VISUAL IMAGES IN DARKNESS. 737 



physiognomy. Landscapes present themselves much more rarely, but 

 more distinctly, and, on the few occasions I rernember, have been high- 

 ly picturesque and pleasing, "with a certain, but very limited power of 

 varying them by an effort of will, which is not the case with the 

 other sort of impressions. Of course," he adds, " I am now speaking 

 of waking impressions, in perfect health, and under no sort of excite- 

 ment." 



There is, of course, as Sir John Herschel observes, one marJced dis- 

 tinction between these spectra and the abstract forms referred to at 

 the beginning of this paper : " The human features have nothing ab- 

 stract in their form, and they are so intimately connected with our 

 mental impressions that the associative principle may easily find, in 

 casual and irregular patches of darkness caused by slight local press- 

 ure on the retina, the physiognomic exponent of our mental state. 

 Even landscape scenery, to one habitually moved by the aspects of 

 Nature in association with feeling, may be considered in the same pre- 

 dicament. We all know," he adds, " how easy it is to imagine faces 

 in casual blots, and to fancy pictures in the fire." 



However this may be, I am inclined to think that we have here an, 

 as yet, unacknowledged source of many widely-prevailing conceptions 

 of the " world unseen." 



If we are to believe with the eminent German mythologist, Dr. 

 Swartz, that there was a time, strange as it may now appear, " when 

 men had not yet learned to suspect any collusion between their eyes 

 and their fancy ; " when fast-scudding clouds were flying horses or 

 fleeting swans ; when the rolling masses of vapor in the west, as the 

 day declined, were mountains in the far-off cloud-land not in the 

 sense of poetic figments, but in sober reality we can scarcely doubt 

 but that the shadowy resemblances of which we have just spoken 

 would be, in like manner, regarded as real existences. 



Even stopping short of this extreme view of the case, I think it is 

 difficult to suggest a more probable origin for that universally-prevail- 

 ing belief, which peoples the darkness with shadowy forms the thou- 

 sand fleeting shapes which 



" Make night hideous ; " 



or of that equally wide-spread faith in the existence of hidden realms 

 of enchantment, of which we have types in the mystic caves of East- 

 ern story, and the glimpses of fairy-land in our own folk-lore. 



It will be observed that the phenomena above described present 

 themselves in health, and in the absence of all excitement. 



Where these two conditions are wanting, both voluntary and invol- 

 untary spectra present themselves with greater frequency and distinct- 

 ness. Medical works abound in such cases, and Sir J. Herschel gives 

 several suggestive examples from his own personal experience, which 

 space forbids my quoting here. 

 47 



