VIVID MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 6, 7 January 1879, Page 4

VIVID MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS.

Sir Isaac Newton coolJ call up a spectrum of tha suu when he was in the d«iik, 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 eeen. Dickens used to allege that he sometimes heard the characters of bis novels actually speak to him ; and a great French novelist declared that whfn he wrote the description of the poisoning of one of his characters he had tbe taste of arsenic so distinctly in his mouth that be wps himself poisoned, had a severe attack of indigestion, and vomited all bis dinner — a most proof pregnant of the power of imagination over sense, because arsenic has scarcely an appreciable taste beyond being sweetish ! Artists sometimes have, in an intense form, th 9 faculty of such vivid mental representation as to become mental presentation. It was very notable in that extraordinary genius, William Blake, poet and paioter, who used constantly to see his conceptions as actual images or vieions. " You have only," he said. " to work up your imagination to a state of vision, and the thing is dove." The power ie, without doubt, consistent with perfeot sanity of mind, although it may be doubtful whether a person who thought it right for himself aud his wife to imitate the naked innocence of Paradise in the back garden of a Lambeth house, as Blake did, was quite cane ; 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 be raoy 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 tbe eppll by which to lay them again. Dr Wigau tells of a skilful painter whom be 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 eaid, "I looked at him attentively for half an hour, sketching from time to time on the canvas. I put away my canvas aud took another sitter. When I wished to resume my first portrait I took the man and set him in tbe chair, where I saw him as distinctly as if be had been before me in his own proper person — I may almost say more vividly. I looked from time to time at the imaginary figure, then referred to tbe countenance, and so on, just as I should have doas had the sitter been there. When I looked at the chair I saw the man. Gradually I began to : lose the distinction between (be imagiasry 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 tbe alarm. I recollect nothing more. I lost ray senses — was 30 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, be may be so distressed by the persistence of the apparition which he baa created as to fall into melancholy and despair, and even to commit suicide. "I knew," says the author "a very intelligent anj amiable man, who baJ the powsr of thus placing before his own eyes^ himself, and often laughed heartily at his double, who always seemed to laugh in turn. This wad a long subject of amusement an-d joke ; but the ultimate result was lamentable. He became gradually convinced that he was haunted by himsslf. This other self would argue with him pertinciously, and, to his great mortification, sometimes refute him, which as he was very proud of bis 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 fihe annoyance, he deliberately resolved not to enter on another year of existence — paid all bis debts, wrapped up in separete papers tbe amount of tbe weekly demands, waited, pistol in hand, the night of tbe 3 1st December, and as the clock struck 12 fired it into his mouth."