110 galton.org
110
Inquiries into Human Faculty
letters. Ever since childhood these have been distinct and unchanging in my
consciousness; sometimes, although very seldom, I have mentioned them, to the
amazement of my teachers and the scorn of my comrades. A is brown. I say it most
dogmatically, and nothing will ever have the effect, I am convinced, of making it appear
otherwise! I can imagine no explanation of this association. [He goes into much detail as to
conceivable reasons connected with his childish life to show that none of these would do.]
Shades of brown accompany to my mind the various degrees of openness in pronouncing
A. I have never been destitute in all my conscious existence of a conviction that E is a
clear, cold, light-gray blue. I remember daubing in colours, when quite a little child, the
picture of a jockey, whose shirt received a large share of E, as I said to myself while
daubing it with green. [He thinks that the letter I may possibly be associated with black
because it contains no open space, and 0 with white because it does.] The colour of R has
been invariably of a copper colour, in which a swarthy blackness seems to intervene,
visually corresponding to the trilled pronunciation of R. This same appearance exists also
in J, X, and Z.”
The upper row of Fig. 69 shows the various shades of brown,
associated with different pronunciations of the letter A, as in “fame,”
“can,” “charm,” and “all” respectively. The second, third and fourth rows
similarly refer to the various pronunciations of the other vowels. Then
follow the letters of the alphabet, grouped according to the character of
the appearance they suggest. After these come the numerals. Then I give
three lines of words such as they appear to him. The first is my own name,
the second is “London,” and the third is “Visualisation.” Proceeding
conversely, Dr. Key collected scraps of various patterns of wall paper, and
sent them together with the word that the colour of the several patterns
suggested to him. Specimens of these are shown in the three bottom lines
of the Fig. I have gone through the whole of them with care, together with
his descriptions and reasons, and can quite understand his meaning, and
how exceedingly complex and refined these associations are. The patterns
are to him like words in poetry, which call up associations that any
substituted word of a like dictionary meaning would fail to do. It would
not, for example, be possible to print words by the use of counters
coloured like those in Fig. 69, because the
