STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 329 



We can most of us, perhaps, recall similar experiences, where 

 colors and sounds, in themselves indifferent, took on either through 

 analogy or association a decidedly repulsive character. How far, 

 one wonders, does this process of transformation of things go in 

 the case of imaginative children ? There is some reason to say 

 that it may go very far, and that, too, when there is no strong 

 feeling at work cementing the combined elements. A child's feel- 

 ing for likeness is commonly keen and subtle, and knowledge of 

 the real relations of things has not yet come to check the impulse 

 to this free, far-ranging kind of assimilation. Dickens was not, 

 one feels sure, the only child who saw odd resemblances in letters, 

 finding, for example, that the thick O and S of his primer stood 

 out from the rest as the easy, good-natured ones. This sort of 

 fanciful reading of character into things is of the very life of 

 childhood. Before the qualities and the connections of objects 

 are sufficiently known for them to be interesting in themselves, 

 they can only acquire interest through the combining art of child- 

 ish fancy. And the same is true of associated characters. A 

 child's ear may not dislike a grating sound, a harsh noise, as our 

 ear dislikes it, because of its immediate effect on the sensitive 

 organ. En revanche it will like and dislike sounds for a hundred 

 reasons unknown to us, just because the quick, strong fancy, add- 

 ing its life to that of the senses, gives to impressions much of 

 their significance and much of their value. 



There is a new field of investigation which is illustrating in a 

 curious way this wizard influence which childish imagination 

 wields over the things of sense. It is well known that a certain 

 number of people habitually color the sounds they hear, visualiz- 

 ing the sound of a vowel, or of a musical tone, as having its char- 

 acteristic tint which they are able to describe accurately. This 

 " colored hearing," as it is called, is always traced back to the dimly 

 recalled age of childhood. Children are now beginning to be 

 tested, and it is found that a good proportion possess the faculty. 

 Thus in the researches on the Boston children already referred to 

 it was found that out of fifty-three, twenty-one, or nearly one 

 half, described the tones of certain instruments as colored. The 

 particular color, as also the degree of its brightness, ascribed to an 

 instrument, varied greatly among different children, so that, for 

 example, one child visualized the tone of a fife as pale or bright, 

 while another imaged it as dark.* It is highly probable that both 

 analogy and association play a part here.f As was recently sug- 

 gested to me by a correspondent, the classic instance of the anal- 



* See the article, Contents of Children's Minds, already quoted, pp. 265, 266. 

 f This has been well brought out by Prof. Flournoy, of Geneva, in his volume, Des 

 Phenomenes de Synopsie (audition coloree), chap. ii. 

 VOL. XLV. 26 



