VIVID MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1565, 24 February 1879, Page 4

VIVID MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS.

Sir Isaac Newton (says an English contemporary) could call up a spectrum of the gun when ho was in the dark, by intense application of his mind to the idea of it, as when a man looks earnestly to see a thing which is difficult to be seen. Dickens used to allege that he sometimes heard the characters of his novels actually speak to him; and a great French novelist declared that when he wrote the description of the poisoning of one of bis characters he had the taste of arsenic so distinctly in his mouth that be was himself poisoned, had a severe attack of indigestion, and vomited all his dinner —a most pregnant proof of the power of imagination over sense, because arsenic has scarcely an appreciable taste beyond being sweetish! Artists sometimes have, in an intense form, the faculty of such vivid mental representations as to become mental presentation. It was very notable in that extraordinary genius, William Blake, poet and painter, who used constantly to see his conceptions as actual images or visions. “ You have only,” he said, “ to work up your imagination to a state of vision, and the thing is done.” The power is, without doubt, consistent with perfect sanity of mind, although it may be doubtful whether a person who thought it right for himself and his wife to imitate the naked innocence of Paradise in the back garden of a Lambeth house, as Blake did, was quite sane : but too frequent exercise of the power is full of peril to the mind’s stability. A person may call up images in this way, and they will come, but he may not be able to dismiss them, and they may haunt him when he would gladly be rid of them. He is like the sorcerer who has called spirits from the vasty deep, and has forgotten the spell by which to lay them again. Dr Wigan tells of a skilful painter whom he knew, who assured him that he had once painted three hundred portraits in one year. The secret of his rapidity and success was that he required but one sitting, and painted with wonderful facility. “ When a sitter came,” he said, “ I looked at him attentively for half an hour, sketching from time to time on the canvas. I put away my canvas, and took another sitter. When I wished to resume my first portrait, I took the man and set him in the chair, where I saw him as distinctly as if he had been before me in his own proper person —1 may almost say more vividly. I looked frem time to time at the imaginary figure, then referred to the countenance, and so on, i'ust as I should have done had the sitter ecn there. When I looked at the chair I saw the man. . . . Gradually I began to

I me the distinction bstween the imaginary figure and the real person, and sometimes disputed with sitters that they had been with me the day before. At last I was sure of it, and then—and then—all is confusion. I suppose they took the alarm. I recollect nothing more. I h'st my senses—was thirty years in an asylum. The whole period except the last six months of my confinement is a dead blank in my memory.” Or, if the person [does not go out of his mind, ho may be so distressed by the persistence of the mind, he may be so distressed by the persistence of the apparition which he has created as to fall into melancholy and despair, and even to commit suicide. “ I knew,” says the author “ a very intelligent and admirable man, who had the power of thus placing before his own eyes himself, and often laughed heartily at his double, who always seemed to laugh in turn. Tbii was a long subject of amusement and joke ; but the ultimate result was lamentable. He became gradually convinced that be was haunted by himself." This other self would argue with him pertinaciously, and, to his great mortification, sometimes refute him, which, as he was very proud of his logical powers, humiliated him exceedingly. He was eccentric, but was never placed in any confinement, or subject to the slightest restraint. At length, worn out by the annoyance, he deliberately resolved not to enter on another year of existence—paid all his debts, wrapped up in separate papers the amount of the weekly demands, waited, pistol in hand, the night of the 31st December, and as the clock struck 12 fired into his mouth.”