Case CXLVII

"Brutus was about to move with his whole army. One dark night, having only a small lamp in his tent, which gave but a feeble light, his whole army being wrapped in silence and sleep, he was plunged in deep meditation, a thousand different thoughts revolving in his brain, when suddenly he heard some one enter his tent. Looking towards the aperture, he saw a monstrous figure with a horrible countenance, which approached him, and stood by his bedside, without speaking.

"In a firm voice he inquired: 'Who art thou? Art thou a man? Art thou a god? Wherefore dost thou come into my tent, and what wilt thou?' The phantom replied: 'Brutus, I am thy evil genius, and thou wilt soon see me on the plains of Philippi.' - * Well,' replied Brutus, unmoved, 'then we shall meet again there;' after which the phantom vanished. Brutus then called his attendants, who said that they had neither seen nor heard anything.

"When the day broke, he sought Cassius, to whom he related the vision. Then Cassius, who was a disciple of the doctrines of Epicurus, replied that the senses were deceitful, and that imagination created a thousand strange and hideous phantoms. 'Besides,' said he, ' your body, exhausted and heated by exertion, also heats, subtilizes, and perverts your imagination. It is not possible that demons and genii can exist; but even if there were such beings, it is absurd to suppose that they would assume the appearance and the voice of man.' "*

* Renaudin, Considerations sur les formes de l'Alienation Mentale observes a Stephansfeld, 1841.

This hallucination, whatever explanation may be given of it, had no influence on the conduct of Brutus; his acts were those of a superior man, and no one can accuse him of madness.

In the same catalogue we would place the dream of the Emperor Julian: "On the night before his death," says Ammianus Marcellinus, "a genius appeared to fly from him in consternation; it was the genius of the empire; the image, which everywhere met his sight on his coin, on his standard, and probably also in his tent. Disquieted by the scarcity which distressed his troops, aware that a religious faith contrary to his own existed in the heart of his army, and incited numerous enemies against him, and on the eve of a decisive battle, is it surprising that the sleep which overpowered him should be disturbed by sinister dreams? Is it surprising that the enthusiastic disciple of Theur-gic philosophers, whose doctrine ascribed so much importance and power to genii, should see in a dream the genius of the empire mourning, and ready to abandon him, and should believe in its reality?

Hallucinations do not alone consist in the reproduction of ideas habitual to individuals, they are also frequently reminiscences, recollections of sensations long since deposited in the brain, and recalled by the well-known law of association, to which a physical or moral cause communicates all the vivacity of actual sensations. There is no doubt that the material forms given by painters and sculptors to the spirits mentioned in the

* Dacier, Vie des hommes illustres de Plutarque, pp. 610 to 612, t. vii. Paris, 1731. In a note, Dacier says: "This discourse of Cassius is both true and false, for undoubtedly there are spirits; but it is with the appearance of spirits as with dreams, there are both false and true ones; some created by imagination, some sent by God." At the distance of a century, M. Le1ut writes, in his Amulette de Pascal (p. 15): "It were well to distinguish, as that great mystic Gerson recommends, between the inspirations of heaven and those of imagination." sacred books - forms so generally spread abroad in works, in religions edifices, pictures, and portraits - have been the origin of saints, angels, and demons as seen in a host of apparitions. It is therefore not surprising that when, by a certain organic disposition, superstitions or unenlightened persons are exposed to hallucinations, these forms should be their subjects.

Amongst cases which prove the influence of association in the phenomenon of hallucinations, we will relate the following: -