5 26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



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, ap- 

 parently in vigorous health, and belonging to a vigorous family, told 

 me that during some past months she had been plagued by voices. 

 The words were at first simple nonsense; then the word "pray" was 

 frequently repeated; this was followed by some more or less coherent 

 sentences of little import, and finally the voices left her. In short, the 

 familiar hallucinations of the insane are to be met wdth far more fre- 

 quently than is commonly supposed, among people moving in society 

 and in normal health. 



I have now nearly done with my summary of facts ; it remains to 

 make a few comments on them. 



The weirdness of visions lies in their sudden appearance, in their 

 vividness while present, and in their sudden departure. An incident 

 in the Zoological Gardens struck me as a helpful simile. I happened 

 to walk to the seal-pond at a moment w^hen a sheen rested on the un- 

 broken surface of the water. After waiting a while I became suddenly 

 aware of the head of a seal, black, conspicuous, and motionless, just as 

 though it had always been there, at a spot on which my eye had rested 

 a moment previously and seen nothing. Again, after a w^hile, my eye 

 wandered, and, on its returning to the 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 ha,ve been answ^ered if the glare had not obstructed 

 the view of the movements of the animal under water. As it was, a 

 solitary link in a continuous 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 w^ay, that a condition of the presentation of vi- 

 sions lies in the over-sensitiveness of certain tracks or domains of brain- 

 action, and the under-sensitiveness of others; certain stages in a men- 

 tal process being vividly represented in consciousness while the other 

 stages are unfelt. It is also well known that a condition of partial hy- 

 pera3sthesia and partial anoesthesia is a frequent functional disorder, 

 markedly so among the hysterical and hypnotic, and an organic dis- 

 order among the insane. The abundant facts that I have collected 



