118 Inquiries into Human Faculty
opened (2), when all of a sudden it burst open and the petals became reflexed (3).[1]
“Fig. 73. The spontaneous appearance of a poppy capsule* (1) dehiscing as usual by ‘pores,’ but with inordinately long and arching valves over the pores. These valves were eminently suggestive of hooded flowers. Hence they changed to a whorl of salvias. (2). Each blossom now gyrated rapidly in a vertical plane. Concentrating observation on one rotating flower, it became a -‘rotating haze,’ as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The ‘haze’ now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird’s nest. It became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective view of the nest. The eggs all disappeared but one (5), which increased in size; the bright point of light now shone with great intensity like a star; then it gradually grew dimmer and dimmer till it disappeared into the usual hazy obscurity into which all [my] visual objects ultimately vanish.”
I have a sufficient variety of cases to prove the continuity between all the forms of visualisation, beginning with an almost total absence of it, and ending with a complete hallucination. The continuity is, however, not simply that of varying degrees of intensity, but of variations in the character of the process itself, so that it is by no means uncommon to find two very different forms of it concurrent in the same person. There are some who visualise well, and who also are seers of visions, who declare that the vision is not a vivid visualisation, but altogether a different phenomenon. In short, if we please to call all sensations due to external impressions “direct,” and all others “induced,” then there are many channels through which the “induction” of the latter may take place, and the channel of ordinary
-visualisation in the persons just mentioned is different from that through which their visions arise.
The following is a good instance of this condition. A friend writes
“These visions often appear with startling vividness, and so far from depending on any voluntary effort of the mind, they
[1] The details and illustrations of four other experiments with the image of a rosebud have been given me. They all vary in detail.
