COLOURED THINKING 137 



and pain-photisms recorded in the annals of abnormal psy- 

 chology. A good example of a pain-photism occurs in a recent 

 novel, The Dream Ship (66). The whole passage is so appro- 

 priate to our subject that it may be quoted in full : 



" Blair" (a boy) " decided all his likes and dislikes by colour 

 and smell. His favourite colours were yellow, red, green, and wet- 

 black. The last was very different to (sic) ordinary black, which 

 was the colour of toothache. Little rheumatic pains which he 

 sometimes got in his knees were grey. The worst pain you 

 could get was a purply-red one, which came when you were sad, 

 and gave you the stomach-ache. He had once solemnly stated 

 that the only colour he hated was yellowy-pink, but, as he 

 always called yellow pink, and pink yellow, no one had been 

 able to solve the riddle of this hated colour." 



The black colours of toothache and the grey of rheumatism 

 were this boy's pain-photisms. Something of the reverse order 

 is indicated where a disagreeable colour is described as pro- 

 ducing a pain in the stomach. When Baudelaire said that musk 

 reminded him of scarlet and gold, he had an odour-photism. 



When the reverse linking occurs we have an analogous 

 series. If light or colour produces a sound, it is a light- or 

 colour-phonism. This is what occurred in the case of the blind 

 man alluded to by Locke (1), to whom "scarlet was like the 

 sound of a trumpet " ; he had a colour-phonism, the colour 

 presumably being of the nature of a memory. When a taste is 

 coupled with a sound we have a taste-phonism, and there may 

 exist odour-, touch-, temperature-, and pain-phonisms respec- 

 tively. Sometimes the secondary sensation linked is of a more 

 vague character, as when screeching sounds produce disagreeable 

 general sensations very difficult to describe. They have been 

 called secondary sensations of general feeling, and they may be 

 akin to those unpleasant sensations evidently experienced by 

 dogs and other animals when they hear music. The late Mr. 

 Grant Allen was evidently alluding to this kind of thing when 

 he wrote, in an article on " Scales and Colours," that " Chaos 

 was in dark and gloomy colours, whereas light was treated in 

 white " in such a work as Haydn's " Creation." 



Bleuler believes that phonisms of high pitch are produced by 

 bright lights, well-defined outlines, small and pointed forms, 

 whereas phonisms of low pitch are produced by the opposite 

 conditions. An interesting thing may be mentioned in con- 



