Transition from Dreams to Waking Hallucinations. Popular Scepticismabout the Existence of Hallucinations in the Sane. Evidence of Mr.Francis Galton, F.R.S. Scientific Disbelief in ordinary MentalImagery. Scientific Men who do not see in "the Mind's Eye". OrdinaryPeople who do. Frequency of Waking Hallucinations among Mr. Gallon'sfriends. Kept Private till asked for by Science. Causes of suchHallucinations unknown. Story of the Diplomatist. Voluntary orInduced Hallucinations. Crystal Gazing. Its Universality.Experience of George Sand. Nature of such Visions. Examples.Novelists. Crystal Visions only "Ghostly" when Veracious. ModernExamples. Under the Lamp. The Cow with the Bell Historical Example.Prophetic Crystal Vision. St. Simon The Regent d'Orleans. TheDeathbed of Louis XIV. References for other Cases of Crystal Visions.From dreams, in sleep or swoon, of a character difficult to believe inwe pass by way of "hallucinations" to ghosts. Everybody is ready toadmit that dreams do really occur, because almost everybody hasdreamed. But everybody is not so ready to admit that sane andsensible men and women can have hallucinations, just because everybodyhas not been hallucinated.On this point Mr. Francis Galton, in his Inquiries into Human Faculty(1833), is very instructive. Mr. Galton drew up a short catechism,asking people how clearly or how dimly they saw things "in theirmind's eye"."Think of your breakfast-table," he said; "is your mental picture ofit as clearly illuminated and as complete as your actual view of thescene?" Mr. Galton began by questioning friends in the scientificworld, F.R.S.'s and other savants. "The earliest results of myinquiry amazed me. . . . The great majority of the men of science towhom I first applied, protested that _mental imagery was unknown tothem_, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposingthat the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believedeverybody supposed them to mean." One gentleman wrote: "It is onlyby a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a sceneas a 'mental image' which I can 'see' with 'my mind's eye'. I do notsee it," so he seems to have supposed that nobody else did.When he made inquiries in general society, Mr. Galton found plenty ofpeople who "saw" mental imagery with every degree of brilliance ordimness, from "quite comparable to the real object" to "I recollectthe table, but do not see it"--my own position.Mr. Galton was next "greatly struck by the frequency of the replies inwhich my correspondents" (sane and healthy) "described themselves assubject to 'visions'". These varied in degree, "some were so vivid asactually to deceive the judgment". Finally, "a notable proportion ofsane persons have had not only visions, but actual hallucinations ofsight at one or more periods of their life. I have a considerablepacket of instances contributed by my personal friends." Thus one"distinguished authoress" saw "the principal character of one of hernovels glide through the door straight up to her. It was about thesize of a large doll." Another heard unreal music, and opened thedoor to hear it better. Another was plagued by voices, which said"Pray," and so forth.Thus, on scientific evidence, sane and healthy people may, and "in anotable proportion _do_, experience hallucinations". That is to say,they see persons, or hear them, or believe they are touched by them,or all their senses are equally affected at once, when no such personsare really present. This kind of thing is always going on, but "whenpopular opinion is of a matter-of-fact kind, the seers of visions keepquiet; they do not like to be thought fanciful or mad, and they hidetheir experiences, which only come to light through inquiries such asthose that I have been making".We may now proceed to the waking hallucinations of sane and healthypeople, which Mr. Galton declares to be so far from uncommon. Intothe _causes_ of these hallucinations which may actually deceive thejudgment, Mr. Galton does not enter.STORY OF THE DIPLOMATIST {56a}For example, there is a living diplomatist who knows men and cities,and has, moreover, a fine sense of humour. "My Lord," said a famousRussian statesman to him, "you have all the qualities of adiplomatist, but you cannot control your smile." This gentleman,walking alone in a certain cloister at Cambridge, met a casualacquaintance, a well-known London clergyman, and was just aboutshaking hands with him, when the clergyman vanished. Nothing inparticular happened to either of them; the clergyman was not in theseer's mind at the moment.This is a good example of a solitary hallucination in the experienceof a very cool-headed observer. The _causes_ of such experiences arestill a mystery to science. Even people who believe in "mentaltelegraphy," say when a distant person, at death or in any othercrisis, impresses himself as present on the senses of a friend, cannotaccount for an experience like that of the diplomatist, an experiencenot very uncommon, and little noticed except when it happens tocoincide with some remarkable event. {56b} Nor are suchhallucinations of an origin easily detected, like those of delirium,insanity, intoxication, grief, anxiety, or remorse. We can onlysuppose that a past impression of the aspect of a friend is recalledby some association of ideas so vividly that (though we are not_consciously_ thinking of him) we conceive the friend to be actuallypresent in the body when he is absent.These hallucinations are casual and unsought. But between these andthe dreams of sleep there is a kind of waking hallucinations whichsome people can purposely evoke. Such are the visions of _crystalgazing_.Among the superstitions of almost all ages and countries is the beliefthat "spirits" will show themselves, usually after magical ceremonies,to certain persons, commonly children, who stare into a crystal ball,a cup, a mirror, a blob of ink (in Egypt and India), a drop of blood(among the Maoris of New Zealand), a bowl of water (Red Indian), apond (Roman and African), water in a glass bowl (in Fez), or almostany polished surface. The magical ceremonies, which have probablynothing to do with the matter, have succeeded in making this old andnearly universal belief seem a mere fantastic superstition. Butoccasionally a person not superstitious has recorded this experience.Thus George Sand in her Histoire de ma Vie mentions that, as a littlegirl, she used to see wonderful moving landscapes in the polished backof a screen. These were so vivid that she thought they must bevisible to others.Recent experiments have proved that an unexpected number of peoplehave this faculty. Gazing into a ball of crystal or glass, a crystalor other smooth ring stone, such as a sapphire or ruby, or even into acommon ink-pot, they will see visions very brilliant. These are oftenmere reminiscences of faces or places, occasionally of faces or placessunk deep below the ordinary memory. Still more frequently theyrepresent fantastic landscapes and romantic scenes, as in anhistorical novel, with people in odd costumes coming, going andacting. Thus I have been present when a lady saw in a glass ball aman in white Oriental costume kneeling beside a leaping fountain offire. Presently a hand appeared pointing downwards through the flame.The _first_ vision seen pretty often represents an invalid in bed.Printed words are occasionally read in the glass, as also happens inthe visions beheld with shut eyes before sleeping.All these kinds of things, in fact, are common in our visions betweensleeping and waking (illusions hypnagogiques). The singularity isthat they are seen by people wide awake in glass balls and so forth.Usually the seer is a person whose ordinary "mental imagery" isparticularly vivid. But every "visualiser" is not a crystal seer. Anovelist of my acquaintance can "visualise" so well that, havingforgotten an address and lost the letter on which it was written, hecalled up a mental picture of the letter, and so discovered theaddress. But this very popular writer can see no visions in a crystalball. Another very popular novelist can see them; little dramas areacted out in the ball for his edification. {58}These things are as unfamiliar to men of science as Mr. Galton foundordinary mental imagery, pictures in memory, to be. Psychology may ormay not include them in her province; they may or may not come to bestudied as ordinary dreams are studied. But, like dreams, thesecrystal visions enter the domain of the ghostly only when they are_veracious_, and contribute information previously unknown as to past,present or future. There are plenty of stories to this effect. Tobegin with an easy, or comparatively easy, exercise in belief.
