AND ALLIED CONDITIONS. HARRIS. 319 



fastidious in the choice of terms to give adequate expression 

 to his chromatic imagery. One of these is not content, for 

 instance, with speaking of September as grey, he must call 

 it steel-grey; another speaks of a dull white, of a silvery 

 white, of "the colour of white watered silk," and so on. One 

 child speaks of March as "art blue," whatever that is; an- 

 other of 6 p. m. as pinkish. The degree of chromatic pre- 

 cision which can be given by coloured thinkers to their 

 visualizing is as extraordinary as any of the other extraordinary 

 things connected with this curious subject. 



The fourth characteristic is the complete non-agreement 

 between the various colours attached to the same concept 

 in the minds of coloured thinkers. Thus, nine different 

 persons think of Tuesday in terms of the following colours: 

 brown, purple, dark purple, brown, blue, white, black, 

 pink, and blue. Again, September is thought of as 

 pale yellow, steel-grey, and orange by three different 

 coloured thinkers respectively. Once more, the vowel "i" 

 is thought of as black, red-violet, yellow, white, and red 

 respectively by five persons gifted with chromatic mentation. 

 Unanimity seems hopeless, agreement quite impossible; 

 the colours are essentially individualistic. 



^The fifth characteristic of psychochromes is their un- 

 accountableness. No coloured thinker seems to be able to 

 say how he came by his associations; "I cannot account for 

 them in any way" is the invariable remark one finds in 

 letters from persons describing their coloured thoughts. 



The sixth characteristic is the hereditary or at least 

 inborn nature of the condition. Galton's phrase was "very 

 hereditary". The extremely early age at which coloured 

 thinking reveals itself would of itself indicate that the ten- 

 dency was either hereditary or congenital. The details 

 of a case of heredity from father to son have been reported 

 for coloured hearing by Lauret and Duchassoy; a case of 

 coloured thinking reported by the present writer was one 



