this way the natural tendency to see them is
blunted by repression. Therefore, when popular opinion is of a
matter-of-fact kind, the seers of visions keep quiet; they do not
like to be thought fanciful or mad, and they hide their experiences,
which only come to light through inquiries such as these that I have
been making. But let the tide of opinion change and grow favourable
to supernaturalism, then the seers of visions come to the front. The
faintly-perceived fantasies of ordinary persons become invested by
the authority of reverend men with a claim to serious regard; they
are consequently attended to and encouraged, and they increase in
definition through being habitually dwelt upon. We need not suppose
that a faculty previously non-existent has been suddenly evoked, but
that a faculty long smothered by many in secret has been suddenly
allowed freedom to express itself, and to run into extravagance
owing to the removal of reasonable safeguards.

NURTURE AND NATURE.

Man is so educable an animal that it is difficult to distinguish
between that part of his character which has been acquired through
education and circumstance, and that which was in the original grain
of his constitution. His character is exceedingly complex, even in
members of the simplest and purest savage race; much more is it so in
civilised races, who have long since been exempted from the full
rigour of natural selection, and have become more mongrel in their
breed than any other animal on the face of the earth. Different
aspects of the multifarious character of man respond to different
calls from without, so that the same individual, and, much more, the
same race, may behave very differently at different epochs. There
may have been no fundamental change of character, but a different
phase or mood of it may have been evoked by special circumstances,
or those persons in whom that mood is naturally dominant may through
some accident have the opportunity of acting for the time as
representatives of the race. The same nation may be seized by a
military fervour at one period, and by a commercial one at another;
they may be humbly submissive to a monarch, or become outrageous
republicans. The love of art, gaiety, adventure, science, religion
may be severally paramount at different times.

One of the most notable changes that can come over a nation is from
a state corresponding to that of our past dark ages into one like
that of the Renaissance