FIG. 5.
Similarly, in the accompanying figure of a transparent solid, I can at will select either of the two surfaces which approximately face the eye and regard it as the nearer, the other appearing as the hinder surface looked at through the body.
FIG. 6.
Again, in the next drawing, taken from Schroeder, one may, by an effort of will, see the diagonal step-like pattern, either as the view from above of the edge of an advancing piece of wall at a, or as the view from below of the edge of an advancing (overhanging) piece of wall at b.
FIG. 7.
These last drawings are not in true perspective on either of the suppositions adopted, wherefore the choice is easier. But even when an outline form is in perspective, a strenuous effort of imagination may suffice to bring about a conversion of the appearance. Thus, if the reader will look at the drawing of the box-like solid (Fig. 3, p. 79), he will find that, after a trial or two, he succeeds in seeing it as a concave figure representing the coyer and two sides of a box as looked at from within.[49]
Many of my readers, probably, share in my power of variously interpreting the relative position of bands or stripes on fabrics such as wall-papers, according to wish. I find that it is possible to view now this stripe or set of stripes as standing out in relief upon the others as a ground, now these others as advancing out of the first as a background. The difficulty of selecting either interpretation at will becomes greater, of course, in those cases where there is a powerful suggestion of some particular local arrangement, as, for example, the case of patterns much brighter than the ground, and especially of such as represent known objects, as flowers. Yet even here a strong effort of imagination will often suffice to bring about a conversion of the first appearance.
A somewhat similar choice of interpretation offers itself in looking at elaborate decorative patterns. When we strongly imagine any number of details to be elements of one figure, they seem to become so; and a given detail positively appears to alter in character according as it is viewed as an element of a more or less complex figure.
These examples show what force belongs to a vivid preconception, if this happens to fit only very roughly the impression of the moment, that is to say, if the interpretative image is one of the possible suggestions of the impression. The play of imagination takes a wider range in those cases where the impression is very indefinite in character, easily allowing of a considerable variety of imaginative interpretation.
I referred at the beginning of this account of sense-illusions to the readiness with which the mind deceives itself with respect to the nature and causes of the vague sensations which usually form the dim background of our mental life. A person of lively imagination, by trying to view these in a particular way, and by selectively attending to those aspects of the sensation which answer to the caprice of the moment, may give a variety of interpretations to one and the same set of sensations. For example, it is very easy to get confused with respect to those tactual and motor feelings which inform us of the position of our bodily members. And so, when lying in bed, and attending to the sensations connected with the legs, we may easily delude ourselves into supposing that these members are arranged in a most eccentric fashion. Similarly, by giving special heed to the sensations arising in connection with the condition of the skin at any part, we may amuse ourselves with the strangest fancies as to what is going on in these regions.
Again, when any object of visual perception is indistinct or indefinite in form, there is plainly an opening for this capricious play of fancy in transforming the actual. This is illustrated in the well-known pastime of discovering familiar forms, such as those of the human head and animals, in distant rocks and clouds, and of seeing pictures in the fire, and so on. The indistinct and indefinite shapes of the masses of rock, cloud, or glowing coal, offer an excellent field for creative fancy, and a person of lively imagination will discover endless forms in what, to an unimaginative eye, is a formless waste. Johannes Müller relates that, when a child, he used to spend hours in discovering the outlines of forms in the partly blackened and cracked stucco of the house that stood opposite to his own.[50] Here it is plain that, while experience and association are not wholly absent, but place certain wide limits on this process of castle-building, the spontaneous activity of the percipient mind is the great determining force.
So much as to the influence of a perfectly unfettered voluntary attention on the determination of the stage of preperception, and, through this, of the resulting interpretation. Let us now pass to cases in which this direction of preperception follows not the caprice of the moment, but the leading of some fixed predisposition in the interpreter's mind. In these cases attention is no longer free, but fettered, only it is now fettered rather from within than from without; that is to say, the dominating preperception is much more the result of an independent bent of the imagination than of some suggestion forced on the mind by the actual impression of the moment.
Involuntary Mental Preadjustment.
If we glance back at the examples of capricious selection just noticed, we shall see that they are really limited not only by the character of the impression of the time, but also by the mental habits of the spectator. That is to say, we find that his fancy runs in certain definite directions, and takes certain habitual forms. It has already been observed that the percipient mind has very different attitudes with respect to various kinds of impression. Towards some it holds itself at a distance, while towards others it at once bears itself familiarly; the former are such as answer to its previous habit and bent of imagination, the latter such as do not so answer.
This bent of the interpretative imagination assumes, as we have already seen, two forms, that of a comparatively permanent disposition, and that of a temporary state of expectation or mental preparedness. Illusion may arise in connection with either of these forms. Let us illustrate both varieties, beginning with those which are due to a lasting mental disposition.
It is impossible here to specify all the causes of illusion residing in organized tendencies of the mind. The whole past mental life, with its particular shade of experience, its ruling emotions, and its habitual direction of fancy, serves to give a particular colour to new impressions, and so to favour illusion. There is a "personal equation" in perception as in belief—an amount of erroneous deviation from the common average view of external things, which is the outcome of individual temperament and habits of mind. Thus, a naturally timid man will be in general disposed to see ugly and fearful objects where a perfectly unbiased mind perceives nothing of the kind; and the forms which these objects of dread will assume are determined by the character of his past experience, and by the customary direction of his imagination.
In perfectly healthy states of mind this influence of temperament and mental habit on the perception of external objects is, of course, very limited; it shows itself more distinctly, as we shall see, in modifying the estimate of things in relation to the æsthetic and other feelings. This applies to the mythical poetical way of looking at nature—a part of our subject to which we shall have to return later on.
Passing now from the effect of such permanent dispositions, let us look at the more striking results of temporary expectancy of mind.
When touching on the influence of such a temporary mental attitude in the process of correct perception, I remarked that this readiness of mind might assume an indefinite or a definite form. We will examine the effect of each kind in the production of illusion.
Action of Sub-Expectation.
First of all, then, our minds may at the particular moment be disposed to entertain any one of a vaguely circumscribed group of images. Thus, to return to the example already referred to, when in Italy, we are in a state of readiness to frame any of the images that we have learnt to associate with this country. We may not be distinctly anticipating any one kind of object, but are nevertheless in a condition of sub-expectation with reference to a large number of objects. Accordingly, when an impression occurs which answers only very roughly to one of the associated images, there is a tendency to superimpose the image on the impression. In this way illusion arises. Thus, a man, when strolling in a cathedral, will be apt to take any kind of faint hollow sound for the soft tones of an organ.
The disposition to anticipate fact and reality in this way will be all the stronger if, as usually happens, the mental images thus lying ready for use have an emotional colouring. Emotion is the great disturber of all intellectual operations. It effects marvellous things, as we shall presently see, in the region of illusory belief, and its influence is very marked in the seemingly cooler region of external perception. The effect of any emotional excitement appears to be to give a preternatural vividness and persistence to the ideas answering to it, that is to say, the ideas which are its excitants, or which are otherwise associated with it. Owing to this circumstance, when the mind is under the temporary sway of any feeling, as, for example, fear, there will be a special readiness to interpret objects by help of images congruent with the emotion. Thus, a man under the control of fear will be ready to see any kind of fear-inspiring object whenever there is any resemblance to such in the things actually present to his vision. The state of awe which the surrounding circumstances of a spiritualist séance inspires produces a general readiness of mind to perceive what is strange, mysterious, and apparently miraculous.
It is worth noting, perhaps, that those delightful half-illusions which imitative art seeks to produce are greatly favoured by such a temporary attitude of the interpreting imagination. In the theatre, for example, we are prepared for realizing the semblance of life that is to be unfolded before us. We come knowing that what is to be performed aims at representing a real action or actual series of events. We not improbably work ourselves into a slightly excited state in anticipation of such a representation. More than this, as the play progresses, the realization of what has gone before produces a strong disposition to believe in the reality of what is to follow. And this effect is proportionate to the degree of coherence and continuity in the action. In this way, there is a cumulative effect on the mind. If the action is good, the illusion, as every play-goer knows, is most complete towards the end.
Were it not for all this mental preparation, the illusory character of the performance would be too patent to view, and our enjoyment would suffer. A man is often aware of this when coming into a theatre during the progress of a piece before his mind accommodates itself to the meaning of the play. And the same thing is recognizable in the fact that the frequenter of the theatre has his susceptibility to histrionic delusion increased by acquiring a habit of looking out for the meaning of the performance. Persons who first see a play, unless they be of exceptional imagination and have thought much about the theatre—as Charlotte Brontë, for instance—hardly feel the illusion at all. At least, this is true of the opera, where the departure from reality is so striking that the impression can hardly fail to be a ludicrous one, till the habit of taking the performance for what it is intended to be is fully formed.[51]
A similar effect of intellectual preadjustment is observable in the fainter degrees of illusion produced by pictorial art. Here the undeceiving circumstances, the flat surface, the surroundings, and so on, would sometimes be quite sufficient to prevent the least degree of illusion, were it not that the spectator comes prepared to see a representation of some real object. This is our state of mind when we enter a picture gallery or approach what we recognize as a picture on the wall of a room. A savage would not "realize" a slight sketch as soon as one accustomed to pictorial representation, and ready to perform the required interpretative act.[52]
So much as to the effect of an indefinite state of sub-expectation in misleading our perceptions. Let us now glance at the results of definite preimagination, including what are generally known as expectations.
Effects of Vivid Expectation.
Such expectations may grow out of some present objective facts, which serve as signs of the expected event; or they may arise by way of verbal suggestion; or, finally, they may be due to internal spontaneous imagination.
In the first place, then, the expectations may grow out of previous perceptions, while, nevertheless, the direction of the expectation may be a wrong one. Here the interpreting imagination is, in a large sense, under the control of external suggestion, though, with respect to the particular impression that is misconstrued, it may be regarded as acting independently and spontaneously.
Illustrations of this effect in producing illusion will easily occur to the reader. If I happen to have heard that a particular person has been a soldier or clergyman, I tend to see the marks of the class in this person, and sometimes find that this process of recognition is altogether illusory. Again, let us suppose that a person is expecting a friend by a particular train. A passenger steps out of the train bearing a superficial resemblance to his friend; in consequence of which he falls into the error of false identification.
The delusions of the conjuror depend on a similar principle. The performer tells his audience that he is about to do a certain thing, for example, take a number of animals out of a small box which is incapable of holding them. The hearers, intent on what has been said, vividly represent to themselves the action described. And in this way their attention becomes bribed, so to speak, beforehand, and fails to notice the inconspicuous movements which would at once clear up the mystery. Similarly with respect to the illusions which overtake people at spiritualist séances. The intensity of the expectation of a particular kind of object excludes calm attention to what really happens, and the slightest impressions which answer to signs of the object anticipated are instantly seized by the mind and worked up into illusory perceptions.
It is to be noted that even when the impression cannot be made to tally exactly with the expectation, the force of the latter often effects a grotesque confusion of the perception. If, for example, a man goes into a familiar room in the dark in order to fetch something, and for a moment forgets the particular door by which he has entered, his definite expectation of finding things in a certain order may blend with the order of impressions experienced, producing for the moment a most comical illusion as to the actual state of things.
When the degree of expectation is unusually great, it may suffice to produce something like the counterfeit of a real sensation. This happens when the present circumstances are powerfully suggestive of an immediate event. The effect is all the more powerful, moreover, in those cases where the object or event expected is interesting or exciting, since here the mental image gains in vividness through the emotional excitement attending it. Thus, if I am watching a train off and know from all the signs that it is just about to start, I easily delude myself into the conviction that it has begun to start, when it is really still.[53] An intense degree of expectation may, in such cases, produce something indistinguishable from an actual sensation. This effect is seen in such common experiences as that the sight of food makes the mouth of a hungry man water; that the appearance of a surgical instrument produces a nascent sensation of pain; and that a threatening movement, giving a vivid anticipation of tickling, begets a feeling which closely approximates to the result of actual tickling.
One or two very striking instances of such imagined sensations are given by Dr. Carpenter.[54] Here is one. An officer who superintended the exhuming of a coffin rendered necessary through a suspicion of crime, declared that he already experienced the odour of decomposition, though it was afterwards found that the coffin was empty.[55]
It is, of course, often difficult to say, in such cases as these, how far elements of actual sensation co-operate in the production of the illusions. Thus, in the case just mentioned, the odour of the earth may have been the starting-point in the illusion. In many cases, however, an imaginative mind appears to be capable of transforming a vivid expectation into a nascent stage of sensation. Thus, a mother thinking of her sick child in an adjoining room, and keenly on the alert for its voice, will now and again fancy she really hears it when others hear nothing at all.
Transition to Hallucination.
It is plain that in these cases illusion approaches to hallucination. Imagination, instead of waiting on sensation, usurps its place and imitates its appearance. Such a "subjective" sensation produced by a powerful expectation might, perhaps, by a stretch of language, be regarded as an illusion, in the narrow sense, in so far as it depends on the suggestive force of a complete set of external circumstances; on the other hand, it is clearly an hallucination in so far as it is the production of the semblance of an external impression without any external agency corresponding to this.
In the class of illusory expectations just considered the immediately present environment still plays a part, though a much less direct part than that observable in the first large group of illusions. We will now pass to a second mode of illusory expectation, where imagination is still more detached from the present surroundings.
A common instance of this kind of expectation is the so-called "intuition," or presentiment; that something is going to happen, which expectation has no basis in fact. It does not matter whether the expectation has arisen by way of another's words or by way of personal inclinations. A strong wish for a thing will, in an exalted state of mind, beget a vivid anticipation of it. This subject will be touched on again under the Illusions of Belief. Here I am concerned to point out that such presentiments are fertile sources of sense-illusion. The history of Church miracles, visions, and the like amply illustrates the effect of a vivid anticipation in falsifying the perceptions of external things.
In persons of a lively imagination any recent occupation of the mind with a certain kind of mental image may suffice to beget something equivalent to a powerful mode of expectation. For example, we are told by Dr. Tuke that on one occasion a lady, whose imagination had been dwelling on the subject of drinking fountains, "thought she saw in a road a newly erected fountain, and even distinguished an inscription upon it, namely, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.' She afterwards found that what she had actually seen was only a few scattered stones."[56] In many cases there seems to be a temporary preternatural activity of the imagination in certain directions, of which no very obvious explanation is discoverable. Thus, we sometimes find our minds dwelling on some absent friend, without being able to give any reason for this mental preoccupation. And in this way arise strong temporary leanings to illusory perception. It may be said, indeed, that all unwonted activity of the imagination, however it arises, has as its immediate result a temporary mode of expectation, definite or indefinite, which easily confuses our perceptions of external things.
In proportion as this pre-existing imaginative impulse becomes more powerful, the amount of actual impression necessary to transform the mental image into an illusory perception becomes less; and, what is more important, this transformation of the internal image involves a larger and larger displacement of the actual impression of the moment. A man whose mind is at the time strongly possessed by one kind of image, will tend to project this outwards with hardly any regard to the actual external circumstances.
This state of things is most completely illustrated in many of the grosser illusions of the insane. Thus, when a patient takes any small objects, as pebbles, for gold and silver, under the influence of the dominant idea of being a millionaire, it is obvious that external suggestion has very little to do with the self-deception. The confusions into which the patient often falls with respect to the persons before him show the same state of mind; for in many cases there is no discoverable individual resemblance between the person actually present and the person for whom he is taken.
It is evident that when illusion reaches this stage, it is scarcely distinguishable from what is specially known as hallucination. As I have remarked in setting out, illusion and hallucination shade one into the other much too gradually for us to draw any sharp line of demarcation between them. And here we see that hallucination differs from illusion only in the proportion in which the causes are present. When the internal imaginative impulse reaches a certain strength, it becomes self-sufficient, or independent of any external impression.
This intimate relation between the extreme form of active illusion and hallucination may be seen, too, by examining the physical conditions of each. As I have already remarked, active illusion has for its physiological basis a state of sub-excitation, or an exceptional condition of irritability in the structures engaged in the act of interpretative imagination. The greater the degree of this irritability, the less will be the force of external stimulation needed to produce the effect of excitation, and the more energetic will be the degree of this excitation. Moreover, it is plain that this increase in the strength of the excitation will involve an extension of the area of excitation till, by-and-by, the peripheral regions of the nervous system may be involved just as in the case of external stimulation. This accounts for the gradual displacement of the impression of the moment by the mental image. It follows that when the irritability reaches a certain degree, the amount of external stimulus needed may become a vanishing quantity, or the state of sub-excitation may of itself develop into one of full activity.
Hallucinations.
I do not propose to go very fully into the description and explanation of hallucinations here, since they fall to a large extent under the category of distinctly pathological phenomena. Yet our study of illusions would not be complete without a glance at this part of the subject.
Hallucination, by which I mean the projection of a mental image outwards when there is no external agency answering to it, assumes one of two fairly distinct forms: it may present itself either as a semblance of an external impression with the minimum amount of interpretation, or as a counterfeit of a completely developed percept. Thus, a visual hallucination may assume the aspect of a sensation of light or colour which we vaguely refer to a certain region of the external world, or of a vision of some recognizable object. All of us frequently have incomplete visual and auditory hallucinations of the first order, whereas the complete hallucinations of the second order are comparatively rare. The first I shall call rudimentary, the second developed, hallucinations.
Rudimentary hallucinations may have either a peripheral or a central origin. They may first of all have their starting-point in those subjective sensations which, as we have seen, are connected with certain processes set up in the peripheral regions of the nervous system. Or, secondly, they may originate in a certain preternatural activity of the sensory centres, or "sensorium," in what has been called by German physiologists an automatic excitation of the central structures, which activity may probably diffuse itself downwards to the peripheral regions of the nerves. Baillarger would call hallucinations of the former class "psycho-sensorial," those of the latter class purely "psychical," hallucinations.[57]
It is often a matter of great difficulty to determine which part of the nervous system is originally concerned in these rudimentary hallucinations. It is probable that in normal life they are most frequently due to peripheral disturbance. And it seems reasonable to suppose that where the hallucination remains in this initial stage of a very incompletely interpreted visual or auditory impression, whether in normal or abnormal life, its real physiological source is the periphery. For the automatic excitation of the centres would pretty certainly issue in the semblance of some definite, familiar variety of sense-impression which, moreover, as a part of a complex state known as a percept, would instantly present itself as a completely formed quasi-percept. In truth, we may pretty safely argue that if it is the centre which is directly thrown into a state of activity, it will be thrown into the usual complex, that is to say, perceptional, mode of activity.
Let us now turn to hallucinations properly so called, that is to say, completely developed quasi-percepts. These commonly assume the form of visual or auditory hallucinations. Like the incomplete hallucinations, they may have their starting-point either in some disturbance in the peripheral regions of the nervous system or in the automatic activity of the central structures: or, to use the language of Baillarger, we may say that they are either "psycho-sensorial" or purely "psychical." A subjective visual sensation, arising from certain conditions in the retina and connected portions of the optic nerve, may by chance resemble a familiar impression, and so be at once interpreted as an effect of a particular external object. More frequently, however, the automatic activity of the centres must be regarded, either in part or altogether, as the physiological cause of the phenomenon. This is clearly the case when, on the subjective side, the hallucination answers to a preceding energetic activity of the imagination, as in the case of the visionary and the monomaniac. Sometimes, however, as we have seen, the hallucinatory percept answers to previous prolonged acts of perception, leaving a kind of reverberation in the structures concerned; and in this case it is obviously impossible to say whether the peripheral or central regions (if either) have most to do with the hallucination.[58]
The classifications of the causes of hallucination to be met with in the works of pathologists, bear out the distinction just drawn. Griesinger tells us (op. cit., pp. 94, 95) that the general causes of hallucination are: (1) Local disease of the organ of sense; (2) a state of deep exhaustion either of mind or of body; (3) morbid emotional states, such as fear; (4) outward calm and stillness between sleeping and waking; and (5) the action of certain poisons, as haschisch, opium, belladonna. The first cause points pretty distinctly to a peripheral origin, whereas the others appear to refer mainly, if not exclusively, to central derangements. Excessive fatigue appears to predispose the central structures to an abnormal kind of activity, and the same effect may be brought about by emotional agitation and by the action of poisons. The fourth case mentioned here, absence of external stimulation, would naturally raise the nervous structures to an exceptional pitch of excitability. Such a condition would, moreover, prove favourable to hallucination by blurring the distinction between mental image and actual impression.
Hallucinations of Normal Life.
In normal life, perfect hallucinations, in the strict sense as distinct from illusions, are comparatively rare. Fully developed persistent hallucinations, as those of Nicolai, the Berlin bookseller, and of Mrs. A——, the lady cited by Sir D. Brewster, in his Letters on Natural Magic, point to the presence of incipient nervous disorder. In healthy life, on the other hand, while everybody is familiar with subjective sensations such as flying spots, phosphenes, ringing in the ears, few fall into the error of seeing or hearing distinct recognizable objects in the absence of all external impressions. In the lives of eminent men we read of such phenomena as very occasional events. Malebranche, for example, is said to have heard the voice of God calling him. Descartes says that, after a long confinement, he was followed by an invisible person, calling him to pursue his search for truth. Dr. Johnson narrates that he once heard his absent mother calling him. Byron tells us that he was sometimes visited by spectres. Goethe records that he once saw an exact counterpart of himself coming towards him. Sir Walter Scott is said to have seen a phantom of the dead Byron. It is possible that all of us are liable to momentary hallucinations at times of exceptional nervous exhaustion, though they are too fugitive to excite our attention.
When not brought on by exhaustion or artificial means, the hallucinations of the sane have their origin in a preternatural power of imagination. It is well known that this power can be greatly improved by attention and cultivation. Goethe used to exercise himself in watching for ocular spectra, and could at will transform these subjective sensations into definite forms, such as flowers; and Johannes Müller found he had the same power.[59] Stories are told of portrait painters who could summon visual images of their sitters with a vividness equal to that of reality, and serving all the purposes of their art. Mr. Galton's interesting inquiries into the power of "visualizing" would appear to prove that many people can at will sport on the confines of the phantom world of hallucination. There is good reason to think that imaginative children tend to confuse mental images and percepts.[60]
The Hallucinations of Insanity.
The hallucinations of the insane are but a fuller manifestation of forces that we see at work in normal life. Their characteristic is that they simulate the form of distinctly present objects, the existence of which is not instantly contradicted by the actual surroundings of the moment.[61] The hallucinations have their origin partly in subjective sensations, which are probably connected with peripheral disturbances, partly and principally in central derangements.[62] These include profound emotional changes, which affect the ruling mental tone, and exert a powerful influence on the course of the mental images. The hallucinations of insanity are due to a projection of mental images which have, owing to certain circumstances, gained a preternatural persistence and vividness. Sometimes it is the images that have been dwelt on with passionate longing before the disease, sometimes those which have grown most habitual through the mode of daily occupation,[63] and sometimes those connected with some incident at or near the time of the commencement of the disease.
In mental disease, auditory hallucinations play a part no less conspicuous than visual.[64] Patients frequently complain of having their thoughts spoken to them, and it is not uncommon for them to imagine that they are addressed by a number of voices at the same time.[65]
These auditory hallucinations offer a good opportunity for studying the gradual growth of centrally originating hallucinations. In the early stages of the disease, the patient partly distinguishes his representative from his preservative sounds. Thus, he talks of sermons being composed to him in his head. He calls these "internal voices," or "voices of the soul." It is only when the disease gains ground and the central irritability increases that these audible thoughts become distinctly projected as external sounds into more or less definite regions of the environment. And it is exceedingly curious to notice the different directions which patients give to these sounds, referring them now to a quarter above the head, now to a region below the floor, and so on.[66]
Range of Sense-Illusions.
And now let us glance back to see the path we have traversed. We set out with an account of perfectly normal perception, and found, even here, in the projection of our sensations of colour, sound, etc., into the environment or to the extremities of the organism, something which, from the point of view of physical science, easily wears the appearance of an ingredient of illusion.
Waiving this, however, and taking the word illusion as commonly understood, we find that it begins when the element of imagination no longer answers to a present reality or external fact in any sense of this expression. In its lowest stages illusion closely counterfeits correct perception in the balance of the direct factor, sensation, and the indirect factor, mental reproduction or imagination. The degree of illusion increases in proportion as the imaginative element gains in force relatively to the present impression; till, in the wild illusions of the insane, the amount of actual impression becomes evanescent. When this point is reached, the act of imagination shows itself as a purely creative process, or an hallucination.
While we may thus trace the progress of illusion towards hallucination by means of the gradual increase in force and extent of the imaginative, or indirect, as opposed to the sensuous, or direct, element in perception, we have found a second starting-point for this movement in the mechanism of sensation, involving, as it does, the occasional production of "subjective sensations." Such sensations constitute a border-land between the regions of illusion in the narrow sense, and hallucination. In their simplest and least developed form they may be regarded, at least in the case of hearing and sight, as partly hallucinatory; and they serve as a natural basis for the construction of complete hallucinations, or hallucinatory percepts.
In these different ways, then, the slight, scarcely noticeable illusions of normal life lead up to the most startling hallucinations of abnormal life. From the two poles of the higher centres of attention and imagination on the one side, and the lower regions of nervous action involved in sensation on the other side, issue forces which may, under certain circumstances, develop into full hallucinatory percepts. Thus closely is healthy attached to morbid mental life. There seems to be no sudden break between our most sober every-day recognitions of familiar objects and the wildest hallucinations of the demented. As we pass from the former to the latter, we find that there is never any abrupt transition, never any addition of perfectly new elements, but only that the old elements go on combining in ever new proportions.
The connection between the illusory side of our life and insanity may be seen in another way. All illusion has as its negative condition an interruption of the higher intellectual processes, the due control of our mental representations by reflection and reason. In the case of passive illusions, the error arises from our inability to subordinate the suggestion made by some feature of the present impression to the result of a fuller inspection of the object before us, or of a wider reflection on the past. In other words, our minds are dominated by the partial and the particular, to the exclusion of the total or the general. In active illusions, again, the powers of judgment and reflection, including those of calm perception itself, temporarily vacate their throne in favour of imagination. And this same suspension of the higher intellectual functions, the stupefaction of judgment and reflection made more complete and permanent, is just what characterizes insanity.
We may, perhaps, express this point of connection between the illusions of normal life and insanity by help of a physiological hypothesis. If the nervous system has been slowly built up, during the course of human history, into its present complex form, it follows that those nervous structures and connections which have to do with the higher intellectual processes, or which represent the larger and more general relations of our experience, have been most recently evolved. Consequently, they would be the least deeply organized, and so the least stable; that is to say, the most liable to be thrown hors de combat. This is what happens temporarily in the case of the sane, when the mind is held fast by an illusion. And, in states of insanity, we see the process of nervous dissolution beginning with these same nervous structures, and so taking the reverse order of the process of evolution.[67] And thus, we may say that throughout the mental life of the most sane of us, these higher and more delicately balanced structures are constantly in danger of being reduced to that state of inefficiency, which in its full manifestation is mental disease.
Does this way of putting the subject seem alarming? Is it an appalling thought that our normal mental life is thus intimately related to insanity, and graduates away into it by such fine transitions? A moment's reflection will show that the case is not so bad as it seems. It is well to remind ourselves that the brain is a delicately adjusted organ, which very easily gets disturbed, and that the best of us are liable to become the victims of absurd illusion if we habitually allow our imaginations to be overheated, whether by furious passion or by excessive indulgence in the pleasures of day-dreaming, or in the intoxicating mysteries of spiritualist séances. But if we take care to keep our heads cool and avoid unhealthy degrees of mental excitement, we need not be very anxious on the ground of our liability to this kind of error. As I have tried to show, our most frequent illusions are necessarily connected with something exceptional, either in the organism or in the environment. That is to say, it is of the nature of illusion in healthy conditions of body and mind to be something very occasional and relatively unimportant. Our perceptions may be regarded as the reaction of the mind on the impressions borne in from the external world, or as a process of adjustment of internal mental relations to external physical relations. If this process is, in the main, a right one, we need not greatly trouble, because it is not invariably so. We should accept the occasional failure of the intellectual mechanism as an inseparable accompaniment of its general efficiency.
To this it must be added that many of the illusions described above can hardly be called cases of non-adaptation at all, since they have no relation to the practical needs of life, and consequently are, in a general way, unattended to. In other cases, again, namely, where the precise nature of a present sensation, being practically an unimportant matter, is usually unattended to, as in the instantaneous recognition of objects by the eye under changes of illumination, etc., the illusion is rather a part of the process of adaptation, since it is much more important to recognize the permanent object signified by the sensation than the precise nature of the present sensational "sign" itself.
Finally, it should never be forgotten that in normal states of mind there is always the possibility of rectifying an illusion. What distinguishes abnormal from normal mental life is the persistent occupation of the mind by certain ideas, so that there is no room for the salutary corrective effect of reflection on the actual impression of the moment, by which we are wont to "orientate," or take our bearings as to the position of things about us. In sleep, and in certain artificially produced states, much the same thing presents itself. Images become realities just because they are not instantly recognized as such by a reference to the actual surroundings of the moment. But in normal waking life this power of correction remains with us. We may not exercise it, it is true, and thus the illusion will tend to become more or less persistent and recurring; for the same law applies to true and to false perception: repetition makes the process easier. But if we only choose to exert ourselves, we can always keep our illusions in a nascent or imperfectly developed stage. This applies not only to those half-illusions into which we voluntarily fall, but also to the more irresistible passive illusions, and those arising from an over-excited imagination. Even persons subject to hallucinations, like Nicolai of Berlin, learn to recognize the unreal character of these phantasms. On this point the following bit of autobiography from the pen of Coleridge throws an interesting light. "A lady (he writes) once asked me if I believed in ghosts and apparitions. I answered with truth and simplicity, No, madam, I have seen far too many myself."[68] However irresistible our sense-illusions may be, so long as we are under the sway of particular impressions or mental images, we can, when resolved to do so, undeceive ourselves by carefully attending to the actual state of things about us. And in many cases, when once the correction is made, the illusion seems an impossibility. By no effort of imagination are we able to throw ourselves back into the illusory mental condition. So long as this power of dispelling the illusion remains with us, we need not be alarmed at the number and variety of the momentary misapprehensions to which we are liable.
CHAPTER VII.
DREAMS.
The phenomena of dreams may well seem at first sight to form a world of their own, having no discoverable links of connection with the other facts of human experience. First of all, there is the mystery of sleep, which quietly shuts all the avenues of sense and so isolates the mind from contact with the world outside. To gaze at the motionless face of a sleeper temporarily rapt from the life of sight, sound, and movement—which, being common to all, binds us together in mutual recognition and social action—has always something awe-inspiring. This external inaction, this torpor of sense and muscle, how unlike to the familiar waking life, with its quick responsiveness and its overflowing energy! And then, if we look at dreams from the inside, we seem to find but the reverse face of the mystery. How inexpressibly strange does the late night-dream seem to a person on waking! He feels he has been seeing and hearing things no less real than those of waking life; but things which belong to an unfamiliar world, an order of sights and a sequence of events quite unlike those of waking experience; and he asks himself in his perplexity where that once-visited region really lies, or by what magic power it was suddenly and for a moment created for his vision. In truth, the very name of dream suggests something remote and mysterious, and when we want to characterize some impression or scene which by its passing strangeness filled us with wonder, we naturally call it dream-like.
Theories of Dreams.
The earliest theories respecting dreams illustrate very clearly this perception of the remoteness of dream-life from waking experience. By the simple mind of primitive man this dream-world is regarded as similar in its nature or structure to our common world, only lying remote from this. The savage conceives that when he falls asleep, his second self leaves his familiar body and journeys forth to unfamiliar regions, where it meets the departed second selves of his dead ancestors, and so on. From this point of view, the experience of the night, though equal in reality to that of the day, is passed in a wholly disconnected region.[69]
A second and more thoughtful view of dreams, marking a higher grade of intellectual culture, is that these visions of the night are symbolic pictures unfolded to the inner eye of the soul by some supernatural being. The dream-experience is now, in a sense, less real than it was before, since the phantasms that wear the guise of objective realities are simply images spread out to the spirit's gaze, or the direct utterance of a divine message. Still, this mysterious contact of the mind with the supernatural is regarded as a fact, and so the dream assumes the appearance of a higher order of experience. Its one point of attachment to the experience of waking life lies in its symbolic function; for the common form which this supernatural view assumes is that the dream is a dim prevision of coming events. Artemidorus, the great authority on dream interpretation (oneirocritics) for the ancient world, actually defines a dream as "a motion or fiction of the soul in a diverse form signifying either good or evil to come;" and even a logician like Porphyry ascribes dreams to the influence of a good demon, who thereby warns us of the evils which another and bad demon is preparing for us. The same mode of viewing dreams is quite common to-day, and many who pride themselves on a certain intellectual culture, and who imagine themselves to be free from the weakness of superstition, are apt to talk of dreams as of something mysterious, if not distinctly ominous. Nor is it surprising that phenomena which at first sight look so wild and lawless, should still pass for miraculous interruptions of the natural order of events.[70]
Yet, in spite of this obvious and impressive element of the mysterious in dream-life, the scientific impulse to illuminate the less known by the better known has long since begun to play on this obscure subject. Even in the ancient world a writer might here and there be found, like Democritus or Aristotle, who was bold enough to put forward a natural and physical explanation of dreams. But it has been the work of modern science to provide something like an approximate solution of the problem. The careful study of mental life in its intimate union with bodily operations, and the comparison of dream-combinations with other products of the imagination, normal as well as morbid, have gradually helped to dissolve a good part of the mystery which once hung like an opaque mist about the subject. In this way, our dream-operations have been found to have a much closer connection with our waking experiences than could be supposed on a superficial view. The materials of our dreams are seen, when closely examined, to be drawn from our waking experience. Our waking consciousness acts in numberless ways on our dreams, and these again in unsuspected ways influence our waking mental life.[71] Not only so, it is found that the quaint chaotic play of images in dreams illustrates mental processes and laws which are distinctly observable in waking thought. Thus, for example, the apparent objective reality of these visions has been accounted for, without the need of resorting to any supernatural agency, in the light of a vast assemblage of facts gathered from the by-ways, so to speak, of waking mental life. I need hardly add that I refer to the illusions of sense dealt with in the foregoing chapters.
Dreams are to a large extent the semblance of external perceptions. Other psychical phenomena, as self-reflection, emotional activity, and so on, appear in dream-life, but they do so in close connection with these quasi-perceptions. The name "vision," given by old writers to dreams, sufficiently points out this close affinity of the mental phenomena to sense-perception; and so far as science is concerned, they must be regarded as a peculiar variety of sense-illusion. Hence the appropriateness of studying them in close connection with the illusions of perception of the waking state. Though marked off by the presence of very exceptional physiological conditions, they are largely intelligible by help of these physiological and psychological principles which we have just been considering.
The State of Sleep.
The physiological explanation of dreams must, it is plain, set out with an account of the condition of the organism known as sleep. While there is here much that is uncertain, there are some things which are fairly well known. Recent physiological observation has gone to prove that during sleep all the activities of the organism are appreciably lowered. Thus, for example, according to Testa, the pulse falls by about one-fifth. This lowering of the organic functions appears, under ordinary circumstances, to increase towards midnight, after which there is a gradual rising.
The nervous system shares in this general depression of the vital activities. The circulation being slower, the process of reparation and nutrition of the nerves is retarded, and so their degree of excitability diminished. This is clearly seen in the condition of the peripheral regions of the nervous system, including the sense-organs, which appear to be but very slightly acted on by their customary stimuli.
The nervous centres must participate in this lethargy of the system. In other words, the activity of the central substance is lowered, and the result of this is plainly seen in what is usually thought of as the characteristic feature of sleep, namely, a transition from vigorous mental activity or intense and clear consciousness, to comparative inactivity or faint and obscure consciousness. The cause of this condition of the centres is supposed to be the same as that of the torpidity of all the other organs in sleep, namely, the retardation of the circulation. But, though there is no doubt as to this, the question of the proximate physiological conditions of sleep is still far from being settled. Whether during sleep the blood-vessels of the brain are fuller or less full than during waking, is still a moot point. Also the qualitative condition of the blood in the cerebral vessels is still a matter of discussion.[72]
Since the effect of sleep is to lower central activity, the question naturally occurs whether the nervous centres are ever rendered inactive to such an extent as to interrupt the continuity of our conscious life. This question has been discussed from the point of view of the metaphysician, of the psychologist, and of the physiologist, and in no case is perfect unanimity to be found. The metaphysical question, whether the soul as a spiritual substance is capable of being wholly inactive, or whether it is not in what seem the moments of profoundest unconsciousness partially awake—the question so warmly discussed by the Cartesians, Leibnitz, etc.—need not detain us here.
Of more interest to us are the psychological and the physiological discussions. The former seeks to settle the question by help of introspection and memory. On the one side, it is urged against the theory of unbroken mental activity, that we remember so little of the lowered consciousness of sleep.[73] To this it is replied that our forgetfulness of the contents of dream-consciousness, even if this were unbroken, would be fully accounted for by the great dissimilarity between dreaming and waking mental life. It is urged, moreover, on this side that a sudden rousing of a man from sleep always discovers him in the act of dreaming, and that this goes to prove the uniform connection of dreaming and sleeping. This argument, again, may be met by the assertion that our sense of the duration of our dreams is found to be grossly erroneous; that, owing to the rapid succession of the images, the realization of which would involve a long duration, we enormously exaggerate the length of dreams in retrospection.[74] From this it is argued that the dream which is recalled on our being suddenly awakened may have had its whole course during the transition state of waking.
Again, the fact that a man may resolve, on going to sleep, to wake at a certain hour, has often been cited in proof of the persistence of a degree of mental activity even in perfectly sound sleep. The force of this consideration, however, has been explained away by saying that the anticipation of rising at an unusual hour necessarily produces a slight amount of mental disquietude, which is quite sufficient to prevent sound sleep, and therefore to expose the sleeper to the rousing action of faint external stimuli.
While the purely psychological method is thus wholly inadequate to solve the question, physiological reasoning appears also to be not perfectly conclusive. Many physiologists, not unnaturally desirous of upsetting what they regard as a gratuitous metaphysical hypothesis, have pronounced in favour of an absolutely dreamless or unconscious sleep. From the physiological point of view, there is no mystery in a totally suspended mental activity. On the other hand, there is much to be said on the opposite side, and perhaps it may be contended that the purely physiological evidence rather points to the conclusion that central activity, however diminished during sleep, always retains a minimum degree of intensity. At least, one would be disposed to argue in this way from the analogy of the condition of the other functions of the organism during sleep. Possibly this modicum of positive evidence may more than outweigh any slight presumption against the doctrine of unbroken mental activity drawn from the negative circumstance that we remember so little of our dream-life.[75]
Such being the state of physiological knowledge respecting the immediate conditions of sleep, we cannot look for any certain information on the nature of that residual mode of cerebral activity which manifests itself subjectively in dreams. It is evident, indeed, that this question can only be fully answered when the condition of the brain as a whole during sleep is understood. Meanwhile we must be content with vague hypotheses.
It may be said, for one thing, that during sleep the nervous substance as a whole is less irritable than during waking hours. That is to say, a greater amount of stimulus is needed to produce any conscious result.[76] This appears plainly enough in the case of the peripheral sense-organs. Although these are not, as it is often supposed, wholly inactive during sleep, they certainly require a more potent external stimulus to rouse them to action. And what applies to the peripheral regions applies to the centres. In truth, it is clearly impossible to distinguish between the diminished irritability of the peripheral and that of the central structures.
At first sight it seems contradictory to the above to say that stimuli which have little effect on the centres of consciousness during waking life produce an appreciable result in sleep. Nevertheless, it will be found that this is the case. Thus organic processes which scarcely make themselves known to the mind in a waking state, may be shown to be the originators of many of our dreams. This fact can only be explained on the physical side by saying that the special cerebral activities engaged in an act of attention are greatly liberated during sleep by the comparative quiescence of the external senses. These activities, by co-operating with the faint results of the stimuli coming from the internal organs, serve very materially to increase their effect.
Finally, it is to be observed that, while the centres thus respond with diminished energy to peripheral stimuli, external and internal, they undergo a direct, or "automatic," mode of excitation, being roused into activity independently of an incoming nervous impulse. This automatic stimulation has been plausibly referred to the action of the products of decomposition accumulating in the cerebral blood-vessels.[77] It is possible that there is something in the nature of this stimulation to account for the force and vividness of its conscious results, that is to say, of dreams.
The Dream State.
Let us now turn to the psychic side of these conditions, that is to say, to the general character of the mental states known as dreams. It is plain that the closing of the avenues of the external senses, which is the accompaniment of sleep, will make an immense difference in the mental events of the time. Instead of drawing its knowledge from without, noting its bearings in relation to the environment, the mind will now be given over to the play of internal imagination. The activity of fancy will, it is plain, be unrestricted by collision with external fact. The internal mental life will expand in free picturesque movement.
To say that in sleep the mind is given over to its own imaginings, is to say that the mental life in these circumstances will reflect the individual temperament and mental history. For the play of imagination at any time follows the lines of our past experience more closely than would at first appear, and being coloured with emotion, will reflect the predominant emotional impulses of the individual mind. Hence the saying of Heraclitus, that, while in waking we all have a common world, in sleep we have each a world of our own.
This play of imagination in sleep is furthered by the peculiar attitude of attention. When asleep the voluntary guidance of attention ceases; its direction is to a large extent determined by the contents of the mind at the moment. Instead of holding the images and ideas, and combining them according to some rational end, the attention relaxes its energies and succumbs to the force of imagination. And thus, in sleep, just as in the condition of reverie or day-dreaming, there is an abandonment of the fancy to its own wild ways.
It follows that the dream-state will not appear to the mind as one of fancy, but as one of actual perception, and of contact with present reality. Dreams are clearly illusory, and, unlike the illusions of waking life, are complete and persistent.[78] And the reason of this ought now to be clear. First of all, the mind during sleep wants what M. Taine calls the corrective of a present sensation. When awake under ordinary circumstances, any momentary illusion is at once set right by a new act of orientation. The superior vividness of the external impression cannot leave us in any doubt, when calm and self-possessed, whether our mental images answer to present realities or not. On the other hand, when asleep, this reference to a fixed objective standard is clearly impossible. Secondly, we may fairly argue that the mental images of sleep approximate in character to external impressions. This they do to some extent in point of intensity, for, in spite of the diminished excitability of the centres, the mode of stimulation which occurs in sleep may, as I have hinted, involve an energetic cerebral action. And, however this be, it is plain that the image will gain a preternatural force through the greatly narrowed range of attention. When the mind of the sleeper is wholly possessed by an image or group of images, and the attention kept tied down to these, there is a maximum reinforcement of the images. But this is not all. When the attention is thus held captive by the image, it approximates in character to an external impression in another way. In our waking state, when our powers of volition are intact, the external impression is characterized by its fixity or its obdurate resistance to our wishes. On the other hand, the mental image is fluent, accommodating, and disappears and reappears according to the direction of our volitions. In sleep, through the suspension of the higher voluntary power of attention, the mental image seems to lord it over our minds just as the actual impression of waking life.
This much may suffice, perhaps, by way of a general description of the sleeping and dreaming state. Other points will make themselves known after we have studied the contents and structure of dreams in detail.
Dreams are commonly classified (e.g. by Wundt) with hallucinations, and this rightly, since, as their common appellation of "vision" suggests, they are for the most part the semblance of percepts in the absence of external impressions. At the same time, recent research goes to show that in many dreams something answering to the "external impression" in waking perception is the starting-point. Consequently, in order to be as accurate as possible, I shall divide dreams into illusions (in the narrow sense) and hallucinations.
Dream-Illusions.
By dream-illusions I mean those dreams which set out from some peripheral nervous stimulation, internal or external. That the organic processes of digestion, respiration, etc., act as stimuli to the centres in sleep is well known. Thus, David Hartley assigns as the second great source of dreams "states of the body."[79] But it is not so well known to what an extent our dreams may be influenced by stimuli acting on the exterior sense-organs. Let us first glance at the action of such external stimuli.
Action of External Stimuli.
During sleep the eyes are closed, and consequently the action of external light on the retina impeded. Yet it is found that even under these circumstances any very bright light suddenly introduced is capable of stimulating the optic fibres, and of affecting consciousness. The most common form of this is the effect of bright moonlight, and of the early sun's rays. Krauss tells a funny story of his having once, when twenty-six years old, caught himself, on waking, in the act of stretching out his arms towards what his dream-fancy had pictured as the image of his mistress. When fully awake, this image resolved itself into the full moon.[80] It is not improbable, as Radestock remarks, that the rays of the sun or moon are answerable for many of the dreams of celestial glory which persons of a highly religious temperament are said to experience.
External sounds, when not sufficient to rouse the sleeper, easily incorporate themselves into his dreams. The ticking of a watch, the stroke of a clock, the hum of an insect, the song of a bird, the patter of rain, are common stimuli to the dream-phantasy. M. Alf. Maury tells us, in his interesting account of the series of experiments to which he submitted himself in order to ascertain the result of external stimulation on the mind during sleep, that when a pair of tweezers was made to vibrate near his ear, he dreamt of bells, the tocsin, and the events of June, 1848.[81] Most of us, probably, have gone through the experience of impolitely falling asleep when some one was reading to us, and of having dream-images suggested by the sounds that were still indistinctly heard. Scherner gives an amusing case of a youth who was permitted to whisper his name into the ear of his obdurate mistress, the consequence of which was that the lady contracted a habit of dreaming about him, which led to a felicitous change of feeling on her part.[82]
The two lower senses, smell and taste, seem to play a less-important part in the production of dream-illusions. Radestock says that the odour of flowers in a room easily leads to visual images of hot-houses, perfumery shops, and so on; and it is probable that the contents of the mouth may occasionally act as a stimulus to the organ of taste, and so give rise to corresponding dreams. As Radestock observes, these lower sensations do not commonly make known their quality to the sleeper's mind. They become transformed at once into visual, instead of into olfactory or gustatory percepts. That is to say, the dreamer does not imagine himself smelling or tasting, but seeing an object.
The contact of objects with the tactual organ is one of the best recognized causes of dreams. M. Maury found that when his lips were tickled, his dream-fancy interpreted the impression as of a pitch plaster being torn off his face. An unusual pressure on any part of the body, as, for example, from contact with a fellow-sleeper, is known to give rise to a well-marked variety of dream. Our own limbs may even appear as foreign bodies to our dream-imagination, when through pressure they become partly paralyzed. Thus, on one occasion, I awoke from a miserable dream, in which I felt sure I was grasping somebody's hand in bed, and I was racked by terrifying conjectures as to who it might be. When fully awake, I discovered that I had been lying on my right side, and clasping the wrist of the right arm (which had been rendered insensible by the pressure of the body) with the left hand.
In close connection with these stimuli of pressure are those of muscular movement, whether unimpeded or impeded. We need not enter into the difficult question how far the "muscular sense" is connected with the activity of the motor nerves, and how far with sensory fibres attached to the muscular or the adjacent tissues. Suffice it to say that an actual movement, a resistance to an attempted movement, or a mere disposition to movement, whether consequent on a surplus of motor energy or on a sensation of discomfort or fatigue in the part to be moved, somehow or other makes itself known to our minds, even when we are deprived of the assistance of vision. And these feelings of movement, impeded or unimpeded, are common initial impulses in our dream-experiences. It is quite a mistake to suppose that dreams are built up out of the purely passive sensations of sight and hearing. A close observation will show that in nearly every dream we imagine ourselves either moving among the objects we perceive or striving to move when some weighty obstacle obstructs us. All of us are familiar with the common forms of nightmare, in which we strive hopelessly to flee from some menacing evil, and this dream-experience, it may be presumed, frequently comes from a feeling of strain in the muscles, due to an awkward disposition of the limbs during sleep. The common dream-illusion of falling down a vast abyss is plausibly referred by Wundt to an involuntary extension of the foot of the sleeper.