310 COLOURED THINKING 







ference between the French and Italian languages and giving 

 his preference to the former, used terms relating to colours: 

 "JElle est moins rich de coloris, soit, mais elle est plus variee 

 et plus fins de tintes". 



Theoretically, any two sensations may be linked, so that 

 coloured hearing is only one particular variety of synsesthesia 

 (coupled sensations, secondary or dual sensations, second- 

 arempfindungen). No doubt the linking of colour with 

 sound is the commonest of these dual sensations which, 

 following Bleuler( 31 ), might be called sound-photisms. When 

 a taste produces light or colours we have a taste-photism; 

 similarly, there are odour-photisms, touch-photisms, tem- 

 perature-photisms, and pain-photisms recorded in the annals 

 of abnormal psychology. A good example of pain-photism 

 occurs in a recent novel, "The Dream Ship" ( 66 ). The whole 

 passage is so appropriate to our subject that it may be quoted 

 in full: "Bran" (a boy) "decided all his likes and dislikes by 

 colour and smell. His favourite colours were yellow, red, 

 green, and wet-black. The last was very different to (sic) 

 ordinary black which was the colour of toothache. Little 

 rheumatic pains, which he sometimes got in his knees, were 

 grey. The worst pain you could get was a purply-red one 

 which came when you were sad and gave you the stomach 

 ache. He had once solemnly stated that the only colour he 

 hated was yellow-pink, but as he always called yellow pink 

 and pink yellow, no one had been able to solve the riddle 

 of this hated colour." The black colours of toothache and 

 the grey of rheumatism were this boy's pain-photisms. 

 Something of the reverse order is indicated where a dis- 

 agreeable colour is described as producing a pain in the 

 stomach. When Baudelaire said that musk reminded him 

 of scarlet and gold, he had an odour-photism. 



When the reverse linking occurs, we have an analogous 

 series as follows, If light or colour produces a sound, it is 



