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The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
3
The
old
doctrine
of
"ghosts"
regarded
them
as
actual
"spirits"
of
the
living
or
the
dead,
freed
from
the
flesh
or
from
the
grave.
This
view,
whatever
else
may
be
said
for
it,
represents
the
simple
philosophy
of
the
savage,
which
may
be
correct
or
erroneous.
About
the
time
of
the
Reformation,
writers,
especially
Protestant
writers,
preferred
to
look
on
apparitions
as
the
work
of
deceitful
devils,
who
masqueraded
in
the
aspect
of
the
dead
or
living,
or
made
up
phantasms
out
of
"compressed
air".
The
common-sense
of
the
eighteenth
century
dismissed
all
apparitions
as
"dreams"
or
hoaxes,
or
illusions
caused
by
real
objects
misinterpreted,
such
as
rats,
cats,
white
posts,
maniacs
at
large,
sleep-walkers,
thieves,
and
so
forth.
Modern
science,
when
it
admits
the
possibility
of
occasional
hallucinations
in
the
sane
and
healthy,
also
admits,
of
course,
the
existence
of
apparitions.
These,
for
our
purposes,
are
hallucinatory
appearances
occurring
in
the
experience
of
people
healthy
and
sane.
The
difficulty
begins
when
we
ask
whether
these
appearances
ever
have
any
provoking
mental
cause
outside
the
minds
of
the
people
who
experience
them--any
cause
arising
in
the
minds
of
others,
alive
or
dead.
This
is
a
question
which
orthodox
psychology
does
not
approach,
standing
aside
from
any
evidence
which
may
be
produced.
This
book
does
not
pretend
to
be
a
convincing,
but
merely
an
illustrative
collection
of
evidence.
It
may,
or
may
not,
suggest
to
some
readers
the
desirableness
of
further
inquiry;
the
author
certainly
does
not
hope
to
do
more,
if
as
much.
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