“Another peculiarity resides in the extreme restlessness of my visual objects.  It is often very difficult to keep them still, as well as from changing in character.  They will rapidly oscillate or else rotate to a most perplexing degree, and when the characters change at the same time a critical examination is almost impossible.  When the process is in full activity, I feel as if I were a mere spectator at a diorama of a very eccentric kind, and was in no way concerned with the getting up of the performance.

“When a succession of images has been passing, I sometimes determine to introduce an object, say a watch.  Very often it is next to impossible to succeed.  There is an evident struggle.  The watch, pure and simple, will not come; but some hybrid structure appears—­something round, perhaps—­but it lapses into a warming-pan or other unexpected object.

“This practice has brought to my mind very clearly the distinction between at least one form of automatism of the brain and volition; but the strength of the former is enormous, for the visual objects, when in full career of the change, are imperative in their refusal to be interfered with.

“I will now describe the cases illustrated.  Fig. 71.  I thought of a gun.  The stock came into view, the metal plate on the end very distinct towards the left (1).  The wood was elaborately carved.  I cannot recall the pattern.  As I scrutinised it, the stock oscillated up and down, and crumpled up.  The metallic plate sank inwards:  and the stock contracted so that it looked not unlike a tuning-fork (2).  I gave up the stock and proceeded cautiously to examine the lock.  I got it well into view, but no more of the gun.  It turned out to be an old-fashioned flint-lock.  It immediately began to nod backwards and forwards in a manner suggestive of the beak of a bird pecking.  Consequently it forthwith became converted into the head of a bird with a long curved beak, the knob on the lock (3) becoming the head of the bird.  I then looked to the right expecting to find the barrel, but the snout of a saw-fish with the tip distinctly broken off appeared instead.  I had not thought either of a flint-lock or of a saw-fish:  both came spontaneously.

“Fig. 72.  I have several times thought of a rosebud, as Goethe is said to have been able to see one at will, and to observe it expand.  The following are some of the results:—­The bud appeared unexpectedly a moss rosebud.  Its only abnormal appearance was the inordinately elongated sepals (1).  I tried to force it to expand.  It enlarged but only partially opened (2), when all of a sudden it burst open and the petals became reflexed (3).[10]