THE PROBLEM OF COLORED AUDITION. 817 



In colored audition there is no double perception, nor what is 

 called a synsesthesia. All takes place in the imagination of the 

 subject ; the impressions of color of which he is conscious on the 

 hearing of certain vowels are not real sensations ; they are not 

 colors which one sees with the eyes, but mental images, notions, or 

 we might better compare them with the images which the natural 

 significance of the words excites in the mind. We must insist 

 upon this important and too often misinterpreted point. In order 

 to give a basis to our interpretation, we shall relate some of the 

 facts we have collected with Prof. Beaunis in the Laboratory of 

 Psychology of the Sorbonne ; we shall not introduce the detail of 

 the observations, but shall only take the general sense. 



To a certain distinguished doctor a is red, and is the only 

 vowel which appears to him in color. He has colored it spon- 

 taneously from infancy, before having read what was written on 

 the question. The other vowels were not colored till a later age. 

 He is suspicious of the later colorations, and believes that they are 

 fictitious, suggested by reading. Now, what meaning shall we at- 

 tribute to his expression, so clear in itself, "A is red " ? Does he 

 mean that when he sees the letter a written with a pen on a white 

 sheet of paper, or with chalk on a black tablet, or when that vowel 

 is pronounced in his presence, he has the subjective impression of 

 a red spot which hovers before his eyes, on surrounding objects? 

 In other words, is there a hallucination of sight? In no wise. 

 Still less is there the pretended and incomprehensive seeing of the 

 sound in red. He has the idea of red, and nothing more. It is an 

 idea and not a sensation. According to his own expressions, he 

 receives the same suggestion when he meets in any phrase the 

 word red. Hear, for example, a person who is telling us of 

 some judicial ceremony. In the midst of his story appears the 

 phrase, "Then I saw the procurator rise in a red robe." We 

 have immediately an internal vision of something red a vision 

 clear, detailed, vivid for some, confused for others. It is a like 

 impression that the letter a gives our subject ; in short, a simple 

 idea. Let us add that the idea is not very clear ; the subject can 

 not define the shade of red that appears to him, still less repre- 

 sent it in real colors, even if he knows how to mix colors and is 

 an amateur painter ; it is some kind of a red unprecise. 



If we suppose, now, that all the vowels give rise to suggestions 

 of a similar character, our description will be adapted to a major- 

 ity of subjects ; it will exactly represent their mental state. This 

 mental state is characterized by the direction of the thought 

 toward colors and shades. Each word that presents itself, whether 

 to the eyes in reading, or to the ear in listening, or in a mental 

 conception, gives complex ideas of color. These ideas serve as an 

 escort to the word, accompanying it constantly, and are a second- 



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