234 JAfe awl Lettcrx of Francis Gallon 



The difficulty ia much mon> than the coniDiun and wull-known ono of attending to two things 

 at ontv. It is esj)ecially duo to the fact that the oloinentary operations of the nund are 

 vxceixlingly faint and ovanosctMit, and that it n'tpiiroH thu utmost |Niiii.stukinK to watch tlioin 



propi<rly My nu-thotl consists in allowing the mind t<» play frn-ly tor a very brief periiKl, 



until a couple or bo of ideas have paasMi through it, and then while the traces or echoes of 

 tlio>*' ideas an- still lingering in the hrain to turn the* att<!ntiun upon them with a sudden and 

 W)niplete rt-awiikeiiing; to arrest, scrutinise tliom, and to record their exact app<!arance ; aftor- 

 wards I collate the records at leisure, and discuss tliora and draw conclusions." (p. 150.) 



Calton's fii-st experiment was a leisurely walk of 450 yards down Pall 



Mall, on an occasion when he felt himself unusually eajiahle of the kind of 



eftbrt retjuired. He reckoned that 300 ohjects caught his eye, although he 



never allowed his mind to ramble. 



"It was impossible for me to recall in other than the vaguest way the numerous ideas 

 that had pa.ssed through my mind; but of this, at least I was sure, that samples of my whole 

 life had passed before me, that many bygone incidents, which I never suspected to form part 

 of my stock of thoughts, had been glanced at as objects too familiar to awaken the attention. 

 I saw at once that tlie liniiii was vastly more active than I had previously Wlieved it to Iks, 

 and I was perfectly ama/.c^l at the unexpecte<l width of the fields of its everyday operations." 



After an interval of some days in which he kept his mind from dwelling 

 on his tii-st experiences, Galton took a second experimental walk. lie w;is 

 struck ivs before by the variety of idetis thtit j)resented them.selves, but his 

 admiration for the activity of the mind was reduced by the observation that 

 there was a gi'eat deal of repetition in his thought. He next devised an ex- 

 periment for testing these associations and repetitions. He selected a list 

 of 75 suitable words and sitting at a table with a stop-watch, stai-ted it on 

 exposing a word of which he was previously ignorant. He waited till the 

 word called uj) two tlirectly as.st>ciated ideas and then stopped the watcii and 

 recorded these ideas. The second associated idea was always derived from 

 the word itself and not from the first associated idea, for he kept his attention 

 firmly concentrated on the word itself Sometimes he only got one associated 

 idea ; sometimes three or four occurred together and he was able to record 

 them, but as a rule he only managed to record two with precision. Galton 

 went through the 75 words on four occasions at intervals of a month, "but it 

 waa a most repugnant and laljorious work, and it was only by strong self- 

 control that I went through my schedule according to programme." 



The total number of as.sociated ideas was 505, and took GGU seconds to 

 form ; or at the rate of about 46 per minute or 2755 in an hour'. Of the 

 505 ideas, however, 29 occurred in all four trials, 3G in three, 57 in two and 

 107 in one trial only. Galton concluded therefore that reiterated Jissociation, 

 even under the very different conditions of place and time of his experiments, 

 was a nmch more marked feature than he had anticipated. He held from the 

 proved numl>er of faint and barely conscious thoughts and from the proved 

 iteration of them, that the mind is perpetually travelling over familiar ways 

 without the memory retaining any nnpression of its excursions. 



"My associatitd ideas were for the most part due Ui my own unsharecl exp<!rienoC8, and 

 the lint of them would necessarily differ widely from that which another person woidd draw 



' There were 13 caaes of "puzzle" in which nothing sullicicutly definite occurred in the 

 maxitnum of time, 4 seconds, allowed for each test. 



