The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)James, William
Science
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
"The character of the symptoms changed rapidly. A sort of wave seemed
to pass over me, and I became aware of the fact that my pulse was
beating rapidly. I took out my watch, and by exercising considerable
will-power managed to time the heart-beats, 135 to the minute.
"I could feel each pulsation through my whole system, and a curious
twitching commenced, which no effort of the mind could stop.
"There were moments of apparent lucidity, when it seemed as if I could
see within myself, and watch the pumping of my heart. A strange fear
came over me, a certainty that I should never recover from the effects
of the opiate, which was as quickly followed by a feeling of great
interest in the experiment, a certainty that the experience was the
most novel and exciting that I had ever been through.
"My mind was in an exceedingly impressionable state. Any place
thought of or suggested appeared with all the distinctness of the
reality. I thought of the Giant's Causeway in Staffa, and instantly
I stood within the portals of Fingal's Cave. Great basaltic columns
rose on all sides, while huge waves rolled through the chasm and
broke in silence upon the rocky shore. Suddenly there was a roar and
blast of sound, and the word 'Ishmaral' was echoing up the cave.
At the enunciation of this remarkable word the great columns of
basalt changed into whirling clothes pins and I laughed aloud at the
absurdity.
"(I may here state that the word 'Ishmaral' seemed to haunt my other
hallucinations, for I remember that I heard it frequently thereafter.)
I next enjoyed a sort of metempsychosis. Any animal or thing that
I thought of could be made the being which held my mind. I thought
of a fox, and instantly I was transformed into that animal. I could
distinctly feel myself a fox, could see my long ears and bushy tail,
and by a sort of introvision felt that my complete anatomy was that
of a fox. Suddenly the point of vision changed. My eyes seemed to be
located at the back of my mouth; I looked out between the parted lips,
saw the two rows of pointed teeth, and, closing my mouth with a snap,
saw--nothing.
"I was next transformed into a bombshell, felt my size, weight, and
thickness, and experienced the sensation of being shot up out of a
giant mortar, looking down upon the earth, bursting and falling back
in a shower of iron fragments.
"Into countless other objects was I transformed, many of them so
absurd that I am unable to conceive what suggested them. For example,
I was a little china doll, deep down in a bottle of olive oil, next
moment a stick of twisted candy, then a skeleton inclosed in a
whirling coffin, and so on _ad infinitum_.
"Towards the end of the delirium the whirling images appeared
again, and I was haunted by a singular creation of the brain, which
reappeared every few moments. It was an image of a double-faced doll,
with a cylindrical body running down to a point like a peg-top.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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