244 Life ami Letters of Francix Galton 



'What?' always excited the idea of a fat man cracking ii long whip. And 

 such pictures are the regular conconiitanta of the words and go hack as long 

 as memory is ahle to rtnydl. 



((/) I ietnn's in the Field of View, token the eyes are closed, or in jterfect 

 darkness. Many persons appear to have this kaleidoscopic change of forms, 

 if they simply close their eyes and wait; thus Galton himself had these forms 

 to a slight extent, but too fugitive to describe or draw. The llev. George 

 Henslow had them in a marked degree, and Goethe apparently also'. 



{e) Phanta.naagoria. A coumion form of vision is the appearance of a 

 crowd of phantonjs hurrying past like men in the street. They are occa- 

 sionally seen in broad daylight, but generally come to a person in bed, after 

 j)utting the candle out and preparing to sleej), but by no means yet asleep. 

 Galton reports that he knew three scientific men of eminence who had such 



f>hantasmagoria in one form or another'. Galton concludes with actual hal- 

 ucinations occurring to sane people in good working health corresponding to 

 tiie familiar hallucinations of the insane. 



"I have," he writes, "a sufficient variety of caHcs to prove the continuity between all the 

 forms of visualisation, beginning with an almost total absence of it and ending with a com- 

 plete hallucination. The continuity is, however, not simply that of varying degrees of inUiiisity, 

 but of variations in the character of the process itself, so that it is by no means uncoinnion to 

 find two very different forms of it concurrent in the same person. There are some who 

 visualise well and who aXat) are seers of visions, who declare that the ^■ision is .not a vivid 

 visualisation, but altogether a different phenomenon. In short if we call all sensations due to 

 external impressions 'direct,' and all others 'induced,' then there are many channels through 

 which 'induction' may take place, and the channel of ordinary visualisation in the persons 

 just mentioned is different from that through which the visions arise." (p. 649.) 



"It is remarkable how largely the visionary temperament has manifested itself in certain 

 periods of history' and epochs of national life. My interpretation of the matU>r, to a certain 

 extent, is this — that the visionary tendency is much more common among sane people than is 

 generally suspected. In cjirly life it seems to be a hard les-son to an ioiaginativo child to 

 distinguish between the real and visionary world. If the fantasies are habitually laughed at 

 and otherwise discouraged, the child 8<x)ii acquires the power of distinguishing them ; any 

 incongruity or non-conformity is quickly noted, the vision is found out and discredited, and is 

 no further attended to. In this way the natural tendency to see them is blunted by repression. 

 Therefore, when popular opinion is of the matter-of-fact kind, the seers of visions keep quiet; 

 they do not like to be thought fanciful or mad, and they hide their experiences, which only 

 come to light through inquiries such as those that I have been making. But let the tide of 



' The present writer has them somewhat vividly, first colour patterns, then floral devices, 

 succee<le<l by the abrupt appt«rance of highly characteristic faces, corresponding to no 

 individuals known to him, and with trait-s emphasised to caricature. 



' I do not know whether Galton would have cla.ssed utxler vision or phantasmagoria 

 another form of visualisation which comes to the present writer without any willing or power 

 of control. Waking in the morning he lies on his Iwick and looks eyes wide open at the empty 

 white washed ceiling. In a varying number of seconds it will become closely covered with 

 written matter in long narrow columns. It is never print, but has finely made, heavy black 

 vertical letters, as those of a mo<li(!val MS. J/ortulus aniriuie. The words although apjwirently on 

 the ceiling and of normal size are i>erfectly clear and legible, but on attempting to read them only 

 a word, here or there, will Ije grasped l»eforo the whole script either vanishes, or change,s. The 

 author recently caught two words widely apart 'mathematics' and 'faithful' in the vision. 

 He can well imagine that more easily moved natures, unaware of the frequency of such phan- 

 tasmagoria, might by pondering on them intensify them and read from them supernatural 

 meMages directing their conduct, thus crossing the border line between sanity and insanity. 



