Do you think it strange that a ghost should appear fleshless and shadowy without some supernatural influence? Be assured that the only influence exists in the sublime and intricate workings of that mind which in its pure state was itself an emanation from the Deity; which is only shadowed by illusion while in its earthly union with the brain, and which, on the dissolution of that brain, will again live uncombined, a changeless and eternal spirit. It is as easy to believe the power of mind in conjuring up a spectre as in entertaining a simple thought: it is not strange that this thought may appear _embodied_, especially if the external senses be shut: if we think of a distant friend, do we not _see_ a form in our mind’s eye, and if this idea be intensely defined, does it not become a phantom? “Phantasma est sentiendi actus, neque differt a sensione aliter quam fieri differt a factum esse.” “A phantom is an act of thinking,” &c. You have dipped deeply into Hobbes, Astrophel, and will correct me if I misquote this philosopher of Malmsbury. It was in Paris, at the soirée of Mons. Bellart, and a few days after the death of Marshal Ney, the servant, ushering in the Mareschal _Aîné_, announced Mons. Le Mareschal _Ney_. We were startled; and may I confess to you, that the _eidōlon_ of the Prince of Moskwa was for a moment as perfect to my sight as reality? Now it is as easy to imagine a fairy infinitely small as a giant infinitely large. Between an idea and a phantom, then, there is only a difference in degree; their essence is the same as between the simple and transient thought of a child, and the intense and beautiful ideas of a Shakspere, a Milton, or a Dante. “Consider your own conceptions,” said Imlac, “you will find substance without extension. An ideal form is no less _real_ than material, but yet it has no extension.” You hear I adopt the word _idea_, as referring to the organ of _vision_, but sight is not the only sense subject to illusion. Hearing, taste, smell, touch, may be thus perverted, because the original impression was on the focus of all the senses, _the brain_. Indeed, two of these illusions are often _synchronous_: as when a deep sepulchral voice is uttered by a thin filmy spectre, like the ghosts of Ossian, through which the moonbeams and the stars were seen to glimmer. But the illusion of the eye _is_ by far the most common, and hence our adopted terms refer chiefly to the sight: as spectre, phantom, phantasm, apparition, _eidōlon_, ghost, shadow, shade. The ghost then is nothing more than an _intense idea_. And as I have caught the mood of story-telling, listen to some analogies of those deep impressions on the mind which are the spring of all this phantasy.