320 



NATURE 



[February 2, 1893 



Mr. Knowles, in his article entitled '• Aspects of Tenny- 

 son," mentions a conversational incident curiously 

 parallel to Wordsworth's own remarks about himself : — 

 " He [Tennyson] said to me one day, ' Sometimes as I 

 sit alone in this great room I get carried away, out of 

 sense and body, and rapt into mere existence, till the 

 accidental touch or movement of one of my own fingers 

 is like a great shock and blow, and brings the body back 

 with a terrible start." 



Considering how often the imagination is sufficiently 

 intense to stimulate a real sensation, a vastly greater 

 number of cases must exist in which it excites the physio- 

 logical centres in too feeble a degree for their response to 

 reach to the level of consciousness. So that if the imagina- 

 tion has been anyhow set into motion, it shall as a rule 

 originate what may be termed incomplete sensations, and 

 whenever one of these concurs with a real sensation of 

 the same kind, it would swell its volume. 



This supposition admits of being submitted to experi- 

 ment by comparing the amount of stimulus required to 

 produce a just perceptible sensation, under the two condi- 

 tions of the imagination being either excited or passive. 



Several conditions have to be observed in designing 

 suitable experiments. The imagined sensation and the 

 real sensation must be of the same quality ; an expected 

 scream and an actual groan could not reinforce one 

 another. Again, the place where the image is localised 

 in the theatre of the imagination must be the same as it 

 is in the real sensation. This condition requires to 

 be more carefully attended to in respect to the visual 

 imagination than to that of the other senses, because 

 the theatre of the visual imagination is described 

 by most persons, though not by all, as internal, whereas 

 the theatre of actual vision is external. The im- 

 portant part played by points of reference in visual 

 illusions is to be explained by the aid they afford 

 in compelling the imaginary figures to externalise them- 

 selves, superimposing them on fragments of a reality. 

 The visualisation and the actual vision fuse together in 

 some parts, and supplement each other elsewhere. j 



The theatre of audition is by no means so purely j 

 external as that of sight. Certain persuasive tones of 

 voice sink deeply, as it were, into the mind, and even 

 simulate our own original sentiments. The power of 

 localising external sounds, which is almost absent in those 

 who are deaf with one ear, is very imperfect generally, 

 otherwise the illusions of the ventriloquist would be 

 impossible. There was an account in the newspapers a 

 few weeks ago of an Austrian lady of rank who purchased 

 a parrot at a high price, as being able to repeat the 

 Paternoster in seven different languages. She took the 

 bird home, but it was mute. At last it was discovered 

 that the apparent performances of the parrot had been 

 due to the ventriloquism of the dealer. An analogous 

 trick upon the sight could not be performed by a con- 

 juror. Thus he could never make his audience believe 

 that the floor of the room was the ceiling. 



As regards the other senses the theatre of the imagination 

 coincides fairly well with that of the sensations. It is so 

 with taste and smell, also with touch, in so far that an 

 imagined impression or pain is always located in some 

 particular part of the body, then if it be localised in 

 the same place as a real pain, it must coalesce with it. 



Finally, it is of high importance to success in experiments 

 on Imagination that the object and its associated imagery 

 should be so habitually connected that a critical attitude 

 of the mind shall not easily separate them. Suppose an 

 apparatus arranged to associate the waxing and waning 

 of a light with the rising and falling of a sound, holding 

 means in reserve for privately modifying the illumination 

 at the will of the experimenter, in order that the waxing 

 and waning may be lessened, abolished, or even reversed. 

 It is quite possible that a person who had no idea of the 

 purport of the experiment might be deceived, and be led 



NO- I 2 14. VOL. 47] 



by his imagination to declare that the light still waxed 

 and waned in unison with the sound after its ups and 

 downs had been reduced to zero. But if the subject of 

 the experiment suspected its object he would be thrown 

 into a critical mood ; his mind would stiffen itself, as it 

 were, and he will be difficult to deceive. 



Having made these preliminary remarks, I will mention 

 one only of some experiments I have made and am 

 making from time to time, to measure the force of my own 

 imagination. It happens that although most persons 

 train themselves from childhood upwards to distinguish 

 imagination from fact, there is at least one instance in 

 which we do the exact reverse, namely, in respect to the 

 auditory presentation of the words that are perused by 

 the eye. It would be otherwise impossible to realise the 

 sonorous flow of the passages, whether in prose or poetry, 

 that are read only with the eyes. We all of us value and 

 cultivate this form of auditory imagination, and it com- 

 monly grows into a well-developed faculty. I infer that 

 when we are listening to the words of a reader while our 

 eyes are simultaneously perusing a copy of the book from 

 which he is reading, that the effects of the auditory 

 imagination concur with the actual sound, and produce a 

 stronger impression than the latter alone would be able 

 to make. 



I have very frequently experimented on myself with 

 success, with the view of analysing this concurrent im- 

 pression into its constituents, being aided thereto by 

 two helpful conditions, the one is a degree of deafness 

 which prevents me when sitting on a seat in the middle 

 rows from following memoirs that are read in tones 

 suitable to the audience at large ; and the other 

 is the accident of belonging to societies in which 

 unrevised copies of the memoirs, that are about to 

 be read, and usually in monotones, are obtainable, 

 in order to be perused simultaneously by the eye. 

 Now it sometimes happens that portions of these papers, 

 however valuable they may be in themselves, do not 

 interest me, in which case it has been a never-flagging 

 source of diversion to compare my capabilities of follow- 

 ing the reader when I am using my eyes, and when I am 

 not. The result depends somewhat on the quality of the 

 voice ; if it is a familiar tone I can imagine what is coming 

 much more accurately than otherwise. It depends much 

 on the phraseology, familiar words being vividly re-pre- 

 sented. Something also depends on the mood at the 

 time, for imagination is powerfully affected by all forms 

 of emotion. The result is that I frequently find myself in 

 a position in which I hear every word distinctly so long as 

 they accord with those I am perusing, but whenever a word 

 is changed, although the change is perceived, the new 

 word is not recognised. Then, should I raise my eyes 

 from the copy, nothing whatever of the reading can be 

 understood, the overtones by which words are 

 distinguished being too faint to be heard. As 

 a rule, I estimate that I have to approach 

 the reader by about a quarter of the previous 

 distance, before I can distinguish his words by the ear 

 alone. Accepting this rough estimate for the purposes 

 of present calculation, it follows that the potency of my 

 hearing alone is to that of my hearing plus imagination, 

 as the loudness of the same overtones heard at 3 and at 

 4 units of distance respectively ; that is as about 3- to 4'-, 

 or as 9 to 16. Consequently the potency of my auditory 

 imagination is to that of a just perceptible sound as 16-9, 

 or as 7 units, to 16. So the effect of the imagination in 

 this case reaches nearly half-way to the level of conscious- 

 ness. If it were a little more than twice as strong it 

 would be able by itself to produce an effect indistinguish- 

 able from a real sound. 



Two copies of the same newspaper afiford easily acces- 

 sible materials for making this experiment, a few words 

 having been altered here and there in the copy to be read 

 from. 



