Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
I have a sufficient variety of cases to prove the continuity between
all the forms of visualisation, beginning with an almost total
absence of it, and ending with a complete hallucination. The
continuity is, however, not simply that of varying degrees of
intensity, but of variations in the character of the process itself,
so that it is by no means uncommon to find two very different forms
of it concurrent in the same person. There are some who visualise
well, and who also are seers of visions, who declare that the vision
is not a vivid visualisation, but altogether a different phenomenon.
In short, if we please to call all sensations due to external
impressions "_direct"_ and all others "_induced_" then there are
many channels through which the "_induction_" of the latter may
take place, and the channel of ordinary visualisation in the persons
just mentioned is different from that through which their visions
arise.
The following is a good instance of this condition. A friend writes:
--
"These visions often appear with startling vividness, and so far
from depending on any voluntary effort of the mind, [10] they remain
when I often wish them very much to depart, and no effort of the
imagination can call them up. I lately saw a framed portrait of a
face which seemed more lovely than any painting I have ever seen,
and again I often see fine landscapes which bear no resemblance to
any scenery I have ever looked upon. I find it difficult to define
the difference between a waking vision and a mental image, although
the difference is very apparent to myself. I think I can do it best
in this way. If you go into a theatre and look at a scene--say of a
forest by moonlight--at the back part of the stage you see every
object distinctly and sufficiently illuminated (being thus unlike a
mere act of memory), but it is nevertheless vague and shadowy, and
you might have difficulty in telling afterwards all the objects you
have seen. This resembles a mental image in point of clearness. The
waking vision is like what one sees in the open street in broad
daylight, when every object is distinctly impressed on the memory.
The two kinds of imagery differ also as regards voluntariness, the
image being entirely subservient to the will, the visions entirely
independent of it. They differ also in point of suddenness, the
images being formed comparatively slowly as memory recalls each
detail, and fading slowly as the mental effort to retain them is
relaxed, the visions appearing and vanishing in an instant. The
waking visions seem quite close, filling as it were the whole head,
while the mental image seems farther away in some far-off recess of
the mind."
[Footnote 10: The details and illustrations of four other
experiments with the image of a rosebud have been given me. They all
vary in detail.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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