A STUDY IN RACE PSYCHOLOGY. 357 



with Isaiah I recognized that he had come rather late to the ele- 

 ments ; this happens also with many white boys, and is by no 

 means an insuperable obstacle to future progress. The circum- 

 stance really facilitated my study, as it gave me mental states 

 more positive and well defined than those of younger children. 

 Evidently the problem before me resolved itself into two con- 

 ditions : the mind of the boy his environment. The estimates of 

 mind, reading, writing, etc., which formal education employs were 

 evidently not applicable to this individual upon whom the school 

 had left so slight an impress. While I was revolving the matter 

 a new mode of testing his mental powers was suggested. I 

 chanced one evening to be arranging some sets of small color 

 cards in Isaiah's presence. It was evening, the light was dim, 

 and I had difficulty in distinguishing the slightly different tints 

 of the French blues and greens. Whenever I hesitated the boy, 

 who was watching the work with undisguised interest, would in- 

 stantly pick out the right card. As it was in a range of sesthetic 

 tints which I was certain had had no part in his customary sur- 

 roundings, I inferred that he had been through color exercises in 

 school. Inquiry proved that I was mistaken ; color perception 

 and color distinction were natural powers improved simply by 

 the observation of familiar things. Here too I discovered that 

 a network of associations had arisen, the very condition whose 

 absence had made advance in reading so difficult. His color 

 associations were with natural objects, chiefly fruits and birds 

 for example, red with an apple, the inside of a melon, a robin's 

 breast ; blue with the sky and the jay, yellow with a lemon, and so 

 on. Flowers he seldom mentioned. The reason is obvious. He 

 had a gourmand's taste, and was already quite an experienced 

 hunter. Associations ended with the primitive colors, his ready 

 recognition of shades and hues being a mere matter of immediate 

 perception. 



A possible mode of applying the hint thus obtained was sug- 

 gested by the memory tests described by Prof. Munsterberg in 

 the Psychological Review for January, 1894. The material em- 

 ployed (i. e., colored squares, three and a half centimetres) was 

 easily secured and was of precisely the kind to excite distinct per- 

 ceptions in Isaiah's mind. Beyond the arrangement of the cards 

 there was, however, no likeness between my experiments and those 

 of Prof. Munsterberg alluded to. The series employed by me 

 were shorter than his, consisting each of ten cards instead of 

 twenty, arranged either for simultaneous or for successive pres- 

 entation. My subject went through no preliminary training, 

 and no time limit was set for his observation. He was at liberty 

 to look at a series till he thought he knew it, when he proceeded 

 to arrange a duplicate set of the cards in the same order from 



