AP'PARI'TION (Lat. apparitio, an appear ance, from ad, to + to come forth, be visible). An illusion or hallucination in which objects, commonly human heings, are seen with such vividness as to be regarded as real. The hallucinations of delirium or insanity are not included under this term. Before the diffusion of modern seienee, there existed a well-nigh uni versal belief in the reality of apparitions. Greek and Roman poetry abounds with instances; folk lore owes much of its attractiveness to its wealth of spectres and phantoms, fairies and brownies, and its witches and ghost-haunted houses. Dr. Johnson voices the universality of this belief, and, incidentally, gives us a glimpse of a vein of superstition and credulity in his nature when, in his Hasselas, he causes Inilac to say: "That the dead are seen no more 1 will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent testimony of all ages and all nations. There is no people, rude and unlearned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed." It is not difficult to understand how the untutored savage, encouraged by the events of his dream conscious ness which led him to believe in a spirit-self ex isting apart from its body-self, should come to have an equally strong belief in the external ity of the apparitions which he saw in his yok ing consciousness. Indeed, authorities are not wanting who see in the attitude of early man to apparitions the most important, if not the unique, origin of religion. Whether this be true or not, we know that many social phenomena which present religious phases (e.g., witehcraft), have owed the possibility of their existence large ly to a widespread belief in apparitions.
The reign of universal superstition has, it is true, given way before the onward progress of the scientific spirit ; but the more subtle variations of the belief in apparitions have not as yet en tirely disappeared. There still prevails a belief in the supernormal nature of apparitions as man ifested in clairvoyance (q.v.) , telepathy (q.v.),
and spiritualism. Wo need refer, for example, only to the birth in 1S47 of modern spiritualism, as a direct descendant of the belief in "haunted houses." In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was instituted in England. One of its express purposes was to collect data upon the subject of apparitions. Much material has been published in the "Proceedings" of the Society, and in book form by Gurney, Myers, and Pod more. These authors express the relation of ap paritions to telepathy in the following passage: "This book, then, claims to show (1) that ex perimental telepathy exists, and (2) that ap partitions at death,ete.,are a result of something beyond chance, whence it follows (3) that these experimental and these spontaneous cases of the action of mind on mind are in some way allied!' The opposing position is that of Buckley, who asserts that "before endeavoring to explain how phenomena exist, it is necessary to determine precisely what exists; and so long as it is pos sible to find a rational explanation of what un questionably is. there is no reason to suspect, and it is superstition to assume, the operation of supernatural causes." If we apply this cri terion to the lately collected evidence for appari tions, we must discount for errors of observa tion, for errors of memory, and for the strong influence of autosuggestion (q.v.). We shall then find that we have left certain unexplained phenomena. Those who do not believe in ap paritions account for these as illusions or hal lucinations, (q.v.).
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Buckley, Faith Healing, ChrisBibliography. Buckley, Faith Healing, Chris- tian ,‘4eienee, and Kindred Phenomena (New York, 1892) ; Ilibbert, N•etehes of the Philosophy of Apparitions (London, 1524) ; Gurney, Myers, and Podmo•e, Phantasms of the Living (London, 185(i) : Podmore. .t pparitions and Thonght Transference (London. 15951 ; Tyler, Primitive Culture (New York, 1571).