66 P8TGH0L0OT. 



manuscript speech with its original erasures and corrections. He can- 

 not lay the ghost, and he puzzles in trying to decipher it. 



" Some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered; 

 they attend to the visual equivalent and not to the sound of the words, 

 and they read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip of paper, 

 such as is unwound from telegraphic instruments. " 



The reader will find further details in Mr. Galton's 

 'Inquiries into Human Faculty,' pjj. 83-114.* I have 

 myself for many years collected from each and all of my 

 psychology-students descriptions of their own visual 

 imagination ; and found (together with some curious idio- 

 syncrasies) corroboration of all the variations which Mr. 

 Galton reports. As examples, I subjoin extracts from tw o 

 cases near the ends of the scale. The writers are first cous- 

 ins, grandsons of a distinguished man of science. The one 

 \rho is a good visualizer says : 



" This morning's breakfast-table is both dim and bright; it is dim if 

 I try to think of it when my eyes are open upon any object; it is per- 

 fectly clear and bright if I think of it with my eyes closed.— All the 

 objects are clear at once, yet when I confine my attention to any one 

 object it becomes far more distinct. — I have more power to recall color 

 than any other one thing: if, for example, I were to recall a plate deco- 

 rated with flowers I could reproduce in a drawing the exact tone, etc. 

 The color of anything that was on the table is perfectly vivid. — There 

 is very little limitation to the extent of my images: I can see all four 

 sides of a room, I can see all four sides of two, three, four, even more 

 rooms with such distinctness that if you should ask me what was in any 

 particular place in any one, or ask me to count the chairs, etc., I could 

 do it without the least hesitation. — The more I learn by heart the more 

 clearly do I see images of my pages. Even before I can recite the lines 

 I see them so that I could give them very slowly word for word, but 

 my mind is so occupied in looking at my printed image that I have no 

 idea of what I am saying, of tlie sense of it, etc. When I first found 

 myself doing this I used to tliink it was merely because I knew the lines 

 imperfectly; but I have quite convinced myself that I really do see an 

 image. The strongest proof that such is really the fact is, I think, the 

 following: 



"I can look down the mentally seen page and see the words that 

 commence all the lines, and from any one of these words I can continue 



* See also McCosh and Osborne, Princeton Review, Jan. 1884. There 

 are some good examples of high development of the Faculty in the London 

 Spectator, Dec. 28, 1878, pp. 1631, 1634, Jan. 4, 11, 25, and March 18, 1879. 



