Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott].

  • Scott, Walter, 1771-1832
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/344 (page 17)
    —or, to use a darker yet very common instance, the wretched man who has dipped his hand in his fellow- creature’s blood is haunted by the apprehension that the phantom of the slain stands by the bedside of his murderer. In all or any of these cases, who shall doubt that imagination, favoured by circum- stances, has power to summon up to the organ of sight spectres which only exist in the mind of those by whom their apparition seems to be witnessed? If we add, that such a vision may take place in the course of one ot those lively dreams, in which the patient, except in respect to the single subject of one strong impression, is, or seems, sensible of the real particulars of the scene around him, a state of slumber which often occurs—if he is so far con- scious, for example, as to know that he is lying on his own bed, and surrounded by his own familiar furniture, at the time when the supposed apparition is mani- fested—it becomes almost in vain to argue with the visionary against the reality of his dream, since the spectre, though itself purely fanciful, is inserted amid so many circumstances which lie feels must be true beyond the reach of doubt or question. That which is undeniably certain becomes in a manner a warrant for the reality of the appearance to which doubt would have been otherwise attached. And if any event, such as the death of the person dreamed of, chances to take place, so as to correspond with the nature and the time of the apparition, the coincidence, though one which must be frequent, since our dreams usually refer to the accomplishment of that which haunts our minds when awake, and often presage the most probable events, seems perfect, and the chain of circumstances touching the evidence may not unreasonably be considered as complete. Such a concatenation, we repeat, must frequently take place, when it is considered of what stuff dreams are made —-how naturally they turn upon those who occupy our mind while awake, and, when a soldier is exposed to B 2