Psi/rfioloffical / n vent if/a f ions 275 



iiDuge or form without any idea of a word. CJalton and Max Miiller apnuar 

 to he (liscuHsiii}» r)ii wliolly difFtsreiit plaiiCH. "I iuld, " writes (Jaltoii, "nothing 

 ahout the lulvanta^o to nioilern iiuiuirers due to their poasession of Dar- 

 winian facts and theories, hecause we do not rate them in the same way." 

 It was only jiossihUi for a pre- Darwinian or at any rate an anti-Darwinian to 

 deny that animals think Jis well jw man. " Dogs, Sir, do a deal of j)ondering," 

 was a concej)tion which had not and could not reach Max Midler. (Jalton 

 hroke a lance for Darwin, but he might as well have tilted at a windmill as 

 at the Oxford nominalist. 



The matter of this controversy remained long in Galton's mind, and 

 seven years later he pultlished a short })aper in the Psychologicfd Revieic 

 entitled "Arithmetic by Smell'." The purpose of the paper is to show that ' 

 mental proceases may l)e conducted by the sole medium of imaginary smells, 

 just as well as by visual or auditory images, in other words, to prove that 

 thought does not depend on words. Galton first devised an apparatus by 

 which a whiJf of scented air could be sent out as often as recjuired Ixjneatn 

 the nostrils. A separate simple apparatus wjvs u.sed for each scent and he 

 worked with the eyes shut. He was thus able to produce at will a whiff of 

 peppermint, camphor, carbolic acid, ammonia, aniseed, etc. He taught him.self 

 to associate two whiffs of pepjiermint with one whiff of cam[)hor, three of 

 peppermint with one of carbolic acid, anfl so on. He next practised simple 

 addition sums with the scents themselves, and afterwards solely with the 

 inutgination of them. 



"TliiTO was not the sliglitost dirticulty in baiu.>i)iiiig all visual and auditory images from the 



mind, leaving nothing in the consciou«nes.s but real or imaginary scents Subtra<;tion 



succtHxIwI as well as addition. I did not go so far as to associate s(>parate scents with the 

 attitudes of mind severally appropriate to subtraction and addition, t)Ut det^'rmined by my 

 ordinary mental processes which attitude to assume, Ix-fore isolating myself in the world of 

 scents." 



Gallon did not attempt "multiplication by smell, beca>i.se he had con- 

 vinced him.self that arithmetic by scents only, antl by imaginary .scents, was 

 possible with considerable speed and accuracy. He did, however, try some 

 experiments on taste, using s.dt, sugar, citric acid, quinine, etc., and found 

 that arithmetic by ta.ste was as feasible as aritlinietif hv sint'll. Thus Galton 

 proposed to rout the nominalists'. 



In Natnn' for Nov. 15. 1894 (Vol. Ll, pp. 7:5-4) Galton gave an account 

 of Alfred Binet's book Psychologie des (Jramls Calculateurs et Jouenrs 

 d'Echi'cs. He refers to Inaudi, a Piedmontese, who did liis mental sums by 

 the sounds of the numbers, and to Diamandi, a Greek, who worked with 



' Vol. I, pp. 61-2. New York and Ix)ndon, 1894. 



- I fear Max Miiller might have retorte<l that without the earlier association of numl>ers 

 with names arithmetic by smell or tjvste would Ikj imjwssible. .Such an assertion is like that 

 of the tlieologiim who holds that the agnostic either fails to act morally, or only does so owing 

 to a Christian tmining or the Christian environment The one neglects the ages long evolution 

 of moi'ality for which Christianity is a thing of yesterday and the other would neglect the 

 ages long evolution of nnnd prior to language. 



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