< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu
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THE VISIONS OF SANE PERSONS.

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uniform black, subject to an occasional light-purple cloudiness and other small variations. Now, however, after habituating myself to examine it with the same sort of strain that one tries to decipher a sign-post in the dark, I have found out that this is by no means the case, but that a kaleidoscopic change of patterns and forms is continually going on, but they are too fugitive and elaborate for me to draw with any approach to truth. My deficiencies, however, are well supplied by other drawings in my possession. They are by the Rev. George Henslow, whose visions are far more vivid than mine. His experiences are not unlike those of Goethe, who said, in an often-quoted passage, that, whenever he bent his head and closed his eyes and thought of a rose, a sort of rosette made its appearance, which would not keep its shape steady for a moment, but unfolded from within, throwing out a succession of petals, mostly red, but sometimes green, and that it continued to do so without change in brightness and without causing him any fatigue so long as he cared to watch it. Mr. Henslow, when he shuts his eyes and waits, is sure, in a short time, to see before him the clear image of some object or other, but usually not quite natural in its shape. It then begins to change from one object to another, in his case, also, for as long a time as he cares to watch it. Mr. Henslow has zealously made repeated experiments on himself, and has drawn what he sees. He has also tried how far he is able to mold the visions according to his will. In one case, after much effort, he contrived to bring the imagery back to its starting-point, and thereby to form what he terms a "visual cycle." The following account is extracted and condensed from his very interesting letter:

The first image that spontaneously presented itself was a cross-bow; this was immediately provided with an arrow, remarkable for its pronounced barb and superabundance of feathering. Some person, but too indistinct to recognize much more of him than the hands, appeared to shoot the arrow from the bow. The single arrow was then accompanied by a flight of arrows from right to left, which completely occupied the field of vision. These changed into falling stars, then into flakes of a heavy snow-storm; the ground gradually appeared as a sheet of snow where previously there had been vacant space. Then a well-known rectory, fish-ponds, walls, etc., all covered with snow, came into view most vividly and clearly defined. This somehow suggested another view, impressed on his mind in childhood, of a spring morning, brilliant sun, and a bed of red tulips: the tulips gradually vanished except one, which appeared now to be isolated and to stand in the usual point of sight. It was a single tulip, but became double. The petals then fell off rapidly in a continuous series until there was nothing left but the pistil, but (as is almost invariably the case with his objects) that part was greatly exaggerated. The stigmas then changed into three branching brown horns; then into a knob, while the stalk changed into a stick. A slight bend in it seems to have suggested a center-bit; this passed into a sort of pin passing through a metal plate; this again into a lock, and afterward into a nondescript shape, distantly suggestive of the original cross-bow. Here Mr. Henslow endeavored to force his will upon the visions, and to reproduce the cross-bow, but the first attempt was an utter failure. The figure
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