THE COLORS OF LETTERS. 371 



" Thought and reason seem to give but little assistance in de- 

 termining the character of any word. It is, however, noticeable 

 that the more attention that is given to the subject in general, the 

 clearer do all words shine out* These shades and colors are per- 

 manent. A word or symbol seems to have a peculiar and indi- 

 vidual character which never changes. 



" A student of mine, Mr. C. E. Mead, of Ramelton, who had 

 never before heard of the subject, has spent some time examining 

 me and recording the results. 



" If one should wish to divide all visible objects into classes on 

 a basis of the lightness or darkness of their shades of color, he 

 would find some manifestly very light, almost white; others very 

 dark, almost black ; others would be of intermediate shades. Let 

 him call all that are very light, 1 ; all that are very dark, 5 ; then 

 2, 3, and 4 would indicate intermediate shades. Some objects 

 would easily be seen to belong to certain classes. Others, even 

 with the aid of contemporaneous examination, would be very dim- 

 cult to locate. It is convenient to divide words into classes upon 

 the same basis, indicating their degrees of shade by numbers, let- 

 ting 1 represent very light words, 5 very dark ones, and 2, 3, and 

 4 the intermediate shades. 



" A newspaper article containing fifty words was taken, and a 

 number representing the degree of shade was assigned to each. 

 After two weeks, Mr. Mead returned to me the same list of words, 

 and numbers were reassigned. Out of the list, instead of ten, 

 which the law of chance would indicate would be the same, thirty- 

 four were identical. In no case was there a variation of more 

 than one degree. For example, no word which bore number 

 three in the first test was given number one in the last, nor vice 

 versa. Colors were assigned to twenty-one out of forty names and 

 characters. Two weeks later the same colors were reassigned to 

 all but one. 



"I do not know how these distinctions are made. I am not 

 conscious of obtaining them by application of any rules or prin- 

 ciples. "When a word is presented, it is felt to be light or dark, 

 black or yellow, and the mind declares it to be such with little 

 thought or delay, and apparently in the same manner as the pitch 

 and quality of musical sounds are judged. 



" My own experience has been so vivid and persistent that I 

 could not doubt that there were reason and law as the basis of the 

 matter. Yet I could not and did not expect that a theory of word- 

 color would be able to find credence as the result of my single tes- 

 timony. 



" Whether or not there is any significance in the fact, nearly 

 all who perceive color in words have made the first discovery in 

 early childhood. 



