tongues unknown to their hearers, but these tongues are but those in which the speakers conversed in their infancy. And in the next place, what confidence can we place in the philological discernment of the "circle" whom Dr. Bushnell cites? Are not the renditions of the sight and hearing almost invariable perverted by nervous excitement? That such is the case, we will presently show more fully. Observe, also, that the most cautious phychologists maintain that phenomena such as these, or similar to these, are explicable on natural grounds. Thus, in Sir William Hamilton's edition of Reid, we find the following passage:

"No man can show it to be impossible to the Supreme Being to have given us the power of perceiving external objects, without any such organs;" that is, our organs of sense. "We have reason to believe that when we put off these bodies, and all the organs belonging to them, our perceptive powers shall rather be improved than destroyed or impaired. We have reason to believe that the Supreme Being perceives every thing in a more perfect manner than we do without bodily organs. We have reason to believe that there are other created beings endowed with powers of perception more perfect and more extensive than ours, without any such organs as we find necessary."

To this Sir William Hamilton adds the following note:

"However astonishing, it is now proved beyond all rational doubt, that in certain abnormal states of the nervous organism, perceptions are possible through other than the ordinary channels of the sense."

But let us go further and see whether phenomena apparently equally inexplicable are not susceptible of a satisfactory solution. Take, in this view, the following passage from Mrs. Crowe's Night Side of Nature:

"It is the opinion of these psychologists, however, that in the normal and healthy condition of man the union of body, soul, and spirit is most complete, and that all the degrees of disunion in the waking state are degrees of morbid derangement. Hence it is, that somnambulists and clairvoyants are chiefly to be found among sickly women. There have been persons who have appeared to possess a power which they could exert at will, whereby they withdrew from their

bodies, these remaining during the absence of the spirit in a state of catalepsy, scarcely if at all to be distinguished from death.

I say, withdraw from their bodies, assuming that to be the explanation of the mystery; for, of course, it is but an assumption. Epimenides is recorded to have possessed this faculty; and Hermotinus, of Clazomeres, is said to have wandered, in spirit, over the world, while his body lay apparently dead. At length his wife taking advantage of this absence of his soul, burned his body, and thus intercepted its return; so say Lucien and Pliny the elder; and Varro relates, that the eldest of two brothers, named Corfidius, being supposed to die, his will was opened, and preparations were made for his funeral by the other brother, who was declared his heir. In the mean time, however, Corfidius revived, and told the astonished attendants, whom he summoned by clapping his hands, that he had just come from his younger brother, who had committed his daughter to his care, and informed him where he had buried some gold, requesting that the funeral preparations he had made might be converted to his own use. Immediately afterward, the news arrived that the younger brother was unexpectedly deceased, and the gold was found at the place indicated. The last appears to have been a case of natural trance; but the two most remarkable instances of voluntary trance I have met with in modern times are those of Colonel Townshend, and the dervish who allowed himself to be buried. With regard to the former, he could, to all appearance, die whenever he pleased; his heart ceased to beat; there was no perceptible respiration; and his whole frame became cold and rigid as death itself; the features being shrunk and colorless, and the eyes glazed and ghastly. He would continue in this state for several hours, and then gradually revive; but the revival does not appear to have been an effort of will-or rather, we are not informed whether it was or not. Neither are we told whether he brought any recollections back with him, nor how this strange faculty was first developed or discovered-all very important points, and well worthy of investigation.

"With respect to the dervish, or fakeer, an account of his singular faculty was, I believe, first presented to the public in the Calcutta papers, about nine or ten years ago. He had then frequently exhibited it for the satisfaction of the natives; but subsequently he was put to the proof by some of the European officers and residents. Captain Wade, Political Agent at Loodiana, was present when he was disinterred, ten months after he had been buried by General Ventura, in presence of the Maharajah and many of his principal Sirdars.

"It appears that the man previously prepared himself by some processes which, he says, temporally annihilate the powers of digestion, so that milk received into the stomach undergoes no change. He next forces all the breath in his body into his brain, which becomes very hot, upon which the lungs collapse, and the heart ceases to beat. He then stops up, with wax, every aperture of the body through which the air could enter, except the mouth, but the tongue is so turned back as to close the gullet, upon which a state of insensibility ensues. He is then stripped and put into a linen bag; and, on the occasion in question, this bag was sealed with Runjeet Sing's own seal. It was then placed in a deal box, which was also locked and sealed, and the box being buried in a vault, the earth was thrown over it and trod down, after which a crop of barley was sown on the spot, and sentinels placed to watch it. The Maharajab, however, was so skeptical, that, in spite of

all these precautions, he had him, twice in the course of ten months, dug up and examined, and each time he was found to be exactly in the same state as when they had shut him up.

"When he is disinterred, the first step towards his recovery is to turn back his tongue, which is found quite stiff, and requires for some time to be retained in its proper position by the finger; warm water is poured upon him, and his lips and eyes moistened with ghee or oil. His recovery is much more rapid than might be expected, and he is soon able to recognize the by-standers, and converse. He says that, during his state of trance, his dreams are ravishing, and that it is very painful to be awakened; but I do not know that he has ever disclosed any of his experiences. His only apprehension seems to be, lest he should be attacked by insects, to avoid which accident the box is slung to the ceiling. The interval seems to be passed in a complete state of hibernation; and when he is taken up no pulse is perceptible, and his eyes are glazed like those of a corpse."

So with regard to the alleged supernatural celestial appearances. The Parhelia, or mock suns, we are told by the authority last quoted, are produced by the reflection of the sun's light on a frozen cloud. How readily these phenomena are magnified, you may learn from the ancient and modern records. In 1223, four suns were seen, of crimson, inclosed in a wide circle of crystal color. In the same year two giant dragons were seen in the air, flapping their monstrous wings and engaging in single combat, until they both fell into the sea and were drowned! Then, in 1104, there were seen four white circles rolled round the sun; and in 1688, two suns and a reversed rainbow appeared at Bishop's Lavington, in Wiltshire; and in February, 1647, there is an account and sketch of three suns and an inverted rainbow, which Baxter terms, "Binorum Pareliorum pavouevov." And because there were two lunar and one solar eclipses in 1652, it was called, as Lilly records, "Annus tenebrarum," or the dark year.

Among the wonders seen by the great traveller, Pietro della Valla, we are reminded by Mr. Dendy, was the bleeding cypress tree, which shadows the tomb of Cyrus, in Italy. Under the hollow of its boughs, in his day, it was lighted with lamps, and consecrated as an oratory. To this shrine resorted many a devout pilgrim, impressed with a holy belief in the miracle. And what was this but the glutinous crimson fluid exuding from the diseased alburnum of a tree, which the woodmen, indeed, term bleeding, but which the ancient Turks af

firmed or believed to be converted on every Friday into drops of real blood?

The red snow, which is not uncommon in the Arctic regions, is thus tinted by very minute cryptogamic plants, and the fairy ring is but a circle of herbage poisoned by a fungus.

5th. Morbid State of the Brain.

Most of the supposed cases of supernatural possession fall under this head. Take, as the epidemic manifestations of these, the convulsive movements which sometimes are shot into a congregation from the parapets of hyper-revivalist preachers. The preacher or the orator falls into convulsions, and the more impressible of his hearers follow. This was strongly exhibited in the Kentucky excitements of 1810-15. A man who was undoubtedly deranged, and who had in early life been a bold and enthusiastic hunter in the wilderness of which Western Kentucky was composed, became deeply impressed with a religious enthusiasm which exhibited itself in the same way that all his other impulses exhibited themselves—through the mechanism of the hunting mania. He became a sort of fanatical Der Freyschutz. In order to resist the devil and make him flee, he contended that it was necessary to tree him, and to give him chase, just as we would a wolf whom we found prowling among our sheep. As the meetings he convoked were held in a grove, one of the congregation suddenly started in pursuit of the devil, an exercise in which a number of others equally excitable, immediately joined. This was called the "running exercise," and became the first stage in the series of movements by which the meetings were afterwards made memorable. Climbing a tree after the devil was the next movement, which was called the "climbing exercise." In the ecstasy of the moment, one individual was siezed with a propensity to bark, a movement to which the rest were irresistibly impelled, though they used every effort to check the propensity. This exercise, which was called "treeing the devil," was accompanied with such a scene of barking and jumping as to destroy any former little appearance of reason. The epidemic spread to other fields than that of demon-hunting. On one

occasion one individual was seized with an insane propensity to play marbles during divine service, when others involuntarily joined him. And so far did the mania extend, that a series of other juvenile games were introduced and followed with the same irresistible vehemence by the congregation. Absurd as this may appear, the epidemic lasted for some months, and its history has now passed into the records of our Western States as part of the materials on which the annals of Western immigration will rest.*

We, therefore, are not speaking without support from analogy and from direct observation, when we say that while the theory of Satanic or supernatural interposition is without warrant, either in fact or principle, the facts on which the authenticated cases of spiritualism rest, so far as they can be reduced to a system, may be reconciled with the ordinary phenomena which regulate the influence of man upon man, as well as with that feature in the Divine policy which places on the faculties of perception the barrier of time, space, and sense.

In connection with this, let us observe the recognized effect of a mania of the imitative powers, as exhibited in the tarantula of Apulia, and the exercises of the Jumpers of Cornwall and the convulsionnaires of the Parisian miracles.

Cases of sporadic morbid derangement we have brought before us almost without number. Of these, Dr. Ferrier writes:

"It is well known that in certain diseases of the brain, such as delirium and insanity, spectral delusions take place even during the space of many days. But it has not been generally observed that a partial affection of the brain may exist, which renders the patient liable to such imaginary impressions, either of sight or sound, without disordering his judgment or memory. From this peculiar condition of the sensorium, I conceive that the best-supported stories of apparitions may be completely accounted for."

"When the brain is partially irritated, the patient fancies that he sees spiders crawling over his bed clothes or person, or beholds them covering the roof and walls of his room. If the disease increases, he imagines that persons who are dead or absent, flit around his bed; that animals crowd into his apartment, and that all these apparitions speak to him. These impressions take place even while he is convinced of their fallacy. All this occurs sometimes without any degree of delirium.

* See Dr. Stone's History of Fanaticism.