i 4 8 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Monsieur Peillaube (54) has made a suggestion of a different 

 kind as likely to explain some of these colour associations. 



Monsieur Peillaube became acquainted with a Monsieur Ch , 



who had audition colorde as well as coloured thinking. Monsieur 



Ch had an excellent memory, and was able to submit his 



conceptions to searching introspection, with the result that 

 he seems to have discovered what may be called the missing 

 link in the associational chain of mental chromatic events. To 

 this coloured thinker, the lower notes of the organ were of a 

 violet colour. This seems to have been brought about in the 

 following way : low notes of any kind were sweet and deep 

 {donees et profondes), the colour violet is sweet and deep, 

 therefore it came to pass that the low notes were associated 



with violet. Similarly to Monsieur Ch , the vowel sound 



of " i " was suggestive of something vive et gaie, the colour 

 green had always been associated with liveliness and gaiety, 

 therefore he thought the vowel " i " was green. These con- 

 clusions were reached only after considerable introspection, for 

 it must be understood that the link between the low notes and 

 the colour violet was by no means an explicit or definite presen- 

 tation in this person's mind at the time that Monsieur Peillaube 

 suggested the inquiry. Peillaube's theory, then, is that these 

 apparently arbitrary and instantaneous linkings of sounds (x) to 

 colours (y), or of thoughts to colours, are really after all cases 

 of association of two terms through the intermediation of a 

 third factor an emotional link (1) now subconscious but re- 

 vivable. The sequence was x — 1 — y, but in course of time the 

 " 1 " had dropped out of consciousness, leaving the " x " and the 

 "y" apparently indissolubly joined together. 



Finally, it may be asked, would the capability of coloured 

 thinking cause its possessor to be classed as mentally abnormal ? 

 The answer is in the negative. Coloured thinkers may not 

 conform to the usual or most commonly met with mental type, 

 but they deviate from that type only in the same way that 

 geniuses deviate from it. Inasmuch as they deviate from the 

 normal, coloured thinkers are of course abnormal, but there is 

 nothing in them that is allied to instability of mental balance. 

 Some coloured thinkers may no doubt belong to families in 

 which some degree of mental instability is present ; or, on the 

 other hand, some relatives of coloured thinkers may possess a 

 high degree of artistic or musical ability, of scientific or philo- 



