146 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[July 1, 1S68. 



Since that time circular forms have presented 

 themselves spontaneously of the shadowy and ob- 

 scure class. On one occasion circular were com- 

 bined with straight lines, forming a series of semi- 

 circular arches, supported by, or rather prolonged 

 beneatb into, vertical columns, while another series 

 of arches and uprights, darker than the general 

 ground, appeared, intersecting the former, so as to 

 have the dark uprights just intermediate between 

 the bright ones of the first set. On the second 

 occasion the pattern consisted of a very slender 

 and delicate hoop, surrounded with a set of circles of 

 the same size, as tangents to the centre circle and 

 to one another. On the third occasion the whole 

 visual area was covered with separate circles, each 

 having within it a four-sided pattern of concave 

 circular arcs. All these phenomena were much 

 fainter than in the chloroform exhibition." 



The accuracy of these descriptions will be readily 

 admitted, as far as my own observations have 

 enabled me to judge. I am, however, disposed to 

 believe that the forms under which the spectra 

 present themselves vary persistently in different 

 individuals to a considerable extent. 



A question now naturally arises : What are these 

 spectra, and how are they formed ? 



An eminent scientific authority has suggested to 

 me that they are possibly referable to that obscure 

 mental process which Dr. Carpenter has termed 

 " unconscious cerebration?' {See " Human Phy- 

 siology.") But, allowing this to be the case, the 

 questions put by Sir John Herschel still remain 

 unanswered :— 



" Where do the patterns or their prototypes in 

 the intellect originate ? 



" If it be suggested that a kaleidoscopic power 

 of forming regular patterns by the combination of 

 casual \ elements, exists in the sensorium, how is it 

 that we are unconscious of the power— unable to 

 use it voluntarily— only aware of its being exerted 

 at times in a manner in which we have actually no 

 part but as spectators ? " 



I cannot help thinking that more than one of the 

 most ancient types of symbolism upon whicb so 

 mucb learning and ingenuity have been expended 

 in endeavours to invest them with mystical mean- 

 ings, or to trace their origin in the forms of the 

 organic world, may have been first suggested by 

 these hitherto unnoticed spectra. 



But besides these geometrical forms, there are 

 others, which I must again describe in Sir John 

 Herschel' s words : — 



"I fancy," he writes, "that it is no very un- 

 common thing for persons in the dark, and with 

 their eyes closed, to see, or seem to sec, faces and 

 landscapes. I believe I am as little visionary as 

 most people, but the former case very frequently 

 happens to myself. The faces present themselves 

 voluntarily, arc always shadowy and indistinct in 



outline, for the most part unpleasing, though not 

 hideous, expressive of no violent emotions, and suc- 

 ceeding one another at short intervals of time, as if 

 melting into each other. Sometimes ten or a dozen 

 appear in succession, and have always, on each 

 separate occasion, something of a general resem- 

 blance of expression, or some peculiarity of feature 

 common to all, though very various in individual 

 aspect and physiognomy. Landscapes present 

 themselves much more rarely, but more distinctly, 

 and, on the few occasions I remember, have been 

 highly 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 excitement." 



There is, of course, as Sir John Herschel ob- 

 serves, one marked distinction between these spectra 

 and the abstract forms referred to at the beginning 

 of this paper : " the human features have nothing 

 abstract 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 

 pressure 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 predicament. 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 vapour 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 pro- 

 bable origin for that universally prevailing. belief, 

 which peoples the darkness with shadowy forms 

 —the thousand fleeting shapes which 

 Make night hideous ; 



or of that equally wide-spread faith in the existence 

 of hidden realms of enchantment, of which wc have 

 types in the mystic caves of Eastern story, and the 

 glimpses of fairy-land in our own folk-lore. 



