APPARITION, the name given to an il lusion involuntarily generated, by means of which forms not present to the actual sense are depictured with intensity sufficient to create a temporary belief in their reality. It is now generally held to he the result of the reaction of an excited imagination, renovating past feel ing or impressions, with an energy proportioned to the degree of excitement. But although the illusion thus generated is necessarily co existent with the state of excitement in which it has its origin, or, in other words, ceases to be active when the phenomena vanish, it does not therefore follow that the mind, when it regains its ordinary condition, becomes imme diately sensible of the hallucination under which it has for a time been laboring, or capable of distinguishing between perceptions of sense and phantasms of imagination. On the contrary, observation proves what theory equally sanc tions, that the conviction of reality generally outlasts the impressions which originally produced it; and that, so far from any sus picion of illusion being entertained, or any power of discriminating the actual from the imaginary being evinced, this conviction takes entire possession of the mind, in many instances maintaining its hold with a firmness which all the force of argument and reason is insuffi cient to overcome. Hence the tenacity, and, we may add, the universality of the belief in apparitions; and hence also the prodigious diversity of forms under which these spectral illusions are presented in the popular legends and superstitions —a diversity, in fact, which seems commensurate with the incredible variety of influences, whether morbific or other, by which the imagination may be excited, and past feelings or impressions vividly renovated in consequence of its reaction on the organs of sense. Sir D. Brewster has remarked as a physical fact that ((when the eye is not exposed to the impressions of external objects, or when it is insensible to these objects, in consequence of being engrossed with its own operations, any object of mental contemplation, which has either been called up by the memory or created by the imagination, will be seen as distinctly as if it had been formed from the vision of a real object. In examining these mental impres
sions," he adds, have found that they follow the motions of the eyeball exactly like the spectral impressions of luminous objects, and that they resemble them also in their apparent immobility when the eyeball is displaced by an external If this result shall be found generally true by others it will follow that the objects of mental contemplation may be seen as distinctly as external objects, and will occupy the same local position in the axis of vision as if they had been formed by the agency of light." This goes to the very root of the theory of apparitions, all the phenomena of which seem to depend upon the relative intensities of the two classes of impressions, and upon the manner of their accidental combination. In perfect health the mind not only possesses a control over its powers, but the impressions of external objects alone occupy its attention, and the play of imagination is consequently checked, except in sleep, when its operations are rela tively more feeble. But in the unhealthy state of the mind, when its attentiop is partly with drawn from the contemplation of external objects, the impressions of its own creation, or rather reproduction, will either overpower or combine themselves with the impressions of external objects, and thus generate illusions which in the one case appear alone, while in the other they are seen projected among those external objects to which the eyeball is directed, in the manner explained by Sir D. Brewster. It may be added that the reasoning applied to the impressions derived from the sense of sight is equally applicable to those received through the medium of any other sense,— as the ear, for instance, an organ which ministers abun dantly to the production of spectral illusions. This theory explains only those apparitions known to be subjective illusions, but it does not account for those objective apparitions, of which there are many and well-authenticated accounts. Modern science has explained some of the objective apparitions.