Hence, what would he perfectly clear to myself,
and to those who have passed through a similar experience, may be
unintelligible to the former class. The Spiritualists excuse the
crudities which their Plato, St. Paul, and Shakspeare utter, by
ascribing them to the imperfection of human language; and I may claim
the same allowance in setting forth mental conditions of which the mind
itself can grasp no complete idea, seeing that its most important
faculties are paralyzed during the existence of those conditions.]
[Footnote 8: The recent experiments in Hypnotism, in France, show that a
very similar psychological condition accompanies the trance produced by
gazing fixedly upon a bright object held near the eyes. I have no doubt,
in fact, that it belongs to every abnormal state of the mind.]
[Footnote 9: See _The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon containing the
Wonderful Things that he did in his Life, also the Manner of his Death;
with the Lives and Deaths of the Conjurors Bungye and Vandermast_.
Reprinted in Thom's _Early English Romances_.]
[Footnote 10: _Historia Crit. Phil_. Period. II. Pars II.
Liber II. Cap. iii. Section 23.]
[Footnote 11: A barbarous distich gives the relations of these two
famous divisions of knowledge in the Middle Ages:--
"_Gramm_ loquitur, _Dia_ verba docet, _Rhet_ verba colorat,
_Mus_ canit, _Ar_ numerat, _Geo_ ponderat, _Ast_ colit astra.
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