"This practice has brought to my mind very clearly the distinction between at least one form of automatism of the brain and volition; but the strength of the former is enormous, for the visual objects, when in full career of the change, are imperative in their refusal to be interfered with.
"I will now describe the cases illustrated. Fig. 71. I thought of a gun. The stock came into view, the metal plate on the end very distinct towards the left (1). The wood was elaborately carved. I cannot recall the pattern. As I scrutinised it, the stock oscillated up and down, and crumpled up. The metallic plate sank inwards: and the stock contracted so that it looked not unlike a tuning-fork (2). I gave up the stock and proceeded cautiously to examine the lock. I got it well into view, but no more of the gun. It turned out to be an old-fashioned flint-lock. It immediately began to nod backwards and forwards in a manner suggestive of the beak of a bird pecking. Consequently it forthwith became converted into the head of a bird with a long curved beak, the knob on the lock (3) becoming the head of the bird. I then looked to the right expecting to find the barrel, but the snout of a saw-fish with the tip distinctly broken off appeared instead. I had not thought either of a flint-lock or of a saw-fish: both came spontaneously.
"Fig. 72. I have several times thought of a rosebud, as Goethe is said to have been able to see one at will, and to observe it expand. The following are some of the results:--The bud appeared unexpectedly a moss rosebud. Its only abnormal appearance was the inordinately elongated sepals (1). I tried to force it to expand. It enlarged but only partially opened (2), when all of a sudden it burst open and the petals became reflexed (3).[10]
"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, [10] they remain when I often wish them 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 any painting I have ever seen, and again I often see fine landscapes which bear 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 mere act of memory), but it is nevertheless vague and shadowy, and you might have difficulty in telling afterwards all the objects you have seen. This resembles a mental image in point of clearness. The waking vision is like what one sees in the open street in broad daylight, when every object is distinctly impressed on the memory. The two kinds of imagery differ also as regards voluntariness, 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 head, while the mental image seems farther away in some far-off recess of the mind."
[Footnote 10: The details and illustrations of four other experiments with the image of a rosebud have been given me. They all vary in detail.]
The number of sane persons who see visions no less distinctly than this correspondent is much greater than I had any idea of when I began this inquiry. I have received an interesting 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 dark or darkish, in bed or otherwise. It is a flight of pink roses floating in a mass 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 vibrate 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, and 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 had never seen a rose, certainly not a quantity of them together."