8 2 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



number pronounced is more than the person can repeat exactly. 

 I then ask him abruptly if he saw the numbers or heard them 

 in his memory. Remark that this experiment appeals by its 

 method wholly to the auditive memory. In nine cases out of ten, 

 taking the subjects as they come, they will answer that they 

 heard the numbers "in their ear," and had no idea of seeing 

 them ; or, if they saw them, it was by a confused, indirect mental 

 vision. But those persons who have colored audition will answer 

 that they saw the numbers. Although their auditive memory 

 was excited by hearing, they transformed the auditive image of 

 the number into a visual one; their attention was fixed on the 

 form, the color an excellent example of that tendency to trans- 

 form everything into visions which seems to me to be the char- 

 acteristic of colored audition. 



This mental organization agrees in many of its characteris- 

 tics, with that of the painter, the mark of whose vocation may be 

 found, as M. Arreat has indicated in his La Psychologie du 

 Peintre, in his sensitive eye and his aptitude in appreciating, ab- 

 stracting, and reproducing the brilliancy of colors and the har- 

 mony of forms, from which he acquires a habit of thinking with 

 visual images. The natural gifts of the painter are, however, not 

 all that is required for colored audition, but are only one of the 

 psychological conditions of the phenomenon. A person capable 

 of recollecting colors with their most delicate shadings might, by 

 giving free course to his poetic imagination, color all the sounds 

 that vibrate in his ear ; but he would only arrive at intentional 

 comparisons which he can make and unmake at will. The associa- 

 tion in colored audition is very different ; it is not sought for or 

 selected ; the subject does not invent it, he finds it already formed 

 in his mind. He has only to hear a voice to have almost instantly 

 the impression that that voice has a certain shade of color. Here 

 we touch upon the fundamental characteristic of colored audition. 

 Since it consists of an artificial and insurmountable association, it 

 can not be regarded as a strictly physiological condition ; it is a 

 deviation, however insignificant we may suppose it to be, from the 

 usual normal course of thought. Yet it generally coincides, ac- 

 cording to the observations of the best authors, with a perfect 

 state of physical and moral health, with perhaps a slight pre- 

 dominance of the nervous temperament in the majority of the sub- 

 jects. The influence of heredity has been noticed several times. 

 There have been as many as four or five cases in the same family, 

 and considerable resemblance between the colored alphabets of 

 relatives. 



If the ultimate fundamental origin of colored audition is, as we 

 beieve, in the organization of the individual, it remains to find 

 the occasional cause that determines it and establishes a precise 



