i 44 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



description. A coloured thinker is most fastidious in the choice 

 of terms to give adequate expression to his chromatic imagery. 

 One of these is not content, for instance, with speaking of 

 September as grey, he must call it steel-grey ; another speaks 

 of a dull white, of a silvery white, of the colour of white 

 watered silk, and so on. One child speaks of March as " art 

 blue," whatever that is, another of 6 p.m. as pinkish. The 

 degree of chromatic precision which can be given by coloured 

 thinkers to their visualising is as extraordinary as any of the 

 other extraordinary things connected with this curious subject. 



The fourth characteristic is the complete non-agreement 

 between the various colours attached to the same concept in 

 the minds of coloured thinkers. Thus, nine different persons 

 think of Tuesday in terms of the following colours — brown, 

 purple, dark purple, brown, blue, white, black, pink, and blue. 

 Again, September is thought of as pale yellow, steel-grey, 

 and orange by three different coloured thinkers respectively. 

 Once more, the vowel " i " is thought of as black, red-violet, 

 yellow, white, and red respectively by five persons gifted with 

 chromatic mentation. Unanimity seems hopeless, agreement 

 quite impossible; the colours are essentially individualistic. 



The fifth characteristic of psychochromes is their unaccount- 

 ableness. No coloured thinker seems to be able to say how he 

 came by his associations; "I cannot account for them in any 

 way " is the invariable remark one finds in letters from persons 

 describing their coloured thoughts. 



The sixth characteristic is the hereditary or at least inborn 

 nature of the condition. Galton's phrase was " very hereditary." 

 The extremely early age at which coloured thinking reveals 

 itself would of itself indicate that the tendency was either 

 hereditary or congenital. The details of a case of heredity from 

 father to son have been reported for coloured hearing by Lauret 

 and Duchassoy (22, 44, and 50) ; a case of coloured thinking 

 reported by the present writer was one of heredity also from 

 father to son (55). But these related coloured hearers did not 

 see the same colours for the same sound, nor did the two 

 coloured thinkers think in the same colours. From the writer's 

 inquiries, coloured thinking is certainly congenital even when 

 it cannot be proved to be hereditary. This point will come 

 up again in connection with the origin of the condition, T^ut 

 we may at present note that those who have studied the 



