Under this head are contained the most marvellous phenomena which ever came as a group of facts in natural philosophy before the world; and they are reaching that stage towards general reception when their effect is most vivid and striking. Five-and-twenty years ago no one in England dreamed of believing them, although the same positive evidence of their genuineness then existed as now. Five-and-twenty years hence the same facts will be matters of familiar knowledge. It is just at the present moment (or am I anticipating the march of opinion by half a century?) that their difference, and distinctness, and abhorrence even, from our previous conceptions are most intensely felt; and that the powers which they promise eventually to place within human control excite our irrepressible wonder.

I shall narrate the facts which loom so large in the dawning light, very simply and briefly, as they are manifested in catalepsy.

An uninformed person being in the room with a cataleptic patient, would at first suppose her, putting aside the spasmodic affection of the body, to be simply awake in the ordinary way. By-and-by her new powers might or might not catch his observation. But a third point would certainly escape his notice. I refer to her mental state of waking trance, which gives, as it were, the local colouring to the whole performance.

To elucidate this element, I may avail myself of a sketch ready prepared by nature, tinted with the local colour alone—the case of simple trance-waking, unattended by fits or by any marvellous powers, as far as it has been yet observed, which is known to physicians under the name of double consciousness.

A single fit of the disorder presents the following features:—The young person (for the patient is most frequently a girl) seems to lose herself for a moment or longer, then she recovers, and seems to be herself again. The intervening short period, longer at first, and by use rendered briefer and briefer, is a period of common initiatory trance. When, having lost, the patient thus finds herself again, there is nothing in her behaviour which would lead a stranger to suppose her other than naturally awake. But her friends observe that she now does every thing with more spirit and better than before—sings better, plays better, has more readiness, moves even more gracefully, than in her usual state. She manifests an innocent boldness and disregard of little conventionalisms, which impart a peculiar charm to her behaviour. Her mode of speaking is perhaps something altered; a supernumerary consonant making its undue appearance, but upon a regular law, in certain syllables. But the most striking thing is, that she has totally forgotten all that has passed during the morning. Inquire what her last recollections are, they leave off with the termination of her last fit of this kind; the intervening period is for the present lost to her. She was in her natural state of waking when I introduced her to your notice; she lost herself for a few seconds, found herself again; but found herself not in her natural train of recollections, but in those of the last fit.

These fits occur sometimes at irregular intervals, sometimes periodically and daily. In her ordinary waking state, she has her chain of waking recollections. In her trance-waking state, she has her chain of trance-waking recollections. The two are kept strictly apart. Hence the ill-chosen term, double-consciousness. So at the occurrence of her first fit, her mental existence may be said to have bifurcated into two separate routes, in either of which her being is alternately passed. It is curious to study, at the commencement of such a case, with how much knowledge derived from her past life the patient embarks on her trance-existence. The number of previously realized ideas retained by different patients at the first fit is very various. It has happened that the memory of facts and persons has been so defective that the patient has had to learn even to know and to love her parents. To most of her acquaintances she is observed to give new names, which she uses to them in the trance-state alone. But her habits remain; her usual propriety of conduct: the mind is singularly pure in trance. And she very quickly picks up former ideas, and restores former intimacies, but on a supposed new footing. To complete this curious history, if the fits of trance recur frequently, and through some accidental circumstance are more and more prolonged in duration, so that most of her waking existence is passed in trance, it will follow that the trance-development of her intellect and character may get ahead of their development in her natural waking. Being told this, she may become anxious to continue always in her entranced state, and to drop the other: and I knew a case in which circumstances favoured this final arrangement, and the patient at last retained her trance-recollections alone, from long continuance in that state having made it, as it were, her natural one. Her only fear was—for she had gradually learned her own mental history, as she expressed it to me—that some day she should of a sudden find herself a child again, thrown back to the point at which she ceased her first order of recollections. This is, indeed, a very extreme and monstrous case. Ordinarily, the recurrence of fits of simple trance-waking does not extend over a longer period than three or four months or half a year, after which they never reappear; and her trance acquirements and feelings are lost to the patient’s recollection for good. I will cite a case, as it was communicated to me by Dr. G. Barlow, exemplifying some of the points of the preceding statement.

“This young lady has two states of existence. During the time that the fit is on her, which varies from a few hours to three days, she is occasionally merry and in spirits; occasionally she appears in pain, and rolls about in uneasiness; but in general she seems so much herself, that a stranger entering the room would not remark any thing extraordinary: she amuses herself with reading or working, sometimes plays on the piano—and better than at other times—knows every body, and converses rationally, and makes very accurate observations on what she has seen and read. The fit leaves her suddenly, and she then forgets every thing that has passed during it, and imagines that she has been asleep, and sometimes that she has dreamed of any circumstance that has made a vivid impression upon her. During one of these fits she was reading Miss Edgeworth’s Tales, and had in the morning been reading a part of one of them to her mother, when she went for a few minutes to the window, and suddenly exclaimed, “Mamma, I am quite well, my headache is gone.” Returning to the table, she took up the open volume, which she had been reading five minutes before, and said, “What book is this?” She turned over the leaves, looked at the frontispiece, and replaced it on the table. Seven or eight hours afterwards, when the fit returned, she asked for the book, went on at the very paragraph where she had left off, and remembered every circumstance of the narrative. And so it always is; she reads one set of books during one state, and another during the other. She seems to be conscious of her state; for she said one day, “Mamma, this is a novel, but I may safely read it; it will not hurt my morals, for, when I am well, I shall not remember a word of it.””

To form a just idea of a case of catalepsy, the reader has to imagine such a case as I have just instanced, with the physical feature added, that the patient, when entranced, is motionless and fixed as a statue; the spasmodic state, however, not confining itself closely to one type, but running into catochus, or into partial rigid spasm, or into convulsive seizures, (see Letter V.) capriciously.

The psychical phenomena exhibited by the patient when thus entranced, are the following:—

1. The organs of sensation are deserted by their natural sensibility. The patient neither feels with the skin, nor sees with the eyes, nor hears with the ears, nor tastes with the mouth.

2. All these senses, however, are not lost. Sight and hearing, if not smell and taste, reappear in some other part—at the pit of the stomach, for instance, or the tips of the fingers.

3. The patient manifests new perceptive powers. She discerns objects all around her, and through any obstructions, partitions, walls or houses, and at an indefinite distance. She sees her own inside, as it were, illuminated, and can tell what is wrong in the health of others. She reads the thoughts of others, whether present or at indefinite distances. The ordinary obstacles of space and matter vanish to her. So likewise that of time; she foresees future events.

Such and more are the capabilities of cataleptic patients, most of whom exhibit them all—but there is some caprice in their manifestation.

I first resigned myself to the belief that such statements as the above might be true, upon being shown by the late Mr. Bulteel letters from an eminent provincial physician in the year 1838, describing phenomena of this description in a patient the latter was attending. In the spring of 1839, Mr. Bulteel told me that he had himself in the interim often seen the patient, who had allowed him to test in any way he pleased the reality of the faculties she possessed when entranced. As usual, in the hours which she passed daily in her natural state, she had no recollection of her extraordinary trance performances. The following are some of the facts, which Mr. Bulteel told me he had himself verified.

When entranced, the patient’s expression of countenance was slightly altered, and there was some peculiarity in her mode of speaking. To each of her friends she had given a new name, which she used only when in the state of trance. She could read with her skin. If she pressed the palm of her hand against the whole surface of a printed or written page deliberately, as it were, to take off an impression, she became acquainted verbally with its contents, even to the extent of criticising the type or the handwriting. One day, after a remark made to put her off her guard, a line of a folded note was pressed against the back of her neck; she had read it. She called this sense-feeling—contact was necessary for its manifestation. But she had a general perceptive power besides. She used to tell that persons, whom she knew, were coming to the house, when they were yet at some distance. Persons sitting in the room with her playing chess, to whom her back was turned, if they made intentionally false moves, she would ask them what they possibly could do that for.

The next three cases which I shall describe are from a memoir on catalepsy (1787) by Dr. Petetin, an eminent civil and military physician at Lyons.

M. Petetin attended a young married lady in a sort of fit. She lay seemingly unconscious; when he raised her arm, it remained in the air where he placed it. Being put to bed, she commenced singing. To stop her, the doctor placed her limbs each in a different position. This embarrassed her considerably, but she went on singing. She seemed perfectly insensible. Pinching the skin, shouting in her ear, nothing aroused her attention. Then it happened that, in arranging her, the doctor’s foot slipped; and, as he recovered himself, half leaning over her, he said, “How provoking we can’t make her leave off singing!” “Ah, doctor,” she cried, “don’t be angry! I won’t sing any more,” and she stopped. But shortly she began again; and in vain did the doctor implore her, by the loudest entreaties, addressed to her ear, to keep her promise and desist. It then occurred to him to place himself in the same position as when she heard him before. He raised the bed-clothes, bent his head towards her stomach, and said, in a loud voice, “Do you, then, mean to sing for ever?” “Oh, what pain you have given me!” she exclaimed; “I implore you speak lower.” At the same time she passed her hand over the pit of her stomach. “In what way, then, do you hear?” said Dr. Petetin. “Like any one else,” was the answer. “But I am speaking to your stomach.” “Is it possible!” she said. He then tried again whether she could hear with her ears, speaking even through a tube to aggravate his voice—she heard nothing. On his asking her, at the pit of her stomach, if she had not heard him,—“No,” said she, “I am indeed unfortunate.”

A cognate phenomenon to the above is the conversion of the patient’s new sense of vision in a direction inwards. He looks into himself, and sees his own inside as it were illuminated or transfigured: that is to say, his visual power is turned inwards, and he sees his organs possibly by the Od-light they give out.

A few days after the scenes just described, Dr. Petetin’s patient had another attack of catalepsy. She still heard at the pit of her stomach, but the manner of hearing was modified. In the mean time her countenance expressed astonishment. Dr. Petetin inquired the cause. “It is not difficult,” she answered, “to explain to you why I look astonished. I am singing, doctor, to divert my attention from a sight which appals me. I see my inside, and the strange forms of the organs, surrounded with a network of light. My countenance must express what I feel—astonishment and fear. A physician who should have my complaint for a quarter of an hour would think himself fortunate, as nature would reveal all her secrets to him. If he was devoted to his profession, he would not, as I do, desire to be quickly well.” “Do you see your heart?” asked Dr. Petetin. “Yes, there it is; it beats at twice, the two sides in agreement; when the upper part contracts, the lower part swells, and immediately after that contracts. The blood rushes out all luminous, and issues by two great vessels, which are but a little apart.”

One morning (to quote from the latter part of this case) the access of the fit took place, according to custom, at eight o’clock. Petetin arrived later than usual; he announced himself by speaking to the fingers of the patient, (by which he was heard.) “You are a very lazy person this morning, doctor,” said she. “It is true, madam; but if you knew the reason, you would not reproach me.” “Ah,” said she, “I perceive you have had a headache for the last four hours: it will not leave you till six in the evening. You are right to take nothing; no human means can prevent it running its course.” “Can you tell me on which side is the pain?” said Petetin. “On the right side; it occupies the temple, the eye, the teeth: I warn you that it will invade the left eye, and that you will suffer considerably between three and four o’clock; at six you will be free from pain.” The prediction came out literally true. “If you wish me to believe you, you must tell me what I hold in my hand.” “I see through your hand an antique medal.”

Petetin inquired of his patient at what hour her own fit would cease: “At eleven.” “And the evening accession—when will it come on?” “At seven o’clock.” “In that case it will be later than usual.” “It is true; the periods of its recurrence are going to change to so and so.” During this conversation, the patient’s countenance expressed annoyance. She then said to M. Petetin, “My uncle has just entered; he is conversing with my husband behind the screen; his visit will fatigue me; beg him to go away.” The uncle, leaving, took with him by mistake her husband’s cloak, which she perceived, and sent her sister-in-law to reclaim it.

In the evening there were assembled, in the lady’s apartment, a good number of her relations and friends. Petetin had, intentionally, placed a letter within his waistcoat, on his heart. He begged permission, on arriving, to wear his cloak. Scarcely had the lady, the access having come on, fallen into trance, when she said—“And how long, doctor, has it come into fashion to wear letters next the heart?” Petetin pretended to deny the fact: she insisted on her correctness; and, raising her hands, designated the size, and indicated exactly the place of the letter. Petetin drew forth the letter, and held it, closed, to the fingers of the patient. “If I were not a discreet person,” she said, “I should tell the contents; but to show you that I know them, they form exactly two lines and a-half of writing;” which, on opening the letter, was shown to be the fact.

A friend of the family, who was present, took out his purse, and put it in Dr. Petetin’s bosom, and folded his cloak over his chest. As soon as Petetin approached his patient, she told him that he had the purse, and named its exact contents. She then gave an inventory of the contents of the pockets of all present, adding some pointed remark when the opportunity offered. She said to her sister-in-law that the most interesting thing in her possession was a letter;—much to her surprise, for she had received the letter the same evening, and had mentioned it to no one.

The patient, in the mean time, lost strength daily, and could take no food. The means employed failed of giving her relief, and it never occurred to M. Petetin to inquire of her how he should treat her. At length, with some vague idea that she suffered from too great electric tension of the brain, he tried, fantastically enough, the effect of making deep inspirations, standing close in front of the patient. No effect followed from this absurd proceeding. Then he placed one hand on the forehead, the other on the pit of the stomach of the patient, and continued his inspirations. The patient now opened her eyes; her features lost their fixed look; she rallied rapidly from the fit, which lasted but a few minutes instead of the usual period of two hours more. In eight days, under a pursuance of this treatment, she entirely recovered from her fits, and with them ceased her extraordinary powers. But, during these eight days, her powers manifested a still greater extension; she foretold what was going to happen to her; she discussed with astonishing subtlety, questions of mental philosophy and physiology; she caught what those around her meant to say before they expressed their wishes, and either did what they desired, or begged that they would not ask her to do what was beyond her strength.

A young lady, after much alarm during a revolutionary riot, fell into catalepsy. In her fits she appeared to hear with the pit of the stomach; and most of the phenomena described in the preceding case were again manifested. She improved in health, under the care of Dr. Petetin, up to the 29th of May, 1790, the memorable day when the inhabitants of Lyons expelled the wretches who were making sport of their fortunes, their liberties, and their lives. At the report of the first cannon fired, Mdlle. —— fell into violent convulsions, followed by catalepsy and tetanus. When in this state she discerned Petetin distinguishing himself under the fire of a battery; and she blamed him the following day for having so rashly exposed his life. In the progress of the complaint, during the attacks of catalepsy, the occurrences of which she exactly foresaw, she likewise predicted the bloody day of the 29th of September, the surrender of the city on the 7th of October, the entrance of the republican troops on the 8th, and the cruel proscriptions issued by the Committee of Public Safety.

The third case given by Petetin is that of Madame de Saint Paul, who was attacked with catalepsy a few days after her marriage, in consequence of seeing her father fall down in a fit of apoplexy at table. The general features of her lucidity are the same as in the former cases. I shall, therefore, content myself with quoting some observations made by Dr. Prost, author of La MÉdecine ÉclairÉe par l’Observation et l’Anatomie pathologique, on the authority of Dr. Foissac, to whom he communicated them. Dr. Prost had studied this case assiduously during nine months. “Her intellectual faculties,” observed Dr. Prost, “acquired a great activity, and the richness of her fancy made itself remarked in the picturesque images which she threw into her descriptions. As she was telling her friends of an approaching attack of catalepsy, suddenly she exclaimed,—‘I no longer see or hear objects in the same manner; every thing is transparent round me, and my observation extends to incalculable distances.’ She designated, without an error, the people who were on the public promenade, whether near the house, or still a quarter of an hour’s walk distant. She read the thoughts of every one who came near her; she marked those who were false and vicious; and repelled the approach of stupid people, who bored her with their questions and aggravated her malady. ‘Just as much as their pates excite my pity,’ said she, 'do the heads of men of information and intelligence, all whose thoughts I look into, fill me with delight.’”

The following facts I cite corroboratively, from one of several cases of hysteria communicated by Dr. Delpit, inspecting physician of the waters at BarÈges.—(Bibliotheque MÉdicale, t. lvi. p. 308.)

Mdlle. V——, aged thirteen, after seeing the curÉ administer extreme unction, fainted away. There followed extreme disgust towards food. During eighteen days she neither ate nor drank; there was no secretion; her breathing remained tranquil and regular; the patient preserved her embonpoint and complexion. During this complete suspension of the functions of digestion, the organs of sensation would be alternately paralyzed. One day the patient became blind; on the next, she could see, but could not hear; another day she lost her speech. The mutations were noticed generally in the night, upon her waking out of sleep. “Nevertheless,” says M. Delpit, “her intellect preserved all its vivacity and force, and, during the palsy of the organs of sensation, nature supplied the loss in another way; when, with her eyes, Mdlle. Caroline could not distinguish light, she yet read, and read distinctly, by carrying her fingers over the letters. I have made her thus read, in the daytime and in the profoundest darkness, either printed pages out of the first book that came to hand, or written passages that I had previously prepared.” In this, the alternation of different states of recollections is not described as having been observed. But I have little doubt that double consciousness was really present. I believe that feature to be essential to waking trance. I have little doubt, likewise, that double consciousness is attended by more or less trance-perception. The co-existence of spasm, necessary to constitute the case one of catalepsy, is accidental.

Sensorial illusions occasionally occur in catalepsy, but not frequently; they are commoner in the inferior grades of trance. The daimon of Socrates was, no doubt, a hallucination of this kind.

The trance-daimon, or sensorial illusion mixing itself with trance, is exemplified in the following case of catalepsy, which occurred in the person of the adopted daughter of the Baron de Strombeck.

Besides the ordinary features, on which I will not again dwell, at one time it was her custom to apply to an imaginary being for directions as to the treatment of her own case. Subsequently, she one day observed—“It is not a phantom; I was in error in thinking it so; it is a voice which speaks within me, and which I think without me. This apparition comes because my sleep is less perfect. In that case, I seem to see a white cloud rise out of the earth, from which a voice issues, the echo of which reverberates within me.”

This patient had quintuple consciousness, or four morbid states, each of which kept its own recollections to itself.

A final case I will quote, the authority of which is the Baron de Fortis. It was treated by Dr. Despine of Aix-les-Bains.

The patient had had epilepsy, for the cure of which she went to Aix. There she had all sorts of fits and day-somnambulism, during which she waited at table, with her eyes shut, perfectly. She likewise saw alternately with her fingers, the palm of her hand, and her elbow, and would write with precision with her right hand, superintending the process with her left elbow. These details are peculiarly gratifying to myself, for in the little I have seen, I yet have seen a patient walk about with her eyes shut, and well blinded besides, holding the knuckles of one hand before her as a seeing lantern. However, the special interest of this case is, that the patient was differently affected by different kinds of matter; glass appeared to burn her, porcelain was pleasantly warm, earthenware felt cold.

What comment can I make on the preceding wondrous details? Those to whom they are new must have time to become familiar with them; in order, reversing the process by which the eye gets to see in the dark, to learn to distinguish objects in this flood of excessive light. Those who are already acquainted with them will, I think, agree with me that the principle which I have assumed—the possibility of an abnormal relation of the mind and body allowing the former, either to shift the place of its manifestations in the nervous system, or partially to energize as free spirit—is the only one which at present offers any solution of the new powers displayed in catalepsy. One regrets that more was not made of the opportunities of observation which Petetin enjoyed. But there are means, which I shall by-and-by have occasion to specify, through which, in the practice of medicine, and in the proper treatment of various disorders, like instances may be artificially multiplied and modified so as to meet the exigencies of inductive science. In the mean time, let me append one or two corollaries to the preceding demonstration.

I. It is evident that the performances of catalepsy reduce the oracles of antiquity to natural phenomena. Let us examine the tradition of that of Delphi.

Diodorus relates, that goats feeding near an opening in the ground were observed to jump about in a singular manner, and that a goatherd approaching to examine the spot was taken with a fit and prophesied. Then the priests took possession of the spot and built a temple. Plutarch tells us that the priestess was an uneducated peasant-girl, of good character and conduct. Placed upon the tripod, and affected by the exhalation, she struggled and became convulsed, and foamed at the mouth; and in that state she delivered the oracular answer. The convulsions were sometimes so violent that the Pythia died. Plutarch adds, that the answers were never in error, and that their established truth filled the temple with offerings from the whole of Greece, and from barbarian nations. Without supposing it to have been infallible, we must, I think, infer that the oracle was too often right to have been wholly a trick. The state of the Pythia was probably trance with convulsions, the same with that in which cataleptic patients have foreseen future events. The priestess was of blameless life, which suits the production of trance, the fine susceptibility of which is spoilt by irregular living. Finally, from what we know of the effects of the few gases and vapours of which the inhalation has been tried, it is any thing but improbable that one or other gaseous compound should directly induce trance in predisposed subjects.

II. The performances of Zschokke are poor by the side of those of a cataleptic. But then he was not entranced. Nevertheless, an approach to that state manifested itself in his losing himself when inspecting his visiter’s brains. So again, those who had the gift of second-sight are represented to have been subject to fits of abstraction, in which they stood rapt. The prÆternatural gifts of Socrates were probably those of a Highland seer; in which character he is reported to have foretold the death of an officer, if he pursued a route he contemplated. The officer would not change his plans, and was met by the enemy, and slain accordingly. In all these cases, the mind seems to have gone out to seek its knowledge. Two of Mr. Williamson’s lucid patients, of whom more afterwards, told him that their minds went out at the backs of their heads, in starting on these occasions. They pointed to the lower and back part of the head, opposite to the medulla oblongata. In prophetic, and in true retrospective dreams, one may imagine the phenomena taking the same course; most likely the dreamers have slipt in their sleep into a brief lucid somnambulism. In the cases of ghosts and of dreams, coincident with the period of the death of an absent person, it seems simpler to suppose the visit to have come from the other side. So the Vampyr-ghost was probably a visit made by the free part of the mind of the patient who lay buried in death-trance. The visit was fatal to the party visited, because trance is contagious.

III. The wonderful performances attributed to instinct in animals appear less incomprehensible when viewed in juxtaposition with some of the feats of lucid cataleptics. The term instinct is a very vague one. It is commonly used to denote the intelligence of animals as opposed to human reason. Instinct is, therefore, a compound phenomenon; and I must begin by resolving it into its elements. They are three in number:—

1. Observation and reasoning of the same kind with that of man, but limited in their scope. They are exercised only in immediate self-preservation, and in the direct supply of the creature’s bodily wants or simple impulses. A dog will whine to get admission into the house, will open the latch of a gate; one rook will sit sentry for the rest; a plover will fly low, and short distances, as if hurt, to wile away a dog from her nest. But in this vein of intelligence, animals make no further advance. Reflection, with the higher faculties and sentiments which minister to it, and with it constitute reason, is denied them. So they originate no objects of pursuit in the way that man does, and have no source of self-improvement. But, in lack of human reflection, some animals receive the help of—

2. Special conceptions, which are developed in their minds at fitting seasons. Of this nature, to give an instance, is the notion of nest-building in birds. It may be observed of these conceptions that they appear to us arbitrary, though perfectly suited to the being of each species: thus, in the example referred to, we may suppose that the material and shape of the nest might be varied without its object being the less perfectly attained,—at least, as far as we can see. The conception spontaneously developed in the mind of the bird is then carried out intelligently, through the same quick and just observation, in a little way, which habitually ministers to its appetites, as I explained in a preceding paragraph.

The special conception is sometimes characterized by the utmost perfectness of mechanical design. Here, however, is nothing to surprise us. The supreme wisdom which preordained the development of an idea in an insect’s mind, might as easily as not have given it absolute perfectness. But—

3. Some animals have the power of modifying the special conception, when circumstances arise which prevent its being carried out in the usual way; and of realizing it in a great many different ways, on as many different occasions. And their work, on each of these occasions, is as perfect as in their carrying out the ordinary form of the conception. I beg leave to call the principle, by which they see thus how to shape their course so perfectly under new circumstances—intuition. To instance it, there is a beetle called the rhynchites betulÆ. Its habit is, towards the end of May, to cut the leaves of the betula alba, or betula pubescens, into slips, which it rolls up into funnel-shaped chambers, which form singularly convenient cradles for its eggs. This is done after one pattern; and one may suppose it the mechanical realization of an inborn idea, as long as the leaf is perfect in shape. But if the leaf is imperfect, intuition steps upon the scene to aid the insect to cut its coat after its cloth. The sections made are then seen to vary with the varying shape of the leaf. Many different sections made by the insect were accurately drawn by a German naturalist, Dr. Debey. He submitted them for examination to Professor Heis of Aix-la-Chapelle. Upon carefully studying them, Dr. Heis found these cuttings of the leaves, in suitableness to the end proposed, even to the minutest technical detail, to be in accordance with calculations compassable only through the higher mathematics, which, till modern times, were unknown to human intelligence. Such is the marvellous power of “intuition,” displayed by certain insects. I know not how to define it but as a power of immediate reference to absolute truth, evinced by the insect in carrying out its little plans. It is evident that the insect uses the same power in realizing its ordinary special conception, when the result displays equal perfectness. And the question even crosses one’s mind, Are the seemingly arbitrary plans really arbitrary?—may they not equally represent a highest type of design? But, be that as it may, the intuition of insects, as we now apprehend it, no longer stands an isolated phenomenon. The lucid cataleptic cannot less directly communicate with the source of truth, as she proves by foreseeing future events.

IV. The speculations of Berkeley and Boscovich on the non-existence of matter; and of Kant and others on the arbitrariness of all our notions, are interested in, for they appear to be refuted by, the intuitions of cataleptics. The cataleptic apprehends or perceives directly the objects around her; but they are the same as when realized through her senses. She notices no difference; size, form, colour, distance, are elements as real to her now as before. In respect again to the future, she sees it, but not in the sense of the annihilation of time; she foresees it; it is the future present to her; time she measures, present and future, with strange precision,—strange, yet an approximation, instead of this certainty, would have been still more puzzling.

So that it appears that our notions of matter, force, and the like, and of the conditions of space and time, apart from which we can conceive nothing, are not figments to suit our human and temporary being, but elements of eternal truth.