. to change it into a bow the strap broke, the | slowly as the mental effort to retain them is two ends were separated, but it happened that relaxed; the visions appearing and vanishing an imaginary string connected them. This in an instant. The waking visions seem quite was the first concession of his automatic chain close, filling as it were the whole head, while of thoughts to his will. By a continued effort the mental image seems further away in some the bow came, and then no difficulty was felt far-off recess of the mind. in converting it into the cross-bow and thus returning to the starting-point. I have a sufficient variety of cases to prove the continuity between all the forms of visualization, 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 visualize well and who also are seers of visions, who declare that the vision is not a vivid visualization, 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 may take place, and the channel of ordinary visual. ization in the persons just mentioned is very 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 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 The number of 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 in my possession the sketch of one, prefaced by a description of it by Mrs. Haweis. She says: The 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. sparks totter or vibrate from left to right, but blocks, half gold, half black, rather symmetrithey fly distinctly upwards: they are like tiny cally 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 pleas ing. 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 realize that it was there before the fading sparks showed that it was past. The pleasure of This is how they still come. 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. A common form of vision is a phantas magoria, 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; it may be at the instant of putting out the candle, but it generally comes on | mary of facts; it remains to make a few when the person is in bed, preparing to comments on them. sleep, but is by no means yet asleep. I The weirdness of visions lies in their know no less than three men, eminent in sudden appearance, in their vividness the scientific world, who have these phan- while present, and in their sudden detasmagoria in one form or another. A parture. An incident in the Zoological near relative of my own had them in a Gardens struck me as a helpful simile. I marked degree. She was eminently sane, happened to walk to the seal-pond at a and of such good constitution that her moment when a sheen rested on the unfaculties were hardly impaired until near broken surface of the water. After waither death at ninety. She frequently de- ing a while I became suddenly aware of scribed them to me. It gave her amuse- the head of a seal, black, conspicuous, ment during an idle hour to watch these and motionless, just as though it had alfaces, for their expression was always ways been there, at a spot on which my pleasing, though never strikingly so. No eye had rested a moment previously and two faces were ever alike, and they never seen nothing. Again, after a while my resembled that of any acquaintance. eye wandered, and on its returning to the When she was not well the faces usually came 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. spot, the seal was gone. The water had closed in silence over its head without leaving a ripple, and the sheen on the surface of the pond was as unbroken as when I first reached it. Where did the seal come from, and whither did it go? This could easily have been answered if the glare had not obstructed the view of the movements of the animal under water. As it was, a solitary link in a conItinuous chain of actions stood isolated from all the rest. So it is with the visions; a single stage in a series of mental processes emerges into the domain of consciousness. All that precedes and follows lies outside of it, and its character can only be inferred. We see in a general way, that a condition of the presentation of visions lies in the over-sensitiveness of certain tracks or domains of brain action, and the under-sensitiveness of others; certain stages in a mental process being vividly represented in consciousness while the other stages are unfelt. It is also well known that a condition of partial hyperæsthesia and partial anesthesia is a frequent functional disorder, markedly so among the hysterical and hypnotic, and an organic disorder among the insane. The abundant facts that I have collected show that it may also co-exist with all the appearances of good health and sober judgment. A notable 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. 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 hallucination 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 A convenient distinction is made beby voices. The words were at first sim- tween hallucinations and illusions. Halple nonsense; then the word "pray was lucinations are defined as appearances frequently repeated; this was followed wholly due to fancy; illusions, as misrepby some more or less coherent sentences resentations of objects actually seen. of little import, and finally the voices left There is, however, a hybrid case which her. In short, the familiar hallucinations deserves to be specifically classed, and of the insane are to be met with far more arising in this way. Vision, or any other frequently than is commonly supposed, sensation, may, as already stated, be a among people moving in society and in"direct" sensation excited in the ordinormal health. nary way through the sense organs, or it may be an "induced" sensation excited I have now nearly done with my sum from within. We have, therefore, direct | effect of idiosyncrasy is excellently illusvision and induced vision, and either of these may be the ground of an illusion. So we have three cases to consider, and not two. There is simple hallucination, which depends on induced vision justly observed; there is simple illusion, which depends on direct vision fancifully observed; and there is the hybrid case of which I spoke, which depends on induced vision fancifully observed. The problems we have to consider are, on the one hand, those connected with induced vision, and, on the other hand, those connected with the interpretation of vision, whether the vision be direct or induced. trated by the "number-forms," where we saw that a very special sharply defined track of mental vision was preferred by each individual who sees them. The influence of the mood of the moment is shown in the curves that characterize the various emotions, as the lank, drooping lines of grief, which make the weeping willow so fit an emblem of it. In constructing fire-faces it seems to me that the eye in its wanderings follows a favorite course, and notices the points in the pictures at large that coincide with its course. It feels its way, easily diverted by associations based on what has just been noIt is probable that much of what passes ticed, and so by the unconscious practice for hallucination proper belongs in reality of a system of "trial and error," at last to the hybrid case, being an illusive inter- finds a track that will suit-one that is pretation of some induced visual cloud easy to follow and that also makes a comor blur. I spoke of the ever-varying pat-plete picture. The process is essentially terns in the field of view; these, under the same as that of getting a clear idea some slight functional change, might from out of a confused multitude of facts. easily become more consciously present, and be interpreted into fantasmal appear ances. Many cases, if space allowed, could be adduced to support this view. The first throws an image of what the imagination will discard, the second of that which it will retain, the third of that which it will supply. Turn on the first and second, and the picture on the screen will be identical with that which fell on the retina. Shut off the first and turn on the third, and the picture will be identical with the illusion. Visions, like dreams, are often mere patchworks built up of bits of recollections. The following is one of these: The fancy picture is dwelt upon, all that is incongruous with it becomes disregarded, while all deficiencies in it are supplied by the fantasy. These latest I will begin, then, with illusions. What stages are easily represented after the is the process by which they are estab- fashion of a diorama. Three lanterns are lished? There is no simpler way of un-made to converge on the same screen. derstanding it than by trying, as children often do, to see "faces in the fire," and to carefully watch the way in which they are first caught. Let us call to mind at the same time the experience of past illnesses, when the listless gaze wandered over the patterns on the wall-paper and the shadows of the bed-curtains, and slowly evoked faces and figures that were not easily laid again. The process of making the faces is so rapid in health that it is difficult to analyze it without the recollection of what took place more slowly when we were weakened by illness. The first essential element in their construction is, I believe, the smallness of the area upon which the attention is directed at any instant, so that the eye has to move much before it has travelled over every part of the object towards which it is directed. It is as with a plough, that must travel many miles before the whole of a small field can be tilled, but with this important differencethe plough travels methodically up and down in parallel furrows, the eye wanders in devious curves, with abrupt bends, and the direction of its course at any instant depends on four causes: on the most convenient muscular motion in a general sense, on idiosyncrasy, on the mood, and on the associations current at the moment. The When passing a shop in Tottingham Court Road, I went in to 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 nized the face but could not remember where about slightly on a white surface. I recogI 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 joined like ent 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 subject to them. One was of a pleasure-party driven out to sea, and not being able to reach the coast till nightfall, at a place where they got shelter but nothing to eat. They were mentally at ease and conscious of safety, but they were all troubled with visions, half dreams and half hallucinations. The cases of visions following protracted wakefulness are well known, and I also have collected a few. As regards the effect of solitariness, it may be sufficient to allude to the recognized advantages of social amusements in the treatment of the insane. It follows that the spiritual discipline under mosaic-work; they may be blended, on the principle I described two years ago, of making composite portraits. I showed that if two lanterns were converged upon the same screen, and the portrait of one person was put into one and that of another person into the other, the por traits being taken under similar aspects and states of light and shade, then on adjusting the two images eye to eye and mouth to mouth, and so superposing them as exactly as the conditions admitted, a new face will spring into existence. It will have a striking appearance of individuality, and will bear a family likeness to each of its constituents. I also showed that these composite portraits admitted of being made photographically * from a large number of components. I suspect that the phantasmagoria may be 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 tried a modification of this proc-gone for purposes of self-control and selfess with but small success, which will at least illustrate a cause of the tendency in many cases to visualize grotesque forms. My object was to efface from a portrait that which was common among persons of the same race, and therefore too familiar to attract attention, and to leave whatever was peculiar in it. I proceeded on the following principle. We all know that the photographic negative is the converse (or nearly so) of the photographic positive, the one showing whites where the other The number of great men who have shows blacks, and vice versa. Hence the been once, twice, or more frequently subsuperposition of a negative upon a posi-ject to hallucinations is considerable. A tive transparency of the same portrait list, to which it would be easy to make tends to create a uniform smudge. By large additions, is given by Brierre de superposing a negative transparency of a composite portrait on a positive of any one of the individual faces from which it was composed, all that is common to the group ought to be smudged out, and all that is personal and peculiar to that face ought to remain. I have found that the peculiarities of visualization, such as the tendency to see number-forms, and the still rarer tendency to associate color 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. these circumstances we should expect that it would be unequally developed in differ Under I have latterly much improved the process and hope shortly to describe it elsewhere. mortification have also the incidental effect of producing visions. It is to be expected that these should often bear a close relation to the prevalent subjects of thought, and although they may be really no more than the products of one portion of the brain, which another portion of the same brain is engaged in contemplating, they often, through error, receive a reli gious sanction. This is notably the case among half-civilized races. Boismont ("Hallucinations," etc., 1862), from whom I translate the following account of the star of the first Napoleon, which he heard, second-hand, from General Rapp:— In 1806 General Rapp, on his return from the siege of Dantzic, having occasion to speak to the emperor, entered his study without being announced. He found him so absorbed that his entry was unperceived. The general seeing the emperor continue motionless, thought he might be ill and purposely made a noise. Napoleon immediately roused himself and without any preamble, seizing Rapp by the there, up there." The general remained silent, said to him, pointing to the sky, "Look but on being asked a second time, he answered that he perceived nothing. "What!" replied the emperor, "you do not see it? It is my star, it is before you, brilliant;" then animating arm, by degrees, he cried out, "It has never aban- | popular opinion is of a matter-of-fact kind, doned me, I see it on all great occasions, it commands me to go forward, and it is a constant sign of good fortune to me." It appears that stars of this kind, so frequently spoken of in history, and so well known as a metaphor in language, are a common hallucination of the insane. Brierre de Boismont has a chapter on the stars of great men. I cannot doubt that fantasies of this desciption were in some cases the basis of that firm belief in astrology, which not a few persons of eminence formerly entertained. the seers of visions keep quiet; they do From Fraser's Magazine. A JAPANESE BRIDE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "KITTY." I. The hallucinations of great men may be accounted for in part by their sharing a tendency which we have seen to be not uncommon in the human race, and which, if it happens to be natural to them, is liable to be developed in their overwrought brains by the isolation of their lives. A man in the position of the first Napoleon could have no intimate associates; a great philosopher who explores ways of thought far ahead of his contem- MOST travellers have been whirled at poraries must have an inner world in some time or other of their lives, many which he passes long and solitary hours. again and again, by night express train Great men are also apt to have touches from Geneva to Paris, though none, I of madness; the ideas by which they are venture to say, have as good cause for haunted, and to whose pursuit they de- remembering any especial journey as myvote themselves, and by which they rise self. What took place upon a certain to eminence, has much in common with occasion now nearly three years ago, and the monomania of insanity. Striking in- the strange story of which that night's stances of great visionaries may be men- experience formed the prologue, I will tioned, who had almost beyond doubt endeavor to relate as briefly as possible. those very nervous seizures with which No additions, were I enabled to make the tendency to hallucinations is inti- them, could indeed lend fictitious charm mately connected. To take a single in- or interest to such a narrative, nor is it stance, Socrates, whose.daimon was an necessary to exaggerate in the smallest audible not a visual appearance, was sub-particular by way of heightening the ject to what admits of hardly any other effect. The lights and shadows are there interpretation than cataleptic seizure, naturally. The picture, to use a technical standing all night through in a rigid atti- phrase, seems to have composed itself. tude. It is remarkable how largely the visionary temperament has manifested itself in certain periods of history and epochs of national life. My interpretation of the matter, to a certain extent, is this: that the visionary tendency is much more common among sane people than is generally suspected. In early life, it seems to be a hard lesson to an imaginative child to distinguish between the real and visionary world. If the fantasies are habitually laughed at, the power of distinguishing them becomes at length learnt; any incongruity or nonconformity is noted, the vision is found out and discredited, and is no further attended to. In this way the tendency to see them is blunted by repression. Therefore, when I had halted the night before at the little town of Bourg-en-Bresse, that shrine of Renaissance art in the heart of a French Boeotia, and here the Geneva express at midnight picked me up in company of another straggler or two. It was early in October, just when the great tide of tourists sets in from Switzerland, and as the train was crowded and the stoppage of a few minutes only, we had to bestow ourselves and our belongings where we could. Not a moment to spare for choosing a smoking, much less a halffilled carriage. I took possession of the first empty seat I could find therefore, tenanted by four ladies and a youth of fifteen. The lad, who served to keep me in countenance, was the only one of the party asleep, and before settling down to |