“It strikes me,” replied Mr. Merton, “that Dr. Corning has not well examined the case. That some of the phenomena may be regarded as symptoms of insanity, I do not question, but if I understand insanity, it is a derangement, an access of what properly belongs to one in his normal state, but not the accession of something preternatural. It may, in some respects, sharpen the senses, revive the memory, and render the faculties, or at least some of them, morbidly active; but I have never understood that it could enable a man to understand and speak a language which he had never learned, and of which, in the full possession of all his faculties, he knew not a word. I can easily understand that in delirium a man may fancy that he is possessed, and act on the conviction that he is, but I do not understand how delirium alone can enable a man, however agile, to climb to the ceiling of a church, his back against a column, with his feet fastened together, and without using his hands or arms, and to remain by the simple application of his feet to the ceiling for one half an hour with his head down, carrying on all the time a close controversy in this very inconvenient position, and finally dropping upon the pavement without the least injury. Such a delirium would, to say the least, be very extraordinary, and I suspect the Doctor has never found a similar delirium amongst any of his numerous patients who were unquestionably insane. I will venture to say that however striking the delirium, the thing is absolutely impossible without superhuman aid.” “Part of it is hallucination,” replied the Doctor. “Whose hallucination? The young man’s, or the missionary’s?” asked Mr. Merton. “Not the missionary’s, for there is no pretence that he was insane; and not the young man’s, because the question turns not on what he saw, or fancied, or imagined, but on what another person, the missionary, saw.” “Probably the facts are much exaggerated,” replied Dr. Corning. “The missionary confesses that he was greatly frightened, and being so, he may, without impeachment of his honesty, have failed to be strictly accurate as to the details.”