60 PSTCHOLOOr. 



ward hearing which precedes articulation rises up in his mind. Tliis 

 feeling was formerly unknown to him. He speaks French fluently; but 

 affirms that he can no longer think in French; but must get his French 

 words by translating them from Spanish or German, the languages of 

 his childhood. He dreams no more in visual terms, but only in words, 

 usually Spanish words. A certain degree of verbal blindness affects 

 him — he is troubled by the Greek alphabet, etc.* 



If this patient had possessed the auditory type of imag- 

 ination from the start, it is evident that the injury, what- 

 ever it was, to his centres for optical imagination, would 

 have aflfected his practical life much less profoundly. 



" The auditory ^ype," says M. A. Binet,t " appears to he rarer than 

 the visual. Persons of this type imagine what they think of in the 

 language of sound. In order to remember a lesson they impress upon 

 their mind, not the look of the page, but the sound of the words. 

 They reason, as well as remember, by ear. In performing a mental ad- 

 dition they repeat verbally the names of the figures, and add, as it 

 were, the sounds, without any thought of the graphic signs. Imag- 

 ination also takes the auditory form. 'When I write a scene,' said 

 Legouve to Scribe, ' I hear ; but you see. In each phrase which I write, 

 the voice of the personage who speaks strikes my ear. Vous., qui etes le 

 theatre meme, your actors walk, gesticulate before your eyes ; I am a 

 listener, you a spectator.'' — ' Nothing more true,' said Scribe ; ' do you 

 know where I am when I write a piece ? In the middle of the parterre.' 

 It is clear that the pure audile, seeking to develop only a single one of 

 his faculties, may, like the pure visualizer, perform astounding feats 

 of memory — Mozart, for example, noting from memory the Miserere of 

 the Sistine Chapel after two hearings ; the deaf Beethoven, composing 

 and inwardly repeating his enormous symphonies. On the other hand, 

 the man of auditory type, like the visual, is exposed to serious dangers ; 

 for if he lose his auditory images, he is without resource and breaks 

 down completely. 



" It is possible that persons with hallucinations of hearing, and in- 



* In a letter to Charcot this interesting patient adds that his character 

 also is changed : "I was formerly receptive, easily made enthusiastic, and 

 possessed a rich fancy. Now I am quiet and cold, and fancy never carries 

 my thoughts away. ... 1 am much less susceptible than formerly lo 

 anger ©r sorrow. I lately lost my dearly-beloved mother; but felt far less 

 grief at the bereavement than if I had been able to see in my mind's eye 

 her physiognomy and the phases of her suffering, and especially less than 

 if 1 had been able to witness in imagination the outward effects of her un- 

 timely loss upon the members of the family. " 



f Psychologic du Raisonnement (1886), p. 25. 



