Letters on demonology and witchcraft. Addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq / by Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
- Walter Scott
- Date:
- 1831
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft. Addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq / by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![advice—or a bereaved husband earuestlv desires ag-ain to behold the form of which the g-rave has deprived him for ever—or, to use a darker, yet very common instance, the wretched man who has dipped his hand in his fellow-creature’s Idood, 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 circumstances, has power to summon up to the organ of sig-ht, 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 coivrse of one of those hvely 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 occiu’s—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 ftirnitnre, at the time when the supposed apparition is manifested, it becomes almost in vain to argue with the visionary against the reahty of his dream, since the spectre, though itself purely fanciful, is inserted amidst so many circumstances which he feels must be true beyond the reach of doubt or question. That which is undeniably certain, becomes in a manner a warrant for tbe reality of the appear- ance to which doubt would have l)een otherwise attached. And if any event, such as the death of the j)erson dreamt of, chances to take place, so as to corres])ond with the nature and the time of the appai’ition, the coincidence, though one which must be frequent, since oiu’ ch’eams usually refer to the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22029667_0034.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
