120 galton.org
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Inquiries into Human Faculty
natural. They would stay a long time before the sparks came; and they occupied a large
area in black space. Then the sparks came slowly flying, and generally, not always, effaced
the roses at once, and every effort to retain the roses failed. Since an early age the flight of
roses has annually grown smaller, swifter, and farther off, till by the time I was grown up
my vision had become a speck, so instantaneous that I had hardly time to realise that it was
there before the fading sparks showed that it was past. This is how they still come. The
pleasure of them is past, and it always depresses me to speak of them, though I do not
now, as I did when a child, connect the vision with any elevated spiritual state. But when I
read Tennyson’s Holy Grail, I wondered whether anybody else had had my vision, ‘Rose-
red, with beatings in it.’ I may add, I was a London child who never was in the country but
once, and I connect no particular flowers with that visit. I may almost say that I had never
seen a rose, certainly not a quantity of them together.”
A common form of vision is a phantasmagoria, or the appearance of a
crowd of phantoms, sometimes hurrying past like men in a street. It is
occasionally seen in broad daylight, much more often in the dark; it may
be at the instant of putting out the candle, but it generally comes on when
the person is in bed, preparing to sleep, but by no means yet asleep. I
know no less than three men, eminent in the scientific world, who have
these phantasmagoria in one form or another. It will seem curious, but it is
a fact that I know of no less than five editors of very influential
newspapers who experience these night visitations in a vivid form. Two of
them have described the phenomena very forcibly in print, but
anonymously, and two others have written on cognate experiences.
A near relative of my own saw phantasmagoria very frequently. She
was eminently sane, and of such good constitution that her faculties were
hardly impaired until near her death at ninety. She frequently described
them to me. It gave her amusement during an idle hour to watch these
faces, for their expression was always pleasing, though never strikingly
beautiful. No two faces were ever alike, and no face ever resembled that
of any acquaintance. When she was not well the faces usually came nearer
to her, sometimes almost suffocatingly close. She never
