they slope up to 100 at an angle of about 25°. Beyond 100 they are
generally all on a level, but if for any reason I have to think of
the numbers from 100 to 200, or from 200 to 300, etc., then the
numbers, between these two hundreds, are arranged just as those from
1 to 100 are. I do not, when thinking of a number, picture to
myself the figures which represent it, but I do think instantly of
the place which it occupies along the line. Moreover, in the case of
numbers from 1 to 20 (and, indistinctly, from 20 up to 28 or 30), I
always picture the number--not the figures--as occupying a
right-angled parallelogram about twice as long as it is broad. These
numbers all lie down flat and extend in a straight line from 1 to 12
over an unpleasant, arid, sandy plain. At 12 the line turns abruptly
to the right, passes into a pleasanter region where grass grows, and
so continues up to 20. At 20 the line turns to the left, and passes
up the before-described incline to 100. This figure will help you in
understanding my ridiculous notions. The asterisk (*) marks the
place where I commonly seem to myself to stand and view the line. At
times I take other positions, but never any position to the left of
the (*), nor to the right of the line from 20 upwards. I do not
associate colours with numbers, but there is a great difference in
the illumination which different numbers receive. If a traveller
should start at 1 and walk to 100, he would be in an intolerable
glare of light until near 9 or 10. But at 11 he would go into a land
of darkness and would have to feel his way. At 12 light breaks in
again, a pleasant sunshine, which continues up to 19 or 20, where
there is a sort of twilight. From here to 40 the illumination is
feeble, but still there is considerable light. At 40 things light up,
and until one reaches 56 or 57 there is broad daylight. Indeed the
tract from 48 to 50 is almost as bad as that from 1 to 9. Beyond 60
there is a fair amount of light up to about 97, From this point to
100 it is rather cloudy."
In a subsequent letter he adds:--
"I enclose a picture in perspective and colour of my 'form.' I have
taken great pains with this, but am far from satisfied with it. I
know nothing about drawing, and consequently am unable to put upon
the paper just what I see. The faults which I find with the picture
are these. The rectangles stand out too distinctly, as something
lying on the plane instead of being, as they ought, a part of the
plane. The view is taken of necessity from an unnatural stand-point,
and some way or other the region 1-12 does not look right. The
landscape is altogether too distinct in its features. I rather
_know that there is_ grass, and that there are trees in the
distance, than _see_ them. But the grass within a few feet of the
line I see distinctly. I cannot make the hill at the right slope
down to the plane as it ought. It is too steep. I have had my poor
success in indicating my notion of the darkness which overhangs the
region of eleven. In reality it is not a cloud at all, but a darkness.
"My sister, a married lady, thirty-eight years of age, sees numerals
much as I do, but very indistinctly. She cannot draw a figure which
is not by far too distinct."
Most of those who associate colours with numerals do so in a vague
way, impossible to convey with truth in a painting. Of the few who
see them with more objectivity, many are unable to paint or are
unwilling to take the trouble required to match the precise colours
of their fancies. A slight error in hue or tint always dissatisfies
them with their work.
Before dismissing the subject of numerals, I would call attention to
a few other associations connected with them. They are often
personified by children, and characters are assigned to them, it may
be on account of the part they play in the multiplication table, or
owing to some fanciful association with their appearance or their
sound. To the minds of some persons the multiplication table appears
dramatised, and any chance group of figures may afford a plot for a
tale. I have collated six full and trustworthy accounts, and find a
curious dissimilarity in the personifications and preferences; thus
the number 3 is described as (1) disliked; (2) a treacherous sneak;
(3) a good old friend; (4) delightful and amusing; (5) a female
companion to 2; (6) a feeble edition of 9. In one point alone do I
find any approach to unanimity, and that is in the respect paid to 12,
as in the following examples:--(1) important and influential;
(2) good and cautious--so good as to be almost noble; (3) a more
beautiful number than 10, from the many multiples that make it
up--in other words, its kindly relations to so many small numbers;
(4) a great love for 12, a large-hearted motherly person because of
the number of little ones that it takes, as it were, under its
protection. The decimal system seemed to me treason against this
motherly 12.--All this concurs with the importance assigned for
other reasons to the number 12 in the Number-Form.
There is no agreement as to the sex of numbers; I myself had
absurdly enough fancied that _of course_ the even numbers would be
taken to be of the male sex, and was surprised to find that they
were not. I mention this as an example of the curious way in which
our minds may be unconsciously prejudiced by the survival of some
forgotten early fancies. I cannot find on inquiring of philologists
any indications of different sexes having been assigned in any
language to different numbers.
Mr. Hershon has published an analysis of the Talmud, on the odd
principle of indexing the various passages according to the number
they may happen to contain; thus such a phrase as "there were three
men who," etc., would be entered under the number 3. I cannot find
any particular preferences given there to especial numbers; even 7
occurs less often than 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10. Their respective
frequency being 47, 54, 53, 64, 54, 51; 12 occurs only sixteen times.
Gamblers have not unfrequently the silliest ideas concerning numbers,
their heads being filled with notions about lucky figures and
beautiful combinations of them. There is a very amusing chapter in
_Rome Contemporaine_, by E. About, in which he speaks of this in
connection with the rage for lottery tickets.
COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS.
Numerals are occasionally seen in Arabic or other figures, not
disposed in any particular Form, but coloured. An instance of this
is represented in Fig. 69 towards the middle part of the column, but
as I shall have shortly to enter at length into the colour
associations of the author, I will pass over this portion of them,
and will quote in preference from the letter of another correspondent.
Baron von Osten Sacken, of whom I have already spoken, writes:--
"The localisation of numerals, peculiar to certain persons, is
foreign to me. In my mind's eye the figures appear _in front_ of me,
within a limited space. My peculiarity, however, consists in the
fact that the numerals from 1 to 9 are differently coloured; (1)
black, (2) yellow, (3) pale brick red, (4) brown, (5) blackish gray,
(6) reddish brown, (7) green, (8) bluish, (9) reddish brown,
somewhat like 6. These colours appear very distinctly when I think
of these figures separately; in compound figures they become less
apparent. But the most remarkable manifestation of these colours
appears in my recollections of chronology. When I think of the
events of a given century they invariably appear to me on a
background coloured like the principal figure in the dates of that
century; thus events of the eighteenth century invariably appear to
me on a greenish ground, from the colour of the figure 7. This habit
clings to me most tenaciously, and the only hypothesis I can form
about its origin is the following:--My tutor, when I was ten to
twelve years old, taught me chronology by means of a diagram on
which the centuries were represented by squares, subdivided in 100
smaller squares; the squares representing centuries had _narrow
coloured borders_; it may be that in this way the recollection of
certain figures became associated with certain colours. I venture
this explanation without attaching too much importance to it, because
it seems to me that if it was true, my _direct_ recollection of those
coloured borders would have been stronger than it is; still, the
strong association of my chronology with colour seems to plead in
favour of that explanation."
Figs. 66, 67. These two are selected out of a large collection
of coloured Forms in which the months of the year are visualised.
They will illustrate the gorgeousness of the mental imagery of
some favoured persons. Of these Fig. 66 is by the wife of an able
London physician, and Fig. 67 is by Mrs. Kempe Welch, whose sister,
Miss Bevington, a well-known and thoughtful writer, also sees
coloured imagery in connection with dates. This Fig. 67 was one
of my test cases, repeated after the lapse of two years, and quite
satisfactorily. The first communication was a descriptive account,
partly in writing, partly by word of mouth; the second, on my asking
for it, was a picture which agreed perfectly with the description,
and explained much that I had not understood at the time. The small
size of the Fig. in the Plate makes it impossible to do justice to
the picture, which is elaborate and on a large scale, with a
perspective of similar hills stretching away to the far distance,
and each standing for a separate year. She writes:--
"It is rather difficult to give it fully without making it too
definite; on each side there is a total blank."
The instantaneous association of colour with sound characterises a
small percentage of adults, and it appears to be rather common,
though in an ill-developed degree, among children. I can here appeal
not only to my own collection of facts, but to those of others, for
the subject has latterly excited some interest in Germany. The first
widely known case was that of the brothers Nussbaumer, published in
1873 by Professor Bruhl of Vienna, of which the English reader will
find an account in the last volume of Lewis's _Problems of Life and
Mind_ (p. 280). Since then many occasional notices of similar
associations have appeared. A pamphlet containing numerous cases was
published in Leipsic in 1881 by two Swiss investigators, Messrs.
Bleuler and Lehmann.[9] One of the authors had the faculty very
strongly, and the other had not; so they worked conjointly with
advantage. They carefully tabulated the particulars of sixty-two
cases. As my present object is to subordinate details to the general
impression that I wish to convey of the peculiarities of different
minds, I will simply remark--First, that the persistence of the
colour association with sounds is fully as remarkable as that of the
Number-Form with numbers. Secondly, that the vowel sounds chiefly
evoke them. Thirdly, that the seers are invariably most minute in
their description of the precise tint and hue of the colour. They
are never satisfied, for instance, with saying "blue," but will take
a great deal of trouble to express or to match the particular blue
they mean. Fourthly, that no two people agree, or hardly ever do so,
as to the colour they associate with the same sound. Lastly, that
the tendency is very hereditary. The publications just mentioned
absolve me from the necessity of giving many extracts from the
numerous letters I have received, but I am particularly anxious to
bring the brilliancy of these colour associations more vividly
before the reader than is possible by mere description. I have
therefore given the elaborately-coloured diagrams in Plate IV., which
were copied by the artist directly from the original drawings, and
which have been printed by the superimposed impressions of different
colours from different lithographic stones. They have been, on the
whole, very faithfully executed, and will serve as samples of the
most striking cases. Usually the sense of colour is much too vague
to enable the seer to reproduce the various tints so definitely as
those in this Plate. But this is by no means universally the case.
Fig. 68 is an excellent example of the occasional association of
colours with letters. It is by Miss Stones, the head teacher in a
high school for girls, who, as I have already mentioned, obtained
useful information for me, and has contributed several suggestive
remarks of her own. She says:--
"The vowels of the English language always appear to me, when I
think of them, as possessing certain colours, of which I enclose a
diagram. Consonants, when thought of by themselves, are of a
purplish black; but when I think of a whole word, the colour of the
consonants tends towards the colour of the vowels. For example, in
the word 'Tuesday,' when I think of each letter separately, the
consonants are purplish-black, _u_ is a light dove colour, _e_ is a
pale emerald green, and _a_ is yellow; but when I think of the whole
word together, the first part is a light gray-green, and the latter
part yellow. Each word is a distinct whole. I have always associated
the same colours with the same letters, and no effort will change
the colour of one letter, transferring it to another. Thus the word
'red' assumes a light-green tint, while the word 'yellow' is
light-green at the beginning and red at the end. Occasionally, when
uncertain how a word should be spelt, I have considered what colour
it ought to be, and have decided in that way. I believe this has
often been a great help to me in spelling, both in English and
foreign languages. The colour of the letters is never smeared or
blurred in any way. I cannot recall to mind anything that should
have first caused me to associate colours with letters, nor can my
mother remember any alphabet or reading-book coloured in the way I
have described, which I might have used as a child. I do not
associate any idea of colour with musical notes at all, nor with any
of the other senses."
She adds:--
"Perhaps you may be interested in the following account from my
sister of her visual peculiarities: 'When I think of Wednesday I see
a kind of oval flat wash of yellow emerald green; for Tuesday, a
gray sky colour; for Thursday, a brown-red irregular polygon; and a
dull yellow smudge for Friday.'"
[Footnote 9: Zwangmässige Lichtempfindungen durch Schall und
verwandte Erscheinungen, von E. Bleuler und K. Lehmann. Leipsig, Fues'
Verlag (R. Reisland), 1881.]
The latter quotation is a sample of many that I have; I give it
merely as another instance of hereditary tendency.
I will insert just one description of other coloured letters than
those represented in the Plate. It is from Mrs. H., the married
sister of a well-known man of science, who writes:--
"I do not know how it is with others, but to me the colours of
vowels are so strongly marked that I hardly understand their
appearing of a different colour, or, what is nearly as bad,
colourless to any one. To me they are and always have been, as long
as I have known them, of the following tints:--"
A, pure white, and like china in texture.
E, red, not transparent; vermilion, with china-white would represent
it.
I, light bright yellow; gamboge.
O, black, but transparent; the colour of deep water seen through
thick clear ice.
U, purple.
Y, a dingier colour than I.
"The shorter sounds of the vowels are less vivid and pure in colour.
Consonants are almost or quite colourless to me, though there is
some blackness about M.
"Some association with U in the words blue and purple may account
for that colour, and possibly the E in red may have to do with that
also; but I feel as if they were independent of suggestions of the
kind.
"My first impulse is to say that the association lies solely in the
sound of the vowels, in which connection I certainly feel it the
most strongly; but then the thought of the distinct redness of such
a [printed or written] word as '_great_' shows me that the relation
must be visual as well as aural. The meaning of words is so
unavoidably associated with the sight of them, that I think this
association rather overrides the primitive impression of the colour
of the vowels, and the word '_violet_' reminds me of its proper
colour until I look at the word as a mere collection of letters.
"Of my two daughters, one sees the colours quite differently from
this (A, blue; E, white; I, black; O, whity-brownish; U, opaque brown).
The other is only heterodox on the A and O; A being with her black,
and O white. My sister and I never agreed about these colours, and I
doubt whether my two brothers feel the chromatic force of the vowels
at all."
I give this instance partly on account of the hereditary interest. I
could add cases from at least three different families in which the
heredity is quite as strongly marked.
Fig. 69 fills the whole of the middle column of Plate IV., and
contains specimens from a large series of coloured illustrations,
accompanied by many pages of explanation from a correspondent,
Dr. James Key of Montagu, Cape Colony. The pictures will tell their
own tale sufficiently well. I need only string together a few brief
extracts from his letters, as follows:--
"I confess my inability to understand visualised numerals; it is
otherwise, however, with regard to colour associations with letters.
Ever since childhood these have been distinct and unchanging in my
consciousness; sometimes, although very seldom, I have mentioned them,
to the amazement of my teachers and the scorn of my comrades. A is
brown. I say it most dogmatically, and nothing will ever have the
effect, I am convinced, of making it appear otherwise! I can imagine
no explanation of this association. [He goes into much detail as to
conceivable reasons connected with his childish life to show that
none of these would do.] Shades of brown accompany to my mind the
various degrees of openness in pronouncing A. I have never been
destitute in all my conscious existence of a conviction that E is a
clear, cold, light-gray blue. I remember daubing in colours, when
quite a little child, the picture of a jockey, whose shirt received
a large share of E, as I said to myself while daubing it with grey.
[He thinks that the letter I may possibly be associated with black
because it contains no open space, and O with white because it does.]
The colour of R has been invariably of a copper colour, in which a
swarthy blackness seems to intervene, visually corresponding to the
trilled pronunciation of R. This same appearance exists also in J, X,
and Z."
The upper row of Fig. 69 shows the various shades of brown,
associated with different pronunciations of the letter A, as in
"fame," "can," "charm," and "all" respectively. The second, third
and fourth rows similarly refer to the various pronunciations of the
other vowels. Then follow the letters of the alphabet, grouped
according to the character of the appearance they suggest. After
these come the numerals. Then I give three lines of words such as
they appear to him. The first is my own name, the second is
"London," and the third is "Visualisation." Proceeding conversely,
Dr. Key collected scraps of various patterns of wall paper, and sent
them together with the word that the colour of the several patterns
suggested to him. Specimens of these are shown in the three bottom
lines of the Fig. I have gone through the whole of them with care,
together with his descriptions and reasons, and can quite understand
his meaning, and how exceedingly complex and refined these
associations are. The patterns are to him like words in poetry,
which call up associations that any substituted word of a like
dictionary meaning would fail to do. It would not, for example, be
possible to print words by the use of counters coloured like those
in Fig. 69, because the tint of each influences that of its
neighbours. It must be understood that my remarks, though based on
Dr. Key's diagrams and statements as on a text, do not depend, by
any means, wholly upon them, but on numerous other letters from
various quarters to the same effect. At the same time I should say
that Dr. Key's elaborate drawings and ample explanations, to which I
am totally unable to do justice in a moderate space, are the most
full and striking of any I have received. His illustrations are on a
large scale, and are ingeniously arranged so as to express his
meaning.
Persons who have colour associations are unsparingly critical. To
ordinary individuals one of these accounts seems just as wild and
lunatic as another, but when the account of one seer is submitted to
another seer, who is sure to see the colours in a different way, the
latter is scandalised and almost angry at the heresy of the former.
I submitted this very account of Dr. Key to a lady, the wife of an
ex-governor of one of the most important British possessions, who
has vivid colour associations of her own, and who, I had some reason
to think, might have personal acquaintance with the locality where
Dr. Key lives. She could not comprehend his account at all, his
colours were so entirely different to those that she herself saw.
I have now completed as much as I propose to say about the quaint
phenomena of Visualised Forms of numbers and of dates, and of
coloured associations with letters. I shall not extend my remarks to
such subjects as a musician hearing mental music, of which I have
many cases, nor to fancies concerning the other senses, as none of
these are so noteworthy. I am conscious that the reader may desire
even more assurance of the trustworthiness of the accounts I have
given than the space now at my disposal admits, or than I could
otherwise afford without wearisome iteration of the same tale, by
multiplying extracts from my large store of material. I feel, too,
that it may seem ungracious to many obliging correspondents not to
have made more evident use of what they have sent than my few and
brief notices permit. Still their end and mine will have been gained,
if these remarks and illustrations succeed in leaving a just
impression of the vast variety of mental constitution that exists in
the world, and how impossible it is for one man to lay his mind
strictly alongside that of another, except in the rare instances of
close hereditary resemblance.
VISIONARIES.
In the course of my inquiries into visual memory, I was greatly
struck by the frequency of the replies in which my informants
described themselves as subject to "visions." Those of whom I speak
were sane and healthy, but were subject notwithstanding to visual
presentations, for which they could not account, and which in a few
cases reached the level of hallucinations. This unexpected
prevalence of a visionary tendency among persons who form a part of
ordinary society seems to me suggestive and well worthy of being put
on record. The images described by different persons varied greatly
in distinctness, some were so faint and evanescent as to appear
unworthy of serious notice; others left a deep impression, and
others again were so vivid as actually to deceive the judgment. All
of these belong to the same category, and it is the assurance of
their common origin that affords justification for directing
scientific attention to what many may be inclined to contemptuously
disregard as the silly vagaries of vacant minds.