f faith
and timidity. It was, indeed, time for issuing the mandate, which, as
wit read it, ran:

"De par le roi--Defense a Dieu,
De faire miracle en ce lieu."

Turn we now to another subject:--the possessed in the middle ages,--What
was their physiological condition? What was really meant then by being
possessed? I mean, what were the symptoms of the affection, and how are
they properly to be explained? The inquiry will throw further light upon
the true relations of other phenomena we have already looked at.

We have seen that Schwedenborg thought that he was in constant
communication with the spiritual world; but felt convinced, and avowed,
that though he saw his visitants without and around him, they reached
him first inwardly, and communicated with his understanding; and thence
consciously, and outwardly, with his senses. But it would be a
misapplication of the term to say that he was possessed by these
spirits.

We remember that Socrates had his demon; and it should be mentioned as a
prominent feature in visions generally, that their subject soon
identifies one particular imaginary being as his guide and informant, to
whom he applies for what knowledge he wishes. In the most exalted states
of trance-waking, the guide or demon is continually referred to with
profound respect by the entranced person. Now, was Socrates, and are
patients of the class I have alluded to, possessed? No! the meaning of
the term is evidently not yet hit.

Then there are persons who permanently fancy themselves other beings
than they are, and act as such.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there prevailed in parts of
Europe a seizure, which was called the wolf-sickness. Those affected
with it held themselves to be wild beasts, and betook themselves to the
forests. One of these, who was brought before De Lancre, at Bordeaux, in
the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a young man of Besancon. He
avowed himself to be huntsman of the forest lord, his invisible master.
He believed, that through the power of his master, he had been
transformed into a wolf; that he hunted in the forest as such, and that
he was often accompanied by a bigger wolf, whom he suspected to be the
master he served--with more details of the same kind. The persons thus
affected were called Wehrwolves. They enjoyed in those days the
alternative of being exorcised or executed.

Arnold relates in his history of church and of heresy, how there was a