1881.] on the Visions of Sane Persons. 647 



to the same word. These are perceived by many in a vague, fleeting 

 and variable way, but to a few they appear strangely vivid and per- 

 manent. I have collected many cases of this peculiarity, and am 

 much indebted to tlie authoress, Mrs. Haweis, who sees these pictures, 

 for her kindness in sketching some of them for me, for permitting 

 me to exhibit them on the screen, and to use her name in guarantee 

 of their genuineness. She says: — 



" Printed words have always had faces to me ; they had definite 

 expressions, and certain faces made me think of certain words. The 

 words had no connection with these except sometimes by accident. 

 The instances I give are few and ridiculous. When I think of the 

 word Beast, it has a face something like a gurgoyle. The word Green 

 has also a gurgoyle face, with the addition of big teeth. The word 

 Blue blinks and looks silly, and turns to the right. The word 

 Attention has the eyes greatly turned to the left. It is difficult to 

 draw them properly because, like ' Alice's ' ' Cheshire cat,' which at 

 times became a grin without a cat, these faces have expression without 

 features. The expression of course " [note the naive phrase " of 

 course." — F. G.] "depends greatly on those of the letters, which have 

 likewise their faces and figures. All the little a's turn their eyes to 

 the left, this determines the eyes of Attention. Ant, however, 

 looks a little down. Of course these faces are endless as words are, 

 and it makes my head ache to retain them long enough to draw." 



Some of the figures are very quaint. Thus the interrogation 

 " what?" always excites the idea of a fat man cracking a long whip. 

 They are not the capricious creations of the fancy of the moment, 

 but are the regular concomitants of the words, and have been so as far 

 back as the memory is able to recall. 



When in perfect darkness, if the field of view be carefully watched, 

 many persons will find a perpetual series of changes to be going on 

 automatically and wastefully in it. I have much evidence of this. 

 I will give my own experience the first, which is striking to me, 

 because I am very unimpressionable in these matters. I visualise 

 with efibrt; I am peculiarly ina2)t to see "after-images," "phos- 

 phenes," " light-dust," and other phenomena due to weak sight or 

 sensitiveness; and, again, before I thought of carefully trying, I 

 should have empliatically declared that my field of view in the 

 dark was essentially of a uniform black, subject to an occasional 

 light-purple cloudiness and other small variations. Now, however, 

 alter habituating myself to examine it with the same sort of strain 

 that one tries to decipher a sign-post in the dark, I have found out 

 that this is by no means the case, but that a kaleidoscopic change of 

 jiatterns and forms is continually going on, but they are too fugitive 

 and elaborate for me to draw with any approach to truth. My 

 deficiencies, however, are well supplied by other drawings in 

 my possession. These are by the Kev. George Henslow, whose 

 visions are far more vivid than mine. His experiences are not 

 unlike those of Goethe, who said, in an often-quoted passage, that 



