The other expression of
the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on
rational principles. Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by,
a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy
Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim
I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more
distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon which it rested.
"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind
had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when
these phantoms beset me. Yet, on all other occasions, save that of
their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their
existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding
sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting
the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.
[One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral
illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some
of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a
particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression
made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a
similar impression was formerly made.
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