The sensible signs which form the exclusive materials for hallucinations, everything that exerts a powerful impression on the mind, can, under certain circumstances, produce an image, a sound, a smell, etc. Thus, when a man has long resigned himself to profound meditation, he frequently finds the idea which has absorbed him clothed in a material form; on the cessation of the mental effort, the vision disappears, and it is explained by natural laws. But, should this man live at a time when apparitions, demons, spirits, phantoms, are a general belief, the vision becomes a reality; with this difference, that if his intellects are healthy, and his mind clear, this apparition has no power over him, and he can fulfil the duties of his social life as well as he who has no hallucinations.

This remark applies forcibly to the hallucinations of eminent men. To have been raised above the belief of their times, they should have inherited another nature, especially where the belief had nothing of a reprehensible character. In adopting it, they partook of a social error; but their enterprises, their actions, their doctrines, were those of philosophers, of moralists, of benefactors of their kind. They fulfilled a needful mission, and their names are justly inscribed among those who glorify humanity.

Who is not struck by the extreme differences which separate these from those who are hallucinated in our day? The former, powerful, logical, full of grandeur in their actions, are the representatives of an epoch, a want, an idea. The latter, feeble, undecided, illusive, are the expression of no desire; their missions are useless, aimless. The hallucinations of the one are consequent on the times; they have no influence on their reason; whilst those of the others prove an unhealthy individual organization, and are always more or less mixed up with madness.

An important point, which must not be lost sight of, is that, in the greater number of these, the hallucination was only an auxiliary to their thought. The illustrious men, so unjustly placed in the catalogue of lunatics, began by conceiving and arranging their plans, stamped with the impress of genius; and it was only when, having profoundly considered them in all their bearings their minds having attained the highest degree of enthusiasm, that prime mover of great actions - that they saw their thought take a form. The condition designated by the word hallucination, which we use for want of a better, was not in these cases a symptom of madness, but the result of the highest pitch of attention.

In reading the life of an illustrious personage, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is composed of a history and a biography; - history as the spiritual, biography as the mortal part. To judge of one without the other, would be to deceive ourselves and others. The upspringings of genius give rise to phenomena, which are frequently derived from the public voice; they are the rough materials, which disappear beneath the knife of the operator, to leave but the perfect result; they are, so to speak, hallucinations; but they have no effect upon acquired truths; and these exist as well before as after the life of him who has been made their interpreter. Considering its duality, we think that an idea is, like man, composed of two parts - the one spiritual, the other material; and hallucination, considered in its characteristic phenomena, is the material reproduction of an idea. It is the highest degree of tension of which the deep thinker is capable - a real ecstasy. Amongst people of strong conviction, where imagination is not enlightened by science, it is the reflection of general belief; but in neither case does it offer any obstacle to the free exercise of reason. It is an incontrovertible fact that the most celebrated men have been subject to hallucinations, without being in the least degree suspected of mental aberration.

But, however strongly we may protest against accusing these learned men of madness, we nevertheless admit that hallucinations, combined with loss of reason, have existed amongst a certain number of persons renowned in history.

The necessity of belief is a distinctive trait of our nature. If we take both faith and reason for our guides, we are surely led without obstacle to the end we would attain; but if we lean exclusively on one or the other, the result must be sadly erroneous. Faith without reason leads directly to superstition; and reason without faith almost always results in arrogance. The hallucinations which arise from these two sources of error will be as various as the habitual ideas and occupations of the individual. The craving to know, unregulated, will produce monstrosities of every kind. The desire of excitement, indulged in, will drive even the most enlightened nations into absurdities, and give an ephemeral triumph to impostors, until a new excitement arises to replace that which last existed. It would be impossible to give a luminous account of the hallucinations resulting from these two causes; they would be as numerous as the combinations of thought, and as diversified as character.

However much the false direction of the mental powers may be the cause of these hallucinations, they cannot all be so classed. Some are the result of disease, some of certain substances introduced into the system, etc. The primitive phenomenon is always the same; but the cause differs. We have, therefore, thought it well to separate it into two classes; namely, moral causes and physical causes. In treating of hallucinations and their etiology, considered psychologically, historically, morally, and religiously, we shall enter fully into such a development as the importance of the subject demands.

In a question of this nature, it is natural that our opinion should be required on apparitions mentioned in Holy Writ. It belongs neither to our principles nor to our convictions to evade a reply. We admit the authenticity of the recitals both of the Old and the New Testament; we believe in the intervention of the Divinity to establish a religion, the founder of which proclaimed his mission by the destruction of the worship of false gods, by the abolition of slavery, and the creation of family ties.