PRESENTIMENTS, VISIONS, AND APPARITIONS
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is not essential; and it is obvious that Lord Herbert might easily have passed into a state of habitual visions in all respects analogous to those of Swedenborg or St. Theresa.
VISIONS OF THE DYING
The visions which the dying are supposed to see are regarded by many with reverence bordering upon awe. The explanation given by Dr. Edward H. Clarke, a devout physician of Boston, in his "Visions: a Study of False Sight," is strictly physiological. After a long and suggestive philosophical exposition, he says:
Should a bright ray of light falling from some object in the chamber on the retina of a dying person excite the visual apparatus and cells, the hieroglyphic of a departed child, husband, lover, or friend be brought into the field of subjective sight, the beloved one would be reproduced, and at once projected into space. Intense emotion, engendered by such a sight, would for an instant break through the stupefying power of nature's anæsthetic, as the surgeon's knife sometimes momentarily breaks the spell of ether, and the dying individual, springing, with eyes intent, features transfigured, and arms outstretched, toward the vision, would naturally pronounce the long-remembered name, and then fall back and die. Such scenes have occurred. Few could witness them without an overwhelming sense of awe, oppressed "with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls," at beholding for a moment the apparent lifting of the veil and the glory within. To the dying such a vision would not be false. It would not be imagination. It would be real to him. The well-known features would be there, and yet they would be a creation or reproduction of a dissolving brain, and not a messenger from the opened heavens. The vision would be a physiological effect, not a supernatural intervention.
Dr. Clarke is not willing to say that it is impossible that there should be to the dying a revelation of the future into which they are about to enter. He says:
