eyes, that we must not say a miracle is contrary to nature, but only above the commonly observed sequences of natural law, yet operated by some higher natural law which we know not? In certain aspects, the controversy about whether we should say above, beyond, or contrary to nature, is simply amusing, as very much a strife of words; but in others, it is serious. If it is meant, that nature-the realm of the necessary sequence of cause and effect -is all-inclusive, then we protest with all energy against this view of nature; for man's will is bound in no such laws, and nature is not, therefore, all-inclusive. But if it means simply what we have denoted, exclusive of all free beings, then we maintain that things are constantly done in it by man's interference contrary to what would take place if Nature were left to herself. Dean Trench, in his otherwise admirable book, has, with characteristic defect of speculative power, hinted at the existence of two natures. Arguing against miracles being counted unnatural, he says: "So far from this, the true miracle is an higher and a purer nature, coming down out of the world of untroubled harmonies into this world of ours, which so many discords have jarred and disturbed, and bringing this back again, though it be but for one prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher. The healing of the sick can in no way be termed against nature,' seeing that the sickness which was healed was against the true nature of man-that it is sickness which is abnormal, and not health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order."* Now this is very beautiful as poetry; but we certainly are not able to see how it serves the end for which it is advanced. The fiction of two natures is introduced for the purpose of warning us not to speak of miracles as violations of natural law, lest Spinoza may be too strong for us; but, as a pure fiction, it has no value. Then we are informed, notwithstanding the warning, that there are such violations; for "the sickness which was healed was against the true nature of man ;" and we are further, on this principle, obliged to believe, that the violations of law are much more frequent than the restorations, inasmuch as the cases of sickness-and they are all "abnormal" - are, on all hands, confessed to be much more fre *Notes on the Miracles, p. 15. VOL. XLIX-No. 1 quent than the cases of miraculous restoration. Two natures are thus brought before us: one, a "true nature;" the other, of course, a "false nature" and these are contrary the one to the other. One is tempted to ask, Whence do they both come? If from God, what has the Christian argument gained against Spinoza? Has it not grievously lost by this cumbrous mechanism of contradictory natures? How much wiser to cling to the old method, and assert God's right to interfere with the nature which he has made, when it shall appear for the interest of his moral creatures, whose sphere of being and action that nature is! While we are engaged on this subject of nature, it is interesting and even monitory to observe how man's knowledge and power in relation to it exist in a curious inverse ratio. Lord Bacon said, “Knowledge is power," and ever since his time man, following his method, has been contradicting his apophthegm. He has extended his knowledge into various regions. He has measured the orbits of the planets, watched the eccentric motions of the comet's fiery wheel, weighed the earth in his balances, and asserted the power of his science to predict the return of the eccentric visitor, and to determine the amount of perturbation produced by the neighborhood of one orb to another; and he has even made grand discoveries by watching such perturbations. Yet all this is unaccompanied by the least power over the things he knows so exactly. He can not bid them change or move. All move without him, whether he wills or not; he knows, and that is all. Meanwhile, among those sequences of nature where he might be able to introduce new causes, and thus deflect the action of natural forces towards a different result, knowledge is often wanting. In cases where his own health, or that of those dear to him, might be secured by the employment of power which is in his hands, his knowledge falls short, and leaves him helpless still. When he is in the full pride of knowledge, he feels his littleness can not grasp the scepter; and when the elements of power are subjected to him, then his knowledge forsakes him, and the secret is still hidden. Is not all this arranged as if God through it should say to him: "Cease, my child, to pride thyself on thy great acquirements and mighty powers. I have placed thee in the midst of this universe of mine to 6 teach thee humility-to bring thee to known thyself and the limits of thy strength. Look to the heavens, and admire their beautiful order; but learn, too, that the stars in their courses know not thy control. Look upon thyself, observe the strange complications of thy manifold nature, sway thy scepter too over the powers and elements of nature around thee; yet learn, that when thy trial comes, and the blast falls upon thee, thy power is helplessness; and let all this train thy soul to acknowledge in me thy wisdom and thy strength." And yet the vain creature presumes to think, that he can fix the limits of the Divine action, when his knowledge and his power are alike as nothingness. But we call Nature herself to witness that her sequences have been frequently interfered with-that new productions have come forth, and new laws and processes have been called into being. Ask the geologist what witnesses he has found in the rocks, and he will tell you, that he has gone down in his search to the foundations of the earth, where the igneous rocks have warned him that he had reached primeval creation; and in his upward journey he has met with mosses, and ferns, and palms, and higher vegetable productions; each of which, as standing at the head of a species, he is bound to regard as having been brought into existence separately and independently. Ascending higher still, he has discovered various forms of animal life, higher and lower; and he confesses, that he knew no other rational and scientific way of accounting for their existence, than that of a new creation-the action of a power above nature bringing them into nature. Ask him, if "development" is not equal to the production of these forms? and if he is a man of science, (not a sciolist,) he will tell you, that he knows not the voice of this stranger; that some of his weaker brethren have gone after him, and have been led into sad follies; but that in all his scientific observations he has never known the occurrence of the transition from one of these forms of life to another, he has never witnessed the operation, and the earth has disclosed to him no case in which it was progressing or performed. He will tell you, that this same development is an unblushing intruder into the domain of science, unlicensed and unrecognized. Such is the united voice of all the most eminent in geology and its kindred sciences; and if these new formations exist, and if no known powers or laws with which science deals can offer or suggest a cause of their existence, what remains but that we refer them to the action of a power above nature, bringing them into existence at a fitting time for the accomplishment of their purpose in its system? * (TO BE CONCLUDED IN NEXT NUMBER.) * Let us hear a word, on the subject of development, from one who himself has won scientific laurels. All the great living and recently deceased masters of physical science reject it. Does Owen, and Carpenter cry out against it. Does it it appeal to anatomy and physiology? Cuvier, evoke the aid of chemistry? Berzelius, Turner, and Liebig see its shallowness. Does it call on zoology for aid? Agassiz and Ehrenberg can refute its claims. Does it search the archives of geD'Orbigny can show how certainly they will fail ology for support? Sedgwick, Miller, Lyell, and there. Or, finally, does it appeal to botany? Hooker and Lindley, Torrey and Gray, know that it will certainly glean nothing to sustain it in that flowery field. The fact is, it is only here and there that a second-rate naturalist will sympathize at all with such dreamy views." - Dr. E. Hitchcock in Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. xi. p. 789. 1854. THE Emperor Napoleon lately purchased a very beautiful mountain dog. The owner of the animal asked one hundred and fifty francs for it. "Five hundred francs," said his Majesty, handing the money to the astonished peasant; "bring the dog to my house." The most amusing part of the affair is, that the man, who had never seen the Emperor, spoke to him without even raising his hat. When he found out to whom he had been speaking, he said: "O Sire! pray excuse me for having called you Monsieur." IT is mentioned as a discovery that the secretary of Mary Queen of Scots, Sir George Bailey, is buried in a small cemetery, at La Hulpe, near Brussels. He was born in the same year as the Queen, whose execution he witnessed, and had reached the advanced age of eighty-four when he died. From Fraser's Magazine. HALLUCINATIONS M. BRIERRE DE BOISMONT is well known in England as a physician of large experience among the insane, and as an author of mark on many subjects conected with the physiology and pathology of the mind. He is also favorably distinguished from most of his countrymen by the pains he has taken to make himself acquainted with the labors of his cotemporaries on this side the Channel, with some of whom he is on terms of intimacy. The latest production of his pen is now before us in an English dress. The work of translation has been faithfully performed by Mr. Hulme, who has also succeeded in condensing a work of which the chief defect was diffuseness and repetition, without impairing its value as an exponent of a very interesting and important subject. The intellectual repast provided for us by the author consists of nearly one hundred and fifty cases selected from the best authorities, French, German, and English, arranged in order, and serving as illustrations of the principles laid down in the early chapters of his work. The cases themselves, apart from the running commentary which connects them, and serves to enhance their value, would prove full of interest for the intelligent student; but when taken with the judicious remarks of M. de Boismont, they will be found to combine the charms of authentic fact, lucid arrangement, and sound philosophy. Before we proceed to place the author's labors under contribution for the edification of our readers, we must indulge ourselves in a brief dissertation on the meaning of the word hallucination. The discussions which took place on the occasion of the trial of Buranelli, respecting the meaning which ought to attach to the cognate words illusion and delusion must serve as our apology for the slight delay involved in this our verbal criticism. * On Hallucinations: a History and Explanation of Apparitions, Visions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulism. By A. BRIERRE DE BOISMONT, M.D. Translated from the French by ROBERT T. HULME, F.L.S., M.R.C.S. London: Renshaw. 1859. There are three words in common use among the learned in disorders of the mind-illusion, delusion, and hallucination; and it would greatly conduce to clearness and precision in the treatment of a subject in which these qualities are specially required, if we could arrive at some distinct understanding respecting these terms. Now, there should be no doubt or difficulty about the two words illusion and delusion. Illusion certainly should mean a false sensation, and delusion a false idea. The one (illusion) is an error of the senses, in which the mind, if sound, has no part; the other (delusion) an error of the mind, in which it is not necessary that the senses should participate. But the word hallucination, though perhaps used in France with the requisite precision, has not met with such judicious treatment in England. Among scientific writers it is sometimes used as synonymous with illusion, sometimes with delusion. Our older writers, too, both classical and medical, employed the word in different senses. Addison, for instance, says, of a mere typographical error, "This must have been the hallucination of the transcriber, who probably mistook the dash of the i for a t" and Byrom tells us of "some poor hallucinating scribe's mistake." Boyle, too, speaks of "a few hallucinations about a subject to which the greatest clerks have been generally such strangers." In the first two passages the word is used somewhat in the sense of an illusion, but in the third in the sense of a delusion. The two great physicians, Sir Thomas Browne and Harvey, evidently use the word in opposite senses; for Sir Thomas Browne, discoursing upon the sight, says: "If vision be abolished, it is called cocitas or blindness; if depraved, and receive its objects erroneously, hallucination." But Harvey, speaking of "a wasting of the flesh without cause," tells us that it "is frequently termed a bewitched disease; but questionless a mere hallucination of the vulgar." So that Harvey used the word in the sense of an error of the mind, Browne as an error of the sense of sight. As, however, the learned author of Vulgar free from illusions and hallucinations. Errors is defining the word, while Harvey uses it without any special weighing of its meaning-as two out of the three other authorities just quoted employ it in the sense which Sir Thomas Browne attaches to it, and most modern writers give it the same meaning-we will take an hallucination to be a depraved or erroneous action of the senses. If we are justified in so defining the word hallucination, we are perhaps equally justified in urging our psychologists to abandon the use of the term in favor of the more simple word illusion. But we are afraid that M. Brierre de Boismont would not support us in this attempt at simplification, for he employs the word illusion in contradistinction to the word hallucination, defining a hallucination as "the perception of the sensible signs of an idea," and an illusion "as the false appreciation of real sensations." We, on the contrary, are disposed to make the word illusion do double duty, and to release the word hallucination from all its engagements. Defining an illusion as an error of sense, we should recognize two kinds of illusion, the one consisting in the falsification of real, the other in the creation of unreal, sensations. Thus a gentleman who, fresh from turtle-soup, punch, venison, and champagne, should contrive to convert a combination of lantern, turnip, broomstick, and sheet into a ghost, would be afflicted with the first form of illusion; while another gentleman who, under similar convivial influences, should succeed in manufacturing a ghost out of the unsubstantial air of a bleak common, with no object visible for miles, would be the subject of the second form of illusion. But the question whether we shall or shall not accept our author's definition of hallucinations and illusions must not be allowed to divert us any longer from the more important contents of his work. We shall be turning these to the best account if we attempt with his assistance, to give our own connected and continuous view of all that part of the large science of psychology which relates to the senses in their healthy and in their disordered conditions. A man possessed of a sound mind in a healthy body, endowed with organs of sense of perfect construction, and keeping in all things within the bounds of temperance and moderation, would be absolutely His eye would present to him none but real sights, his ear would convey to him only real sounds. His sleep would not be disturbed by dreams. The only sensa tions not exactly corresponding to external objects which he would experience would consist in the substitution of the complementary colors for each other if he fatigued the eye by fixing it too long on some bright object. The golden sun would appear to his closed eyes like a violet colored wafer, a window frame would seem to have dark panes and light sashes, and a dark picture with a gilt frame would have its light and dark features transposed. The perfect physical organization which we have just supposed would also be quite compatible with the hearing of sounds and the seeing of sights which can only be traced to their true source by the light of science or experience. A person thus happily endowed might judge wrongly of an echo or be misled by a mirage. He might be frightened by the Giant of the Brocken or enchanted by the castles of the Fairy Morgana. His sensations would be real, though the cause might be indirect or obscure. The next onward step in the philosophy of the organs of sense is taken if, for the healthy man, we substitute the ailing child or less vigorous adult, on whose organs of sense sensations linger after the cause of them have been removed. Our author quotes from Abercrombie one case in which the eye' was the seat of such a persistent sensation; and he might have drawn from the same source another in which the sense of hearing was similarly affected. A friend of the Doctor had been for some time looking intently at a small print of the Virgin and Child. On raising his head, the two figures the size of life appeared at the end of the room, and continued visible for the space of two minutes. From persistent sensations, or sensa tions reproduced involuntarily after a short interval, the transition is easy and natural to sensations prolonged or reproduced by an effort of the will. The power of bringing back the pictures of visible objects in the dark, or of restoring sounds in the silence, does not seem to be a very rare one. Many children possess it, and there are artists who are able to turn it to account. The painter whom Dr. Wigan If we again assume as possible a perfectly healthy and perfectly temperate man, we can imagine such a man to be absolutely free from hallucinations, for we can imagine him free from dreams; but the vast majority of men have large experience of hallucinations as they occur in that imperfect sleep which favors the free play of the fancy. In this state we know that every sense may become in its turn the theater of impressions that are not distinguishable from those which external objects occasion in the waking man; and these illusions of the senses are blended with delusions of the mind that rival them in vividness and reality. represents as executing three hundred | It is to this involuntary work of the brain portraits in one year possessed this faculty that we would now invite the attention of of reproduction in an eminent degree. the reader. He placed each of a succession of sitters before him for half an hour, and looked at him attentively, sketching from time to time on the canvas. Having dismissed his last sitter, he began to paint the first of the series after a method described in these words: "I took the man and sat him in the chair, where I saw him as distinctly as if he had been before me in his own proper person; I may almost say more vividly. I looked from time to time at the imaginary figure, then worked with my pencil, then referred to the countenance, and so on, just as I should have done had the sitter been there. When I looked at the chair I saw the man." This painter won distinction, and earned and saved money, but he spent thirty years of his life in a madhouse. On his release his right hand was found not to have lost its cunning; but the exercise of his art excited him too much; he gave up his painting, and died soon after. Another step forward, and we come to the case of the child who covers himself with the bed-clothes and paints his miniature fancy scenes on his organ of vision: or of the poet who contrives, as Goethe did, to see what he fervently imagines; or of the actor Talma, who asserted of himself that he was in the habit of stripping his brilliant audiences of all covering, artificial and natural, till he left only bare skeletons behind, and that under the influence of the emotions excited by this strange spectral assembly he produced some of his most startling effects. Here let us pause a moment while we contemplate this wonderful phenomenon of dreams this strange compound of illusions and delusions this harmless analogue of madness this most instructive and most humanizing plea for dealing cautiously and tenderly with the sorest trial and affliction of humanity. Fatigued by bodily labor, wearied by mental applition, or tired of doing nothing, we escape from the discomfort of clothes, place ourselves in a position of rest, do our best to banish thought, shut out, if we can, both light and sound, and so fall asleep. There we lie, given up to the chemical changes and automatic movements of nutrition, circulation, and respiration, the pulse and breathing reduced to their lowest number, and every function of the frame to its lowest point of activity. Of the proximate cause of this state we know nothing, and the best guess we can make at it is that the balance of the circulation through the brain has been altered, and that whereas in our waking state the vessels conveying red blood to the head were kept filled by the more vigorous action of the heart, Sensation without the immediate pre- and the vessels conveying black blood sence of an object of sense is assuredly a from the head were comparatively empty, very wonderful phenomenon; but the in our sleeping state the order of things seeing and hearing, the feeling, smelling, is reversed, and the black blood predomiand tasting, of objects which have no ex-nates over the red. Be this as it may, a istence, as the result of an involuntary operation of the brain, without any cooperation of the senses, (for illusions have been shown to occur after the entire destruction of the organs of sense of which they might be supposed the scene,) are among the most extraordinary facts of our complicated and marvelous organization. Such then, without making any pretense to minute accuracy, are the most familiar facts relating to the reproduction of sensations or their voluntary creation in the absence of the objects which usually occasion them. perfectly healthy change in the functions of the brain, and one not involving any permanent alteration in its structure, is found by universal experience to be accompanied by illusions of all the senses, and strange delusions of the mind, the illusions and delusions being mixed up into scenes as apparently real as the mix |