Another correspondent saw a spectral figure enter his room and stand at the foot of his bed. "Of course I put my head under the bed-clothes, and yet I saw it." It seems so unlikely that the imagination would attract its visitor " under the bed-clothes," that one prefers to suppose a mechanical continuance of reverberation at the lower centre; and the more so that the spectre was a sort of after-image, based on the memory of a picture. More persistent cases are still frequently of a single object. I have mentioned the doctor and the black cow, and the headless man at the bottom of the garden; similarly a lady, when in bad health, always saw a cat on the staircase; and among the insane, a single imaginary attendant is tolerably common.1 Wherever such simple cases are not connected with any special delire or any fixed set of ideas, they may, I think, be fairly (though of course not certainly) attributed to an activity following the lines of certain established tracts in the sensorium. We might compare this locality to a kaleidoscope, which when shaken is capable of turning out a certain limited number of combinations.

On the other hand, hallucinations produced at the will of the percipient must first take shape above the sensory centres. For it is indisputable that the idea of the object to be projected - the picture, face, sentence, or whatever it may be - must precede its sensory embodiment as a thing actually seen or heard; and the idea, as well as the volition, is an affair of the higher tracts. And apart from these rare voluntary specimens, the astonishing variety and complexity of more common cases - whether visual appearances or verbal sequences - seem absolutely to drive us to a higher seat of manufacture; for they demand a countless store of elements, and limitless powers of ideal combination. The patient listens to long discourses, or holds conversations with his invisible friends; and what is heard is no echo of former phrases, but is in every way a piece of new experience. So, too, the number and variety of visual hallucinations which may occur to a single person, sometimes even within the space of a few minutes, is astonishing. The physiologist Bostock, who had many hallucinations at a time when he was suffering from nervous exhaustion, says that he did not in a single instance see any object with which he had been previously acquainted.

Nicolai, who was never otherwise than perfectly sane, and who eventually recovered, continually saw troops of phantoms, most of them of an aspect quite new to him; and in insanity such a phenomenon is common enough. So, too, the seers of Faces in the Dark (p. 299), who had in the course of their lives seen many thousands of phantasmal faces, had never seen one that they recognised. Mrs. Macdonald, quoted above, has only occasionally recognised a face; and another of my correspondents, who has been similarly troubled, says, "The faces I have seen have always been unknown faces." Even in the perfectly casual hallucinations of the sane and healthy, what is seen is less commonly a mere revival of an object which the eyes have previously encountered than an unrecognised person.2 A lady of my acquaintance, "One of my parishioners is an old woman, now in her 85th year. Though poor and in receipt of parish relief, her education has been good. She retains her faculties in almost undiminished power. She is always bright and cheerful, and I never saw any. very aged person at all her equal for a wholesome common sense.

I am very much attached to her; and for some years past have always sent her a little present on her birthday (Jan. 5th), and have visited her either on the day itself, or as soon after it as possible.

1Blandford, Insanity and its Treatment, p. 155; Kahlbaum, Op. cit.., p. 3; Binet in the Revue Philosophique for May, 1884, p. 500.

2The following case is of special interest; being the most marked instance of a mere revival that I have encountered; while at the same time clearly due to a train of thought and memory involving the highest cerebral tracts. The account is from the Rev. P. H. Newnham.

'This year [1885] 1 visited her on January 0th, and after 1 had offered the usual who has been occasionally subject to seeing figures on awakening from sleep, and who tells me that the experience has had no perceptible connection with health, says that on no single occasion has the face been a known face, though the faces are often so clearly seen that, if subsequently met, they would be at once recognised. Another informant, who says that she can evoke figures at any time by looking intently before her, adds that she "cannot tell beforehand what kind they will be, though able after a minute or two to describe the features and dress to anyone that is by." Here, then, we have an immense amount of high,creative work - of what in psychical terms we should call par excellence the work of the imagination; and this is work which we have good grounds for supposing that congratulations, she said, with a little air of injured innocence, 'It's 2 years since you came to me on my birthday,' or words to that effect.

I felt quite sure she was mistaken, and told her so; but she was confident she was right; and I did not contest the point; but when I said good-bye, added as a last word, 'Mind, I can't believe about those 2 years.' On returning home 1 referred to my parish books, and found that her birthday in 1884 fell on Saturday, and that being unable to go down and see her myself, I had sent my curate to her, with a message and our little gifts.