Truth and Error or the Science of Intellection/Chapter 20

by John Wesley Powell

CHAPTER XX

FALLACIES OF SENSATION

The certitudes which we have tried to demonstrate have given rise to a host of fallacies which have played a strange role in the history of opinions and which from time to time have vitiated science itself. Civilization began with science when it commenced with verification by experimentation. Verification soon led to the dissipation of fallacies; then it was discovered that things are something more than what they seem to be to our simplest judgments. Kinds are something more than kinds, they are forms; forms are something more than forms, they are forces; forces are something more than forces, they are causations; in animate bodies causations are something more than causations, they are concepts. When we know all about a body we must know all of its properties and these can only be discovered by investigation, and science is the result of this investigation; but before we acquire knowledge we entertain fallacies. The early philosophers, discovering that partial knowledge is inadequate to the expression of the whole truth, thought to characterize the whole truth by calling it noumenon, and they thought to characterize partial truth by calling it phenomenon. This was a wise and legitimate distinction, but the time came when certain delusions were held to be sacred and a belief in them necessary to a good life; so they thought by the legerdemain of language to prove that delusions were the noumena and all knowledge only phenomena. But scientific men took up the phenomena or unexplained properties of bodies and by investigation increased knowledge as science, and reduced phenomena or partially explained properties to noumena or more fully explained properties. To a great extent they dropped the term noumenon and held to the term phenomenon, and expressed the opinion tacitly or overtly that a phenomenon is but still a phenomenon whether it be properly or improperly explained, and they held it their province to explain phenomena and they called the explanation of phenomena, science.

In modern times those who hold that noumena are inexplicable, that is, unknown and unknowable properties, call themselves metaphysicians. Those who hold that phenomena are knowable and seek by investigation to know them, call themselves scientists. Such schematizing of philosophers as metaphysicians and scientists is necessarily imperfect, for some philosophers are both metaphysicians and scientists. There are many who are metaphysicians when they wear their holiday dress, and scientists when they wear the garb of labor. Metaphysical reasoning can be more clearly demarcated from scientific reasoning, for scientific reasoning may always be known by its demand for verification. We may make a mistake in sensation because of its obscurity or by referring it to a wrong sense. The sense impression may be obscure itself, as when a sound barely passes the threshold of consciousness, or a sight which is obscure by reason of the twilight, or it may be obscure by reason of preoccupied attention; thus I may fail to attend to a sound or a sight because my attention is elsewhere engaged. I do not hear the speaker because I am attending to a sight, or I do not see a sight because I am listening to what another person is saying. All of such missensations are easily corrected by ordinary methods of verification, but often we neglect them, as we deem them of no importance. I shall call all such errors of judgment, missensations, and group them in a higher class which I shall call illusions.

When a youth, as I was breaking prairie with an ox team, my labor was interrupted by a rattlesnake, and during the day I saw and killed several of these serpents. At one time the lash of my whip flew off. In trying to pick it up I grasped a stick. The fear of being bitten by a snake and the degree of expectant attention to which I was wrought, caused me to interpret the sense impression of touch as caused by a rattlesnake. This was a missensation of touch. At the same time I distinctly heard the rattle of the snake; this was a missensation of audition.

I make a distinction between a sense impression and a feeling impression. A sense impression is one made upon the end organ of a sense by an object exterior to the body; a feeling impression is one made upon an organ of feeling which is metabolic, circulatory, motor, reproductive, or cognitional. A feeling impression arises as a result of the functioning of the organ and is usually distinguished as being subjective. The mind may err in considering a subjective impression as objective, when an hallucination will be produced. We thus divide fallacies of sensation into two groups, missensations and hallucinations. Missensations are easily corrected; hallucinations cannot be corrected while the person who makes them is in the condition of mind tinder which they originate, for they are produced under abnormal conditions and so long as these conditions prevail similar hallucinations will occur, for hallucinations occur in the dream state, the intoxication state, the disease state, or other abnormal states. We will see the significance of this statement when we proceed to discuss hallucinations. Missensations are at first presentative and they remain only until corrected by verification; hallucinations are false presentations and cannot be tested by the verification of the persons who make them. To the mind that forms the habit of believing in hallucinations they come to the persons as recognitions and have the instantaneous effect of recognitions.

Here we must distinguish clearly between a fallacy of sensation and a fallacy of feeling. A soldier in the suspense which precedes the battle, when sharpshooters are now and then picking off a man, may have his gun or his clothing touched by a rifle ball and in the suspense of the occasion may imagine that he has received a severe, perhaps a deadly wound, and may shriek with pain. The fallacy of being struck is a fallacy of sensation, but the fallacy of having pain is a fallacy of feeling. Similar cases are often witnessed on the frontier, where men experience an adventurous life. Now, we are not treating of fallacies of feeling, but of those of sensation. An hallucination is the antithesis of the one I have just given; it is the error which arises by interpreting a feeling impression as if it were a sense impression; but a fallacy of feeling consists of interpreting a sense impression as a feeling impression.

In a former chapter it was explained that a judgment of intellection is a judgment of the cause of a sense impression, and that a judgment of emotion is a judgment of the effect of an impression. The feelings, therefore, tell of effects upon self, and the senses tell of the causes of these effects. This distinction is important to a clear understanding of the nature of fallacies.

Parish has assembled a great body of “Hallucinations and Illusions,” which are in convenient form for reference. As his treatment of the subject is better than any I have elsewhere seen, I shall liberally avail myself of the material which he has gathered. Notwithstanding Parish’s disclaimer, he still exhibits a tendency to explain psychological phenomena by a reference to its physiological concomitant. As there can be no psychology without its concomitant physiology, this is quite legitimate, but the practical conclusions at which he arrives still require explication in terms of abstract mind. He uses a geometrical scheme for the purpose of setting forth the facts of physiology. Such a scheme may have an expositional value to make us realize the facts which have been discovered in the anatomy of the nervous system, but it is easily abused. We know that the nervous system is composed of ganglia of cells, connected by nerves composed of bundles of fibers, and that the ganglia are found in hierarchies connected by these nerve fibers, which finally terminate in the organs of life, where they are distributed throughout the system, and also at the periphery, where they terminate in end organs supplied with various mechanical devices. The nerve fibers that connect with a ganglion are not structurally continuous with the cells of the ganglion, so that a sense impression or a feeling impression is conveyed from one ganglion to another by fibers which are discontinuous at the ganglion. This permits of a shunting or diversion of an impulse in many directions through the nervous system, a ganglion being a shunting or diverting mechanism. The paths of which Parish, together with many other authors, speaks, are the fibers and cells. Now, I submit that a simple statement of the fact is much more readily comprehensible than any geometric scheme which any physiologist has devised. The concept of a nervous system composed of sensory and vital organs connected by nervous fibers with nervous cells for a shunting apparatus, is one easily realized by the mind. It must be remembered that this discovery was not available until of late. When we come to explain the physiology of the nervous system we must explain also the anatomy of the nervous system, and finally this leads us to an explanation of the metabolism of the nervous system. Hence conception has its concomitants in physiology, anatomy, and metabolism, and as the physiology of the nerves is a process which also involves time in its evolution, we may characterize conception in terms of evolution, physiology, anatomy, or metabolism, but a psychologic treatment of the subject requires that the conception should ultimately be treated in terms of psychology. I shall, therefore, treat all fallacies in terms of psychology. I shall assume that both sense impressions and feeling impressions may go astray in passing from the end organ to the cortex, because the fibrous nerves are not structurally connected with the ganglionic nerves, so that, tinder certain conditions, they may be directed to any portion of the cortex by the will acting normally or abnormally.

Every cell in the human body is a seat of consciousness, while the nervous system is the organ of inference. All the bodily organs are related to one another through the structure of the nervous system, the fibers of which permeate all the organs, collect sense and feeling impressions from them, and transmit them by fibrous nerves to the ganglionic nerves, where such impressions are woven into concepts to be ultimately returned to the motor apparatus. In this conception I suppose that an hallucination involves not only the central organ in the cortex, but it also may involve a subordinate ganglion or an organ of sense or feeling.

We have divided fallacies of sensation into missensations and hallucinations. The exposition already made relating to missensations will, perhaps, be sufficient for practical purposes, but hallucinations will require further consideration.

In discussing hallucinations there are no sense impressions to be considered, but there are feeling impressions which are interpreted as if they were sense impressions. The interpretation seems always to be made by the faculty of perception. We have, therefore, to discuss hallucinations as false perception based on feeling impressions; consequently, in order to consider their cause in feeling impressions, we shall illustrate by instances of fallacious perceptions which are specters.

Esquirol distinguishes hallucinations from illusions by considering hallucinations as “subjective sensory images” which arise without the aid of external stimuli, and illusions as the false interpretation of external objects, but he does not clearly distinguish between sensation and perception, which we have attempted to make clear. In the same manner Parish has fallen into confusion; Sully makes the distinction but he classifies illusions in a manner which we cannot follow. I shall therefore treat the subject as demanded by the standpoint obtained in considering the five-fold faculties of the intellect as hitherto set forth.

In sensation we hear sounds that are caused by objective bodies; thus a bell agitates the air and we hear it, but we may have a disturbance of the physiological function of the ear, due it may be to the influence of a drug or perhaps to a disease of the organ. Now, such a subjective impression or functioning of an organ of sense we call a feeling impression, and when we consider it to be objective we hallucinate or have an hallucination.

In a highly nervous state men mistake the motor feeling of speech for the sound of speech, as if caused by another or objective person. A subjective irritation of the skin may be mistaken for the objective crawling of an insect over the skin. A polypus in the nose may produce a disturbance in the function of the nose which is interpreted as an odor. A man may smell paradisic odors or mephitic stenches by reason of disease in the olfactory organ. In the same manner diseases produce hallucinations of the gustatory sense.

The literature of hallucination in large part is the literature of pathology, although the occurrence of hallucinations has often been recorded in biographic literature, in which there are many notable examples. Socrates had hallucinations of a demon who frequently warned him of impending evil. Savonarola saw the heavens open and a sword appear on which was the inscription Gladius Domini super terram. Luther had an auditory hallucination when on the stairs at Rome he heard the words, “The just shall live by faith.” Cromwell had his greatness foretold him by an apparition. At first it may be difficult to state whether such fallacies are hallucinations proper or only missensations. As we go on with the subject, however, we may find reason to believe them genuine hallucinations.

When a patient with peritonitis declares that a church congress is being held inside of her and says that she can feel it in the abdomen, no one knows what a congress in such a locality would feel like, but the patient mistakes it for a sense impression and hence it is an hallucination. Should the patient imagine that she hears the speeches of the contending parties in the congress, then of course there would be an auditory hallucination.

A so-called census of hallucinations has been made at the instigation of the Society for Psychical Research which is really a list and description of hallucinations which have occurred in recent times to such people as the promoters of the enterprise could induce to tell of them. It is probable that there is no person who has not frequently experienced them. Many of these are now on record, constituting quite a body of hallucinations. The purpose for which these records were made seems to have been the desire to prove that hallucinations are often veridical and hence give evidence of some unknown or hitherto unrecognized method of communicating ideas, except in folklore, when such communications are attributed to the interference of disembodied spirits in the affairs of mankind or an extra sense called telepathy by an organ not yet discovered. Those who believe in ghostly manifestations will find abundant evidence of them here, while those who believe in telepathy will gain confirmation of their doctrines. In the meantime those who still hold them to be hallucinations or specters will explain them as psychologic errors.

Parish in his work on Hallucinations and Illusions considers those of the S. P. R. catalogue with others which have been recorded by medical experts or derived from general literature. He endeavors to show that all hallucinations and illusions are phenomena of dissociation. Dissociation is manifestly abnormal association, and association is about synonymous with conception as we have used the terms.

When awake we may have hallucinations whenever our nerves are unduly excited or when we are in any abnormal condition, as from fatigue.

Hallucinations are a constant phenomenon of ecstasy, where they arise out of one-sided mental activity and intense concentration on single groups of ideas, conjoined with lowered sensibility. The best known cases are those of religious ecstasy, but religious ideas do not invariably furnish the material for “ecstatic vision.” Philosophers, artists, and others whose habit of mind tends to deepen certain channels of thought, are also liable to such visitations. Any and every object of longing or desire, no matter how trivial, grotesque, or perverse, may become the object of ecstasy.—(P. 38.)

Emanuel Swedenborg was privileged to behold God himself. Engelbrecht relates how he was carried by the Holy Spirit through space to the gates of hell, and then borne in a golden chariot up into heaven, where he saw choirs of saints and angels singing round the throne, and received a message from God, delivered to him by an angel.—(P. 39.)

The multitudinous hallucinations recorded in history, like that of the demon of Socrates and those referred to in the former part of this chapter, are probably all hallucinations of ecstasy. Hallucinations are fundamentally classed by the sense deceived. Thus we have gustatory, tactual, motor, auditory, and visual hallucinations. Of gustatory and olfactory hallucinations, Parish says:

Where hallucinations of taste have been noted they are mostly nauseous or poisonous (arsenic, copper, filth), and frequently give rise to refusal of nourishment, or it may be to continued spitting. In the early stages of paralysis, on the other hand, gustatory hallucinations of an agreeable nature are sometimes reported, the patient perhaps describing the enjoyment of all the various dishes of an imaginary menu. Olfactory hallucinations are, on the whole, infrequent, and are seldom of an agreeable character. The experiences of the patient who declared he smelt all the perfumes of Arabia and the East are exceptional, for hallucinations of this sense are, generally speaking, associated with delusions about bodily foulness, and odors of corruption and corpses, due to visceral disturbances. Lélut reports the case of an insane woman who declared that the pestilential odors she perceived arose from corpses buried in certain vaults under the Salpêtrière. Sometimes, haunted by the fear of being murdered, the sufferer perceives everywhere the fumes of charcoal, noxious gases, and particles of poisonous dust. Olfactory hallucinations seldom appear alone, but are generally associated with other sensory fallacies. Some authors consider that they belong more to the early stages of insanity. They are frequently found in association with local disease of the ovaries, and of the reproductive organs in general.—(Pp. 28, 29.)

Fallacies of touch seem usually to be represented by hallucination of external bodies crawling on the skin when in fact no such bodies exist. Hallucinations of insects, mice, and snakes are frequent.

There is not much to note concerning hallucinations of the tactile sense. . . .

It is only when a darkened intelligence “seizes upon them as a basis for a new conception of the ego and the environment,” that they become of primary significance. But such significance may always be attributed to an hallucination of either of the higher senses, though opinion is divided as to which of these two senses plays the greater part.—(Pp. 29, 30.)

Hallucinations of pressure are more common than those of touch. In the dream state the walls of the building of a room may seem to contract until the sleeper is in a nightmare of trouble with the compression. These hallucinations are also common in certain diseased conditions.

Hallucinations of audition are very commonly caused by inflammation of the inner ear.

The sufferer hears taunting or insulting voices calling after him in the street, and making injurious insinuations about him, or sometimes unseen speakers incidentally let fall words which confirm his forebodings.—(P. 23.)

A kind of auditory hallucination worthy of special note is “audible thinking,” wherein the patient hears his own thoughts spoken aloud, and imagines that they can be heard by everybody, or else hears them repeated or dictated to him by an imaginary being. Fallacious perceptions of the other senses are also not uncommon. Many sufferers see the persecutors who torment them from a distance by means of magnetic and electrical apparatus. They entertain kings and princesses, and receive angels’ visits; all these hallucinations occur in a state of full consciousness.—(P. 24.)

Gall relates the case of a minister of state who constantly heard insulting words whispered into his left ear; and in the more recent literature of the subject such examples are no longer rare. According to Krafft-Ebing, the unilateral voices are heard better when the other ear is closed when, for instance, the patient is lying on it.—(P. 32.)

While walking alone she hears a voice calling her, she turns round, there is no one. While she is at her work familiar voices speak in her ear. She hears them on both sides, but chiefly on the right.—(P. 35.)

Hallucinations are . . . a frequent cause of violent and criminal acts; for instance, in hallucinatory insanity, epilepsy, hysteria, and somnambulism, and especially in delirious states (alcohol, morphia, cocaine, and typhus-delirium). Thrown into a paroxysm of terror by the phantoms which threaten him, or obsessed by his “voices,” the sufferer snatches up a weapon and perhaps commits a murder or sets fire to the house. Or, again, despairing of escape from the enemies who pursue and mock him, he puts an end to his sufferings and his life at the same time, and often in a skilful and cunningly planned manner.—(P. 34.)

Tactual, auditory, and visual hallucinations most frequently occur on the hemianesthetic side.

Hallucinations of vision are more common than those of any other sense.

Thus Herr Von M—— told me that when taking his usual afternoon walk he used to see regularly on reaching a certain spot the head of the squadron returning from their daily exercise, and crossing the street at some little distance in front of him. One day when he had seen this as usual it occurred to him to wonder why the rest of the troops did not follow, and he soon discovered that the cavalry he had seen on this occasion were phantoms.—(P. 190.)

Some years ago, a friend and I rode—he on a bicycle, I on a tricycle—on an unusually dark night in summer from Glendalough to Rathdrum. It was drizzling rain, we had no lamps, and the road was overshadowed by trees on both sides, between which we could just see the sky-line. I was riding slowly and carefully some ten or twenty yards in advance, guiding myself by the sky-line, when my machine chanced to pass over a piece of tin or something else in the road that made a great crash. Presently my companion came up, calling to me in great concern. He had seen through the gloom my machine upset and me flung from it.—(Pp. 191, 192.)

Gregory mentions the case of a patient in whom the seizure was always preceded by the apparition of a hideous old woman in a red cloak, who advanced and struck him on the head with her cane, whereupon he fell to the ground in convulsions. In another case the devil appeared in a shadowy form. Sometimes the apparitions are less frightful. Conolly tells of a patient who saw, in the last few moments before loss of consciousness, pleasant landscapes spread out before him.—(P. 33.)

For example, the commonest visual hallucinations (in which black and red play a leading part) are black rats, cats, snakes, and spiders, shining stars, fiery spheres, and so on. But these do not remain motionless. Either they go diagonally across the patient’s field of vision, in which case they proceed from the hemianaesthetic side; or else (generally) they come from behind the patient, hasten past, and disappear in the distance. In this case also the apparitions occur on the hemianaesthetic side . . . These premonitory hallucinations haunt the sufferer even by day, but in the night they become much more persistent and vivid, and what was only a passing vision before, develops into a long scene, in which the patient is called upon to take a part.—(P. 35.)

Sufficient illustrations have perhaps been given to exhibit the fundamental classification of hallucinations. Were I writing a treatise on hallucinations rather than a condensed account of the subject, every class should be sub-classified by the agency through which they are produced. This classification would give us, (1) the hallucinations of dreams, (2) the hallucinations caused by subverted sensation or ecstasy, under which are included the phenomena of crystal vision, (3) the hallucinations of suggestion or hypnotism, (4) the hallucinations of intoxicants, (5) the hallucinations of disease.

In sleep the senses are dormant while the functions of life continue. Sense impressions are only instantaneous, but feeling impressions endure as long as the cause acts, although they may become dulled by repetition or unrecognized by habit. It is well known that a sense impression may give rise to a feeling if it is too intense. It is an old doctrine of psychology that sensation is inversely proportional to feeling, and it remains true to this extent, that a sense impression may be neglected, that is, we may not consider the cause though we may consider the effect, when the impression will give rise to a feeling. In the dream state sensation lies dormant and feeling has the psychic field to itself.

In sleep sense impressions frequently impinge upon the organs: lights appear in the darkened room, sounds are made which produce some slight effect upon the ear, and to the sleeping person there come many tactual impressions, all of which are interpreted as feelings and produce hallucinations because feelings are so intimately associated with external objects; these are feeling hallucinations.

On the other hand if on a cold night the clothing is partially removed from the body the feeling of discomfort is quite likely to produce an hallucination. Drops of water falling upon the face of the sleeper may have the same effect.

The bedcover pressing on the arm is embraced as a mistress or felt as a heavy weight; a dream of being impaled, that is to say, of standing on a stake, the point of which was thrust through the foot, has been known to arise from the pressure of a straw lodged between the toes; a covering which has slipped to the ground is sometimes a source of great embarrassment, when it causes us to dream of appearing half clad in the street or at a social gathering; or it may call up visions of skating, Alpine travels, Polar expeditions, and these again may suddenly end in the feeling of falling into a gulf, due to a slight alteration of the sleeper’s position in bed. Gregory, when he had a hot-water bottle at his feet, dreamed that he was climbing Etna and walking on hot lava. Purkinje says: “If our hand has become numb by pressure, in the dream-state it may appear as something strange and gruesome touching us, and if the whole side is affected, we imagine that a strange bedfellow, whom we cannot get rid of, is stretched beside us.—(Pp. 54, 55.)

The influence of position during sleep is generally exhibited in one of the following ways: (1) The position of a member may be perceived more or less correctly, but suggest an attitude; for instance, if the foot is stretched and bent back it suggests the dream of standing on tip-toe to reach something; (2) the strained position may be taken to be part of a movement and the dreamer seem to be dancing on his toes; (3) the movements may appear to be executed by some one else; (4) sometimes the movements seem to be impeded; (5) the affected member may be changed in the dream into some animal or inanimate object of analogous form; (6) sometimes the dream-perception of the member gives rise to abstract ideas, which it symbolizes; for instance, the perception of several fingers may give rise to dreams of numbers and calculations.—(P. 55.)

A mustard plaster on the head may cause a man to dream of an Indian conflict in which he is scalped, as I have observed.

Thus Herrmann, when suffering from an attack of colic, dreamed that his abdomen was opened, and an operation performed on the sympathetic nerve. Others dream of going up for examinations. The house-wife dreams she is giving a party, and that all her dainties are burnt up, and so on.—(P. 56.)

An individual directed his servant to sprinkle his pillow sometimes after he was asleep (leaving the choice of the particular night to the servant) with a perfume which he had only used during a certain stay in the country, but to which he had then taken a great fancy. On those nights he visited again in his dreams the scenes associated in his mind with the perfume. The occurrence of imaginary tastes and smells in dreams is very rare, so much so that it has been altogether denied by many observers. Still a few cases have been reported.—(P. 54.)

Hallucinations of ecstasy often arise with persons engaged in profound abstract thought. Philosophers, poets, literary men, generals, and divines are peculiarly subject to them. Extreme ethical emotions are apt in begetting hallucinations. It is through all of these cases that the world’s literature is replete with accounts of hallucinations. Perhaps every great man has had them.

We have abundantly affirmed and illustrated the doctrine that sense impressions are instantaneous, and the judgments which we form from sense impressions are instantaneous, while feeling impressions endure while the cause acts. It is possible for us to concentrate the attention upon the impressions received by one organ, but if we fixate the attention on an interrupted succession of like impressions we overthrow or subvert judgment. As we must at every instant go on to form a new judgment, the supposed concentration of attention sets the mind adrift to follow feeling impressions wherever they may lead. This subverted sensation I call ecstasy.

We make a multitude of judgments of recognition at one glance of the eye about the room which we occupy, or over the landscape when we are out of doors. Now, if we can fixate the attention of the eye or the ear and abstract the mind from all other sense impressions, hallucinations may be produced. This secret has been an open one to those who have practiced divination in the departed centuries. There is a vast body of literature on the subject, though it relates chiefly to the abstraction of vision.

Even as I write, the boys on the street are crying the New York papers and tempting purchasers with stories of divination by crystal vision.

In crystal vision the percipient attempts to occupy his mind in the contemplation of a constantly renewed sense impression, while the mind in fact is recalling concepts from memory which he ascribes to hallucinatory objects in the glass; that is, he forms judgments of things not seen but remembered by suggestion from feeling impressions. We may express this idea in still another way. In crystal-vision experiments the mind of the percipient is engaged in recalling memories which may be determined by the feelings or may arise at random, for it is impossible for the waking mind to cease operations. As the thing expected or looked for in the glass does not appear, these memory images are projected into the glass.

The percipient strives to banish all conscious thought from his mind, and fixes his gaze continuously on a “Braid’s crystal,” a burning glass in a dark frame, a glass of water or some similar reflecting object. Many persons after gazing thus for some time begin to see pictures in the crystal, the spire of the parish church perhaps, or familiar faces.—(P. 63.)

An eye-witness relates the following anecdote of an occurrence in Egypt:

His curiosity was excited by Mr. Salt, the English Consul-General, who, on suspecting his servants of theft, sent for a magician. Mr. Salt himself selected a boy as seer, while the magician occupied himself with writing charms on pieces of paper which, with incense and perfumes, were afterwards burned in a brazier of charcoal; then, drawing a diagram in the boy’s right palm, into the middle of which he poured some ink, he bade him look fixedly into it. After various visions had come and gone, the form of the guilty person appeared to the boy, and was recognized by the description he gave. On being arrested, the thief thus strangely convicted confessed his crime.—(P. 64.)

Just as visual images may be called up by gazing on a shining object, so by placing a sea-shell to the ear it is possible to induce auditory hallucinations. I therefore class such hallucinations with crystal visions, which they resemble in their content. This analogy is borne out by cases like that of the lady who, if she listened to the shell after a dinner-party, generally heard repeated, not the conversation of her “lawful interlocutor” to which her attention had been directed, but the talk of her neighbors on the other side, which she had not consciously noted at the time.—(P. 70.)

All modes of ecstatic hallucination are of this character. It is the abstraction of attention to the particular object while waiting” for a judgment of cognition or recognition to come through the intellectual faculties, while instantaneous judgments continue to be made through the emotional faculties. The consideration of this fact leads us to restate that which may seem already to have been abundantly affirmed, that the vital organs of metabolism, circulation, motility, and reproduction are the end organs of feeling, while in the nervous system we find organs of feeling and intellection.

The third class of hallucinations comes from the land of suggestion. Much of the intellectual activity of mankind is acception, or the receiving of judgments made by others through the agency of speech; words are heard or seen that express judgments which we accept as valid. So much of intellectual life is of this character that we are trained in the ability of acception. This ability runs astray with some persons because there goes not with it the habit of constant verification. The speech of human beings must be verified in the same manner that natural language in presentation and representation must be verified. He who accepts the judgments of others without intellectual verification is eminently qualified for hypnotic suggestion.

There are some people so naïve in their interpretation of expressed judgments as to suppose that what is told them must be either truth or falsehood, not being able to distinguish a fallacy from a lie. This simplicity in weighing the judgments of others is highly conducive to the development of hypnotic intellects.

Frau U., an innkeeper’s wife, forty-five years of age, an extremely suggestible subject (so much so that while awake a mere assurance that she could not move her limbs deprived her of all power of movement), was hypnotized by me, and the post-hypnotic suggestion given that each time A., who was present, should cough, a fly would alight on her brow. The hallucination was realized; at each cough of A.’s she raised her hand to her forehead and looked up into the air as though watching a fly. This did not prevent her, however, from continuing with animation her conversation with me on the preparations for her daughter’s approaching marriage. Her prompt reaction to suggestions given in ordinary life rendered her post-hypnotic suggestibility valueless as a test of her state of consciousness.

Bernheim communicates the following case of a young girl, of unusual intelligence, and free from hysterical tendency: I arranged that on waking she should see an imaginary rose. She saw it, touched and smelt it, and described it to me; but knowing that I might have given her a suggestion, she asked me if the rose was a real or imaginary one, adding that it was quite impossible for her to tell the difference. I told her that it was imaginary. She believed me, and yet found that by no effort of the will could she make it disappear. “I can still see and touch it,” she said, “as though it were natural; and if you were to show me a real rose beside it, or instead of it, I should not be able to tell the one from the other.” All this time she was thoroughly awake, and talked quietly with me about the apparition.—(P. 62.)

In a former chapter it was stated that the corpuscles of the blood are unicellular organisms and that the red corpuscles are built into the system, so that every part is composed of unicellular organisms. Each of these organisms is endowed with the rudiments of life and mind which they take with them into the human system. The phenomena of hypnotism reënforce the discoveries of physiology and confirm the doctrine that the entire body is the seat of consciousness and that the nervous system constitutes the special apparatus of inference. This leads us to a theory of multiple seats of consciousness which is demonstrated by the phenomena of hypnotism, a tempting subject which we are compelled to ignore by reason of the limitations of our argument.

Hallucinations caused by intoxicants are well known. Those occurring through the immoderate consumption of alcoholic drinks are most common.

. . . The hallucinations . . . are generally of a depressing nature, and terrifying impressions predominate. True, sweet voices are sometimes heard, melodies delight the ear, and fair landscapes appear before the eyes, but this seldom lasts long, monsters and serpents take the place of flowers, and the visions shift about and are mingled together. Vermin, reptiles, etc., appear in great numbers, such for instance as the rats, cats, snakes, mice, and monkeys, which fill the visions of delirium tremens. Thus Brierre de Boismont found among twenty-one cases—three of them severe—twenty in which hallucinations of vermin and such creatures were seen swarming over the bed and up the walls. Other sensory delusions of a purely fantastic nature are not lacking. Sometimes black men appear who grimace and threaten, then climb the walls, or vanish up the chimney. In other cases the visions arise out of the daily occupations of the patient, or out of his past experience.—(Pp. 41, 42.)

In addition to alcoholic beverages many drugs produce hallucinations, as opium, hashish, santonin, etc. Among the tribes of the western plains of the United States a cactus known as peyote is widely used in their religious rites. The plants themselves, when made into decoctions or when eaten as dried fruit, produce a variety of effects, among which are those of color vision. Dr. Theodate Smith, an expert in experimental psychology, has furnished me with the following memoranda of an experiment on herself in the use of the peyote. Earlier trials produced in part very disagreeable effects and in part excessive motor excitement, but after repeated trials color visions came only when she placed herself under some restraint from motor activity; then there appeared a set of retinal effects in a succession of dissolving views which she described to an attendant who was charged with making a record of her words.

The following is an extract from this record:

Branches of coral, in color a deep, beautiful blue.
Flattened forms of coral shape, deep purple changing to red with ruby red tips.
An electric fountain, many colors.
Colors of a peacock’s tail, form somewhat indistinct.
Flashes of light over the whole retinal field; predominant color a wonderful intense green.
Flower forms quantities of violets, yellow in color, flickering light over them, also yellow.
Deep opal-blue rings running outward from a center and in constant motion.
Beautiful green light, like light in an electric fountain; no special form.
A complex Grecian pattern, deep blue with white dots suggesting snowflakes over it.
This changes through many tints of blue to turquoise blue; the form becomes a bowl and pitcher ornamented with gold.
A ship with square sails on the bluest ocean, intensely blue.
Blue aureoles encircling everything as I half open my eyes in dim light.
Strings of beads of many colors.
Embroidered leather with rainbow colors flickering over it as if from a stained-glass window.
Nine leaves of silvery gray conventionalized.
Cat’s fur, but colored blue and white.
The blue becomes lines and forms, the outline of a big centipede.
Venetian glass, amethyst tinted, shades from light to dark, wavy lines running through it, forms not distinct.
An escutcheon, quarterings of blue, steely blue, a shield with lines; around the shield four swallow tails. These enlarge, cover and finally blot out the shield.
A shining laurel leaf.
A beautiful chandelier, richly jeweled and blazing with light.
A stained-glass window, red, blue, and amber, colors rich and deep, forms not well defined.
A crazy quilt, pretty but very crazy. A transparent flexible lily shape, with wavy lines running through it like bird-of-paradise feathers; no color in the form itself, but it seems to float in the midst of colored light.
Phosphorescent fishes’ eyes.
Fish scales of wonderful green, changing to shell shapes in the green light.
A picture of an arctic sunset, with silver rays rising from it, and far off on the edge an aureole of beautiful blue.
A ceiling from which hang ribbon cards of every color.
A camel with gorgeous trappings, with a palm tree behind him.
Embroidery of red chrysanthemums, variously mixed with pale pinks and yellows.

All of the North American tribes have intoxicants that produce hallucinations, but they supplement these intoxicants with many rites such as dancing, singing, ululation, the beating of drums, and the tormenting of the body by various painful operations, all designed to produce ecstatic states and the consequent hallucinations.

Among all tribal men many hallucinations are supposed to be veridical, as some are supposed to be by certain members of the Society for Psychical Research. So tribesmen resort to the agencies which produce both hallucinations and illusions to obtain a view of the world about them, of the past and of the future, in order that their conduct may be governed by this superior knowledge.

Had our psychologists attempted to make a “census of waking hallucinations in the sane” among the North American Indians they would have found a hundred per cent, ready to testify in their favor. It is the universal belief in savagery, for in that stage of culture all men produce hallucinations for divination—for which times and seasons are regularly appointed and systematic means employed. But the savage always recognizes that some visions are not veridical. False spirits may have testified or some evil being may by black art have vitiated the ceremony or the percipient may have been unable to properly read the communication, for communications arc told in ambiguous terms. It is very interesting to read these communications recorded in the annals of the Society, for we find that after all it is often necessary to wait for a time to discover an event which will fit the hallucinations.

With the hallucinations already considered, those appearing in the course of acute somatic diseases, and as a result of them, seem naturally to be classed. Here, as in the delirious states associated with intoxication, the swarming of the hallucinations is characteristic. This resemblance is not accidental. Indeed, the delirious states of somatic disease may, in part at least, be referred to intoxication. But of no less importance are the rise of temperature, acceleration of metabolic processes, and disturbances of circulation in the brain cavity (first, active hyperæmia; later, in enfeebled action of the heart, venous stasis), the importance of which is indicated in typhus, for instance, by the parallelism between the violence of the delirium and the temperature curve. The initial hallucinatory visions of typhus, smallpox, and intermittent fever, occurring before the other causes have had time to act, are on the other hand to be attributed to the direct influence of the specific virus of the fever, as also the afebrile delusions, sometimes occurring in intermittent fever in place of the fever attack, and the visual and auditory hallucinations which are observed in smallpox between the eruptive fever and the fever of the suppurating stage.

Hallucinations also occur in the decline of the disease, during the period of convalescence. First they appear singly, in association with those of the fever, and are often recognized by the patient as such and concealed from those around him. But soon they overmaster the sufferer, and delirious states are developed, or states resembling hallucinatory insanity, in which visions of corpses, death’s-heads, mocking voices, and offensive olfactory and gustatory hallucinations play a part. Of an equally distressing nature are most of the sensory fallacies of collapse-delirium, and those which sometimes precede death. In tuberculosis, on the other hand, they are often of an agreeable nature, corresponding to the euphoria which is so characteristic of this disease.—(Pp. 48-50.)

The most frequently quoted of all sense-deceptions are those of insanity. Some authors have sought to divide them according to their origin into “idiopathic,” those which are primary but which may also occur in secondary consensual morbid states, and “symptomatic,” those which occur only as a secondary symptom of insanity. In any case a distinction ought to be drawn between sporadic hallucinations not associated with particular emotional states, and hallucinations which reflect the ruling mental tone. This distinction has prognostic importance, since observation seems to prove that hallucinations depending on certain morbid emotional states are capable of disappearing with them, whilst independent hallucinations seldom admit of cure, and pass over into the state of secondary psychical weakness.

The particular forms of insanity in which hallucinations most frequently occur are such as are associated with dreamlike beclouding of the intellect. Thus they are a frequent phenomenon of amentia, but are seldom seen in acute dementia with its deep-reaching paralysis of the higher psychical functions. Opinion as to the frequency of sensory hallucinations in melancholia has altered very much of late years, chiefly because of the altered meaning of the term, and because cases previously classed under melancholia are now referred to other groups. Thus, while hallucinations were at one time regarded as frequent phenomena of this state, they are now held to be rare, or altogether absent from it. In mania hallucinations only appear when there is clouding of consciousness, and are generally vague and indistinct. On the other hand, illusions are frequent, and mistakes of identity are specially characteristic of this state, though not absent from other forms of insanity. Snell, who devotes an article to them, is of opinion that the confusions are not so much caused by mere resemblance, but that a general psychological law lies at their root; that the patient is powerless to escape from the familiar thought-channels, and therefore grafts his new impressions on to his old opinions and ideas. In folie circulaire hallucinations occur in the maniacal period in association with profound mental disturbance, but as regards their occurrence in the melancholic phase opinion is again divided.

Delusional insanity and Paranoia, on the other hand, abound in hallucinations, so much so that some forms classed under this head are designated “hallucinated insanity” (hallucinatorischer Wahnsinn), and “paranoia hallucinatoria.” The sense-deceptions of delusional insanity are vivid in their externalization, and resemble in their content the fixed ideas which they embody. In cases which end in mental decay the hallucinations frequently persist long. In depressive monomania they are more fragmentary and vague, but are often kept alive by distressing dreams. . . . The sufferer hears taunting or insulting voices calling after him in the street, and making injurious insinuations about him, or sometimes unseen speakers incidentally let fall words which confirm his forebodings.—(Pp. 20-23.)

The physiological conception of memory is that concepts are impressed upon the brain and the nervous system as elements of structure. Memory is thus a function of structure. The revival of concepts is recollection; such revival is accomplished by a sense or feeling- impression, but a sense or feeling impression is a force or mode of motion which is utilized by conditions so that the central consciousness or consciousness of the brain is subject to conditions which we call causation. Thought is therefore explained physiologically by the late discovery that sense and feeling impressions traverse paths along the fibrous nerves which are diverted by the ganglionic nerves to different tracts of the brain, where concepts are recorded as structural elements. Thus hallucinations are explained by referring them to the mechanism of the brain and showing how by such mechanism incongruous concepts may be aroused by defects in its working.

Now we are prepared to reaffirm that a judgment of sensation must be verified to become a cognition, for if a judgment of sensation is an hallucination there is no cognition. Many of our sensations may be verified by repetition, and it is often the case that this method establishes their verity.

The hallucination caused by subjective audition cannot be disproved by a repetition of the hallucination caused by an injury to the middle ear. An hallucination which is a color vision cannot be shown not to be veridical in this manner, for it may continue while the intoxication lasts. The ultimate test of the verity of a sensation is an appeal to a higher faculty of the mind, which is perception, that yet requires explication.

The person who had an hallucination of a church congress in her stomach was not in a condition to appeal to a higher faculty. Before she realizes that she has an hallucination her malady must be cured. The man who believes in ghosts when he has an hallucination of his dead child appearing to him in the cerements of the tomb can best be shown that it is an hallucination by curing the malady in his understanding.