s THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



It is the faculty of seeing certain concepts — the numerals, days 

 of the week, months of the year, the alphabet and so forth — as occupy- 

 ing collectively some definite positions in space. 



Thus certain seers always think of the numerals one to a hundred 

 as arranged in the form of a ladder stretching up into the sky to the 

 right or the left, as the case may be. 



Other seers think of the days of the week as on a curve with 

 Wednesday at the apex, still others visualize the months as arranged 

 on a rainbow or other huge form dying away into space. 



Thought-forms may be yet more irregular as when the alphabet 

 is exteriorized in the form of steps and stairs ascending or descending 

 from the observer. 



Coloured thinking proper is the association of a colour with an 

 exteriorized concept. Certain persons find that they cannot atten- 

 tively think of anything, cannot visualize, without arousing or suggest- 

 ing colour. This may be called chromatic mentation, or psycho- 

 chromaesthesia, and such persons coloured thinkers or psycho- 

 chromaesthetes. 



The concepts most commonly coloured are the hours of the day, 

 the days of the week, the months of the year, the letters of the al- 

 phabet, proper names and so forth. 



To those who never experience this sort of thing* it is unintel- 

 ligible. There is no kind of agreement between the colours associated 

 with any one thought on the part of a number of coloured thinkers. 

 Thus the vowel "u" is for eight different persons thought of as in 

 eight different colours — grey-white, yellow, black, brown, blue, green, 

 brown-yellow and dark grey respectively. To one person August is 

 white, to another crimson, to" a third heliotrope. There is no attempt 

 at agreement. 



The following are the characteristics of this curious capacity: 



1. The very early age at which these associations were 

 fixed. "Ever since I can remember," "Ever since childhood I 

 have always had," " I do not remember the time when I had not," 

 etc., are the phrases used by coloured thinkers asked when they 

 first noticed the phenomenon. 



Children of only nine and ten years give most satisfactory and 

 definite accounts of their psychochromes. This feature was 

 recognized by Francis Galton in his classic examination of the 

 subject in 1883. ^ 



^Inquiries into human faculty and its development: MacMillan, London, 1883 



