MESCAL: A STUDY OF A DIVINE PLANT. 69 



real resemblance, sometimes in a striking manner, between the prevail- 

 ing nature of the visions and the name of the piece. This was espe- 

 cially the case as regards Schumann's music. It would be worth while 

 to carry out further experiments along this line, and on a variety of 

 people, preferably non-musical people. It may be added that under 

 some circumstances music itself evokes a train of visual imagery. 

 Heine has somewhere described in detail the imagery called up when 

 listening to Berlioz's music, and in 'Florentine Nights' he describes, in 

 the person of his hero, the elaborate imagery evoked on hearing 

 Paganini play, and remarks: "You know my second sight, my gift 

 of seeing at each tone a figure equivalent to the sound, and so Paganini 

 with each stroke of his bow brought visible forms and situations before 

 my eyes; he told me in melodious hieroglyphics all kinds of brilliant 

 tales ; he, as it were, made a magic lantern play its colored antics before 

 me, he himself being the chief actor." It would seem that in Heine's 

 case music produced actual visual imagery, as under the influence of 

 mescal. In this connection I may recall an account of visual imagery, 

 as seen at a concert, recorded by Dr. Robert MacDougall.* 



One is tempted to ask by what process we should conceive to our- 

 selves that the action of mescal works on the organism. I think it is 

 not impossible to hazard such an explanation, provided that we avoid 

 the risks attending undue precision in our explanations. We are 

 justified, it seems to me, in supposing that mescal effects its peculiar 

 actions by producing a kind of violent but temporary neurasthenia and 

 cerebrasthenia. In other words, it rapidly overstimulates and exhausts 

 the nervous and cerebral apparatus, more especially on the sensory side. 

 It is true that such an explanation might be said to apply to the action 

 of many drugs, including all those that are commonly called stimulants. 

 The day has gone by when it could be supposed that a stimulant put 

 anything into the system. It acts not by putting energy into the system 

 but by taking it out, and so rapidly producing a state of fatigue. The 

 careful experiments of Fere with the ergograph have lately shown that 

 all sorts of sensory stimulants, acting on various senses and not neces- 

 sarily involving the use of drugs, produce an immediate increase in the 

 output of muscular work, but that no sensory stimulant of any kind 

 will enable us to do a total amount of work equal to that we can achieve 

 without stimulants, because the sudden rise of output is more than 

 compensated by the subsequent fall. So that by the use of stimulants, 

 so far as output of work is concerned, we not only draw on our capital, 



*'Music Imagery,' Psychological Review, September, 1898. The cases in 

 which some definite appearance is regularly associated with the sound of each 

 instrument belong to an allied though different class; a case of this kind is 

 recorded in "Nature, March 6, 1890. Here, we approach the best known group 

 of ' secondary sensations.' 



