FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 245 



&quot;hysterical&quot; subjects; whose pains are as real experiences to 

 them, as if they originated in the pirts to which they are 

 referred. And I have no reason to doubt that the &quot;sensitives&quot; 

 of Reichenbach really saw the flames they described as issuing 

 from magnets in the dark, as a very honest and highly educated 

 gentleman assured me that he did, not only when the magnet was 

 there, but when he believed it to be still there (in the dark), after 

 it had been actually withdrawn. So there are &quot;sensitives&quot; in 

 whom the drawing of a magnet along the arm will produce a 

 sensible aura or a pricking pain ; and this will be equally 

 excited by the belief that the magnet is being so used, when 

 nothing whatever is done. 



Now, the phenomena of which these are simple examples, 

 appear to me to have this physiological signification, that 

 changes in the cerebrum which answer to the higher mental 

 states, act downwards upon the sensorium at its base, in the 

 same manner as changes in the organs of sense act upwards 

 upon it ; the very same state of the sensorium being producible 

 through the nerves of the internal and of the external senses, and 

 the very same affection of the sensational consciousness being 

 thus called forth by impressions ab extra and ab intra. Thus 

 individuals having a strong pictorial memory can reproduce 

 scenes from nature, faces, or pictures, with such vividness that 

 they may be said to see with their &quot; mind s eye &quot; just as distinctly 

 as with their bodily eye ; and there is an instance on record 

 (which Mr. Ruskin fully accredits, as well from having seen the 

 two pictures as from his own similar experiences) in which a 

 painter at Cologne accurately reproduced from memory a large 

 altar-piece by Rubens, which had been carried away by the 

 French. Those, again, who possess a strong pictorial imagination, 

 can thus create distinct visual images of what they have never 

 seen through their bodily eyes. And although this power of 

 voluntary representation is comparatively rare, yet we are all 

 conscious of the phenomenon as occuring involuntarily in our 

 dreams. 



Now, there is a very numerous class of persons who are 

 subject to what may be termed &quot;waking dreams,&quot; which they can 

 induce by placing themselves in conditions favourable to reverie ; 



