318 COLOURED THINKING 



phrases as, "ever since I can remember", "ever since child- 

 hood I have always had it", "I do not remember the time 

 when I had not", etc. A writer in "Nature" in 1891,(29) 

 reports on the psychochromes of his daughter when seven 

 years old, at which age she had specifically different colours 

 for the days of the week, namely: blue, pink, brown or grey, 

 brown or grey, white, white, and black. The months of the 

 year were coloured in the following way by a girl of ten who 

 had so thought of them ever since she could remember: 

 brown, olive-green, "art" blue, green-yellow, pink, pale 

 green, pale mauve, orange, orange-brown, grey, grey out- 

 lined in black and finally red. 



A boy ten years old is reported in the article on Colour 

 Hearing in the "British Review", (^^) to have "noticed that 

 the number eight invariably provoked in him the sensation 

 of apricot-yellow, and the number fifteen that of peacock 

 blue". There seems not the slightest doubt that these 

 colour associations are amongst the earliest that are formed 

 in the child mind of the coloured thinker. 



The second characteristic of coloured thinking is the 

 unchangeableness of the colour thought of. Middle-aged 

 people will tell you that there has been no alteration in the 

 colours or even in the tints and shades of colour which, for 

 many years, they have associated with their various concepts. 

 Galton remarked on this in his original monograph: "They 

 are very little altered," he said, " by the accidents of educa- 

 tion." Galton's phrase was they result from "Nature not 

 nurture". Just as their origination is not due to the in- 

 fluence of the environment, so the environment exercises no 

 modifying influence on them even during a long life. 



The third characteristic of psychochromes is the extreme 

 definiteness in the minds of their possessors. Contrary to 

 what might reasonably be expected, the precise colours 

 attached to concepts are by no means vague or incapable 

 of accurate verbal description. A coloured thinker is most 



