our idea of glimpses of the future world than
those in which the vision is continued or repeated for hours, days, and
months, affording opportunities of discovering, from other
circumstances, that the symptom originates in deranged health.

Before concluding these observations upon the deceptions of the senses,
we must remark that the eye is the organ most essential to the purpose
of realizing to our mind the appearance of external objects, and that
when the visual organ becomes depraved for a greater or less time, and
to a farther or more limited extent, its misrepresentation of the
objects of sight is peculiarly apt to terminate in such hallucinations
as those we have been detailing. Yet the other senses or organs, in
their turn, and to the extent of their power, are as ready, in their
various departments, as the sight itself, to retain false or doubtful
impressions, which mislead, instead of informing, the party to whom they
are addressed.

Thus, in regard to the ear, the next organ in importance to the eye, we
are repeatedly deceived by such sounds as are imperfectly gathered up
and erroneously apprehended. From the false impressions received from
this organ also arise consequences similar to those derived from
erroneous reports made by the organs of sight. A whole class of
superstitious observances arise, and are grounded upon inaccurate and
imperfect hearing. To the excited and imperfect state of the ear we owe
the existence of what Milton sublimely calls--

The airy tongues that syllable men's names,
On shores, in desert sands, and wildernesses.

These also appear such natural causes of alarm, that we do not
sympathize more readily with Robinson Crusoe's apprehensions when he
witnesses the print of the savage's foot in the sand, than in those
which arise from his being waked from sleep by some one calling his name
in the solitary island, where there existed no man but the shipwrecked
mariner himself. Amidst the train of superstitions deduced from the
imperfections of the ear, we may quote that visionary summons which the
natives of the Hebrides acknowledged as one sure sign of approaching
fate. The voice of some absent, or probably some deceased, relative was,
in such cases, heard as repeating the party's name. Sometimes the aerial
summoner intimated his own death, and at others it was no uncommon
circumstance that the person who fancied himself so called, died in
consequence;--for the same reason that the n