the Hebrews believed in the possibility of the souls of the dead returning, is evident from the tale of the Witch of Endor. Calmet says, in this connection: "Whether Samuel was raised up or not, whether his soul, or only a shadow, or even nothing at all appeared to the woman, it is still certain that Saul and his attendants, with the generality of the Hebrews, believed the thing to be possible." Similar beliefs were held by other Eastern nations. Among the Greeks and Romans of the classic period. apparitions of gods and men would seem to have been fairly common. Calmet, in his Dissertation on Apparitions, says: "The ancient Greeks, who had derived their religion and theology from the Egyptians and Eastern nations, and the Latins, who had borrowed theirs from the Greeks, were all firmly persuaded that the souls of the dead appeared sometimes to the living-that they could be called up by necromancers, that they answered questions, and gave notice of future events; that Apollo gave oracles, and that the priestess, filled with his spirit, and transported with a holy enthusiasm, uttered infallible predictions of things to come. Homer, the most ancient of all the Greek writers, and their greatest divine, relates several apparitions, not only of gods, but of dead men and heroes. In the Odyssey, he introduces Ulysses consulting Teresias, who, having prepared a pit full of blood, in order to call up the Manes, Ulysses draws his sword to hinder them from drinking the blood for which they were very thirsty, till they had answered the questions proposed to them. It was also a prevailing opinion, that the souls of men enjoyed no repose, but wandered about near their carcases as long as they continued unburied. Even after they were buried, it was a custom to offer them something to eat, especially honey, upon the supposition that after having left their graves, they came to feed upon what was brought them. They believed also, that the demons were fond of the smoke of sacrifices, of music, of the blood of victims, and the commerce of women; and that they were confined for a determinate time to certain houses or other places, which they haunted, and in which they appeared.

'They held that souls, when separated from their gross and terrestial bodies, still retained a finer and more subtile body, of the same form with that which they had quitted; that these bodies were luminous like the stars; that they retained an inclination for the things which they had loved in their life-time, and frequently appeared about their graves. When the soul of Patroclus appeared to Achilles, it had his voice, his shape, his eyes, and his dress, but not the same tangible body. Ulysses relates, that when he went down into hell, he saw the divine Hercules, that is, adds he, his image: for he himself is admitted to the banquets of the immortal gods. Dido says, that after death she, that is, her image bigger than the life, shall go down to the infernal regions.

"Et mine magna mei sub terras ibit imago.' "And Æneas knew his wife Creusa, who appeared to him in her usual shape, but of a taller and nobler stature than when she was alive.

Infelix simulacrum, atque ipsius umbra Creuso, Visa mihi ante oculos, et nota major imago.

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"In the speech which Titus made to his soldiers, to persuade them to mount to the assault of the Tower Antonia at Jerusalem, he uses this argument: Who knows not that the souls of those who bravely expose themselves to danger, and die in war, are exalted to the stars, are there received into the highest region of heaven, and appear as good genii to their relations; while they who die of sickness, though they have lived good lives, are plunged into oblivion and darkness under earth, and are no more remembered after death, than if they had never existed.” Again he says:

Apparitions

"We find that Origen, Tertullian, and St. Irenaus, were clearly of this opinion. Origen, in his second book against Celsus, relates and subscribes to the opinion of Plato, who says, that the shadows and images of the dead, which are seen near sepulchres, are nothing but the soul disengaged from its gross body, but not yet entirely freed from matter; that these souls become in time luminous, transparent, and subtile, or rather are carried in luminous and transparent bodies, as in a vehicle, in which they appeal to the living. Tertullian, in his book concerning the soul, asserts that it is corporeal, and of a certain figure, and appeals to the experience of those who have seen apparitions of departed souls, and to whom they have appeared as corporeal and tangible, though of an aerial colour and consistence. He defines the soul to be a breath from God, immortal, corporeal, and of a certain figure."

It is interesting to note that some of these classic spectres are nearly akin to the melodramatic conceptions of more modern times. The younger Pliny tells of haunted houses whose main features correspond with those of later hauntings-houses haunted by dismal, chained spectres, the ghosts of murdered men who could not rest till their mortal remains had been properly buried.

In the early centuries of the Christian era there was no diminution in the number of apparitions witnessed. Visions of saints were frequently seen, and were doubtless induced by the fasts, rigid asceticism, and severe penances practiced in the name of religion. The saints themselves saw visions, and were attended by guardian angels, and harassed by the unwelcome attentions of demons, or of their master, the devil. These beliefs continued into the Middle Ages, when, without undergoing any abatement in vigour, they began to take on a more romantic aspect. The witch and wer-wolf superstitions were responsible for many tales of animal apparitions. The poltergeist flourished in a congenial atmosphere. Vampires were terribly familiar in Slavonic lands, and nowhere in Europe were they quite unknown. The malignant demons, known as incubi and succubi, were no less common. In the northern countries familiar spirits or goblins, approximating to the Roman lares, or the wicked and more mischievous lemures, haunted the domestic hearth, and bestowed well-meant, but not always desirable, attentions on the families to which they attached themselves. These beings were accountable for a vast number of apparitions, but the spirits of the dead also walked abroad in the Dark Ages. Generally they wished to unburden their minds of some weighty secret which hindered them from resting in their graves. The criminal came to confess his guilt, the miser to reveal the spot where he had hidden his gold. The cowled monk walked the dim aisles of a monastery, or haunted the passages of some Rhenish castle, till the prayers of the devout had won release for his tortured soul. Perchance, a maiden in white flitted through the corridor of some old mansion, moaning and wringing her hands, enacting in pantomime some long-forgotten tragedy. At the cross-roads lingered the ghost of the poor suicide, uncertain which way to take. The old belief in the dread potency of the unburied dead continued to exercise sway. There is, for example, the German story of the Bleeding Nun. Many and ghastly had been her crimes during her lifetime, and finally she was murdered by one of her paramours, her body being left unburied. The castle wherein she was slain became the scene of her nocturnal wanderings. It is related that a young woman who wished to elope with her lover decided to disguise herself as this ghostly spectre in order to facilitate their escape. But the unfortunate lover eloped with the veritable Bleeding Nun herself, mistaking her for his mistress. This, and other traditional apparitions, such as the Wild Huntsman, the

Apparitions

Phantom Coach, the Flying Dutchman, which were not confined to any one locality, either originated in this period or acquired in it a wildly romantic character which lent itself to treatment by ballad-writers, and it is in ballad form that many of them have come down to us.

This hey-day of the apparition passed. however, at length, and in the eighteenth century we find among the cultured classes a scepticism as regards the objective nature of apparitions, which was destined two centuries later to become almost universal. Hallucination, though not yet very well understood, began to be called the "power of imagination." Many apparitions, too, were attri buted to illusion, Nevertheless, the belief in apparitions was sustained and strengthened by the clairvoyant powers of magnetic subjects and somnambules. Swedenborg, who had, and still has many disciples, did much to encourage the idea that apparitions objective and supernatural. To explain the fact that only the seer saw these beings and heard their voices, he says:

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The speech of an angel or of a spirit with man is heard as sonorously as the speech of one man with another; yet it is not heard by others who stand near, but by the man himself alone. The reason is, the speech of an angel or of a spirit flows in first into the man's thought, and by an internal way into the organ of hearing, and thus actuates it from within, whereas the speech of man flows first into the air, and by an external way into the organ of hearing which it actuates from without. Hence, it is evident, that the speech of an angel and of a spirit with man is heard in man, and, since it equally affects the organ of hearing, that it is equally sonorous."

Thus it will be seen that ancient and modern ideas on apparitions differ very little in essential particulars, though they take colour from the race and time to which they belong. Now they are thin, gibbering shadows; now they are solid, full-bodied creatures, hardly to be distinguished from real flesh and blood; again they are rich in romantic accessories; but the laws which govern their appearance are the same, and the beliefs concerning them are not greatly different, in whatever race or age they may be found.

Present-Day Theories Concerning Apparitions.-At the present time apparitions are generally, though by no means universally, referred to hallucination (q.v.) Even those who advance a spiritualistic theory of apparitions frequently incline to this view, for it is argued that the discarnate intelligence may, by psychical energy alone, produce in the brain of a living person a definite hallucination, corresponding perhaps to the agent's appearance in life. Hallucinations may be either coincidental or noncoincidental. The former, also known as telepathic hallucinations, are those which coincide with a death, or with some other crisis in the life of the person represented by the hallucination. The Society for Psychical Research has been instrumental in collecting numerous instances of coincidental hallucinations, many of which are recorded in Phantasms of the Living, by Messrs. Myers, Podmore and Gurney. Mr. Podmore was indeed the chief exponent of the telepathic theory of ghosts (for which see also Telepathy) which he had adopted after many years of research and experiment. He suggested that apparitions result from a telepathic impression conveyed from the mind of one living person to that of another, an impression which may be doubly intense in time of stress or exalted emotion, or at the moment of dissolution. Apparitions of the dead he would account for by a theory of latent impressions, conveyed to the mind of the percipient during the agent's lifetime, but remaining dormant until some particular train of thought rouses them to activity. This view is largely

supported at the present day. Hallucinations, whether coincidental or otherwise, may, and do present themselves to persons who are perfectly sane and normal, but they are also a feature of insanity, hypnotism and hysteria, and of certain pathological conditions of brain, nerves, and senseorgans. The late Mr. Myers was of opinion that an apparition represented an actual “ psychic invasion," that it was a projection of some of the agent's psychic force. Such a doctrine is, as Mr. Myers himself admitted, a reversion to animism. There is another modern theory of apparitions, particularly applicable to haunted houses. This is the theory of psychometry (q.v.). Sir Oliver Lodge, in his Man and the Universe, says:

"Occasionally a person appears able to respond to stimuli embededd, as it were. among psycho-physical surroundings in a manner at present ill understood and almost incredible:-as if strong emotions could be unconsciously recorded in matter, so that the deposit shall thereafter affect a sufficiently sensitive organism, and cause similar emotions to reproduce themselves in its subconsciousness, in a manner analogous to the customary conscious interpretation of photographic or phonographic records, and indeed of pictures or music and artistic embodiment generally."

Take, for example, a haunted house of the traditional Christmas-number type, wherein some one room is the scene of a ghostly representation of some long past tragedy. On a psychometric hypothesis the original tragedy has been literally photographed on its material surroundings, nay, even on the ether itself, by reason of the intensity of emotion felt by those who enacted it; and thenceforth in certain persons an hallucinatory effect is experienced corresponding to such impression. It is this theory which is made to account for the fecling one has on entering certain rooms, that there is an alien presence therein, though it be invisible and inaudible to mortal sense. The doctrine of psychometry in its connection with apparitions is of considerable interest because of its wide possibilities, but it belongs to the region of romance rather than to that of science, and is hardly to be considered as a serious theory of apparitions at least, until it is supported by better evidence than its protagonists can show at present.

Spiritualistic theories of apparitions also vary, though they agree in referring such appearances to discarnate intelligences, generally to the spirits of the dead. The opinion of some spiritualistic authorities is, as has been said, that the surviving spirit produces in the mind of the percipient, by purely psychic means, an hallucination representing his (the agent's) former bodily appearance. Others believe that the discarnate spirit can materialise by taking to itself ethereal particles from the external world, and thus build up a temporary physical organism through which it can communicate with the living. Still others consider that the materialised spirit borrows such temporary physical organism from that of the medium, and experiments have been made to prove that the medium loses weight during the materialisation. (See Materialisation.) The animistic belief that the soul itself can become visible is not now generally credited, since it is thought that pure spirit cannot be perceptible to the physical senses. But a compromise has been made in the psychic body, ' (q.v.), midway between soul and body, which some spiritualists consider clothes the soul at the dissolution of the physical body. The psychic body is composed of material particles, very fine and subtle, and perceptible as a rule, only to the eye of the clairvoyant. It is this, and not the spirit, which is seen as an apparition. We must not overlook the theory held by some Continental investigators, that spirit materialisations so-called are manifestations of psychic force emanating from the medium.

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Different Classes of Apparitions.-Many of the various classes of apparitions having been considered above, and others being dealt with under their separate headings, it is hardly necessary to do more than enumerate them here. Apparitions may be divided broadly into two classesinduced and spontaneous. To the former class belong hypnotic and post-hypnotic hallucinations (see Hypnotism) and visions (q.v.) induced by the use of narcotics and intoxicants, fasts, ascetic practices, incense, narcotic salves, and auto-hypnotisation. The hallucinatory appearances seen in the mediumistic or somnambulistic trance are, of course, allied to those of hypnotism, but usually arise spontaneously, and are often associated with clairvoyance (q.v.). Crystallomancy (q.v.) or crystal vision is a form of apparition which is stated to be frequently clairvoyant, and in this case the theory of telepathy is especially applicable. Crystal visions fall under the heading of induced apparitions, since gazing in a crystal globe induces in some persons a species of hypnotism. a more or less slight dissociation of consciousness, without which hallucination is impossible. Another form of clairvoyance is second sight (q.v.). a faculty common among the Scottish Highlanders. Persons gifted with the second sight often see symbolical apparitions, as, for instance, the vision of a funeral or a coffin when a death is about to occur in the community. Symbolical appearances are indeed a feature of clairvoyance and visions generally. Clairvoyance includes retrocognition and premonition-visions of the past and the future respectively-as well as apparitions of contemporary events happening at a distance. Clairvoyant powers are often attributed to the dying. Dreams are, strictly speaking, apparitions, but in ordinary usage the term is applied only to coincidental or veridical dreams, or to those "visions of the night," which are of peculiar vividness.

From these subjective apparitions let us turn to the ghost proper. The belief in ghosts has come to us, as has been indicated, from the remotest antiquity, and innumerable theories have been formulated to account for it, from the primitive animistic conception of the apparition as an actual soul to the modern theories enumerated above, of which the chief are telepathy and spirit materialisation. Apparitions of the living also offer a wide field for research, perhaps the most favoured hypothesis at the present day being that of the telepathic hallucination. A peculiarly weird type of apparition is the wraith (q.v.) or double, of which the Irish fetch is a variant. The wraith is an exact facsimile of a living person, who may himself see it; Goethe, Shelley, and other famous men are said to have seen their own wraiths. The fetch makes its appearance shortly before the death of the person it represents, either to himself or his friends, or both. Another Irish spirit which foretells death is the banshee (q.v.), a being which attaches itself to certain ancient families, and is regularly seen or heard before the death of one of its members. To the same class belong the omens of death, in the form of certain animals or birds, which follow some families. Hauntings or localised apparitions are dealt

with under the heading Haunted Houses." The pol

tergeist (q.v.), whose playful manifestations must certainly be included among apparitions, suggests another classification of these as visual, auditory, tactile, etc., since poltergeist hauntings or indeed hauntings of any kindare not confined to apparitions touching any one sense. apparitions of fairies, brownies, and others of the creatures of folk-lore, see Fairies.

For

In this article an attempt has been made to show as briefly as possible the universality of the belief in apparations, and the varied forms under which this belief exhibits itself in various times and countries among savage

Aquinas

and civilised peoples; and to indicate the basic principles on which it rests-namely, the existence of a spiritual world capable of manifesting itself in the sphere of matter, and the survival of the human soul after the dissolution of the body. While the beliefs in this connection of savage races and of Europeans in early and mediæval times may arouse interest and curiosity for their own sakes, the scientific investigator of the present day values them chiefly as throwing light on modern beliefs. The belief in apparitions is a root principle of spiritualism. Many who are not spiritualists in the accepted sense have had experiences which render the belief in apparitions almost inevitable. A subject which touches so nearly a considerable percentage of the community, including many people of culture and education, and concerning which there is a vast quantity of evidence extending back into antiquity, cannot be a matter of indifference to science, and the investigations made by scientific men within recent years arouse surprise that such investigation has been so long delayed. The Society for Psychical Research has gathered many well attested instances of coincidental apparitions, clairvoyance, and apparitions of the dead. As yet, however, the problem remains unsolved, and the various hypotheses advanced are conflicting and sometimes obscure. The theory of telepathic hallucination offered by Mr. Podmore seems on the whole to be the most conformable to known natural laws, while at the same time covering the ground with fair completeness. But perhaps the best course to take at the present stage of our knowledge is to suspend judgment in the meanwhile, until further light has been cast on the subject. Apports: The name given to various objects, such as flowers, jewellery, and even live animals, materialised in the presence of a medium. The production of these apports have always been, and still are, one of the most prominent and effective features of spiritualistic séances. Sometimes they fly through the air and strike the faces of the sitters; sometimes they appear on the table, or in the laps of those present. A favourite form is the scattering of perfume on the company. Recent systematic experiments conducted in a purely scientific spirit have exposed fraud in numerous instances where ordinary precautions would not have sufficed for its detection. Frequently it has been found that the medium had skilfully concealed the apports in the room or about her person. Nevertheless, though the result is often produced by obviously unscrupulous means, it does not follow that all materialisations are performed with fraudulent intent. In cases where, so far as can be judged, the character of the medium is beyond reproach, as in the case of Hélene Smith, the idea has been advanced that any preparations made beforehand, such as the secreting of flowers, etc., must result from a process of activity of the sublinimal consciousness. Other explanations are, that the apports are actually conveyed to the séance by spirits, or that they are drawn thither by magnetic power. Branches of trees, armfuls of fruit and flowers, money, jewels, and live lobsters are among the more extraordinary apports. Apprentice: (See Adept.) Apuleius: (See Greece.)

Aquin (Mardochee d'): A learned rabbi of Carpentras, who died in 1650. He became a Christian, and changed his name of Mardochee into Philip. He was the author of an Interpretation of the Tree of the Hebrew Kabala. Aquinas (Thomas) who has been under the imputation of magic, was one of the profoundest scholars and subtlest logicians of his day. He was a youth of illustrious birth, and received the rudiments of his education under the monks of Monte Cassino, and in the University of Naples. D

Aquinas

But, not contented with these advantages, he secretly entered himself in the Society of Preaching Friars, or Dominicans, at seventeen years of age. His mother, being indignant that he should thus take the vow of poverty, and sequester himself from the world for life, employed every means in her power to induce him to alter his purpose, but all in vain. The friars, to deliver him from her importunities, removed him from Naples to Terracina, from Terracina to Anagnia, and from Anagnia to Rome. His mother followed him in all these changes of residence, but was not permitted so much as to see him. At length she induced his two elder brothers to seize him by force. They waylaid him on his road to Paris, whether he was sent to complete his course of instruction, and carried him off to the castle of Aquino, where he had been born. Here he was confined for two years, but he found a way to correspond with the superiors of his order, and finally escaped from a window in the castle. St. Thomas Aquinas (for he was canonised after his death) exceeded perhaps all men that ever existed in the severity and strictness of his metaphysical disquisitions, and thus acquired the name of the Seraphic Doctor.

It was to be expected that a man, who thus immersed himself in the depths of thought, should be an enemy to noise and interruption. He dashed to pieces an artificial man of brass that Albertus Magnus, who was his tutor, had spent thirty years in bringing to perfection, being impelled to this violence by its perpetual and unceasing garrulity. It is further said, that his study being placed in a great thoroughfare, where the grooms were all day long exercising their horses, he found it necessary to apply a remedy to this nuisance. He made by the laws of magic a small horse of brass, which he buried two or three feet under ground in the midst of this highway, and, having done so, no horse would any longer pass along the road. It was in vain that the grooms with whip and spur sought to conquer the animals" repugnance. They were finally compelled to give up the attempt, and to choose another place for their daily exercises.

It has further been sought to fix the imputation of magic upon Thomas Aquinas by referring to him certain books written on that science; but these are now acknowledged to be spurious.

Arabs The heyday of occultism among the Arab race was reached at the epoch when that division of them known as the Moors established their empire in the Spanish peninsula.

We first emerge from cloud and shadow into a precise and definite region in the eighth century, when an Arabian mystic revived the dreams and speculations of the alchemists, and discovered some important secrets. Geber (q.v.), who flourished about 720-750, is reputed to have written upwards of five hundred works upon the Philosophers' Stone and elixir vitæ. His researches after these desiderata proved fruitless, but if he did not bestow upon mankind immortal life and boundless wealth, he gave them nitrate of silver, corrosive sublimate, red oxide of mercury, and nitric acid.

Among his tenets were a belief that a preparation of gold would heal all diseases in animals and plants, as well as in human beings; that the metals were affected with maladies, except the pure, supreme, and precious one of gold; and that the Philsophers' Stone had often been discovered, but that its fortunate discoverers would not reveal the secret to blind, incredulous, and unworthy man. His Summa Perfectionis-a manual for the alchemical student-has been frequently translated. A curious English version, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, was published by an English enthusiast, one Richard Russell, at "the Star, in New Market, in Wapping,

near the Dock," in 1686. Geber's true name was Abou Moussah Djafar, to which was added Al Sofi, or "The Wise," and he was a native of Houran, in Mesopotamia. He was followed by Avicenna (q.v.), Averroes (q.v.) and others equally gifted and fortunate.

According to Geber and his successors the metals were not only compound creatures, but they were also all composed of the same two substances. Both Prout and Davy lent their names to ideas not unlike this. "The improvements," says the latter," taking place in the methods of examining bodies, are constantly changing the opinions of chemists with respect to their nature, and there is no reason to suppose that any real indestructible principle has yet been discovered. Matter may ultimately be found to be the same in essence, differing only in the arrangement of its particles; or two or three simple substances may produce all the varieties of compound bodies." The ancient ideas, therefore, of Demetrius the Greek physicist, and of Geber, the Arabian polypharmist, are still hovering about the horizon of chemistry.

The Arabians taught, in the third place, that the metals are composed of mercury and sulphur in different proportions. They toiled away at the art of making many medicines out of the various mixtures and reactions of the few chemicals at their command. They believed in transmutation, but they did not strive to effect it. It belonged to their creed rather than to their practice. They were a race of hard-working, scientific artisans, with their pestles and mortars, their crucibles and furnaces, their alembics and aludels, their vessels for infusion, for decoction, for cohobation, sublimation, fixation, lixiviation, filtration and coagulation. They believed in transmutation, in the first matter, and in the correspondence of the metals with the planets, to say nothing of potable gold. Whence the Arabians derived the sublimer articles of their scientific faith, is not known to any European historian. Perhaps they were the conjectures of their ancestors according to the faith. Perhaps they had them from thə Fatimites of Northern Africa, among whose local predecessors it has been seen that it is just possible the doctrine of the four elements and their mutual convertibility may have arisen. Perhaps they drew them from Greece, modifying and adapting them to their own specific forms of matter, mercury, sulphur and arsenic.

Astrology.-Astrology was also employed by the oracles of Spain. Albatgni was celebrated for his astronomical science, as were many others; and in geometry, arithmetic, algebraical calculations and the theory of music, we have a long list, Asiatic and Spanish, but only known by their lives and principal writings. The works of Ptolemy also exercised the ingenuity of the Arabians; while Alchindi, as far as we may be allowed to judge from his multifarious volumes, traversed the whole circle of the sublimer sciences. But judicial astrology, or the art of foretelling future events from the position and influences of the stars, was with them a favourite pursuit; and many of their philosophers, incited by various motives, dedicated all their labours to this futile but lucrative inquiry. They often speak with high commendation of the iatro-mathematical discipline, which could control the disorders to which man was subject, and regulate the events of life.

The tenets of Islamism, which inculcate an unreserved submission to the over-ruling destinies of heaven, are evidently adverse to the lessons of astrology; but this by no means hindered the practitioners of old Spain and Arabia from attaining a high standard of perfection in the art, which they perhaps first learned from the peoples of Chaldæa, the past masters of the ancient world in astronomical science, in divination, and the secrets of prophecy. But in Arab Spain, where the tenets of Islam, were per