The objects of visual illusions are commonly men and women; but animals, and even inanimate objects, sometimes constitute them. A lady whose sight was failing her had long visions every day of rows of buildings, houses, and parks, and such like. The subjects of visual illusions are generally perfectly trivial, like the events of a common dream. But, though susceptible of change, their custom is to recur with much the same character daily. One patient could at will summon the apparition of an acquaintance to join the rest; but, once there, he could not get rid of him. Sometimes it happens that sensorial illusions are in accordance with a congenial train of thought—for instance, with peculiar impressions referring to religion. They are then very liable to be construed by the patient into realities, and to materially influence his conversation and conduct. He remains, no doubt, strictly sane in the midst of these delusions. But he is apt not to be thought so; or, to use a figure, the world’s opinion of such a person becomes a polar force, and society is divided into his admiring followers and those who think him a lunatic. Such was, and remains, the fate of Schwedenborg. Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg, ennobled as Schwedenborg, was up to the year 1743, which was the fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished only in literature, having written many volumes on philosophy and science, and being professor in the Mineralogical School, where he was much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their revelations, but was in the habit of detailing their daily chat with him. Thus he says, “I had a conversation the other day on that very point with the apostle Paul,” or with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what he believed to be constant communion with spirits till his death, in 1772. He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wurtemburg Prelate, Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words: “If I have spoken with the apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St. Paul during a whole year, particularly with reference to the text, Romans iii. 28. I have three times conversed with St. John, once with Moses, and a hundred times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an angel that he professed _fidem solam_, and that he stood alone upon the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these twenty years conversed, and converse daily.”