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Inquiries into Human Faculty
explanation without attaching too much importance to it, because it seems to me that if it
was true, my direct recollection of those coloured borders would have been stronger than it
is; still, the strong association of my chronology with colour seems to plead in favour of
that explanation."
Figs. 66, 67. These two are selected out of a large collection of
coloured Forms in which the months of the year are visualised. They will
illustrate the gorgeousness of the mental imagery of some favoured
persons. Of these Fig. 66 is by the wife of an able London physician, and
Fig. 67 is by Mrs. Kempe Welch, whose sister, Miss Bevington, a well-
known and thoughtful writer, also sees coloured imagery in connection
with dates. This Fig. 67 was one of my test cases, repeated after the lapse
of two years, and quite satisfactorily. The first communication was a
descriptive account, partly in writing, partly by word of mouth; the
second, on my asking for it, was a picture which agreed perfectly with the
description, and explained much that I had not understood at the time. The
small size of the Fig. in the Plate makes it impossible to do justice to the
picture, which is elaborate and on a large scale; with a perspective of
similar hills stretching away to the far distance, and each standing for a
separate year. She writes
“It is rather difficult to give it fully without making it too definite; on each side there is
a total blank.”
The instantaneous association of colour with sound characterises a
small percentage of adults, and it appears to be rather common, though in
an ill-developed degree, among children. I can here appeal not only to my
own collection of facts, but to those of others, for the subject has latterly
excited some interest in Germany. The first widely known case was that
of the brothers Nussbaumer, published in 1873 by Professor Bruhl of
Vienna, of which the English reader will find an account in the last
volume of Lewis’s Problems of Life and Mind (p. 280). Since then many
occasional notices of similar associations have appeared. A pamphlet
containing numerous cases was published in Leipsic in 1881 by two Swiss
investigators,
