secondly, there is the idea that only the meeting with Satan was literal, while everything up until he “found himself amid calm night and solitude”, were apparitions conjured by Satan.  (Hawthorne/p.945).  In Rita Gollins’ book Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Truth of Dreams she attempts to explain what she calls “the unsteady perceptions of young Goodman Brown”, by referring to the philosophy of a scholar whose ideas closely followed those of one of Hawthorne’s professors.  (Gollin/p.26).  Her explanation, based on the scholar’s opinion, says, “superstitious people ‘incorporate their fears with the objects they dimly perceive, till the whole, thus compounded, assumes the appearance of external reality.’” (Gollin/p.126).