Visionaries 125
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
