Piti/r/iofof/i'ail /iii'fx/i'f/dtionM 237 



Galton confesses that the firet results of his imiuiry amazed him. He had 

 hegim by questioning friends in the scientitic world, l)ecaust! he thought 

 they were tlio most likely persons to give accurate answers, and to nis 

 astonislnuent most of the men of science replied that mental imagery was 

 unknown to them. 



"They hn<l iii> iiioro notion nf iti tru<' niitiirc tliiin a colour lilind man, who hiis not 

 (lisceriip<i hia ilpfcet, has of the nature of colour. Thoy had a ini'iital deficii-ncy of which ihey 

 were unaware, and naturally enough Rup{ioM<(l that those who were nomiaily endowed were 

 romancing." (p. 302.) 



The members of the French Institute exhibited a like incredulity as to 

 the reality of the visualising faculty. On the other hand in general society 

 Galton found many men antl women with the power of vi.sualising. He wjis 

 thus compelled to the conclusion that, whatever its cau.se might be, scientific 

 men as a class have feeble powers of visual representation. 



"My own conclusion is, tliat an ovor-r«sadines» to perceive clear mental pictures is antagon- 

 istic to the uc(|uireinent of Li>(hly generali-stnl antl alistract thought, and that if the faculty of 

 producing them was ever j>os.ses.sed by men who think hard, it is very apt to Ije lost hy disust*. 

 The highest minds are prol)al>lv thase in which it is not lost, hut sulmrdinatetl, ami is ready 

 for use on suitable occiusions. I am, however, IhiuikI to say, that the missing facult}' seems to 

 be re|)laced so .servicejibly by other mfxles of conception, chiefly I In^lieve connecte<l with the 

 motor sense, that men wlio declare themselves entirely deticient in the power of seeing mental 

 picturt's can nevertheless give lifelike descriptions of what they have seen, and can otherwise 

 express themselves as if they were gifted with a vivid visual imagination. They can also 

 become painters of the rank of Royal Academicians." (p. 304.) 



Galton data were collected from 100 adult men, of whom 19 were Fellows 

 of the Royal Society, three times as many more of distinction in other kinds 

 of intellectual work, and the remainder of less note. He had also returns 

 from 172 Charterhouse boys who had been interested in the matter by their 

 Science Master Mr W. H. Poole. The whole of the original material — with 

 nujch that Galton collected later for a new edition of the I)i(/inne.<t info Human 

 Faculty — is in the Galtoninmt, and would be well worth working up by more 

 modern statistical methods than were available in 1879. 



W^hat Cialton does in this paper is to arrange the answers to each of his 

 tpiestions — vividness of imagery, colour representation, extent of Held of 

 mental view — in ranks by order of intensity, for his 100 adult males and for 

 two groups of the Charterhouse boys : A for the upper cla.sses, Ji for the five 

 lower cla.sses of the school. When the material was ranked Galton cited the 

 Highest, the first Suboctile, the first Octile, the first Quartile, the Median, 

 the last Quartile, the last Octile, the hist Suboctile and the Lowest Answers. 

 The intensities exhibited by the two Charterhouse groups at the various 

 selected ranks were very similar, and the adult males were not very dis- 

 similar from these, but they did not form as regular a series .is tli.' Ixiv^ TIm-v 

 were avowedly not members of a true statistical group: 



"being an aggregate of one class of persons who replied because they had remarkable powers 

 of imagery and had much to say, of another cla.ss of persons, the scientific, who on the whole 

 are very deficient in that gift, and of a. third cla.ss who may justly be considered as fair samples 

 of adult males." (p. 312.) 



