Another remarkable sensation follows.  The shining band, which has dilated until it is withdrawn from the eyes, whether closed or open, to an apparent distance of several yards, becomes tinted with all the colours of the rainbow, standing out in such vivid splendour on the dark background that I have never seen them equalled in nature.  Indeed the beauty of this phenomena is amazing.  The band, inlaid with various colours, now occupies the whole space, maintaining an equal distance from the closed eyes, and moving continually with a rhythmic undulation, while it constantly becomes more vivid.  The moving circle continues to dilate until it slowly fades, and at last completely disappears.  From its beginning to the end, the vision occupies from twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Throughout the phenomenon I continue to be perfectly collected and free in mind, so that I can observe it in all its details with perfect calmness, and can also impart my observations to the persons with whom I happen to be.  Only when the subjective sensation has ceased, I feel an obscure pain in the brow of the eye in which the phenomenon occurred.  This is readily explained by the well-known interlacing of the nerves, and the action of the hemispheres.

Supposing that such phenomena occur, as they more readily do, in persons predisposed to nervous affections, although not insane, in times and in a society agitated by religious excitement, or in persons habitually contemplative and occupied with spiritual images and thoughts; if in moments of ecstatic emotion they should perceive, in addition to the images proper to such conditions, these circling flames, which is very likely to be the case, or the iridescent aureole we have described, they would certainly accept and glorify the heavenly vision revealed to them.  The revolution of the bright stars or iridescent band, preceded by the obscurity of vision which accompanies the ordinary ecstatic hallucination, would certainly be ascribed to the saints or angels, and would thus become more supernatural and consonant with the believer’s idea of heaven; and these very subjective sensations might often produce the ecstatic vision, so ready to appear in the morbid conditions which lead to hallucination.

According to the process previously described, by which the phenomenon of natural hallucinations is produced by an external stimulus, these luminous phenomena would revive the memory of angelic and saintly forms, of which men were so profoundly conscious in times of religious excitement, and would be regarded as their external signs, while they would at the same time stimulate the appearance of such angelic visions.  Ultimately this would lead to the vast drama of celestial hallucinations described for us in the accounts of many ecstatic visions.  They do not only occur in modern religions, but in those of the old heathen, and in the rude and unformed beliefs of savages.  The ethnography of the most savage peoples of our