Pui/cliolof/i'caf fuvenfifffitiong 243 



"Another general experience in that the power of noeing vivid iniagefl in tlm niind'H eye 

 ha« little connection with Uinh or low ability, or any other ohvious chaructfrititic, so tlmt at 

 prasent I am often puzr.lwl to kuo.hii fri>ni my f{i'n<'ral knowledge of a friond, whether he will 

 |)r<)V<! on iiKiiiiry t<i have the fariilty or not. I have inHtancea in which the hi({heBt ahility in 

 accompaniiMl hy a huKO nmosure of thJM gift, and other?* in which the faculty appearn to lie 

 almost wholly alisi-nt. It in not jK)s.se!WCHl hy all artists, nor hy all mathcmatician.H, nor hy all 

 nu-chanicH, nor hy all men of science. It i.s certainly not jiok.wr.'msI liy all metuphysicianM, who 

 are too apt to put forward Keiienili.sjitions, l)a.s«Hl solely on the experiences of their own .sjiecial 

 way of thinking, in total disregard of the fact that the mental op<'nition.s of other men may Ixs 

 conducted in very different wayg to their own." (Mature, p. 25'2.) 



And again : 



"Although philosophers may have wiilt<>n to show the inipos-sibility nt our (iiscnveiing 

 what goes on in the minds of others, I maintain an opjxwite opinion. I do not see why the 

 report of a person on his own mind should not ho as intelligible and tnistworthy as that of a 

 traveller upon a new country, whose landscapes and iidwl>itants are of a different tyj)e to any 

 which we ourselves have seen. It appears to me that inquiry into the mental constitution of 

 other people is a most fertile Held for exploration, especially as there is much in the facts 

 adduced hero, as well as elsewhere, to show that original differences in mental constitution are 

 permanent, Ixnng little niodititsl liv the necideiits of educution', and that they are strongly 

 hereditary." (Nature, p. 256.) 



Our Plates (XXI and XXli) give specimens of number form.s. The Gal- 

 toniana contains many more and further shdes of a certitin number of coloured 

 ones which do not appear in tlie publi.shed papers. 



The next paper we reach was given as a Friday evening discourse at the 

 Royal Institution, May 13, 1881'. It is entitled: "The Visions of Sane 

 Persons." The object of this lecture was to show the unexj)ected prevalency 

 of a visionary tendency among persons who form a part or ordinary society. 

 Visions, illusions, hallucinations are stages of the same mental phenomenon, 

 and may grade in Intensity up to the star of Napoleon I or the daimon of 

 Socrates and ultimately link up with a touch of madness. 



Galton commences his lecture with referring in succession to: 



(a) Nmnher Forms. "Strange visions for such they must be called, ex- 

 tremely vivid in some cases, but almost incredible to the great majority of 

 mankind," who are inclined to set them down as fantastic nonsense. 



(/>) The Association of Colour with Sound. The persistence of colour 

 association with sound is fully as remarkable as that of Number Forms with 

 numbers; generally it is concerned with the vowel sounds, and it is not a 

 mere general colour, but a very distinct tint of that colour, which is asso- 

 ciated with the given sound. The association is permanent, but very arbitrary, 

 no two pei-sons agreeing in their distribution of tints to sounds. 



(c) Association of ]Vords unth visualised Pictures. Sometimes this curious 

 fantasy occurs in a vague fleeting way, but occasionally the pictures are 

 strangely vivid and permanent. Thus in Mrs Haweis' mind the interrogation 



' This sentence .since visualisation is part of the mental constitution does not seem wholly 

 in accord with Gallon's view that it should be possible by education to raise the intensity of 

 that faculty in the general pt^pulation so that the present grade at the upper suboctile should 

 represent that of the lower quartile of the new population. 



* Publishwl also in the Forlniyhtly Review, June, 1881 : Proceedings, Royal I^iatitution, 

 Vol. i.\, pp. 644-55, 1882. 



31— a 



