IDA. I presume these illusions may be wrought without the outlines of _distinct shapes_. I have ever thought the vision of Eliphaz the Temanite more solemn, because an _undefined_ shadow: “A vision is before our face, but we cannot discern the form thereof.” And where the _profane_ poets have written thus mystically, they have risen in sublimity. Such is Milton’s portraiture of death:
“——the other shape, If shape it could be called, which shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed neither.”
And in the splendid vision of Manfred, whose thoughts were, alas! so polluted by passion—
“I see The steady aspect of a clear large star, But nothing more.
SPIRIT. We have _no form_ beyond the elements, Of which we are the mind and principle.”
And the idolaters profanely adopted this mystic metaphor when they inscribed their Temple of Isis, at Sais—
“I am whatever has been, is, and shall be, and no one hath taken off my veil.”
EV. The phantom is often described as destitute of form. When Johnson was asked to define the ghost which appeared to old Cave, he answered: “Why, sir, something of a _shadowy_ being.” And there is a sublimity and a mystery in that which is indefinite. Two very deep philosophers have however differed in opinion regarding the effect of darkness and obscurity on the mind. Burke alludes to darkness as a cause of the sublime and terrific: (and he is supported by Tacitus—“Omne ignotum pro magnifico est:”) Locke, as not naturally a cause of terror, but as it is associated by nurses and old crones with ghosts and goblins.
I will not split this difference, but I believe Burke is in the right. Obscurity is doubtless deeply influential in raising phantoms; that which is indefinable becomes almost of necessity a ghost. If the ghosts of Shakspere did not appear, the illusion would be more impressive. In darkness and night, therefore, the ghosts burst their cerements, the spirits walk abroad, and the ghost seers revel in all their superstitious glory. The druids, those arch impostors, acted their mysteries in the depth of shadowy groves: and the heathen idols are half hidden both in the hut of the American Indian and the temples of Indostan. It is true children shut their eyes when frightened, but this is _instinctive_, and because they think it real; but, in truth, they ever dread the notion of darkness. By the fancy of a timid mind, in the deepening gloom of twilight, a withered oak has been fashioned into a living monster; and I might occupy our evening in recounting the tales of terror to which a decayed trunk once gave birth, among some village gossips in the weald of Sussex.