Here again the image was voluntarily excited, so that a doubt must remain as to whether it equaled a real sense image in clearness. The painter’s bidding anybody who stood in the way to step aside was quite a matter of course. ‘When we wish to reproduce a former impression of sense we try first to shut out all other impressions of that sense. When we wish to call up the image of a person we always shut our eyes. With open eyes most people are, however, capable of making such a reproduction, provided that none but lifeless objects are in the field of vision. But in talking to one person and fixing the traits of his countenance, few people are able to call up the image of another person at the same time. In the same way, very few can recall one melody while another is heard.

Such phenomena are by no means rare among artists of lively fancy. They have nothing in common with the hallucinations of insanity. Hagen, therefore, calls them pseudohallucinations, Baillarger psychical hallucinations, and Kahlbaum apperceptional hallucinations. Von Kraft-Ebing says: “Among artists this gift is found both in a simply reproductive and also in a fancifully deforming mode. The striking art of delineation of many an eminent dramatic artist, the plastic power of description of a Goethe, Ossian, or Homer, suggest such an endowment. Among some composers, too, the fineness of the instrumentation and the timbre of their tone poems lead us to suspect a specially fine and lively faculty of reproduction of their acoustic memory. Persons extraordinarily gifted in sensuous faculties can create hallucinations more easily than do those who are poor in fancy and who live in the realm of abstract ideas. This will readily be admitted. Even their recollections can sometimes be voluntarily raised to a plastic distinctness approaching hallucination.”

So far, we have only considered cases in which deceptions of sense were voluntarily called up, whether by an especially strong faculty of reproduction or by a play of fancy. The subjects were quite aware that the object before them was fantastic and not real.

On the other hand, it is recorded of a considerable number of famous men in different departments that they have had deceptions of the senses which arose independently of their will, and were consequently genuine hallucinations. Among these we must place many religious visions, such as those of St. Paul and other saints. Luther insists that he often saw the devil; and on one celebrated occasion he threw the inkstand at him.