“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.… “Why do you doubt your senses?”

 

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato…”

—CHARLES DICKENS, A CHRISTMAS CAROL

 

It is—last stage of all—

When we are frozen up within, and quite

The phantom of ourselves,

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost

Which blamed the living man.

—MATTHEW ARNOLD, GROWING OLD