What I say of the mode of induction of the image in the crystal can be applied to any other mode of induction—mirror, glass of water, decanter, etc.
The cause of the vision is sometimes an association of ideas or images, which is easy to trace. Here is an example: I was once in a spiritistic group, and among those present were several sensitives presenting subconscious or paraconscious automatisms, with the features of ordinary somnambulism. I begged one young girl, of about fifteen or sixteen years old, to look into a white crystal ball of four centimetres in diameter. Almost without transition she saw goldfish in the ball. Every one knows the spherical bowls in which goldfish are put; as it happened, there was a bowl of this kind in the room. The idea of a transparent bowl was naturally associated with that of goldfish; this subconscious association provoked the visual image of the fish. Facts of this kind are the simplest; their psychological mechanism is easy to penetrate; the associations of images are almost logical, and their dreamlike character is scarcely marked. In the above case, the impossibility of placing the fish in a crystal ball is not perceived by the consciousness, which suffers the succession of images empirically associated; the globe of water containing the fish resembled in its form and aspect the transparent glass ball; therefore, the latter evoked the image of the former, and the fish which it contained. This association is very intelligible.
Here is another example borrowed from experiments I made with a remarkable sensitive—the one with whom the hallucination becomes generalised. This person, looking in the crystal, perceived a railway-station, and saw portmanteaux in the luggage-room. He then plunged right into the dream, and imagined he was going to take away his own portmanteau; he entered the luggage-room, took his trunk and opened it. It contained a particularly horrible dead body, which leaped out of the portmanteau, and bitterly complained of being disturbed. It threw itself upon the sensitive, who immediately fled, pursued by the dead body. After a desperate chase, the sensitive darted into a road which crossed a park. This park, in reality, is situated at more than six hundred miles from the railway-station, where he believed he saw the portmanteaux: this distance had disappeared in the vision. The dead body took a corresponding road; the two roads met on a hill, where the persecutor made a dead set at the sensitive; the latter fell, and the dead body stopped and bent down to strike him. The visionary gave him a kick in the stomach, and stretched him full length on the ground. The hallucination then ceased abruptly, and the sensitive found himself back in his room, in front of the crystal. The vision was so intense, that he was still upset with fright, and breathless from running.
This hallucination is of a dreamlike character, and reminds one of certain kinds of delirium. I have often questioned the sensitive carefully, in order to try to reconstitute the psychological elements of his hallucinations, and for this particular hallucination, as I have related it, I will indicate the result of my inquiry:—
1. The sensitive has often seen dead bodies. He is not afraid of them; he feels no repugnance even when touching them.
2. He has travelled a great deal, but has no souvenir of any connection whatever between his portmanteau and dead bodies, except the associations which stories of the nature of the Gouffé affair may evoke.[11]
3. The chase occurred at a spot known to the sensitive, who had, as it happened, gone, one day, to that very spot on a walking expedition with one of his friends, under some conditions recalling those of the hallucination, notably the choice of different roads; the two roads corresponded and met as in the vision.
4. He did not fall, and has no conscious souvenir, which can explain his struggle with the dead body.
This curious hallucination shows us an admixture of true images and fantastic images, these latter, however, composed of real elements. The duration of this hallucination, so full of events, was very short. This is another feature observed in dreams. We see here the trace of queer associations, some explicable, others not so. The idea of a railway-station awakens that of portmanteaux; that of the dead body is already abnormal, but comprehensible, the sensitive being sufficiently acquainted with contemporary criminal literature to know of the Gouffé affair. The leap of the dead body out of the valise, the flight of the sensitive, and the pursuit of the dead body after him, are abnormal associations. The first is difficult to explain; the flight and pursuit are more easily explained. The first of these ideas naturally suggests the second. The idea of pursuit awakens the idea of running; this, in its turn, awakens the idea of the place where the sensitive has really run a race; and, notwithstanding its illogism, that association is accepted, though the railway-station, where the scene begins, be more than six hundred miles from the park where the chase takes place.