OCR Rendition - approximate

734 very much to depart, and no effort of the imagination can call them up. I lately saw a framed portrait of a face which seemed more lovely than ally painting I have ever seen, and again I often see fine landscapes which boar no resemblance to any scenery I have ever looked upon. I find it difficult to define the difference between a waking vision and a mental image, although the difference is very apparent to myself'. I think I can do it best in this way. If' you go into a theatre and look at a scene, say of a forest by moonlight, at the back part of the stage, you see every object distinctly and sufficiently illuminated (being thus unlike a more act of memory), but it is nevertheless vague and shadowy, and you might have difficulty in tolling afterwards all the objects you have seen. This rescumblos a mental imago in point of clearness. The waking vision is like what one sons in the open street ill broad daylight, when every object is distinctly impressed on the na9nory. The two kinds of imagery differ also its regards voluntarinoss, the image being entirely subservient to the will, the visions entirely independent of it. They differ also in point of suddenness, the images being formed comparatively slowly as memory recalls each detail, and fading slowly as the mental effort to retain them is relaxed; the visions appearing and vanishing in an instant. The waking visions seem quite close, filling as it were the whole bend, while the mental image seems further away in some far off recess of the mind." The number of persons who see visions no less distinctly than this correspondent is much greater than I bad any idea of when I began this inquiry. I have in my possession the sketch of one, prefaced by a description of it by Mrs. Haweis. She says : " All my life long I have had one very constantly recurring vision, a sight which came whenever it was (lark or darkish, in bed or otherwise. It is a flight of pink roses floating in amass from left to right, and this cloud or mass of roses is presently effaced by a flight of ' sparks' or gold speckles across them. The sparks totter or vibrato from left to right, but they fly distinctly upwards : they are like tiny blocks, half gold, half black, rather symmetrically placed behind each other, and they are always in a hurry to efface the roses sometimes they have come at my call, sometimes by surprise, but they are always equally pleasing. What interests me most is that when a child under nine the flight of roses was light, slow, soft, close to my eyes, roses so large and brilliant and palpable that I tried to touch them : the scent was overpowering, the petals perfect, with leaves peeping here and there, texture and motion all natural. They would stay a long time before the sparks came, and they occupied a large area in black space. Then the sparks came slowly flying, and generally, not always, effaced the roses at once, and every effort to retain the roses failed. Since an early age the flight of roses has annually grown smaller, swifter, anti farther off, till by the time I was grown up my vision had become a speck, so instantaneous that I had hardly time to realise that it was there before the fading sparks showed that -it was past. This is how they still come. The pleasure of them is past, and it always depresses me to speak of them, though I do not now, as I did when a child, connect the vision with any elevated spiritual state. But when I read Tennyson's " Holy Grail," I wondered whether anybody else had had my vision," Rose-red, with beatings in it ' I, may add, I was a London child who never was in the country but once, and I connect no particular flowers with that visit. I may almost say that I hnd,never seen arose, certainly not a quantity of them together." A common form of vision is a phantasmagoria, or the appearance of a crowd of phantoms, perhaps hurrying past like men in a street. It is occasionally seen in broad daylight, much more often in the dark ; THE VISIONS OF SANE PERSONS. 735 it may be at the instant of putting out the candle, but it generally comes on when the person is in bed, preparing to sleep, but is by no means yet asleep. I know no less than three men, eminent in the scientific world, who have those phantasmagoria in one form or another. A near relative of my own had them in a marked degree. She was eminently sane, and of' such good constitution that her faculties were hardly impaired until near her death at ninety. She frequently described them to me. It gave her amusement (luring in idle hour to watch these faces, for their expression was always pleasing, though never strikingly so. No two faces were ever alike, and they never resembled that of any acquaintance. When she was not well the faces usually camp nearer to her, sometimes almost suffocatingly close. She never mistook them for reality, although they were very distinct. This is quite a typical case, similar in most respects to many others that I have. A notcable proportion of' sane persons have had not only visions, but actual hallucinations of sight, sound, or other sense, at one or more periods of their lives. I have a considerable packet of instances contributed by my personal friends, besides a large number communicated to me by other correspondents. One lady, a distinguished authoress, who was at the time a little` fidgeted, but in no way overwrought or ill, said that she saw the principal character of one of her novels glide through the door straight' up to her. It was about the size of a large doll, and it disappeared as suddenly as it came. Another lady, the daughter of an eminent musician, often imagines she hears her father playing. The day she told me of it the incident had again' occurred. She was sitting in a room with her maid, and she asked the maid to open the door that she might hear the music better. The moment the maid got up the hallucina tion disappeared. Again, another lady, apparently in vigorous health, and belonging to a vigorous family, told me that during some past months she had been plagued by voices. The words were at first simple nonsense ; then the word " pray " was frequently repeated ; this was followed by some more or less coherent sentences of little import, and finally the voices left her. In short, the familiar hallucinations of the insane are to be met with far more frequently than is commonly supposed, among people moving.in society and in normal health. I have now nearly done with my summary of facts ; it remains t o make a few comments. on them. The weirdness of visigns lies in their sudden appearance, in their vividness while, present, and in their sudden departure. An inciclznt in the Zoological Glardens-'struck me as a helpful simile: I happened to walk to the seal-pond at a moment when a sheen rested on the unbroken surface of the water. After waiting a while I THE VISIONS OF SANE PERSONS.