PSYCHOMETRIC FACTS. 



777 



call it ''histrionic." I find it to be a most important agent in creating 

 generalizations. 



The second group of ideas consists of mere sense imagery, unaccom- 

 panied by any obscure feeling of muscular tension or action : such as 

 mental landscapes, sounds, tastes, etc. I showed, in a paper read be- 

 fore the Anthropological Society last year,' how generalized images 

 admitted of being produced. I took a number of portraits of dilFerent 

 persons, who were all represented in the same attitudes and of the same 

 size, and I threw photographic images of these, one on the top of the 

 other, by a contrivance there described, on the same sensitized photo- 

 graphic plates. The result was a picture compounded of that of all the 

 different persons ; and so much more numerous are th^ points of resem- 

 blance than those of dissimilarity in different human faces, that the 

 composite picture looked as though it had been taken from a real living 

 individual a little out of focus, and who had somewhat moved during 

 the process. I then pointed out that " a composite portrait represents 

 the picture that would rise before the mind's eye of a man who had the 

 gift of pictorial imagination in the highest degree." It is clear, from 

 the evidence of these composites, that generalized images are no chi- 

 meras. 



So much for the second group of ideas. The third and last group 

 consisted of purely verbal associations, whether the mere names of per- 

 sons or things, or bits of quotations in prose or verse. 



The seventy-five words were similarly divisible into three groups. 

 The first included such words as " abasement," " abhorrence, " adora- 

 tion," and " acclamation," all of which could be perfectly expressed in 

 pantomime, and generally gave rise to histrionic ideas. The second 

 group comprised " abbey," " aborigines," " abyss," and the like, all of 

 which admitted of sense representation, either by a visual image, or, in 

 the case of such a word as " acid," by some other sense. In the third 

 group were the words " afternoon," " ability," " absence," " actuality," 

 and others of a like abstract character, difficult to apprehend and realize, 

 and tending to give rise to purely verbal associations. But as two ideas 

 were registered on each occasion, the eight results were usually dis- 

 persed among all the groups, though in unequal proportions. 



Experiments such as these allow an unexpected amount of illumi- 

 nation to enter into the deepest recesses of the character, which are 

 opened and bared by them like the anatomy of an animal under the 

 scalpel of a dissector in broad daylight. If we had records of the self- 

 examination of many persons, and compared them, I think we should 

 be much impressed by the differences between one mind and another, 

 in the quality, wealth, and appropriateness of their associated ideas, 

 and we should wonder that mutual misunderstandings were not more 

 frequent even than they are. 



' "Journal of the Anthropological Institute," viii., p. 134; or "Nature," May 23, 

 1878, p. 97. • 



VOL. XIV. — 50 



