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the subjoined sketch is respectfully submitted. A more philosophical devil was perhaps never depicted: he not only appears to be well versed in the abstruse metaphysics of the period in which he sat for his portrait, but seems to be in the very act of expounding them; and, since he has been regarded by very good authority as the efficient cause of all the phenomena in which we have been so seriously engaged, there cannot, surely, be any material impropriety in allowing him to grace the conclusion of the first part of these laborious lucubrations.

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PART II.

THE PARTICULAR MORBID AFFECTIONS WITH

WHICH THE PRODUCTION OF PHANTASMS

IS OFTEN CONNECTED.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

THE PATHOLOGY OF SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.

"I lost all connexion with external things; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind."-Sir Humphrey Davy on the Effects of the Nitrous Oxide.

HAVING explained certain divers opinions, ancient as well as modern, which have been entertained on the subject of apparitions, I ought, in due course, to state the particular notion which I may be inclined myself to adopt in the course of the present dissertation. Simply, then, it is the view to which I briefly adverted in the first chapter of this work, when treating of Nicolai's illusions; namely, that apparitions are nothing more than ideas, or the recollected images of the mind, which have been rendered as vivid as actual impressions. This is a view, however, that by no means originates with myself; it has entered into the disquisitions of

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