immediate communication of ideas is also due to the same direct influence. It is so certain that I advise anyone who has to keep a perilous and important secret never to discuss the whole affair to which it refers with another who is not permitted to know it. For while he is discussing the whole affair, he is bound to have in mind the true facts of the case, and so a light may suddenly dawn on the other man in that it will furnish a communication against which neither reserve nor disguise offers any protection. In the elucidations to the Westostlicher Diwan under the heading 'Exchange of Flowers', Goethe narrates that two loving couples on a pleasure trip set each other charades: 'Very soon not only was each one at once guessed as it was uttered, but ultimately even the word which the other person thought and wanted to transform into the word-puzzle was known and expressed by the most direct divination.' Many years ago, my handsome hostess in Milan asked me in a very animated conversation at the dinner-table what the three numbers were that she had taken as a tern in the lottery. Without thinking, I correctly mentioned the first and second, but then gave the third incorrectly because her merriment confused me; I woke up, as it were, and now reflected. The highest degree of such an influence takes place, as we know, in very clairvoyant somnambulists who describe precisely and accurately to their interrogator his distant native land, his dwelling there, or other remote countries in which he has travelled. The thing-in-itself is the same in all beings and the state of clairvoyance enables the person therein to think with my brain instead of with his own that is fast asleep.

On the other hand, as it is for us quite certain that the will, in so far as it is thing-in-itself, is not destroyed and annihilated by death, we cannot absolutely rule out a priori the possibility that a magic effect of the kind just described might not also come from one already dead. Yet such a possibility can as little be clearly understood and thus positively asserted, since, although generally it is not inconceivable, it is nevertheless, on closer examination, open to great difficulties which I now wish briefly to state. Since we have to conceive the inner nature of man, which remained intact in death, as existing outside time and space, its influence on us who are alive could take place only through very many agencies all of which might be on our side, so that it would be difficult to determine how many of them had actually come from the dead man. For such an influence would first have to enter the intuitive perception-forms of the subject perceiving them; consequently, it would have to appear as something spatial, temporal, and materially operative according to the causal law. But in addition, it would also have to enter into association with his abstract thinking, since otherwise he would not know what to make of it. The man appearing to him can be not merely seen, but also to some extent understood in his intentions and in the influences corresponding thereto. Accordingly, that man would also have to comply with, and conform to, the limited views and prejudices of the subject concerning the totality of things and the world. But even more! Not only as the result of the whole of my discussion so far are spirits seen through the dream-organ and in consequence of an influence that reaches the brain from within instead of the usual one through the senses from without, but also J. Kerner, firmly upholding the objective reality of appearing spirits, says the same thing in his frequently repeated statement that spirits 'are seen not with the somatic eye, but with the spiritual'. Accordingly, although the spirit apparition is brought about by an internal influence that springs from the being-in-itself of things and hence by a magic influence on the organism, which is transmitted to the brain by means of the ganglionic system, such an apparition is nevertheless perceived after the manner of objects that act on us from without by means of light, air, sound, impact, and odour. What a change a dead man's assumed influence must have undergone during such a transference, so complete a metamorphosis ! Yet how can it be assumed that, during such transference and in such roundabout ways, an actual dialogue of statement and reply can take place, as is so often reported? Incidentally, here it may be remarked that the ludicrous, as well as the gruesome, element which attaches more or less to every assertion of an apparition of this kind and on account of which one hesitates to communicate it, arises from the narrator's speaking as of a perception through the external senses. But such a perception certainly did not exist since otherwise a spirit would necessarily be seen and perceived invariably and in the same way by all present. A perception which is only apparently external and has arisen as a result of an internal impression, but which is to be distinguished from the mere fantasy, does not happen to everyone. Therefore, with the assumption of an actual spirit apparition, these would be the difficulties to be found on the part of the subject perceiving it. Again, there are other difficulties to be found on the part of the dead man who is assumed to exert the influence. In consequence of my doctrine, the will alone has a metaphysical reality by virtue whereof it is indestructible through death. The intellect, on the other hand, as the function of a bodily organ, is merely physical and perishes therewith. And so the way in which a dead man could obtain knowledge of living persons, in order to act on them in accordance therewith, is highly problematical. Not less so is the nature of that action itself; for with corporeality the dead man has lost all ordinary, i.e. physical, means of influencing others as well as the physical world generally. Yet, if we wish to concede some truth to the incidents which are reported and asserted from so many different sources and definitely point to an objective influence of dead persons, then we must so explain the matter that, in such cases, the will of the dead man is still always passionately directed to mundane affairs. Now in the absence of physical means for influencing these, the will has recourse to that magic power which belongs to it in its original and hence metaphysical capacity and consequently in death as well as in life. I have already touched on this and have discussed in detail my ideas on the subject in the chapter' Animal Magnetism and Magic' of my work On the Will in Nature. Therefore only by virtue of this magic power would it be capable, perhaps even now, of that whereof it may also have been capable in life, namely of exerting a real actio in distans, without the assistance of a body and accordingly of influencing others directly without any physical intervention, by affecting their organism in such a way that forms were bound to present themselves intuitively to their brain, just as they are usually produced there only in consequence of an external impression on the senses. Indeed, as this influence is conceivable only as magical, that is, as one to be produced by the inner essence of things which is identical in all and hence by the natura naturans, [30] we might perhaps venture to take the bold step of not limiting it to human organisms, but of conceding it also to inanimate and thus inorganic bodies that could therefore be moved by it, as not absolutely and utterly impossible. if the reputation of respectable reporters were to be vindicated solely in this way. This we could do to obviate the necessity of bluntly censuring as false certain very trustworthy narratives like those of Hofrat Hahn in the Seherin von Prevorst. For this is by no means an isolated case, but in older works and even in modern reports there are many instances exactly similar to it. But here the matter certainly borders on the absurd; for, in so far as the magic way of acting is confirmed by animal magnetism and thus legitimately, even now it still offers only one feeble and questionable analogue for such an effect, namely the fact asserted in the Mittheilungen aus dem Schlafleben der Auguste K .... zu Dresden, 1843, pp. I 15 and 318, that this somnambulist, by her mere will and without using her hands, repeatedly succeeded in diverting the magnetic needle. The same thing is reported by Ennemoser about a somnambulist named Kachler (Anleitung zur Mesmerischen Praxis, 1852): 'The clairvoyante Kachler moved the magnetic needle not only by holding out her fingers, but also by using her eyes. She directed her glance to the north point at a distance of about half a yard and after a few seconds the needle turned four degrees to the west. As soon as she withdrew her head and turned away her glance, the needle returned to its former position.' In London the same thing was done by the somnambulist Prudence Bernard at a public meeting and in the presence of selected competent witnesses.

The view, here expounded, of the problem in question explains first why, if we intend to admit as possible an actual influence of the dead over the world of the living, such could take place only extremely rarely and wholly by way of exception, since its possibility would be tied up with all the conditions stated which do not easily occur together. Moreover, if we do not wish to declare as purely subjective, as mere aegri somnia, [31] the facts narrated in the Seherin von Prevorst and the kindred writings of Kerner, the most detailed and authentic reports on spirit seeing that have appeared in print; if we are unwilling to be satisfied with the assumption previously discussed of a retrospective second sight to whose dumb show the clairvoyante from her own resources would have added the dialogue, but wish to establish our case on an actual influence of the dead, then it follows from what has been said that the world-order, so revoltingly absurd indeed so infamously stupid, that emerged from the statements and actions of these spirits would not thereby obtain any objectively real basis. On the contrary, such a world-order would have to be established entirely on the strength of the intuitively perceiving and thinking activity of an exceedingly ignorant clairvoyante who is thoroughly at home with her beliefs in the catechism, although such activity was awakened by an influence coming from outside nature, yet necessarily remaining true to itself.

In any case, a spirit apparition primarily and directly is nothing but a vision in the brain of the spirit seer. Experience has frequently testified to the fact that a dying man can from without give rise to such an apparition. That a living man can also do this has in several cases been confirmed on good authority. The question is merely whether one who is dead can also do it.

Finally, when explaining spirit apparitions, we might still refer to the fact that the difference between those who were formerly alive and those now alive is not absolute, but that one and the same will-to-live appears in both. In this way, a living man, going back far enough, might bring to light reminiscences that appear as the communications of one who is dead.

If in all these remarks I should have succeeded in throwing even a feeble light on a very important and interesting subject with regard to which two parties have faced each other for thousands of years, the one persistently assuring us that 'it is!" and the other as obstinately repeating that 'it cannot be', then I have achieved all that I promised to do, and in fairness the reader had a right to expect this.  

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[b]Notes:[/b]

 1 ['In a certain sense the dream-picture is a perception.')

 2 ['The healing power of nature'.]

3 ['After midnight when the truth is dreamed'.]

4 [The German word is Schlafwachen.]

5 [The German word is Wahrtraumen.]

 6 ['Nature does nothing in vain.']

* With regard to the hypothesis in question, it is always noteworthy that the Septuagint usually calls seers and soothsayers [x] [ventriloquist]-in particular also the Witch of Endor. Now this may have been done on the basis of the Hebrew original, or in accordance with the ideas and their expressions that prevailed at that time in Alexandria. The Witch of Endor is obviously a clairvoyante and what is meant by [x]. Saul sees and speaks not to Samuel himself, but through the intercession of the woman who describes to Saul what Samuel looks like. (Cf. Deleuze, De la prevision, pp. 147, 148.)

 * In the dream we often attempt in vain to cry out or move our limbs, and this  is due to the fact that the dream, as a thing of mere representation, is an activity  of the cerebrum alone that does not extend to the cerebellum. Accordingly, the latter  remains in the lethargy of sleep, wholly inactive, and cannot fulfil its function,  as the regulator of limb movements, of acting on the medulla. And so the most  urgent commands of the cerebrum remain unfulfilled; hence the uneasiness. But if  the cerebrum breaks through the isolation and becomes master of the cerebellum, we  then have somnumabulism.

 * From the doctors' description catalepsy appears to be the complete paralysis  of the motor nerves, whereas somnambulism is that of the sensory nerves, for which  the dream-organ then deputizes.

 7 ['For the rest of your life your eyes will for you be dead and you will no longer  see anything except in sleep.']

* In Aus meinem Leben, Book I towards the end, Goethe tells us about the allegorical reality-dreams of Textor the magistrate.

8 [See Shakespeare, Henry V, Act II, Sc. 1.]

 9 ['The healing power of nature'.]

10 ['Nature does nothing in vain.']

11 ['Healing power'.]

12 ['The prime mover', 'the prime motive' (an expression used by Aristotle)].

13 ['Acting at a distance'.]

14 ['Being affected from a distance'.]

15 ['Seeing at a distance and acting at a distance'.]

16 ['Acting at a distance and being affected from a distance'.]

17 [From Prince Puckler's Briefe eines Verstorbenen.]

18 ['Hence those tears!']

19 ['Great is the power of truth and it shall prevail.')

* The English are such a 'matter of fact nation' [Schopenhauer's own words] that when, through recent historical and geological discoveries (for instance, the pyramid of Cheops being a thousand years older than the Great Flood), they are deprived of the factual and historical elements in the Old Testament, their whole religion also falls to the ground.

** In the Galignani of 12 May 1855, it is quoted from the Globe that the rectory of Pewsey, Wiltshire, was to be publicly auctioned on 13 July 1855; and the Galignani of 23 May 1855 gives from the Leader, and since then more frequently, a complete list of livings advertised for sale by auction. Appended to each were the income, local amenities, and the age of the present incumbent. For just as commissions in the Army can be bought, so also can livings in the Church. The campaign in the Crimea has revealed what manner of men the officers are and experience also tells us something about the parsons.

20 ['When good form appears, good common sense retires.']

 21 ['The shadow pictures of the deceased'; 'the feeble and impotent heads of  the dead'.]

22 Cf. World as Will and Representation, vol. ii, chap. I.

23 ['Apparitions and terrible visions of the devil by virtue whereof he assumes a body or something else perceivable by the senses in order to torment and alarm men'.]

24 ['So surely was he convinced that souls were no longer anything when they had quitted the body.']

25 ['There was a venerable lady who had an incomprehensible gift bestowed on her by God; for after pouring pure water into a glass tumbler, she saw on the bottom thereof the appearance of future events and, in accordance with what she had seen, she fully predicted them and said how they would come to pass. And the confirmation of the thing did not escape our notice.']

26 [Macbeth, Act n. Sc. 1.]

27 See the chapter 'Animal Magnetism and Magic' in my work On the Will in Nature.

29 ['From impossibility to unreality'.]

29 ['Believe Robert who experienced it himself.' (From Virgil's Experto credite, Aeneid, Xl. 283. It is found also in Ovid's Ars amandi, III. 511.)]

 30 ['Creating nature', as distinct from natura naturata 'created nature'.]

31 ['Dreams of the sick' (Horace, Ars poetica, 7).]

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