The results of such exertions are generally impressions made apparently upon the eye or the ear; but it need not be said that what is seen or heard in such cases, is merely the effect of a deeply felt sensation in our soul which seeks an outward expression. If our innermost being is thus suddenly appealed to, as it were, by the spirit of a dying friend or companion, his image arises instantaneously before our mind's eye, and we fancy we see him in bodily form, or our memory recalls the familiar sounds by which his appearance was wont to be accompanied. Dying musicians remind distant friends of their former relations by sweet sounds, and a sailor, wounded to death, appears in his uniform to relatives at home. The series of sights and sounds by which such intercourse is established, varies from the simplest and faintest vision to an apparently clear and distinct perception of well-known forms, and constitute feeble, hardly perceptible, sighs or sobs to words uttered aloud, or whole melodies clearly recited. If a living person, by such an unconscious but all-powerful effort of will, makes himself seen by others, we call the vision a "double," in German, a "Doppelgänger;" if he produces a state of dualism, such as has been mentioned before, and sees his own self in space before him, we speak of second sight. Such efforts are, however, by no means strictly limited to the moment of dissolution, when soul and body are already in the act of parting. They occur also in living persons, but almost invariably only in diseased persons. The exceptions belong to the small number of men in whom great excitement from without, or a mysterious power of will, cause a state of ecstasy; they are, in common parlance, "beside themselves." In this condition, their soul is for the moment freed from the bondage in which it is held by its earthy companion, and such men become clairvoyants and prophets, or they are enabled actually to affect other men at a distance, in various ways. Thus it may very well be, that strange visions, the hearing of mysterious voices, and especially the most familiar phenomenon, second sight, are in reality nothing more than symptoms of a thoroughly diseased system, and this explains very simply the frequency with which death follows such mysterious occurrences.