and who died in 1781. For some time a calm resignation to the divine will had been observed during the short intervals of reason. A month before her death she at length awoke from her long dream. Those who had seen and known her before this time, now knew her no longer, so increased and expanded were the powers of her mind and soul, and so noble was her language. She spoke the most exalted truths with a distinctness and inward clearness which is seldom met with in common life. People crowded round her bed of sickness, and all who saw her admitted that if during the long space of her affliction she had been in communication with the most enlightened persons, her comprehensive powers and knowledge could not have been greater than they now were. (Steinbeck, p. 538).

To that abnormal somnambulism which is similar in character to the manifestations of delirium and the visions of insanity, belong those conditions which are either produced by chance or by the use of certain poisons. In such cases we find a certain poisonous intoxication and an exaltation of the soul which usually leave behind great weakness and depression. To these belong all narcotics. Passavant has collected > many well-authenticated examples in his "Investigations concerning the Magnetism of Life." Acosta states that the Indian dancing girls drug wine with the seeds of the Datura stramonium. Whoever is so unfortunate, he farther says, as to partake of it, is for some time perfectly unconscious. He often, however, speaks with others, and gives answers as if he were in the full possession of his senses, although he has no control over his actions, is perfectly ignorant of whom he is with, and loses all remembrance of what has taken place when he awakes. (De opii usu, Doringio, Jen. 1620, p. 77). According to Gassandi, a shepherd in Provence produced visions and prophesied through the use of Deadly Nightshade. The Egyptians prepare an intoxicating substance from hemp, called Assis. They roll it into balls of the size of a chestnut. After having swallowed a few, they › experience ecstatic visions.

Johann Wier mentions a plant in the Lebanon (Theangelides) which, if eaten, causes persons to prophesy. (Johann. Wierus de lamiis, § s.)

Kämpfer informs us that, at a festival in Persia, a drink

was brought to him containing opium. After drinking it he experienced an inexpressible happiness. Afterwards he imagined himself to be sitting on a horse which flew through the air. (Pinel, Nosograph, Cl. iv. No. 97.) A similar feeling of flying through the air among the clouds is produced especially by henbane.

Here our thoughts naturally turn to the so-called witches of the middle ages, who maintained that they did so-for instance, riding to the Blocksberg; and it is well known that they used henbane internally as a magic drink, and ontwardly as an ointment. However, this does not by any means fully explain all the stories related of witches during the middle ages. (Passavant, p. 244.)

By means of the Napellus, Van Helmont produced a condition in which the altered activity of the mind expressed itself in a loftier manner than is usually the case when narcotic drugs are used. Van Helmont relates it himself

(Demens idea, § 12):

"I made use of the Napellus in various ways. Once, when I had only prepared the root in a rough manner, I tasted it with the tongue : although I had swallowed nothing, and had spit out a deal of the juice, yet I felt as if my skull was being compressed by a string. Several household matters suggested themselves, and I went about the house and arranged everything. At last I experienced what I had never felt before. It seemed that I neither thought nor understood, and as if I had none of the usual ideas in my head; but I felt, with astonishment, clearly and distinctly, that all those functions were taking place at the pit of the stomach: I felt this clearly and perfectly, and observed with the greatest attention, that, although I felt movement and sensation spreading themselves from the head over the whole body, yet that the whole power of thought was really and unmistakeably situated in the pit of the stomach, always excepting a sensation that the soul was in the brain as a governing power.

"Full of astonishment and surprise at this feeling, I watched my own thoughts, and made the most accurate observations. The sensation of having my imagination and power of reasoning at the pit of the stomach was beyond the power of words to describe. I perceived that I thought

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with greater clearness: there was a pleasure in such an intellectual distinctness. It was not a fugitive sensation; it did not take place when I slept, dreamed, or was ill, but during perfect consciousness; and although I had often before been in ecstasia (V. Helmont must therefore have been naturally inclined to it), yet I observed that the former states had no connection with this, where thought and imagination were exclusively confined to the pit of the stomach. I perIceived clearly that the head was perfectly dormant as regarded fancy: and I felt not a little astonished at the change of position. Occasionally the pleasure was interrupted by the fear that this unusual circumstance might cause insanity, being produced as it was by a poison; but the preparation and the small dose reassured me. Although I felt somewhat suspicious of the present clearness and penetration of thought, on account of the cause, yet my perfect resignation to Providence restored my former calmness. After about two hours a slight dizziness came twice over me. After the first I observed that thought had returned; after the second, that I thought in the usual manner. have never since experienced anything similar, although 1 have used the same means."

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V. Helmont makes the following remarks:-" Of this brilliant ray of light we can only say that it is intellectually higher than the material body, for it emanates from the soul, which itself is pure intelligence. It teaches us that the spirit of life has a free passage through the nerves; for the intelligence from the region of the heart penetrates everything, on which it shines as a taper shines through the fingers of young people. From that time," he continues, "I had clearer and more consequent dreams; I learnt to understand that one day instructs another, and that one night lends knowledge to another. I also learned that life, reason, sleep, are the workings of a certain light which needs no conductors; for one light penetrates the existence of another. At times the soul retires within itself, or expands in many ways, -in sleep, in waking, in contemplation, in enthusiasm, in unconsciousness, in mania, delirium, the passions, and, lastly, by artificial means."

From this we perceive that V. Helmont was well acquainted with the various descriptions of visions, and there

from formed a theory peculiar to himself, respecting the activity of the soul through the nervous system. According to him, the determinations of reason arise in the brain, but associated with a nervous stream from the regions of the heart, where memory of the past and comprehension are situated. But everything which is future and purely abstract, without reference to the present, takes place entirely in the pit of the stomach, and distant things appear to be present, -on which account insane persons talk of distant things as if they were close at hand.

Lastly, Van Helmont explains clairvoyance as a direct sight of the soul, and believes this to have been the original state of man before the Fall; that now, however, it is cramped on every side by the body, and has transferred its duties to its handmaidens, the senses. After death, however, the soul regains its former clearsightedness, when it is no longer compelled to understand from conclusions drawn, but now and here will include all things, and memory and reflection will be unnecessary. The soul will then contemplate truth without striving and difficulty. (Imago mentis, § 24). The gases and vapours by which the priests of old became ecstatic, or which were used upon the oracles, may be classed among the narcotics; the most violent convulsions were even then connected with somnambulism, as in the case of the priestess of Apollo at Delphi. Incense and the bewildering dances of the Turkish dervishes also produce dizziness and prophetic visions similar to those observed in the priests of antiquity, in the Sabaism of the Canaanites in the service of Baal, in the Indian Schiwa and Kali, in the Phoenician Moloch, in the Bacchanalian festivals of the Greeks snd Romans, and at the present day among the Lapps and Finns. "In this case," says Passavant, "it is not the peaceful light which flows calmly from the soul, but lightning flashing forth from within. Where, however, in men impure in mind and spiritually evil, the deeper powers are aroused, such blackness may seize upon the roots of the mind, and such terrible moral abysses present themselves, that men under the restraints (social laws) could scarcely have imagined them possible. Such unhallowed ecstasies and evil manifestations are at least acknowledged by the religious teachings of both Jews and Chris

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tians, and the prophets of God have described them as in league with Satan.

The highest step in the system of visions is ecstasy-a removal from the world of the senses, so that the subject of the visions remains in a purely internal world, mostly without external participation. In ecstasy the imagination is heightened to such a degree that the body either appears dead, or is cataleptic, and insensible to all outward excitement. The mind, however, beholds distant and future events. These convulsions are distinguished from the conditions already described, by a recollection which is retained of them in the waking state. A certain natural disposition is necessary to the higher state of ecstasy; but it may be produced by outward and artificial means. Persons of great imagination, with an excitable nervous system and of impressible temperament, and particularly those of a religious turn of mind, are especially inclined to natural ecstasy. Poets and artists, as well as enthusiasts who are sunk in religious contemplations, are often thrown into an ecstatic state by very slight causes. Those ideas which float so constantly around them, form their world of the spirit, and on the contrary the real world is to them but a field on which the invisible ideas are reflected, or they carry its impressions with them to the realms of the mind. Poets and artists, therefore, often possess, in common with those persons who are naturally inclined to abnormal convulsions, an easily excited temperament. "For in the inner recesses of the mind," says Cicero, " is divine prophecy hidden and confined, as the soul, without reference to the body, may be moved by a divine impulse, which when it burns more vividly is called madness (furor)." "Without this madness," Democritus maintains, there can be no poet;" in which Plato also agrees; "for every power of the mind may be violently excited if the soul itself is not disturbed. As regards very pure minds it is no wonder that they are acquainted with future things, as they are more divine in their nature." It was thus that the painter Angelico da Fiesole often fell into ecstatic states while painting, and had in them ideal visions. Michael Angelo says of a picture painted by him, that "No man could have created such a picture without having seen the original." (Görres' Mystic, i. 155.)

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