galton.org 107
Colour Associations
107
Messrs. Bleuler and Lehmann.
[1]
One of the authors had the faculty very
strongly, and the other had not; so they worked conjointly with advantage.
They carefully tabulated the particulars of sixty-two cases. As my present
object is to subordinate details to the general impression that I wish to
convey of the peculiarities of different minds, I will simply remark—First,
that the persistence of the colour association with sounds is fully as
remarkable as that of the Number-Form with numbers. Secondly, that the
vowel sounds chiefly evoke them. Thirdly, that the seers are invariably
most minute in their description of the precise tint and hue of the colour.
They are never satisfied, for instance, with saying “blue,” but will take a
great deal of trouble to express or to match the particular blue they mean.
Fourthly, that no two people agree, or hardly ever do so, as to the colour
they associate with the same sound. Lastly, that the tendency is very
hereditary. The publications just mentioned absolve me from the necessity
of giving many extracts from the numerous letters I have received, but I
am particularly anxious to bring the brilliancy of these colour associations
more vividly before the reader than is possible by mere description. I have
therefore given the elaborately-coloured diagrams in Plate IV., which
were copied by the artist directly from the original drawings, and which
have been printed by the superimposed impressions of different colours
from different lithographic stones. They have been, on the whole, very
faithfully executed, and will serve as samples of the most striking cases.
Usually the sense of colour is much too vague to enable the seer to
reproduce the various tints so definitely as those in this Plate. But this is
by no means universally the case.
Fig. 68 is an excellent example of the occasional association of colours
with letters. It is by Miss Stones, the head teacher in a high school for
girls, who, as I have already mentioned, obtained useful information for
me, and has contributed several suggestive remarks of her own. She says
[1]
Zwangmassige Lichtempfindungen durch Schall und verwandte Erscheinungen, von
E. Bleuler und K. Lehmann. Leipsig, Fues’ Verlag (R. Reisland), 1881.
