COLOURED THINKING 147 



auditivus), a psychical deafness depending on the red-blindness, 

 since the note to which they were psychically deaf was the one 

 which called up mentally the particular colour, red, to which 

 they were actually blind. 



It might now be asked whether we have any explanation 

 of the causes or causal conditions of coloured thinking, why 

 may thoughts be coloured at all, and why should particular 

 thoughts come to be associated with particular colours? Why 

 should only a few persons be found to be coloured thinkers ? 

 The answers, if answers they can be called, are extremely dis- 

 appointing, for we have no satisfactory explanations of any of 

 these matters. The very arbitrariness of the associations defies 

 theoretical analysis. 



If it is the function of science merely to describe, then our 

 work is done ; but in a subject such as this, to make no attempt 

 to account for the abstruse phenomena observed would be a 

 distinctly feeble conclusion of our studies. It has been sug- 

 gested that the cause of coloured thinking is no more recondite 

 than the influence of some picture-book which in early life 

 determined for us ever afterwards the colours of certain con- 

 cepts. Now though many people do regard their coloured 

 thinking as a childish survival, the picture-books will account 

 for very few of the best established psychochromes. In some 

 few cases, environmental influences do seem to have been 

 causal. Thus, in one case known to the writer, the colour of 

 February as white was accounted for by the influence of the 

 surroundings. The earliest February remembered was snowy, 

 and, through the whiteness of snow, the concept of February 

 came to be and ever afterwards remained white. But it is clear 

 that if environmental influences are operative in anything like 

 a large number of cases, the colours for such concepts as the 

 months of the year ought to be far more uniform than they are. 

 No common origin of external source can make one person 

 think of August as white, another as brown, and yet another 

 as crimson. If August is white to one person because it is 

 the month of white harvest, then it ought to be white to all 

 persons capable of receiving any impressions as to the colours 

 of harvest. But to the vast majority of people it is perfectly 

 absurd to talk of August having any colour at all ; and, to the 

 few who think it coloured, it has not by any means the same 

 colour ; all seems confusion. 



