66 PSYCHOLOGY. 



may then actually tingle with tlie imaginary sensation — 

 perhaps not altogether imaginary, since goose-flesh, pal- 

 ing or reddening, and other evidences of actual muscular 

 contraction in the spot may result. 



" An educated man," says a writer who must always be quoted when 

 it is question of the powers of imaginatiou,* "told me once that on 

 entering his house one day he received a shock from crushing the finger 

 of one of his little children in the door. At the moment of his fright 

 he felt a violent pain in the corresponding finger of his own body, 

 and this pain abode with him three days." 



The same author makes the following discrimination, 

 which probably most men could verify : 



"On the skin I easily succeed in bringing out suggested sensations 

 wherever I will. But because it is necessary to protract the mental ef- 

 fort I can only awaken such sensations as are in their nature prolonged, 

 as warmth, cold, pressure. Fleeting sensations, as those of a prick, a 

 cut, a blow, etc., I am unable to call up, because I cannot imagine them 

 ex ahrupto with the requisite intensity. The sensations of the former 

 order I can excite upon any part of the skin ; and they may become so 

 lively that, whether I will or not, I have to pass my hand over the place 

 just as if it were a real impression on the skin." f 



3Ieyer's account of his oivn visual images is very interest- 

 ing ; and with it we may close our survey of diflereuces be- 

 tween the normal powers of imagining in different indi- 

 viduals. 



"With much practice,'^ he says, " I have succeeded in making it 

 possible for me to call up subjective visual sensations at will. I tried 

 all my experiments by day or at night with closed eyes. At first it 

 was very difiicult. In the first experiments which succeeded the whole 

 picture was luminous, the shadows being given in a somewhat less strong 

 bluish light. In later experiments I saw the objects dark, with 

 bright outlines, or rather I saw outline drawings of them, bright on a 

 dark ground. I can compare these drawings less to chalk drawings on 

 a blackboard than to drawings made with phosphorus on a dark wall 

 at night, though the phosphorus would show luminous vapors which 

 were absent from my lines. If I wished, for example, to see a face, 

 without intending that of a particular person, I saw the outline of a 

 profile against the dark background. "When I tried to repeat an eX- 



* Geo. Herm. Meyer, Untersuchungen iib. d. Physiol, d. Nervenfaser 

 (1843) , p. 233. For other cases see Tuke's Influence of Mind upon Body, 

 chaps. II. and vii. 



t Meyer, op. cit. p. 238, 



