John Wesley Powell

“ The bedcover pressing on the arm is embraced as a mistress or felt as a heavy weight; a dream of being impaled, that is to say, of standing on a stake, the point of which was thrust through the foot, has been known to arise from the pressure of a straw lodged between the toes; a covering which has slipped to the ground is sometimes a source of great embarrassment, when it causes us to dream of appearing half clad in the street or at a social gathering ”

“ Civilization began with science when it commenced with verification by experimentation. Verification soon led to the dissipation of fallacies; then it was discovered that things are something more than what they seem to be to our simplest judgments. Kinds are something more than kinds, they are forms; forms are something more than forms, they are forces; forces are something more than forces, they are causations; in animate bodies causations are something more than causations, they are concepts. ”

“ The early philosophers, discovering that partial knowledge is inadequate to the expression of the whole truth, thought to characterize the whole truth by calling it noumenon, and they thought to characterize partial truth by calling it phenomenon. ”

“ Hence conception has its concomitants in physiology, anatomy, and metabolism, and as the physiology of the nerves is a process which also involves time in its evolution, we may characterize conception in terms of evolution, physiology, anatomy, or metabolism, but a psychologic treatment of the subject requires that the conception should ultimately be treated in terms of psychology. I shall, therefore, treat all fallacies in terms of psychology. ”

“ The fallacy of being struck is a fallacy of sensation, but the fallacy of having pain is a fallacy of feeling. Similar cases are often witnessed on the frontier, where men experience an adventurous life. ”

“ When we know all about a body we must know all of its properties and these can only be discovered by investigation, and science is the result of this investigation; but before we acquire knowledge we entertain fallacies. ”

“ Every cell in the human body is a seat of consciousness, while the nervous system is the organ of inference. All the bodily organs are related to one another through the structure of the nervous system, the fibers of which permeate all the organs, collect sense and feeling impressions from them, and transmit them by fibrous nerves to the ganglionic nerves, where such impressions are woven into concepts to be ultimately returned to the motor apparatus. ”

“ Sense impressions are only instantaneous, but feeling impressions endure as long as the cause acts, although they may become dulled by repetition or unrecognized by habit. It is well known that a sense impression may give rise to a feeling if it is too intense. It is an old doctrine of psychology that sensation is inversely proportional to feeling, and it remains true to this extent, that a sense impression may be neglected, that is, we may not consider the cause though we may consider the effect, when the impression will give rise to a feeling. ”

“ A sense impression is one made upon the end organ of a sense by an object exterior to the body; a feeling impression is one made upon an organ of feeling which is metabolic, circulatory, motor, reproductive, or cognitional. A feeling impression arises as a result of the functioning of the organ and is usually distinguished as being subjective. The mind may err in considering a subjective impression as objective, when an hallucination will be produced. We thus divide fallacies of sensation into two groups, missensations and hallucinations. ”

“ In sensation we hear sounds that are caused by objective bodies; thus a bell agitates the air and we hear it, but we may have a disturbance of the physiological function of the ear, due it may be to the influence of a drug or perhaps to a disease of the organ. Now, such a subjective impression or functioning of an organ of sense we call a feeling impression, and when we consider it to be objective we hallucinate or have an hallucination. ”

“ It is through all of these cases that the world’s literature is replete with accounts of hallucinations. Perhaps every great man has had them.
We have abundantly affirmed and illustrated the doctrine that sense impressions are instantaneous, and the judgments which we form from sense impressions are instantaneous, while feeling impressions endure while the cause acts. It is possible for us to concentrate the attention upon the impressions received by one organ, but if we fixate the attention on an interrupted succession of like impressions we overthrow or subvert judgment. ”

“ The consideration of this fact leads us to restate that which may seem already to have been abundantly affirmed, that the vital organs of metabolism, circulation, motility, and reproduction are the end organs of feeling, while in the nervous system we find organs of feeling and intellection.
The third class of hallucinations comes from the land of suggestion. Much of the intellectual activity of mankind is acception, or the receiving of judgments made by others through the agency of speech; words are heard or seen that express judgments which we accept as valid. ”

“ Each of these organisms is endowed with the rudiments of life and mind which they take with them into the human system. The phenomena of hypnotism reënforce the discoveries of physiology and confirm the doctrine that the entire body is the seat of consciousness and that the nervous system constitutes the special apparatus of inference. This leads us to a theory of multiple seats of consciousness which is demonstrated by the phenomena of hypnotism, a tempting subject which we are compelled to ignore by reason of the limitations of our argument. ”

“ In a highly nervous state men mistake the motor feeling of speech for the sound of speech, as if caused by another or objective person. A subjective irritation of the skin may be mistaken for the objective crawling of an insect over the skin. A polypus in the nose may produce a disturbance in the function of the nose which is interpreted as an odor. A man may smell paradisic odors or mephitic stenches by reason of disease in the olfactory organ. In the same manner diseases produce hallucinations of the gustatory sense. ”

“ Among all tribal men many hallucinations are supposed to be veridical, as some are supposed to be by certain members of the Society for Psychical Research. So tribesmen resort to the agencies which produce both hallucinations and illusions to obtain a view of the world about them, of the past and of the future, in order that their conduct may be governed by this superior knowledge. ”

“ We know that the nervous system is composed of ganglia of cells, connected by nerves composed of bundles of fibers, and that the ganglia are found in hierarchies connected by these nerve fibers, which finally terminate in the organs of life, where they are distributed throughout the system, and also at the periphery, where they terminate in end organs supplied with various mechanical devices. ”

“ An hallucination which is a color vision cannot be shown not to be veridical in this manner, for it may continue while the intoxication lasts. The ultimate test of the verity of a sensation is an appeal to a higher faculty of the mind, which is perception, that yet requires explication. ”

“ The man who believes in ghosts when he has an hallucination of his dead child appearing to him in the cerements of the tomb can best be shown that it is an hallucination by curing the malady in his understanding. ”

“ The nerve fibers that connect with a ganglion are not structurally continuous with the cells of the ganglion, so that a sense impression or a feeling impression is conveyed from one ganglion to another by fibers which are discontinuous at the ganglion. ”

“ The best known cases are those of religious ecstasy, but religious ideas do not invariably furnish the material for “ecstatic vision.” Philosophers, artists, and others whose habit of mind tends to deepen certain channels of thought, are also liable to such visitations. Any and every object of longing or desire, no matter how trivial, grotesque, or perverse, may become the object of ecstasy.— (P. 38.) ”

“ In modern times those who hold that noumena are inexplicable, that is, unknown and unknowable properties, call themselves metaphysicians. Those who hold that phenomena are knowable and seek by investigation to know them, call themselves scientists. Such schematizing of philosophers as metaphysicians and scientists is necessarily imperfect, for some philosophers are both metaphysicians and scientists. ”

“ It is probable that there is no person who has not frequently experienced them. Many of these are now on record, constituting quite a body of hallucinations. The purpose for which these records were made seems to have been the desire to prove that hallucinations are often veridical and hence give evidence of some unknown or hitherto unrecognized method of communicating ideas, except in folklore, when such communications are attributed to the interference of disembodied spirits in the affairs of mankind or an extra sense called telepathy by an organ not yet discovered. ”

“ The person who had an hallucination of a church congress in her stomach was not in a condition to appeal to a higher faculty. Before she realizes that she has an hallucination her malady must be cured. ”

“ In the early stages of paralysis, on the other hand, gustatory hallucinations of an agreeable nature are sometimes reported, the patient perhaps describing the enjoyment of all the various dishes of an imaginary menu. Olfactory hallucinations are, on the whole, infrequent, and are seldom of an agreeable character. The experiences of the patient who declared he smelt all the perfumes of Arabia and the East are exceptional, for hallucinations of this sense are, generally speaking, associated with delusions about bodily foulness, and odors of corruption and corpses, due to visceral disturbances. ”

“ In discussing hallucinations there are no sense impressions to be considered, but there are feeling impressions which are interpreted as if they were sense impressions. The interpretation seems always to be made by the faculty of perception. ”

“ So much of intellectual life is of this character that we are trained in the ability of acception. This ability runs astray with some persons because there goes not with it the habit of constant verification. The speech of human beings must be verified in the same manner that natural language in presentation and representation must be verified. He who accepts the judgments of others without intellectual verification is eminently qualified for hypnotic suggestion. ”

“ The literature of hallucination in large part is the literature of pathology, although the occurrence of hallucinations has often been recorded in biographic literature, in which there are many notable examples. Socrates had hallucinations of a demon who frequently warned him of impending evil. ”

“ In crystal vision the percipient attempts to occupy his mind in the contemplation of a constantly renewed sense impression, while the mind in fact is recalling concepts from memory which he ascribes to hallucinatory objects in the glass ”

“ Hallucinations of pressure are more common than those of touch. In the dream state the walls of the building of a room may seem to contract until the sleeper is in a nightmare of trouble with the compression. These hallucinations are also common in certain diseased conditions. ”

“ It is the universal belief in savagery, for in that stage of culture all men produce hallucinations for divination—for which times and seasons are regularly appointed and systematic means employed. But the savage always recognizes that some visions are not veridical. ”

“ It is the abstraction of attention to the particular object while waiting” for a judgment of cognition or recognition to come through the intellectual faculties, while instantaneous judgments continue to be made through the emotional faculties. ”

“ Thus, while hallucinations were at one time regarded as frequent phenomena of this state, they are now held to be rare, or altogether absent from it. In mania hallucinations only appear when there is clouding of consciousness, and are generally vague and indistinct. On the other hand, illusions are frequent, and mistakes of identity are specially characteristic of this state, though not absent from other forms of insanity. ”

“ Hallucinations of ecstasy often arise with persons engaged in profound abstract thought. Philosophers, poets, literary men, generals, and divines are peculiarly subject to them. Extreme ethical emotions are apt in begetting hallucinations. ”

“ On the other hand if on a cold night the clothing is partially removed from the body the feeling of discomfort is quite likely to produce an hallucination. Drops of water falling upon the face of the sleeper may have the same effect. ”

“ All of the North American tribes have intoxicants that produce hallucinations, but they supplement these intoxicants with many rites such as dancing, singing, ululation, the beating of drums, and the tormenting of the body by various painful operations, all designed to produce ecstatic states and the consequent hallucinations. ”

“ First they appear singly, in association with those of the fever, and are often recognized by the patient as such and concealed from those around him. But soon they overmaster the sufferer, and delirious states are developed, or states resembling hallucinatory insanity, in which visions of corpses, death’s-heads, mocking voices, and offensive olfactory and gustatory hallucinations play a part. Of an equally distressing nature are most of the sensory fallacies of collapse-delirium, and those which sometimes precede death. ”