The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)

being called names by person;

that it is wrong to take food;

being acted on by spirits;

being in hell;

being a man;

being tempted of the devil;

the body being transformed;

being possessed of the devil;

insects coming from the body;

having committed an

rape being practised on her;

unpardonable sin;

having a venereal disease;

unseen agencies working;

being a fish;

her own identity;

being dead;

being on fire;

having committed suicide of the soul.

[123] V. Kandinsky: Kritische u. Klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete d. Sinnestäuschungen (1886), p. 42.

[124] See Proceedings of Soc. for Psych. Research, Dec. 1889, pp. 7, 183. The International Congress for Experimental Psychology has now charge of the Census, and the present writer is its agent for America.

[125] This case is of the class which Mr. Myers terms 'veridical.' In a subsequent letter the writer informs me that his vision occurred some five hours before the child was born.

[126] Le Sommeil et les Rêves (1865), chaps. iii, iv.

[127] This theory of incomplete rectification of the inner images by their usual reductives is most brilliantly stated by M. Taine in his work on Intelligence, book ii. chap. i.

[128] Not, of course, in all cases, because the cells remaining active are themselves on the way to be overpowered by the general (unknown) condition to which sleep is due.

[129] For a full account of Jackson's theories, see his 'Croonian Lectures' published in the Brit. Med. Journ. for 1884. Cf. also his remarks in the Discussion of Dr. Mercier's paper on Inhibition in 'Brain,' xi. 361.

The loss of vivacity in the images in the process of waking, as well as the gain of it in falling asleep, are both well described by M. Taine, who writes (on Intelligence, i. 50, 58) that often in the daytime, when fatigued and seated in a chair, it is sufficient for him to close one eye with a handkerchief, when, "by degrees, the sight of the other eye becomes vague, and it closes. All external sensations are gradually effaced, or cease, at all events, to be remarked; the internal images, on the other hand, feeble and rapid during the state of complete wakefulness, become intense, distinct, colored, steady, and lasting: there is a sort of ecstasy, accompanied by a feeling of expansion and of comfort. Warned by frequent experience, I know that sleep is coming on, and that I must not disturb the rising vision; I remain passive, and in a few minutes it is complete. Architecture, landscapes, moving figures, pass slowly by, and sometimes remain, with incomparable clearness of form and fulness of being; sleep comes on, and I know no more of the real world I am in. Many times, like M. Maury, I have caused myself to be gently roused at different moments of this state, and have thus been able to mark its characters.—The intense image which seems an external object is but a more forcible continuation of the feeble image which an instant before I recognized as internal; some scrap of a forest, some house, some person which I vaguely imagined on closing my eyes, has in a minute become present to me with full bodily details, so as to change into a complete hallucination.

Then, waking up on a hand touching me, I feel the figure decay, lose color, and evaporate: what had appeared a substance is reduced to a shadow.... In such a case, I have often seen, for a passing moment, the image grow pale, waste away, and evaporate; sometimes, on opening the eyes, a fragment of landscape or the skirt of a dress appears still to float over the fire-irons or on the black hearth." This persistence of dream-objects for a few moments after the eyes are opened seems to be no extremely rare experience. Many cases of it have been reported to me directly. Compare Müller's Physiology, Baly's tr., p. 945.

[130] I say the 'normal' paths, because hallucinations are not incompatible with some paths of association being left. Some hypnotic patients will not only have hallucinations of objects suggested to them, but will amplify them and act out the situation. But the paths here seem excessively narrow, and the reflections which ought to make the hallucination incredible do not occur to the subject's mind. In general, the narrower a train of 'ideas' is, the vivider the consciousness is of each. Under ordinary circumstances, the entire brain probably plays a part in draining any centre which may be ideationally active. When the drainage is reduced in any way it probably makes the active process more intense.

[131] M. A. Maury gives a number: op. cit. pp. 126-8.

[132] M. Binet's highly important experiments, which were first published in vol. XVII of the Revue Philosophique (1884), are also given in full in chapter ix of his and Féré's work on 'Animal Magnetism' in the International Scientific Series. Where there is no dot on the paper, nor any other visible mark, the subject's judgment about the 'portrait' would seem to be guided by what he sees happening to the entire sheet.

[133] It is a difficult thing to distinguish in a hypnotic patient between a genuine sensorial hallucination of something suggested and a conception of it merely, coupled with belief that it is there. I have been surprised at the vagueness with which such subjects will often trace upon blank paper the outlines of the pictures which they say they 'see' thereupon. On the other hand, you will hear them say that they find no difference between a real flower which you show them and an imaginary flower which you tell them is beside it. When told that one is imaginary and that they must pick out the real one, they sometimes say the choice is impossible, and sometimes they point to the imaginary flower.

[134] Only the other day, to three hypnotized girls, I failed to double a hallucination with a prism. Of course it may not have been a fully-developed hallucination.

[135] Brain, xi. 441.

[136] Mind, x. 161, 316; and Phantasms of the Living (1886), i. 470-488.

[137] In Mr. Gurney's work, just cited, a very large number of veridical cases are critically discussed.

[138] Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 186.

[139]Literature. The best treatment of perception with which I am acquainted is that in Mr. James Sully's book on 'Illusions' in the International Scientific Series. On hallucinations the literature is large. Gurney, Kandinsky (as already cited), and some articles by Kraepelin in the Vierteljahrschrift für Wissenschaftliche Philosophie, vol. v (1881), are the most systematic studies recently made. All works on Insanity treat of them. Dr. W. W. Ireland's works, 'The Blot upon the Brain' (1886) and 'Through the Ivory Gate' (1890) have much information on the subject. Gurney gives pretty complete references to older literature. The most important thing on the subject from the point of view of theory is the article by Mr. Myers on the Demon of Socrates in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for 1889, p. 522.