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Visionaries
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in dreams, and I find that a very trifling accident, such as a chance dot on
the paper, may have great influence on the general character of any one of
these automatic sketches.
Visions, like dreams, are often mere patchworks built up of bits of
recollections. The following is one of these
“When passing a shop in Tottenham Court Road, I went in order a Dutch cheese, and
the proprietor (a bullet-headed man whom I had never seen before) rolled a cheese on the
marble slab of his counter, asking me if that one would do. I answered ‘Yes,’ left the shop,
and thought no more of the incident. The following evening, on closing my eyes, I saw a
head detached from the body rolling about slightly on a white surface. I recognised the
face, but could not remember where I had seen it, and it was only after thinking about it for
some time that I identified it as that of the cheesemonger who had sold me the cheese on
the previous day. I may mention that I have often seen the man since, and that I found the
vision I saw was exactly like him, although if I had been asked to describe the man before
I saw the vision I should have been unable to do so.”
Recollections need not be combined like mosaic work; they may be
blended, on the principle of composite portraiture. I suspect that the
phantasmagoria may be in some part due to blended memories; the
number of possible combinations would be practically endless, and each
combination would give a new face. There would thus be no limit to the
dies in the coinage of the brain.
I have found that the peculiarities of visualisation, such as the tendency
to see Number-Forms, and the still rarer tendency to associate colour with
sound, is strongly hereditary, and I should infer, what facts seem to
confirm, that the tendency to be a seer of visions is equally so. Under
these circumstances we should expect that it would be unequally
developed in different races, and that a large natural gift of the visionary
faculty might become characteristic not only of certain families, as among
the second-sight seers of Scotland, but of certain races, as that of the
Gipsies.
It happens that the mere acts of fasting, of want of sleep, and of
solitary musing, are severally conducive to visions. I have myself been
told of cases in which persons accidentally long deprived of food became
for —a brief time subject to
