ike Ahab's false
prophets. The angel then, who, through one channel or another,
fore-knows, or anticipates an event, 'has no more to do than to
reverse the species of these things from a man's brain to the organ
of the eye'. Substitute telepathy, the effect produced by a distant
mind, for angels, and we have here the very theory of some modern
inquirers. Mr. Frazer thinks it unlikely that _bad_ angels delude
'several men that I have known to be of considerable sense, and
pious and good conversation'. He will not hear of angels making
bodies of 'compressed air' (an old mystic idea), which they place
before men's eyes. His own hypothesis is more economical of marvel.
He has not observed second sight to be hereditary. If asked why it
is confined to ignorant islanders, he denies the fact. It is as
common elsewhere, but is concealed, for fear of ridicule and odium.
He admits that credulity and ignorance give opportunities to evil
spirits 'to juggle more frequently than otherwise they would have
done'. So he 'humbly submits himself to the judgment of his
betters'. Setting aside the hypothesis of angels, Mr. Frazer makes
only one mistake, he does not give instantiae contradictoriae, where
the hallucination existed without the fulfilment. He shows a good
deal of reading, and a liking for Sir Thomas Browne. The difference
between him and his contemporary, Mr. Kirk, is as great as that
between Herodotus and Thucydides.

Contemporary with Frazer is Martin Martin, whose Description of the
Western Isles (1703, second edition 1716) was a favourite book of
Dr. Johnson's, and the cause of his voyage to the Hebrides. Martin
took his M.A. degree at Edinburgh University in 1681. He was a
curious observer, political and social, and an antiquarian. He
offers no theory of the second sight, and merely recounts the
current beliefs in the islands. The habit is not, in his opinion,
hereditary, nor does he think that the vision can be communicated by
touch, except by one to another seer. Where several seers are
present, all do not necessarily see the vision. 'At the sight of a
vision, the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue
staring until the object vanish,' as Martin knew by observing seers
at the moment of the experience. Sometimes it was necessary to draw
down the eyelids with the fingers. Sickness and swooning
occasionally accompanied the hallucination. The visions were
usually symbolical, shrouds, co