372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" Various theories have been suggested : the association of the 

 emotions with the words which arouse them, the form of the char- 

 acters, the sound of the pronunciation of the characters or words, 

 the nature of the mechanical production of the sounds. 



" I believe that the fairest conclusion of the matter is, that 

 color and shade depend chiefly upon form, but that sound and 

 sense may have some influence. That there is some relation, some 

 analogy which warrants the statement that this word is light and 

 that is dark, I can doubt but little more than that it is appropriate 

 to say that one sound is high, another low. 



" Can it be that this association of form and color is an arbi- 

 trary product of the imagination ? I would believe it myself but 

 for three facts : The phenomena were observed at an age appar- 

 ently too early for the origination of any such strange and elabo- 

 rate idea ; too early for the development of any theory universally 

 applicable to all words and letters ; too early for the dreams of 

 the imagination to remain as the realities of later life. Second, I 

 do not know nor remember of ever having laid down any prin- 

 ciples of criticism. Third, I am not conscious of employing any 

 such principles. To do this would require great use of the mem- 

 ory. I have no reason for believing that it is so employed. In- 

 deed, rather than burdening the memory with special facts or 

 general principles, word-color even relieves it of a part of its 

 proper work. It has more than once assisted in the study and 

 use of ancient language vocabularies. For example, only by 

 means of this have I been able to distinguish between ferus, 

 fierce, and ferrum, iron. When wishing to refer to the place of 

 the former use of a word, its shade is of great service in finding 

 its position on the page. Sometimes by its assistance words are 

 seen to be correctly or incorrectly spelled. How many are there 

 of you who do not write in two ways a word of doubtful spelling, 

 and then choose one for no other reason than that it 'looks right' ? 

 Such an act is, perhaps, an unconscious testimony to word-color." 



Associations of color with musical tones are not uncommon. 

 Certain musicians claim to play the piano by color. One of my 

 correspondents is positive that there exist definite relations be- 

 tween color and sound. In his view " every person has a key- 

 note, and each key-note corresponds to a color which the person 

 naturally prefers to any other." He claims to be able to indicate 

 a " person's favorite color by knowing this key-note. A fine piece 

 of music may thus be worked into a painting by using the colors 

 corresponding to the musical notes." Conversely I should sup- 

 pose the colors of the rainbow might be rendered into a musical 

 symphony of perfect harmony. 



Not less curious is the occasional association of color with 

 taste. A student tells me that when she was a young girl she 



