he was alone in his drawing-room, he was so haunted by a spectral corps de ballet, that the very furniture was, as it were, converted into phantoms. To release himself from this unwelcome intrusion he retired to his country house, and here, for a while, he obtained the quiet which he sought. But it chanced that the furniture of his town house was sent to him in the country, and on the instant that his eyes fell on his drawing-room chairs and tables, the illusion came afresh on his mind. By the influence of association the green figurantes came frisking and capering into his room, shouting in his unwilling ears, “Here we are! here we are!”
It is not, however, essential that there be substance at all to excite these spectres. Idea alone is sufficient.
Do you think it strange that a ghost should appear fleshless and shadowy without some supernatural influence? Be assured that the only influence exists in the sublime and intricate workings of that mind which in its pure state was itself an emanation from the Deity; which is only shadowed by illusion while in its earthly union with the brain, and which, on the dissolution of that brain, will again live uncombined, a changeless and eternal spirit.
It is as easy to believe the power of mind in conjuring up a spectre as in entertaining a simple thought: it is not strange that this thought may appear embodied, especially if the external senses be shut: if we think of a distant friend, do we not see a form in our mind’s eye, and if this idea be intensely defined, does it not become a phantom?
“Phantasma est sentiendi actus, neque differt a sensione aliter quam fieri differt a factum esse.”
“A phantom is an act of thinking,” &c.
You have dipped deeply into Hobbes, Astrophel, and will correct me if I misquote this philosopher of Malmsbury.
It was in Paris, at the soirée of Mons. Bellart, and a few days after the death of Marshal Ney, the servant, ushering in the Mareschal Aîné, announced Mons. Le Mareschal Ney. We were startled; and may I confess to you, that the eidōlon of the Prince of Moskwa was for a moment as perfect to my sight as reality?
Now it is as easy to imagine a fairy infinitely small as a giant infinitely large. Between an idea and a phantom, then, there is only a difference in degree; their essence is the same as between the simple and transient thought of a child, and the intense and beautiful ideas of a Shakspere, a Milton, or a Dante.
“Consider your own conceptions,” said Imlac, “you will find substance without extension. An ideal form is no less real than material, but yet it has no extension.”
You hear I adopt the word idea, as referring to the organ of vision, but sight is not the only sense subject to illusion. Hearing, taste, smell, touch, may be thus perverted, because the original impression was on the focus of all the senses, the brain.
Indeed, two of these illusions are often synchronous: as when a deep sepulchral voice is uttered by a thin filmy spectre, like the ghosts of Ossian, through which the moonbeams and the stars were seen to glimmer. But the illusion of the eye is by far the most common, and hence our adopted terms refer chiefly to the sight: as spectre, phantom, phantasm, apparition, eidōlon, ghost, shadow, shade.
The ghost then is nothing more than an intense idea. And as I have caught the mood of story-telling, listen to some analogies of those deep impressions on the mind which are the spring of all this phantasy.
That destructive brainworm, Demonomania, is often excited in the mind of a proselyte by designing religious fanatics. Let the life of the selected person be ever so virtuous and exemplary, she (for it is usually on the softer sex that these impostures are practised) becomes convinced of the influence of the demon over her, and she is thus criminally taught the necessity of conversion—is won over to the erroneous doctrine of capricious and unqualified election.
These miseries do not always spring from self-interested impostors. The parent and the nurse, in addition to the nursery tales of fairies and of genii, too often inspire the minds of children with these diabolical phantoms. The effect is always detrimental—too often permanently destructive. I will quote one case from the fourth volume of the Psychological Magazine, related by a student of the university of Jena.—“A young girl, about nine or ten years old, had spent her birth-day with several companions of her own age, in all the gaiety of youthful amusement. Her parents were of a rigorous devout sect, and had filled the child’s head with a number of strange and horrid notions about the devil, hell, and eternal damnation. In the evening, as she was retiring to rest, the devil appeared to her, and threatened to devour her. She gave a loud shriek, fled to the apartment where her parents were, and fell down apparently dead at their feet. A physician was called in, and she began to recover herself in a few hours. She then related what had happened, adding, that she was sure she was to be damned. This accident was immediately followed by a severe and tedious nervous complaint.”
The ghost will not appear to tell us what will happen, but it may rise, and with awful solemnity too, to tell us that which has happened. Such is the phantom of remorse—the shadow of conscience—which is indeed a natural penalty: a crime that carries with it its own consecutive punishment. Were the lattice of Momus fixed in the bosom, that window through which the springs of passion could be seen, there would be, I fear, a dark spot on almost every heart—as there is, to quote the Italian proverb, “a skeleton in every house.” Of these pangs of memory, the pages both of history and fiction are teeming. Not in the visions of sleep alone, but in the glare of noonday, the apparition of a victim comes upon the guilty mind—
“As when a gryphon through the wilderness,
With winged course, o’er hill and moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth,
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold.”
Brutus, and Richard Plantagenet, and Clarence, and Macbeth, and Manfred, and Lorenzo, and Wallace, and Marmion, are but the archetypes of a very numerous family in real life—for Shakspere, and Byron, and Schiller, and Scott, have painted in high relief these portraits from the life.
Many a real Manfred has trembled as he called up the phantom of Astarte; many a modern Brutus has gazed at midnight on the evil spirit of his Cæsar; many a modern Macbeth points to the vacant chair of his Banquo, the ghost in his seat, and he mentally exclaims—“Hence, horrible shadow! unreal mockery, hence!”
Ida. Aye, and many a false heart, like Marmion, hears, as his life ebbs on the battle-field, the phantom voice of Constance Beverly:
“The monk, with unavailing cares,
Exhausted all the church’s prayers.
Ever he said, that, close and near,
A lady’s voice was in his ear,
And that the priest he could not hear,
For that she ever sung:
‘In the lost battle, borne down by the flying,
Where mingles war’s rattle with groans of the dying’—
So the notes rung.”
We read in Moreton an exquisite story of the trial of a murderer, who had with firmness pleaded—“not guilty.” On a sudden, casting his eyes on the witness-box, he exclaimed, “This is not fair; no one is allowed to be witness in his own case.” The box was empty, as you may suppose; but the eye of his conscience saw his bleeding victim glaring on him, and ready to swear to his murder. He felt that his fate was sealed, and pleaded guilty to the crime.
“——Deeds are done on earth,
Which have their punishment ere the earth closes
Upon the perpetrators. Be it the working
Of the remorse-stained fancy, or the vision
Distinct and real of unearthly being:
All ages witness that, beside the couch
Of the fell homicide, oft stalks the ghost
Of