there is also a supernatural botany to be
extracted, and as for the mineralogy of our
forefathers that was supernatural almost from
the beginning to the end. Into these gardens
of superstition I hope I may, some day, be
allowed to pass for a few minutes, but not
yet; since, above all things, it is important to
be systematic. There have already been
discussed in this journal the spirits of the
elements and the chief races of the proper goblin
world, as they entered into the daily household
thoughts of our forefathers, and were
household words to them. Nothing has
been yet said of the supernatural varieties of
man himself as a dwarf, giant, or hero; as
ghost, as subterranean watcher, wehrwolf.
lamia, and so forth. Man before beast.

And spirit before flesh; let us begin therefore
with man as ghost. Ghosts assume
many forms, of which Lavater writing in
the year fifteen hundred and eighty, thus
specified a few. They appear sometimes
in the shape of four-footed animals, as
of dogs, swine, horses, stags, cats, hares, &c.
Sometimes they take the shape of birds
and creeping things, as of the raven, owl,
snake, dragon. Now and then they appear in
lovely guise, at other times they are disgusting.
One may be on horseback, another on
foot, and another, it is said, creeping on all
fours. On one occasion fiery men are seen,
and on another bleeding men, or men ripped
up, whose bowels hang before them. At times
only a shadow is seen, at times only a hand,
at times only a particular instrument, as a
dagger or a sword that is being carried by
the spectre. Often a wisp of burning straw
is observed, or a hoarse voice is heard. It
may occur that one is only conscious of an
unseen wanderer who moves in certain
chambers, turns the leaves of a book, chinks
money, sounds an instrument, or raps upon
the walls. A strange noise may be heard as of
the discharge of great guns at a distance.
It will also occur to a man that a spectre
grasps him by the arm or by the hair, and in
that way becomes his companion for many
miles upon a journey.

Out of so many possibilities who could not
pick authority for the belief that he had seen
or felt a ghost? An ill-favoured stranger in
the street, a stray dog, a nervous twitching
in the arm or tickling at the roots of the hair,
might be enough to justify such an opinion,
and all the terrors that it brought. They
were substantial terrors, for it was accounted
dangerous to see a ghost. "Often it happens,"
Lavater writes, "that they who have seen
spectres or heard them, or have felt their
breath, get a swelling of the mouth and of the
whole face, or may even lose their reason, as
experience has proved."

I think that if men had been as clever at
statistics three hundred years ago as they are
now, and if the truth could have been set
down, we should be amazed at the contents of
a sixteenth century blue-book on the subject
of insanity. It is proved that, in our own day,
the mere folly of belief in one relic of old
ignorance, spirit-rapping, has supplied many
inmates to the mad-houses. But when men's
minds were firmly possessed by a crowd
of the most tormenting sort of superstitions,
taking a hundred forms and entering into a
hundred daily incidents of life; when minds
too, were weaker, because bodies were less
wholesomely provided for; when half the life
of every common-place man or woman was
sheer nightmare; how many thousands must
have been made as "experience proved men
often became who had seen ghosts!" The
annals of superstition include much that
should properly be only the annals of a mad-
house. Men, and especially women—more
particularly those belonging to the lower classes
—were formerly to be found in almost every
town and village, who deserved to be pitied
and nursed, but whose lunatic ravings, on the
topics that turned their brains, were accepted
as so much horrible truth, stored up in
evidence of error, and brought death or ruin
on their utterers. Thus Fincel, in his second
book of Marvels, tells of a poor fellow at Bessan
who believed himself a wolf—a wehrwolf
—and scampered about the fields. He was
caught with difficulty, and earnestly protested
to his captors that he really was a wolf, but
that he had his skin on with the hairy
side turned inwards. "Therefore, some
merciless men, who, in good sooth, were
devouring wolves, cut his skin through with a
sword, and hewed off his arms to ascertain the
truth. The man being proved innocent they
gave him over to the surgeons, but he died in
a few days."

It is in this sense that we must read
the strange stories told, and strange
confessions made, not only by torture, but
voluntarily by people who had all to lose except
their wits. More than half the witch
prosecutions of our forefathers were instituted
against lunatics; the superstitions of the age
fastened upon the hallucinations of these poor
afflicted people; the borders of the kingdom,
of terror were enlarged by them. This
production of lunacy by superstition, and this
reaction of lunacy upon the superstition that
produced it, should be always remembered in
connection with the whole study of either subject.
The importance of a history of insanity, in
connection with the social history of Europe
up to the end of the sixteenth century,
does not seem yet to have been thoroughly
felt.

There was a peculiarity about the movement
of a ghost, usually pointed out by learned
authors. Thus Camerarius writes, upon the
testimony of experienced persons, that "the
more fixedly a spectre is regarded the more
horrible it becomes; but, above all things, it
is to be known by its eyes and by its gait.
For it does not walk in the natural way by
alternately lifting of the feet, but as a ship
blown by a light wind over the water, or with