The Kennewick courier. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1905-1914, 1905-08-04
LIVING PICTURES IN THE EYE
Colored Images that Appear on Lying
Down After an Exciting Day.

LIVING PICTURES IN HE EYE.
colored Images that Appear on Lying
| Down After an Exciting Day.
| There are many who will not read
lily understand what is meant by pic
lures in the eye, unless it be the i,nag-
nation, or minds eye" Of Hamlet,
for the power Of seeing them is not
conferred on all alike. Even those
who have seen them from time to
time, and probably given them little
heed, may not feel altogether sure
about the matter without word Of
explanation.
! Lying in bed, after firing o. ex.
citing day, with your eyes closed, and
about to fall asleep, have you never
seen, apparently in the eyeball. spots
and streaks Of colored light, changing
their forms and shifting their places7
Have you nev,r watched them pass
ing into complicated patterns, like
those Of the ka eidoscope, or into pref
y landscapes quite unknown to you,
or into strange faces, now and again
very beautiful or angelic, but often as
ugly and hideous as COLLINS from the
Internal regions, or, happy, into scenes
Of action reminding you Of the
| drama, but such as you never saw in
real life or upon any stage? These
pictures are more alive than the Civ
Ing pictures" of tho music halls
They have the hues Of life or art, and
rival the quick change artist in their
Frotean transformations. The ami
matograph that can initiate their
| ceaseless evolution, without hitch or
! tremOr, will be a novelty and make
| the fortune of it's inventor.
What are they? 1t Is one Of the
| mysteries Of that marvellous, nay,
| miraculous, organ, the brain. We
| must distinguish them from othet
mysteries Of the "borderland" which
lies between the adjoining states 81
w1deawake and sound asleep.
They are not the images OF reverie
or day dream. Whether we recall
the past in our waking hours, or in
| vent new incidents like a novelist, we
can govern them to some extent, and
are quite aware Of their fanciful or
mental character. They are not an
, hauucination, In the proper sense Of
the term. We feel they are SUBJ
i jectve, or within us; we suppose
them in the eye itself, whereas we
believe an hallucination is objective,
OF without us. An apparition or spec.
ter that we take for a reality is All
hallucination. The ghost Of Hamlet'a
father, witnessed by several persons,
/ and the spook Of his distant brother,
seen by Lord Broughan. were prob
ably halIucinat )ns Of 'telepathic*
order. The picture Of Millais, where
q Man starts up and sees luminous
lady at the foot Of his bed, is a case
Of hallucinadon. The dream image"
Of the undergraduate, who dreamed
that he was chased by a green figure,
and awaking, saw it in his room, was
also an hallucination.
Pictures in the eye are more akin
to what are called latter images" a
gentleman "a doctor, If we are not
mistaken), after fatiguing day, was
/
for his dinner, as he very we'll might,
but seemingly the steak made deep
impression on his mind or his 'diges-
, ton, for while he was browsing, with
bis eyes closed, after eating It, he saw
il again as wildly as before, and on
dropping asleep he saw it third time
in his dream. 1t was doubtless sub
stantial steak, not a ghost, and yet it
haunted him.
There is, Of course, more than ono
theory of these living pictures in the
eye, or, as they are called in science,
''hypnogogic images" One Is that
they are formed on the retina Of the
eye and confined to It Another is
that they are purely mental and
formed in the cortex, or bark, so to
speak, of the cerebrum. AS often
happens, the truth appears to lie In Il
combination of both views. Recent d.
servations Of M. Yves Delage have
put the question to experimental
proof. When we look at a bright
body, for example, the sun, and shut
our eyes, we see q colored spot Of
light, and If we move the eye up or
down, to right or left, the spot moves
with It. The spot, in fact. is left by
the image Of the sun upon the retna,
and therefore moves with 1t. Now, II
the hypnogogic images are on the
retina, they also will move with the
eye, and this is what M. Delage has
found. Nevertheless, the brain alse
comes into play in forming them.
| Merely Suggestion.
"And now" said Mrs. Chatterton.
after handing her husband one-sidef
heart-to-heart talk Of thlrty-seven min
| RI thn