 CHAPTER XXI. NUMBER FORMS. Persons who are imaginative almost invariably think of numerals in some form of visual imagery. The idea of six occurs to them, the word six does not sound in their mental ear, but the figure of six in original printed form rises before their mental eye. The clearness of the images of numerals and the number of them that can be mentally viewed at the same time differs greatly in different persons. The most common case is to see only two or three figures at once, and then a position too vague to admit of definition. There are a few persons in whom the visualising of faculty is so low that they can mentally see neither numerals nor anything else, and again there are a few to whom it is so high as to give rise to hallucinations. Those who are able to visualise a numeral with their distinctness comparable to reality and to behold it, as if it were before their eyes, and not in some sort of dreamland will define the direction of which it seems to lie, and the distance at which it appears to be. If they were looking at a ship on the horizon at the moment that the figure six happened to present itself to their minds, they could say whether the image lay to the left or right of the ship, and whether it was above or below the line of the horizon. They could always point to a definite spot in space and say with more or less precision that that was the direction in which the image of the figure they were thinking of first appeared. Now the strange psychological fact to which I desire to draw attention is that among persons who visualise figures clearly, there are many who notice that the image of the same figure invariably makes its first appearance in the same direction at the same distance. Such a person would always see the figure when it first appeared to him at, we may suppose, one point of the compass to the left of the line between his eye and the ship at the level of the horizon at a twenty-foot distance. Again we may suppose that he would see the figure seven invariably half a point to the left of the ship at an altitude equal to the sun's diameter above the horizon and at thirty feet distance. Similarly, for all the other figures, consequently when he thinks of the series of numerals one, two, three, four, etc. They show themselves in a definite pattern that always occupies an identical position in his field of view with respect to the direction in which he is looking. Those who do not see figures with the same objectivity use nevertheless the same expressions with reference to their mental field of view. They control what they see in a matter of fairly satisfactory to themselves, but they do not locate it so strictly in reference to their axis of sight and to the horizontal plane that passes through it. It is with them, as in dreams, the imageries before and around, but the eyes during sleep turn inwards and upwards. The pattern or form in which the numerals are seen is by no means the same in different persons, but assumes the most grotesque variety of shapes which run in all sorts of angles, bends, curves and zig-zags as represented in the various illustrations to this chapter. The drawings, however, fell in giving the idea of their apparent size to those who see them. They usually occupy a wider range than the mental eye can take in at a single glance, a compelling to wonder. Sometimes they are nearly panoramic. These forms have for the most part certain characteristics in common. They all stated in all cases to have been in existence so far as the earlier numbers in the forms are concerned, as long back as the memory extends. They come into view quite independently of the will and their shape and position at all events in the mental field of view is nearly invariable. They have other points in common to which I shall shortly draw attention, but first I will endeavour to remove all doubt as to the authenticity and trustworthiness of these statements. I see no form myself, and first I retain as such a thing existed through a letter from Mr. G. Bitter Q. C. in which he described his own case as a very curious peculiarity. I was at the time making inquiries about the strength of the visualising faculty in different persons, and among the numerous replies that reached me I soon collected 10 or 12 other cases in which the writers spoke of their same numerals in definite forms. Though the information came from independent sources, the expressions used were so closely alike that they strongly corroborated one another. Of course, I eagerly followed up the inquiry, and when I collected enough material to justify publication, I wrote an account which appeared in nature on 15 January, 1880, with several illustrations. This has led to a wide correspondence and to a much increased store of information which enables me to arrive at the following conclusions. The answers I recede whenever I have pushed my questions have been straightforward and precise. I have not unfrequently procured a second sketch of the form even after more than two years' interval, and found it to agree closely with the first one. I have also questioned many of my own friends in general terms as to whether they visualised numbers in any particular way. The large majority are unable to do so, but every now and then I meet with persons who possess the faculty, and I have become familiar with a quick look of intelligence with which they receive my question. It is as though some chord had been struck which had not been struck before, and the verbal answers they give me are precisely of the same type as those written ones of which I have now so many. I cannot doubt the authenticity of independent statements which closely confirm one another, nor of the general accuracy of the accompanying sketches, because I find now that my collection is large enough for classification that they might be arranged in an approximately continuous series. I am often told that the peculiarity is common to the speaker and to some near relative, and they have found such to be the case by accident. I have the strongest evidence of its hereditary character after allowing, and over-allowing, for all conceivable influences of education and family tradition. Last of all, I took advantage of the opportunity afforded by a meeting of the Anthropological Institute to read a memoir there on the subject, and to bring with me many gentlemen well-known in the scientific world who have this habit of seeing numerals in forms, and whose diagrams were suspended on the walls. Amongst them are Mr. G. Bitter, QC, the Reverend Mr. G. Henslau, the botanist, Professor Shuster, FRS, the physicist, Mr. Rochette, Mr. Woodsmith, and Colonel Ewell C. B., the geographer. These diagrams I give it on plate one figures 20 to 24. I wish that some of my foreign correspondents could also have been present, such as Mr. M. Antoine Diabari, the well-known French traveler and member of the Institute, and Baron V. Austin Sacken, the Russian diplomatist and entomologist, for they had given and procured me much information. I feel sure that I have now set enough to remove doubts as to the authenticity of my data, that trustworthiness will, a trust, be still more apparent as I proceed. It has been abundantly manifest to myself from the internal evidences in a large mass of correspondents, to which I can, unfortunately, do no adequate justice in a brief memoir. It remains to treat the data in the same way as any other scientific fact, and to extract as much meaning from them as possible. The peculiarity in question is found, speaking very roughly, in about one out of every 30 adult males or 15 females. It consists in the sudden automatic appearance of a visibid and invariable form in the mental field of view, whenever a numeral is thought of, in which each numeral has its own definite place. This form may consist of a mere line of any shape of peculiar-arranged row or rows of figures, or of a shaded space. I give woodcuts of representative specimens of these forms, and very brief descriptions of them, extracted from the letters of my correspondents. 63 other diagrams on a smaller scale we found in plates one, two, and three, and two more which are colored or given on plate four. An engraving is displayed on the page with footnote text. The engraver took much pain to interpret the meaning of the rather faint but carefully made drawing by strengthening some of the shades. The result was very, very satisfactory, judging from the author's own view of it, which is as follows. Certainly, if the engraver has been as successful with all the other representations, as with that of my shape and such accompaniments, your article must be entirely correct. DA. From the very first, I've seen numals up to nearly 200 range themselves always in a particular manner, and in thinking of a number, it always takes its place in the figure. The more attention I give to the properties of numerals and their interpretations, the less I'm troubled with the clumsy framework for them. But it is indelible in my mind's eye, even when for a long time must consciously so. The higher numbers are to me quite abstract and unconnected with a shape. This rough and untidy production is the best I can do towards representing what I see. There was a little difficulty in the performance, because it is only by catching on self at unaware, so to speak, then one is quite sure that what one sees is not affected by temporary imagination. But it does not seem much like, chiefly because the mental picture never seems on the flat, but in thick, dark gray atmosphere, deepening in certain parts, especially where one emerges in about 20. Now I get from 100 to 120, I hardly know. Though if I could require these figures a few times without thinking of them on purpose, I should soon notice. About 200 I lose or framework. I don't see the actual figures very distinctly, but what there is of them is distinguished from the dark by thing and what is tracing. It is the place they take and the shape they make collectively, which is inferrable. Nothing more definitely takes this place than a person's age. The person is usually there so long as his age is in mind. Another image displayed on the page with footnote text, TM. The representation I carry in my mind of the numerical series is quite distinct to me, so much that I cannot think of any number, but I at once see it, as it were, in a peculiar place in the diagram. My remembrance of dates is also nearly entirely dependent on a clear mental vision of their look-eye in the diagram. This, as nearly as I can draw it, is the following. It is only approximately correct if the term correct be at all applicable. The numbers seem to approach more closely as I ascend from 10 to 20, 30, 40, etc. The lines embracing 100 numbers also seem to approach as I go on to 400, 500, to 1000. Beyond 1000, I have only the sense of an infinite line in the direction of the arrow, losing itself in darkness towards the millions. Any special number of thousands returns in my mind to its position in the parallel lines from 1 to 1000. The diagram was present in my mind from early childhood. I remember that I learned the multiplication table by reference to it at the age of 7 or 8. I need to highly say that the impression is not that of perfectly straight lines. I therefore used no rule in drawing it. The image displayed on the page of footnote text, JS. The figures are about a quarter inch in length and an ordinary type. They're black on a white ground. The numeral 200 generally takes a place of 100 and obliterates it. There is no lot of shade and the picture is inviourable. In some cases, the mental eye has to travel along the faintly marked and blank paths of form to the place where the numeral that is wanted is known to reside. And then the figure starts into sight. In other cases, all the numeral as far as 100 or more are faintly seen at once, but the figure that is wanted grows more vivid than its neighbours. In one of the cases there is as a word chain and the particular link rises as if an unseen hand had lifted it. The forms are sometimes variously coloured occasionally very brilliantly. See, plate 4. In all of these, the definition and illumination vary much in different parts. Usually the forms fade away into indistinctness after 100. Sometimes they come to a dead stop. The higher numbers very rarely feel so large a space in the forms as the lower ones and the diminution of space occupied by them is so increasingly rapid that I thought it not possible they might diminish according to some geometrical law. Such as that which governs sensitivity. I talk many careful measurements and average them, but the result did not justify the supposition. It is beyond dispute that these forms originate at an early age. They are subsequently often developed in boy holding youth so as to include the higher numbers and among mathematical students the negative values. Nearly all of my correspondents speak with confidence of their forms having been in existence as far back as they recollect. One states that he knows he possessed it at the age of four. Another that he learned his multiplication table by the age of the elaborate mental diagram he still uses. Not one in ten is able to suggest any clue as to their origin. They cannot be due to anything written or printed because they do not stimulate what is found in ordinary writings or books. About one third of the figures are carved to the left, two thirds to the right. They run more often upward than downward. They do not commonly lie in a single plane. Sometimes a form has twists as well as bends. Sometimes it is turned upside down. Sometimes it plunges into an abyss of a measurable depth or it rises and disappears in the sky. My correspondents are often in difficulties and trying to draw them in perspective. One sent me a stereoscopic picture photographed from a wire that had been bent into the proper shape. In one case the form proceeds at first straightforward then it makes it backward sweep high above head and finally recurves into the pocket of all places. It is often sloped upwards as slight inclination from little below the level of the eye just as objects on a table would appear to a child whose chin was barely above it. It may seem strange that children should have such bold conceptions as of curves sweeping loftily upward or downward to immeasurable depths but I think it may be accounted for by a much larger personal experience of the vocal dimensions of space than adults. They uplifted, tossing and swung but adults past had lies very much at a level at only judge of heights by inference from the picture on the retina. Whenever a man first ventures up in a balloon or is let like a gatherer of seabird eggs over the face of a precipice he is conscious of having acquired a much extended experience of the third dimension of space. The character of the forms under which historical dates are visualized contrast strongly with the ordinary number forms. They are sometimes copied from the numerical ones but they are more commonly based both clearly and consciously on the diagrams used in the school room or on some recollected fancy. The months of the year are usually perceived as ovals and they as often follow one another in a reverse direction to those of the figures on the clock as in the same direction. It is a common peculiarity that the months do not occupy equal spaces but those that are most important to the chart extend more widely than the rest. There are many varieties as to the top most month. It's by no means always January. The forms of the letters of the alphabet were imagined as they sometimes are and that way very equally easy to be accounted for. Therefore the ordinary number form is the oldest of all and consequently the most interesting. I suppose that it first came into existence when the child was learning to count and was used by him as a natural mnemonic diagram to which he referred the spoken words one, two, three etc. Also that as soon as he began to read the visual symbol figures supplanted their verbal sounds and permanently established themselves on the form. It therefore existed at an earlier date than that at which the child began to learn to read. It represents his mental process at a time of which no other record remains. It persists in vigorous activity and offers itself freely to our examination. The teachers of many schools and colleges some in America have kindly questioned their pupils for me. The results are given in the two first columns of plate one. It appears that the proportion of young people who see numerals in forms is greater than that of adults. But for the most part their forms are neither well defined nor complicated. I conclude that when they are too faint to be of service they are gradually neglected and become wholly forgotten while if they are vivid and useful they increase in vividness and definition by the effect of habitual use. Hence in adults the two classes of series and non-series are rather sharply defined the connecting link of intermediate cases which is observable in childhood having disappeared. These forms are the most remarkable existing instances of what is called topical memory the existence of which appears to lie in the establishment of a more exact system of division of labor in the different parts of the brain that is usually carried on. Topical aids to memory are of the greatest service to many persons and teachers or minimalics make light to them as by advising a speaker to mentally associate the corners etc of a room with the chief divisions of the speech he is about to deliver. Those who feel the advantage of these aids most strongly are the most likely to cultivate the use of numerical forms I have read many books on minimalics and cannot doubt their utility to some persons to myself the systems of no of our whatever but simply a stumbling block nevertheless I am well aware that many of my early associations are fanciful and silly the question remains why do the lines of the forms run in such strange and peculiar ways the reply is that different persons have natural fancies for different lines and curves their handwriting shows this for handwriting is by no means solely dependent on the balance of the muscles of the hand causing such and such strokes to be made with greater facility than others handwriting is greatly modified by the fashion of the time is in reality a compromise between what the writer most likes to produce and what he can produce with the greatest ease to himself I am sure too that I can trace a connection between the general look of the handwriting of my various correspondence and the lines of their forms if a spider were to visualise new models we might expect it would do so in some well-shaped fashion and it be in hexagons the definite domestic architecture of all animals is seen in their nests arid holes show the universal tendency of each species to pursue their work according to a certain definite lines and shapes which are to them instinctive and in no way we may presume logical the same is seen in the groups and formations of fox or gregarious animals and the flights of gregarious birds among which the wedge-shaped fellings of wild ducks and the huge globes soaring stalks are as remarkable as any I used to be much amused during past travels in watching the different lines of search that were pursued by different persons and looking for objects lost on the ground when the encampment was being broken up different persons had decided to idiosyncrasies so much that if their travelling line of sight could have scored a mark on the ground I think the system of each person would have been as characteristic of his number form children learn their figures to some extent by those on the clock I cannot however trace influence of the clock on the forms in more than a few cases in two of them the clock face actually appears in others it has evidently had a strong influence and the rest of its influence is indicated but nothing more I suppose that the complex roman numerals in the clock do not fit in sufficiently well with the simpler ideas based upon the arabic ones the other traces of the origin of the forms that appear here and there are dominoes, cards, counters and abacus, the fingers, counting boy coins feet and inches a yellow carbonous rule appears in one case with 56 enlarged figures upon it the country surrounding the child's home with hills and dales objects in the garden one scientific man sees the old garden walk and the numerals seven at a tub sunk on the ground where his father filled his watering pot some associations seem connected with the objects spoken of in the doggerel verses by which children often taunt their numbers but the paramount influence proceeds from the names of the numerals our nominclature is perfectly bibrous and that of other civilized nations is not better than ours and frequently worse as a french quattrovingte diksut or four score ten and eight instead of 88 we speak of 10, 11, 12, 13, etc in defiance the beautiful system of decimal notation in which we write those numbers what we see is one nought one, one, one, two, etc and we should pronounce that on principle with this provisio that the word for the one having to show both the place and the value should have a sound suggestive one but not identical with it let us suppose it to be the letter o pronounced short as in on then instead of 10, 11, 12, 13, etc we might say on nought on one, on two, on three, etc the conflict between the two systems creates a perplexity to which conclusive testimony is borne by these numerical forms in most of them there is a mark h at the 12 and this repeats itself at the 120 the run of the lines between 1 and 20 is really analogous to that between 20 and 100 where usually first becomes regular the tains frequently occupy a larger space than they do it is not easier to define in words the variety of traces of the difficulty and annoyance caused by our unscientific nomenclature that are portrayed vividly and so to speak painfully in these pictures there are indelible scars that testify to the effort an engineering to which sort of compromise was struck before and has finally been affected between the verbal and decimal systems I am sure that this difficulty is more serious and abiding than has been suspected not only from the persistency of these twists which would have long since been smoothed away if they did not continue to subserve some useful purpose but also from experiments on my own mind I find I can deal mentally with simple sums with less strain if I would be conceived the figures as on nought on one etc I can both dictate and write from dictation with much less trouble than that system or some similar one is adopted I have little doubt that our nomenclature is a serious though unsuspected hindrance to the ready adoption by the public of a decimal system of weights and measures three quarters of the forms bear a due decimal impress I will now give brief explanations of the number forms drawn in Plates 1, 2 and 3 and in the two front figures from Plate 4 Figure 1 is by Mr Walter Lardin Science Master of Cheltenham College who sent me a very interesting elaborate account of his own case which by itself would make a memoir and he has collected other information for me the number forms of one of his colleagues and of that gentleman's sister are given in figures 53, 54, Plate 3 I extract the following from Mr Lardin's letter It is all for which I can find space All numbers are to me as images of figures in general I see them in ordinary Arabic type except in some special cases they have definite positions in space as shown in the figure Beyond 100 I am conscious of coming down a dotted line to the position of one again and becoming over the same cycle exactly as before e.g. with 120 in Plates 20 and so on up to 140 or 150 with higher numbers the imagery is less definite thus for 1140 I can only say that there are no new positions I do not see the entire number in the Plates of 40 but if I think of it as 1140 I see 40 in its place 11 in its place and 100 in its place The picture is not single though the ideas combine I seem to stand near one I have to turn somewhat to see from 30 to 40 and more and more to see from 40 to 100 100 lies up to my right hand behind me I see no shading nor color in the figures Figures 2 to 6 are from Returns Collected for me by the Reverend A. D. Hill Science Master Winchester College who sent me replies for 135 boys of the average age of 1415 He says speaking of their replies to my numerous questions on visualizing generally that they represent fairly those who could answer anything the boys certainly seemed interested in the subject the others who had no such faculty either attempting and failing or not finding any response in their minds took no interest in the inquiry A very remarkable case of her mandatory color association was sent to me by Mr. Hill to which I shall refer later The only five good cases of number forms among the 135 boys are those shown in the figures I need only describe Figure 2 that boys says Numbers except the first 20 appearing waves The two crossing lines 60 to 70, 140, 150 never appear at the same time The first 12 are the image of a clock and 13 to 20 a continuation of them Figures 7, 8 are sent to me by Mr. Henry F. Osborne of Princeton in the United States who is given cordial assistance in obtaining information as regards visualizing generally These two are the only forms included in 60 Returns that he sent 34 of which were from Princeton College and the remaining 26 from Vassar Female College Figures 9 to 19 and figures 28 are from Returns communicated by Mr. W. H. Poole Science Master of Charter House College which are very valuable to me as regards visualizing power generally He read my questions before a meeting of about 60 boys who all consented to reply and he had several subsequent volunteers All the answers were short, straightforward and often amusing Subsequently the inquiry extended I have 168 Returns from him and all containing 12 good number forms shown in Figures 9 to 19 and in Figures 28 The first figure is out of Mr. Poole himself He says The gross statistical result from the school boys is as follows Total Returns 337 Vis Winchester 135 Princeton 34 Charter House 168 The number of these that contain well defined number forms are 5, 1 and 12 respectively or total 18 That is why in 20 It may just be said that the masters should not be counted because it was only into the accident of their seeing the number forms and cells that they became interested in the inquiry If this objection be allowed the proportion will become 16 in 337 or 1 in 21 Again some boys who had no visualizing faculty at all could make no sense out of their questions and wholly refrained from answering This would again diminish the proportion The shyness of some would help in a statistical return to initialize the tenancy to exaggeration in others But I do not think there is much room for correction on either head Neither do I think it requisite to make much allowance for inaccurate answers as the tone of the replies is simple and straightforward Those from Princeton where the students are older and had been specially warned are remarkable for indications of self-restrange The results of personal inquiries among adults, quite independent and of prior to these gave me the proportion of 1 in 30 as provisional result for adults This is well confirmed by the present returns of 1 in 21 among boys in use as I could have expected I have not a sufficient number of returns from girls for useful comparison with the above Though I much indebted to Ms. Lewis for 33 reports to Ms. Cooper of Edgebaston for 10 reports from the female teachers at her school and to a few other school mistresses such as Ms. Stones of Carnleton whose returns I have utilised in other ways The tenancy to see number forms is certainly higher in girls and in boys Fugue 20 is the form of Mr. George Bitter QC It is of most interest to myself because it was, as I have already mentioned through the receipt of it and an accompanying explanation that my attention was first drawn to the subject Mr. G. Bitter is son of the late well-known engineer the famous calculating boy of the bygone generation whose marvellous feats in mental arithmetic were a standing wonder The faculty is hereditary Mr. G. Bitter himself has multiplied mentally 15 figures by another 15 figures but with less facility than his father It has been again transmitted though in and again reduced degree to the third generation He says One of the most curious peculiarities in my own case is the arrangement of the erythematical numerals I have sketched this to the best of my ability Every number, at least within the first thousand and afterwards thousands, take the place of Eunice is always thought of by me in its own definite place in the series Where it has, if I may say so, a home and an individuality I should however qualify this by saying that when I am multiplying together two large numbers my mind is encroached in the operation and the idea of locality in the series for the moment sinks out of promise Fugue 21 is that of Professor Shuster FRS whose visualizing powers are of a very high order and it was given me valuable information but want of space compels me to extract very briefly He says to the effect The diagram and numerals which I usually see has roughly the shape of a horseshoe lying on a slightly inclined plane with the open in towards me It always comes in the view in front of me a little to the left so that the right hand branch of the horseshoe at the bottom which I play zero is in front of my left eye When I move my eyes without moving my head the diagram remains fixed in space and does not follow the movement of my eye When I move the head, the diagram unconsciously follows the movement but I can, by an effort, keep it fixed in space as before I can also shift it from one part of the field to the other and even turn it upside down I use the diagram as a resting place for my memory placing a number in it and finding it again when I want to A remarkable property of the diagram is the sort of elasticity which enables me to join the two ends of the horseshoe together when I want to connect 100 with zero The same elasticity causes me to see that part of the diagram which I fix my attention larger than the rest Mr Shuster makes the occasional use of a simpler form of diagram which is a little more than a straight line variously divided and which I need not to describe in detail Figure 22 is by Colonel Yule C.B. It is simpler than the others and is found to become sensibly weaker in later years It is now faint and hard to fix Figure 23, Mr Wood Smith Above 200, the form becomes vague and is soon lost except that 999 is always in a corner like 99 My own position in regard to it is generally nearly opposite my own age which is 50 now at which point I can face either towards 7 to 12 or towards 1220 or 20 to 7 but never I think with my back to 12 to 20 Figure 24, Mr Ruljet He writes to the effect that the first 12 are clearly divided on the spots in dominoes After 100, there is nothing clear but 108 The form is so deeply engraved in his mind that a strong effort of the will was required to substitute any artificial arrangement in his place His father, the late Dr Ruljet well known for many years as Secretary of the Rural Society had trained him and his childhood to the use of the Memoria Technica of Fenegal in which each year has its special place in the walls of a particular room and the rooms of a house represent successive centuries but he never could locate them in that way They would go to what seemed their natural homes in the arrangement shown in the figure which had come to him from some unknown source The remaining figures, 25 to 28 in plate 1 sufficiently express themselves The last belongs to one of the Charter House boys the others respectively to a musical critic to a clergyman and to a gentleman who is, I believe, now a barrister Description of plate 2 Plate 2 contains examples of more complicated forms which severely requires so much minute-ness of description that I am in despair of being able to do justice to them separately and must leave most of them to tell their own story Figure 34 is that of Mr Flinders Petrie to which I have already referred, page 66 Figure 37 is by Professor Herbert M. Leaud FRS I will quote his letter almost in full as it is a very good example When your first article on visualised numerals appeared in nature I thought of writing to tell you my own case of which I had never previously spoken to anyone and which I never contemplated putting on paper It becomes now a duty to me to do so for it is a fourth case of the influence of the clock face In my article I had spoken of only three cases known to me FG The enclosed paper will give you a rough notion of the apparent positions of numbers in my mind that is due to learning the clock is, I think, proved by my being able to tell the clock certainly before I was four and probably went little more than three but my mother cannot tell me the exact date I had a habit of arranging my spoon and fork on my plate to indicate the positions of the hands and I will remember being astonished at seeing an old watch of my grandmothers which had ordinary numerals in place of Roman ones All this happened before I could read I have no recollection of learning the numbers unless I was by seeing numbers stenciled on the barrels in my father's brewery When learning the numbers from 12 to 20 they appeared to be vertically above the 12 o'clock and you will see from the enclosed sketch the most prominent numbers which I have underlined all occur in the multiplication table Those doubly underlined are the most prominent The lithographer has not read these correctly FG And just now I caught myself doing what I did not anticipate After doubly underlining some of the numbers I found that all the multiples of 12 except 84 are so marked In the sketch I have written in all the numbers up to 30 the others are not added merely for want of space They appear in their corresponding positions You will see that 21 is curiously placed probably to get a fresh start for the next 10 The loops greatly diminish in size as the numbers rise and it seems rather curious that the numbers from 100 to 120 resemble and form those from 1 to 20 Going to 144 the arrangement is just marked and beyond 200 they entirely vanish although there is some hazy recollection of a futile attempt to learn the multiplication table after 20 times 20 On the preceding page plate 2 examples of number forms is displayed Neither my mother nor my sister is conscious of any mental arrangement of numerals I have not found any idea of this kind among any of my colleagues to whom I have spoken on the subject and several of them have ridiculed the notion and possibly think me a lunatic for having any such feeling I was showing the scheme to G shortly after your first article appeared on the piece of paper I enclosed and he arranged the diagram to a separate most amusingly and grotesque form FG With a remark If you are a rich man, I knew I was mentioned in your will I should destroy that piece of paper in case it be brought forward as an evidence of insanity I mentioned this in connection with the paragraph in your article Figure 40 is, I think, the most complicated form I possess It was communicated to me by Mr Wood Smith as that of Miss LK, a lady who was governess and a family Hermes here closely questioned both with inquiries of his own and by submitting others subsequently sent by myself It is impossible to convey its full meaning briefly and I am not sure that I understand much of the principle of it myself It shows part only, I have not written for more, of the series two, three, five, seven, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, each has two sides of a square That is, larger or smaller according to the magnitude of the number One does not appear anywhere See, similarly, shows part of the series or divisible by three of six, nine, fifteen, twenty-one, twenty-seven, thirty thirty-three, thirty-nine, sixty, sixty-three, sixty-six sixty-nine, ninety, ninety-three, ninety-six B shows the way in which most numbers divisible by four appear D shows the form of the numbers seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, forty-one, forty-two to forty-nine, eighty-one to eighty-three, eighty-five to eighty-seven, eighty-nine, one hundred and one to one hundred and three, one hundred and five to one hundred and seven, and one hundred and nine E shows at thirty-one, thirty-three to thirty-five, thirty-seven to thirty-nine The other numbers are not clear, viz. 50, 51, 53 to 55, 57 to 59. Beyond 100, the arrangement becomes hazy, except that the hundreds and thousands go on again in complete consecutive and proportional squares indefinitely. The groups of figures are not seen together, but one or other starts up as the number is thought of. The form has no background, and is always seen in front. No Arabic or other figures are seen with it. Experiments were made as to the time required to get these images well in the mental view by reading to the lady a series of numbers as fast as she could visualize them. The first series consisted of 20 numbers of two figures each, thus 17, 28, 13, 52, etc. These were going through in the first trial in 22 seconds, on the second in 16 and on the third in 26. The second series is more varied, containing numbers of one, two and three figures, thus 121, 117, 345, 187, 13, 6, 25, etc. And these were going through in three trials in 25, 25 and 22 seconds respectively, forming a general result of 23 seconds for 20 numbers or 4 seconds per number. A noticeable feature in this case is the strong accordance of the scale of the image with the magnitude of the number and the geometric regularity of the figures. Some that I drew and sent for the lady to see did not at all satisfy her eye as to their correctness. I should say that not a few mental calculators work by Bolz rather than by numerals. They arrange concrete battalutes symmetrically in rank and file like battalions and march these about. I have one case where each number in a form seems to bear its own weight. Figure 45, 15, a curious instance of a French member of the Institute communicated to me by M. Antoine de Aberdey, whose own number form is shown in Figure 44. He was asked why he puts four in so conspicuous a place. He replied, You see that such a part of my name, which he wishes to withhold, means four in the south of France, which is a cradle of my family. Consequently, que rest ma raison d'etat. Subsequently, in 1880, M. de Aberdey wrote, I mentioned the case of a philosopher who's four, 14, 24, etc., all steps out of the rank in his mind's eye. He has a haze in his mind from 60. I believe it was 50 of G, up to 80, but literally 80 is sprung out, not like the surgeon's four, 14, 24, a lucky captain. Father out still, and valour six times as large as the privates. One, two, three, five, six, etc. Where I superstitious, said he, I should conclude that my death would occur in the 80th year of the century. The growth of 80 was sudden, and has remained constant ever since. This is the only case known to me of a new stage in the development of another form being suddenly attained. Description of Plate 3. Plate 3 is intended to exhibit some instances of hereditary. I have no less than 22 families in which this curious tenancy is hereditary, and there may be many more of which I am still ignorant. I have found it to extend in at least eight of these beyond the new degrees of parent and child and brother and sister. Considering that the occurrence is so rare as to exist in only about one in every 25 or 30 males, these results are very remarkable, and their trustworthiness is increased by the fact that the hereditary tenancy is on the whole the strongest in those cases where the number forms are the most defined and elaborate. I give four instances in which the hereditary tenancy is found. Not only in having a form at all, but also in some degree in the shape of the form. Figures 40, 60, 49 are those of various members of the Henslau family where the brother, sister and some children of a sister have the peculiarity. Figures 53 to 54 are those of a master of Chilternham College and his sister. Figures 55 to 56 are those of a father and son. Figures 7 and 58 belong to the same family. Figures 59 is 60 are those of a brother and sister. The lower half of the plate explains itself. The last figure of all, Figures 65 is of interest because it was drawn for an intelligent little girl of only 11 years old, and she has been closely questioned by her father, and it was accompanied by elaborate colorful illustrations of months and days of the week. I thought this would be a good test case, so I let the matter drop for two years, and then begged the father to question the child casually and to send me a fresh account. I asked at the same time if any notes had been kept at the previous letter. Nothing could have come out of more satisfactorily. No notes have been kept. The subject has passed out of mind, but the imagery remained the same with some trifling and very interesting metamorphosis of details. On the previous page, plate three, examples of an hereditary tendency to see number forms is displayed. Description of plate four. I can find room in plate four for only two instances of colored number forms. Though others are described in plate three, Figures 64 is by Miss Rose G. Kingsley, daughter of the late eminent writer Reverend Charles Kingsley, and herself an authoress. She says, Up to 30 I see the numbers in clear white to 40 in gray, 40 to 50 in flaming orange, 50 to 60 in green, 60 to 70 in dark blue, 70 I am not sure about, 80 is reddish, I think, and 90 is yellow, but these letter divisions are very indistinct in my mind's eye. She subsequently writes, I now includes my diagram. It is very roughly done. I am afraid not nearly as well as I should have liked to have done it. My great fear has been that in thinking it over I might be led to write down something more than what I actually see, but I have to have avoided this. Figures 65 is an attempt at reproducing the forms sent by Mr. George F. Smyth of Ohio, an American correspondent who has contributed much of interest. He says, To me the numbers from 1 to 20 lie in a level plane, but from 20 they slope up to 100 at an angle of about 25 degrees. Beyond 100 they are generally all on a level, but if for any reason I have to think of the numbers from 100 to 200, or from 200 to 300, etc., then the numbers between these 200 they are arranged just as those from 1 to 100 are. I do not, when thinking of a number, picture to myself the figures which represent it, but I do think instantly of the place which it occupies along the line. Moreover in the case of numbers from 1 to 20, and indistinctly from 20 up to 28 or 30, I always picture the number of the figures as occupying a right-angled parallelogram about twice as long as it is broad. The numbers all lie down flat and extend in a straight line from 1 to 12 over an unpleasant, arid sandy plane. At 12 the line turns abruptly to the right, passes into a pleasanter region where grass grows, and so continues up to 20, as 20 the line turns to the left, and passes up the before described incline to 100. This figure will help you in understanding my ridiculous notions. The asterisks marks a place where I commonly seem to myself to stand and view the line at times I take other positions, whenever any position to the left of the asterisks, nor to the right of the line from 20 upwards. I do not associate colours with numbers. There is a great difference in the illumination which different numbers receive. If a traveller should start at 1 and walk to 100, he would be in total glare of light until near 9 or 10. By 11 he would go into a land of darkness and would have to feel his way. At 12 light breaks sin again, a pleasanter sunshine which continues up to 19 or 20 where there is a sort of twilight. From here to 40 the illumination is feeble, but still there is considerable light. At 40 things light up and until one reaches 56 or 57 there is broad daylight. Indeed the track from 48 to 50 is almost as bad as that from 1 to 9. Beyond 60 there's a fair amount of light up to about 97. From this point to 100 it is rather cloudy. In a subsequent letter he adds I enclose a picture in perspective and colour of my form. I have taken great pains with this and am far from satisfied with it. I know nothing about drawing and consequently I am unable to put upon the paper just what I see. The faults which I find with the picture are these. The rectangles stand out too distinctly as something lying on the plane instead of being, as they ought, a part of the plane. The view is taken of necessity from an unnatural standpoint and some other way or other the region 1 to 12 does not look right. The landscape is altogether too distinct in its features. I rather know that there is grass and that there are trees in the distance and see them, but the grass within a few feet of the line I see distinctly I cannot make the hill at the right slope down the plane as it ought. It is too steep. I have had my poor success in indicating my notion of the darkness which overhangs the region of 11. In reality it is not a cloud at all but a darkness. My sister, a married lady, 38 years of age, sees numerals much as I do, but very distinctly. She cannot draw a figure which is not by far too distinct. Most of those who associate colours to numerals do so in a vague way and possible to convey with truth in a painting, but the few who see them with more objectivity many are unable to paint or are unwilling to take the trouble required to match the precise colours of their fancies. A slight error in hue or tint always dissatisfies them with their work. Before dismissing this subject of numerals, I recall attention to a few other associations connected with them. They are often personified by children and characters are associated to them. It may be on account of the part they play in a multiplication table or rowing into some offenceful association with their appearance or the sound. To the minds of some persons the multiplication table appears dramatised and any chance group of figures may afford a plot for a tale. I have collated six full and trustworthy accounts and find a curious dissimilarity in the personifications and preferences, thus the number 315 described as one, disliked, two, a treacherous sneak, three, a good old friend, four, delightful and amusing, five, a female companion, two, two, six, a fable edition of nine. In one point alone do I find any approach to unanimity and that is in the respect paid to 12. As in the following examples. One, important and influential. Two, good and cautious. So good as to be always noble. Three, a more beautiful number than 10, from the many multiples that make it up. In other words, it's kindly relations to so many small numbers. Four, a great love for 12. A large-hearted, muddly person because of the number of little ones that it takes as a were under its protection, the decimal system seems to be treason against this muddly 12. All the conquers were the importers assigned to other reasons to the number 12 in the number form. There was no agreement as to the sex of numbers. I myself had absolutely enough fancy that of course the even numbers would be taken to be of the male sex and was surprised to find that they were not. I mention this as an example of the curious way which our minds may be unconsciously prejudiced by survival some forgotten early fancies. I cannot find on inquiring on philologists any indications of different sexes having been assigned in any language to different numbers. Mr. Henshin has published an analysis of the Talmud on the odd principle of indexing the various patches according to the number they may have to contain. Thus such a phase as there were three men who, etc, would be entered under the number three. I cannot find any particular preference given there to special numbers. Even seven occurs less than one, two, three, four, and ten. Their respective frequency being forty-seven, fifty-four, fifty-three, sixty-four, fifty-four, fifty-one. Twelve occurs only sixteen times. Gamblers have not unfrequently the silliest ideas concerning numbers. Their heads being filled with notions about lucky figures and beautiful combinations then. There is a very amusing chapter in Rome, Contemporane, by E. about, in which he speaks of this in connection with the rage for lottery tickets. End of Chapter Twenty-One End of Section Five Section Six Of Human Faculty Nits Development by Francis Galton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on a volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter Twenty-Two Colour Associations Numerals are occasionally seen in Arabic or other figures, not disposed in any particular form, but coloured. An instance of this is represented in Figure Sixty-Nine towards the middle part of the column. But as I shall have shortly to enter at length into the colour associations of the author, I will pass over this portion of them, and will quote in preference from the letter of another correspondent. Baron von Osten II, of whom I have already spoken, writes, The localisation of numerals peculiar to certain persons is foreign to me. In my minds, I had the figures appear in front of me within a limited space. My peculiarity, however, consists in the fact that the numerals from one to nine are differently coloured. One black, two yellow, three pale brick red, four brown, five blackish gray, six reddish brown, seven green, eight blueish, nine reddish brown, somewhat like six. These colours appear very distinctly when I think of the figures separately in compound figures that become less apparent, but the most remarkable manifestation of these colours appears in my recollections of chronology. When I think of the events of a given century, they invariably appear to me on a background coloured, like the principal figure in the dates of that century. Thus events of the 18th century invariably appear to me on a greenish ground from the colour of the figure seven. This habit cleansed me most tenaciously, and the only hypothesis I can form about its origin is the following. My tutor, when I was 10 to 12 years old, taught me chronology by means of a diagram on which the centuries were represented by squares, subdivided to 100 smaller squares. The squares representing centuries had narrow coloured borders, and maybe that in this way the recollection of certain figures became associated with certain colours. I eventually did this 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 colours seems to plead in favour of that explanation. Figures 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 favourite persons. Of these, Figures 66 is by the wife of an abled London physician, and Figures 67 is by Mrs Kempie Welch, whose sister, Miss Bevington, a well-known and thoughtful writer, also sees coloured imagery in connection with dates. This Figures 67 was one of my test cases repeated after the lapse of two years, and quite satisfactorily. The first communication was a descriptive account, partially inviting and partially 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 have not understood at the time. The small size of the figure in the plate makes it impossible to do justice to the picture, which is elaborate and on a large scale, with the 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 by the common, though in an ill-developed degree among children. I can hear appeal not only to my own collection of facts, but to those of others, for the subject has letterally excited some interest in Germany. The first widely known case was that of the Brothers, Nusbaumera, published in 1873 by Professor Brewell of Vienna, of which the English reader will find an account in the last volume of Lewis' Problems of Life of Mind, page 280. Since the many occasional notices of similar associations have appeared, a pamphlet containing numerous cases was published in Lipzig in 1881 by two Swiss investigators, Messers, Blüller and Lehman. On the preceding page, the colour associations chart is displayed, with three descending columns with colour associations by various persons, colour associations by Dr. James Key, and mental imagery. One of the authors of the faculty very strongly, and the other had not, so they were conjuntly with advantage. They carefully tabulated the particulars of 62 cases. As my present object is to subordinate details to the general impression that I wish to convey are the peculiarities of different minds, I will simply remark. First, that the persistence of the colour association with the sounds is fully as remarkable as that of the number formed with numbers. Secondly, that the vowels sound chiefly evoked them. Thirdly, that the sues are invariably most minute in the description of the precise tint and hue of the colour. They are never satisfied for instance, with the same 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 a tendency is very hereditary. The publications just mention absolve me from the necessity of giving many extracts from the numerous letters I have received, but I am particularly anxious to bring the brillancy of these colour associations more vividly before the reader than is possible by mere description. I have therefore given the elaborately coloured diagrams from plate 4, 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 differently, as those in this plate, but this is by no means universally the case. Figure 68 is an excellent example of the occasional association of colours with letters, is by Miss Stones, the headteacher 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, But when I think of the whole word together, the first part is a light grey-green, the latter part yellow. Each word is a distinct whole. I have always associated the same colours with the same letters, and no effort will change the colour of one letter, transferring it to another. Thus the word red assumes a light green tint, while the word yellow is light green at the beginning and red at the end. Occasionally, when uncertain how a word should be spelt, I have considered what colour it ought to be, and decided in that way. I believe this has been a great help to me in spelling both in English and foreign languages. The colour of the letters is never smeared or blurred in any way. I do not recall to mind anything that should have first caused me to associate colours with letters, nor can my mother remember any alphabet already in book coloured in the way I have described, which I might have used as a child. I do not associate any idea of colour with musical notes at all, nor with any of the other senses. She adds, perhaps you may be interested in the following account from my sister of her visual peculiarities, and I think Wednesday I see a kind of oval flat wash of yellow and green, for Tuesday a grey in sky colour, for Thursday a brown red irregular polygon, and dull yellow smudge for Friday. The latter quotation is a sample of many that I have. I give it merely as another instance of a redditary tendency. I will insert just one description of other coloured letters than those represented in the plate is from Mrs H, the married sister of a well-known man of science who writes, I don't know how it is with others, but to me the colours of vowels are so strongly marked that I hardly understand their appearance of a different colour, or what is nearly as bad, colourless to anyone. To me they are, boys, have been, as long as I have known them, of the following tints. A. Pure white, and like China in texture. E. Red, not transparent, vermilion, with China white would represent it. I. Light, bright, yellow, gamboge. O. Black, but transparent, a colour of deep water saying through thick, clear ice. U. Purple. Why didn't you colour the eye? The shorter sounds of the vowels are less vivid and pure in colour. Consonants are almost so quite colourless to me, though there is some blackness about M. Some association with you in the words blue and purple may account for that colour, and possibly the E in red may have to do with that also, but I feel as if they were independent of suggestion of the kind. My first impulse is to say that the association lies solely in the sound of the vowels, in which connection I certainly feel it is the most strongly, but then the thought of the distinct redness of such a printed or written word, as great, shows me that the relation must be visual as well as alcohol. The meaning of words is so unavoidably associated with the sight of them that I think this association rather overrides the primitive impression of the colour of the vowels, and the word violet reminds me of its proper colour, until I look at the word as a mere collection of letters. Of my two daughters, one sees the colour quite differently from this. A. Blue, E. White, I. Black, O. Whitey brownish, U. Opec brown. The other is only heterodox on the A and O. A. With the black and O. White. My sister and I never agreed about these colours, and I doubt whether my two brothers feel the chromatic force of the vowels at all. I give this insistence partly on account of their hereditary interest. I could add cases from at least three different families in which their hereditary is quite as strongly marked. Figure 69 fills a hole in the middle column of plate 4 and contains specimens from a large series of coloured illustrations, accompanied by many pages of explanation from a correspondent, Dr James Key of Montagu, Cape Colony. The pictures will tell their own tales sufficiently well. I need only string together a few brief extracts from his letters as follows. I confess my inability to understand visualised numerals, it is otherwise, however, with regard to colour associations with 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 squad of my comrades. A is brown, I say it most automatically and nothing will ever have the effect, I am convinced I make it appear otherwise. I can imagine no explanation of the association. It goes in much detail, as to conceivable reasons connected with his child's 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-grey blue. I remember door being 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 door-bling it with green, he thinks a letter I may possibly be associated with black because it contains no open space and O 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 true pronunciation of R. This same appearance exists also in J, X and Z. The upper row of figure 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, gripped according to the character of the appearance they suggest, after these came 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 collects scraps of various patterns of wallpaper and sent them together with the word of the colour of the several patterns suggested to him. Specimens of these are shown in the three bottom lines of the figure. I've gone through the whole length of them with care to get 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 or 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 figure 69 because the tint of each influences that of its neighbours. It must be understood that my remarks are based on Dr Key's diagram and statements as on a text do not depend by any means wholly upon them, but on numerous other letters from various quarters to the same effect. At the same time I should say that Dr Key's elaborate drawings and ample explanations to which I am wholly unable to do justice in a more of a space are the most fooling striking of any I have received. His illustrations are a large scale and are ingeniously arranged so as to express his meaning. Persons who have colour associations that are unsparingly critical to ordinary individuals, one of these accounts seem just as wild and lunatic as another. For in the account of one seer submitted to another seer, who are sure to see the colours in a different way, the latter is scandalised and almost angry at the heresy of the former. I substituted this very account of Dr Key to a lady. The wife and ex-governor are one of the most important British possessions, who has vivid colour associations of her own and who, I have some reason to think, might have personal acquaintance with locality where Dr Key lives. She could not comprehend his account at all. His colours were so entirely different to those that she herself saw. I have now completed as much as I propose to say about the quaint phenomena of visualised forms and numbers and dates, and of coloured associations with letters. I shall not extend my remarks to such subjects as a musician hearing mental music, of which I have many cases, nor do fancies concerning the other senses, as none of these are so noteworthy. I am conscious that the reader may desire even more assurance of the trustworthiness of the accounts. I have given them the space now that my disposal admits, or then I could otherwise afford without weariness and iteration of the same tale by multiplying extracts from my large store of material. I feel too that it may seem ungracious to many obliging correspondence not to have made more evident use of what they have sent than my few unbriefed notices permit. Still the end in mine will have been gained, and these remarks and illustrations exceed in leaving a just impression by the vast variety of mental constitution that exists in the world, and how impossible it is for one man to lay his mind strictly alongside that of another, except in the rare instances of close hereditary resemblance. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Visionaries In the course of my enquiries into visual memory, I was greatly struck by the frequency of the replies of which my influence described themselves as subject to visions. Those of whom I speak were sane and healthy, but were subject notwithstanding to visual presentations for which they could not account, and which in a few cases reached the level of hallucinations. This unexpected prevalence of a visionary tendency among persons who form a part of ordinary society seems to me suggestive and well worthy of being put on record. The images described by different persons varied greatly in distinctness. Some were so faint and evanescent as to appear unworthy of serious notice, others left a deep impression, and others again were so vivid, as actually to deceive the judgment. All of these being to the same category, and it is the assurance of their common origin that affords justification for directing scientific attention to what many may be inclined to contentiously disregard as a silly fighery's vacant minds. The lowest order of phenomena that admit of being classed as visions are the number forms to which I have just drawn attention. They are in each case absolutely unchangeable, except through a gradual development in complexity. Their diversity is endless, and the number forms of different persons are mutually unintelligible. These strange visions for which they must be called are extremely vivid in some cases, but are almost incredible to the vast majority of mankind, who would set them down as fantastic nonsense. Nevertheless, they are familiar parts of the mental furniture of the rest in whose imaginations they have been unconsciously formed, and where they remain unmodified and unmodifiable by teaching. I have received many touching accounts of their childish experiences from persons who see the number forms, and are the curious visions of which I have spoken or shall speak. As is the case with the colour blind, so with these seers, they imagine at first that everybody else had the same way of regarding things as themselves, then they betrayed their peculiarities by some chance remark, they called forth the stare of surprise followed by ridicule and a sharp scolding for their silliness, so that the poor little things shrink back into themselves, and have eventually gained to allude to their inner world. I will quote just one of many similar letters as a sample. I received it together with much interesting information immediately after a lecture I gave to the British Association at Swansea, in which I had occasion to speak of the number forms. The writer says, I had no idea for many years that everyone did not imagine numbers in the same positions as those in which they appeared to me. One unfortunate day I spoke of it, and was sharply rebuked for my absurdity. Being a very sensitive child, I felt this acutely, but nothing ever shook my belief that, absurd or not, I always saw numbers in this particular way. I began to be ashamed of what I considered peculiarity, and to imagine myself from this in various other mental beliefs and states as somewhat isolated and peculiar. At your lecture the other night though, I am now over 29, the memory of my child's misery at the dread of being peculiar came over me so strongly that I felt I must thank you for proving that in this particular, at any rate, my case is most common. The next sort of vision that fleshes unaccountably into existence is the instant association in some persons of colour with sound which was spoken of in the last chapter, and in which I need not say more now. A third curious and abiding fantasy of certain persons is invariably to connect visualised pictures with words, the same picture to the same word. These are perceived by many, in a vague, fleeting and veritable way, but to a few they appear strangely vivid and permanent. I have collected many cases of this peculiarity and am much indebted to the authorists, Mrs. Hoas, who sees these pictures for a kindness in sketching some of them for me, and for permitting me to use her name in guarantee of their genuineness. She says, printed words have always had faces to me. They had definite expressions, and certain faces may be think of certain words. The words had no connection with these except sometimes by accident. The instances I give are few and ridiculous. When I think of the word beast, it has a face something like a gargoyle. The word green has also a gargoyle face, with the addition of big teeth. The word blue blinks and looks silly, and turns to the right. The word attention as the eyes greatly turn to the left. It is difficult to draw them properly, because like ours's Cheshire Cat, which at times became a green without a cat, these faces have expressions without features. The expression of course, note the naive phrase. Of course, fg, depends greatly on those of the letters, which have likewise their faces and figures. All the little a's turn their eyes to the left. This determines the eyes of attention, and however, looks a little down. Of course these faces are endless as words are, and it makes my headache to retain them long enough to draw. Some of the figures are very quaint, thus the interrogation, what? Always excites the idea of a fat man cracking a long whip. They are not the capricious creations of the fancy of the moment, but are the regular concomitants of the words, and have been so far back as memory is able to recall. When in perfect darkness, in the field of view, be carefully watched, many persons will find a perpetual series of changes to be going on automatically and wastefully in it. I have much evidence of this. I'll give my own experience the first, which is striking to me, because I am very unimpressable in these matters. I visualise with effort, I am peculiarly inept to see after images, phosphines, light dust, and other phenomena due to weak sight or sensitiveness. And again, before I thought to have carefully trying, I should have emphatically declared that my field of view in the dark was essentially of a uniform black subject to an occasional light purple cloudiness and other small variations. Now however, after habituating myself to examine it with the same sort of strain that one tries to decipher a signpost in the dark, I have found out that this is by no means a case, but that a kaleidoscope change of patterns and forms is continually going on. But they are too figurative and elaborate for me to draw with any approach to truth. I am astonished at their variety, I cannot guess in a remotest degree the cause of them. The disappear out of sight and memory at the instant I begin to think about anything, and it is curious to me that they should often be so certainly present and yet be habitually overlooked. If they were more vivid, the case would be very different. And it is most easily conceivable that some very slight physical change should of a really morbid character would enhance their vividness. My own deficiencies however are well supplied by other drawings in my possession. They are by the Reverend George Henslau whose visions are far more vivid than mine. His experiences are not unlike those of Goeth who says in the oftquered passage that whenever he bent his head and closed his eyes and thought of a rose, a sort of rosette made his appearance which would not keep its shape steady for a moment, but unfolded from him, throwing out a succession of petals, mostly red but sometimes green, and that it continued to do so without change and brightness and without causing him any fatigue so long as he cared to watch it. Mr. Henslau, when he shuts his eyes and waits, is sure in a short time to see before him the clear image of some object or other, but usually not quite natural in its shape. It then begins to change from one form to another. In his case also for a long time as he cares to watch it. Mr. Henslau has thusly made a repeated experience on himself and has drawn what he sees. He has also tried how far he is able to mold the visions according to his will. In one case after much effort, he can try to bring the imagery back to its starting point and thereby deform what he terms a visual cycle. The following account is extracted and condensed from his very interesting letter and will explain the illustrations copied from his drawings that are given on plate 4. Figures 70 The first image that spontaneously presented itself was a crossbow, 1. This was immediately provided with an arrow, 2. Remarkable for its pronounced barb and super-rebonance of feathering. Some person, but too indistinct to recognise much more of him than the hands appeared to shoot the arrow from the bow. The single arrow was then accompanied by a flight of arrows from right to left which completely occupied the field of vision. These changed in the following styles then into flakes of a heavy snow storm. The ground gradually appeared as a sheet of snow where previously there had been vacant space. Then a well-known rectory, fishponds, walls, etc. all covered with snow came to view most vividly and clearly defined. This somehow suggested another view, impressed on his mind in childhood of a spring morning brilliant sun and a better red tulips. The tulips gradually vanished except one which appeared now to be isolated and to stand in the visual point of sight. It was but a single tulip, but became double. The petals then fell off rapidly in a continuous series until there's nothing left but the pistol, 3, but as is almost invariably the case with his objects, the part was greatly exaggerated. The stigma then changed to 3 branching brown horns, 4, then into a knob, 5, while the stalk changed into a stick. A slight bend in it seems to have suggested a centre bit, 6. This passed into a sordid pin passing through a metal plate, 7. This again into a lock, 8. Outwards it was not a script shape, 9. Distantly suggestive of the original crossbow. Here Mr. Henslow endeavoured to force his will upon the visions and to reproduce the crossbow, but the first attempt was an utter failure. The figure changed to a leather strap with loops 10, but while he's still endeavoured to change it into a bow, the strap broke, the two ends were separated, and it happened that an imaginary string connected them 11. This was the first concession of his automatic chain of thoughts to his will. Bow continued effort the bow came, 12, and then no differently was felt in converting it into the crossbow, and thus returning to the starting point. Figure 71. Mr. Henslow writes, Though I can usually summon up any object thought of, it not only is somewhat different from the real thing, but rapidly changes. The changes are in many cases clearly due to a suggestedness in the article of something else, but not always so, as in some cases hereafter described. It is not at all necessary to think of any particular object at first, as something is sure to come spontaneously within a minute or two, some object having once appeared, the automatism of the brain will rapidly induce this series of changes. The images are sometimes very numerous, and very rapid in succession, very frequently of great beauty and highly brilliant. Cut glass, far more leopard than I am conscious of ever having seen, highly chased gold, and silver filigree ornaments, gold and silver flower stands etc. elaborate coloured patterns of carpets and brilliant tints are not uncommon. Another peculiarity resides in the extreme mercilessness of my visual objects, it is often very difficult to keep them still, as well as from changing in character, they will rapidly oscillate, or else rotate to a most perplexing degree, and when their characters change, at the same time a critical examination is almost impossible. When the process is in full activity, I feel as if I were a mirror spectator, had a diorama or a various centric kind, and was in no way concerned with it getting up with the performance. When a succession of images has been passing, I sometimes determine to induce an object, say a watch, very often it is next to impossible to succeed. There is an evident struggle, the watch, pure and simple, will not come, but some hybrid structure appears, something round perhaps, but lapses into a warning pan or rather unexpected object. This practice has brought to my mind very clearly the distinction between at least one form of automatism of the brain and volition, but the strength of the form is enormous, for the visual objects, when in the full career of the change, are imperative in their refusal to be interfered with. I will now describe the cases illustrated. Figure 71, I thought of a gun, the stock came into view, metal plate on the end very distinct towards left one, the wood was elaborately carved, I cannot recall the pattern. As I scrutinised it, the stock escalated up and down and crumbled up, the metallic plate sank inwards, and the stock contracted so that it looked not unlike the tuning fork. I gave up the stock and proceeded cautiously to examine the lock. I got a well into view, but no more of the gun. It turned out to be an old fashioned flint lock, it immediately began to north backwards and forwards in the manner suggestive of the beak of a bird pecking. Consequently, it full width became converted into the head of a bird with a long curved beak, the knob of the lock three becoming the head of the bird. I then looked to the right expecting to find the barrel, but the snout of a sawfish with the tip distinctly broken off appeared instead. I had not thought either of a flint lock or of a sawfish, both came spontaneously. Figure 72, I have several times thought of a rosebud, as Goeth is said to have been able to see one at will and to observe it expand, the following are some of the results. The bud appeared unexpectedly a moss rosebud. Its only abnormal appearance was the inaudibly elongated sepals. One, I tried to force it to expand. It enlarged, but only partially opened. Two, when all of a sudden it burst open and the pearls became reflexed. Three, figure 73, the spontaneous appearance of a poppy capsule. One, dehesiying as usual by pores, but with inaudibly long and arching valves over the pores. These valves were eminently suggestive of hooded flowers, hence they changed to a whirl of selvies. Two, each blossom now guiderated rapidly on a vertical plane. Concentrating observation on one rotating flower became rotating haze, as a rapid motion rendered the flower totally indistinct. The haze now shaped itself into a circle of moss with a deep funnel like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird's nest. It became lined with hair and the nest was a deep point of cavity. A nest was suggestive of eggs, hence a series appeared. Four, the two rose meeting in one at the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective view of the nest. The eggs all disappeared by one. Five, which increased in size. The bright point of light now shone with great intensity like a star. Then it gradually grew dimmer and dimmer, till it disappeared into the usual haze obscurity, into which all my visual objects ultimately vanished. I have a sufficient variety of cases to prove the continuity between all the forms of visualization, beginning with an almost total absence of it, and ending with a complete hallucination. The continuity is, however, not simply that of varying degrees of intensity, but of variations in the character of the process itself. So that it is by no means uncommon to find two very different forms of it concurrent in the same person. There are some who visualize well, and who also are series of visions who declare that the vision is not a vivid visualization, but altogether a different phenomenon. In short, they'll be pleased to call all sensations due to external impressions direct and all those induced. Then there are many channels through which the induction of the letter may take place, and the channel of ordinary visualization in the persons just mentioned is different from that through which their visions arise. The following is a good instance of this condition, friend writes. These visions often appear with startling vividness, and so far from depending on any voluntary effort of the mind, they remain when I often wish them very much to depart, and no effort of the imagination can call them up. I lately saw a framed portrait of a face which seemed more lovely than any painting I've ever seen, and again I often see fine landscapes which bear no resemblance to any scenery I've ever looked upon. I find it difficult to define the difference between a waking vision and a mental image, although the difference is very apparent to myself. I think I can do it best in this way. If you go to a theater and look at a scene, save a forest by moonlight, at the back part of the stage you see every object distinctly and sufficiently illuminated, being thus unlike a mere act of memory. But it is nevertheless vague and shadowy, and you might have difficulty in telling afterwards all the objects you have seen. This resembles a mental image in point of clearness. The waking vision is like what one sees in the open street and broad daylight when every object is distinctly impressed on the memory. The two kinds of imagery differ also as regards voluntariness, the image being entirely subservient to the will, the visions entirely independent of it. They differ also in point of suddenness, the image has been formed comparatively slowly as memory recalls each detail, and fading slowly as the mental avatar who retained them is relaxed. The visions appearing and vanishing in an instant. The waking visions seem quite close, feeling as if we're the whole head, while the mental image seems further away in some far-off recess of the mind. The number of same persons you see visions no less distinctly than this correspondent is much greater than I had any idea of when I began this inquiry. I have received an interesting sketch of one, prefaced by a description of it by Mr. Haywis. She says, All my life long, I have had one very constantly recurring vision, a sight which came whenever it was dark or darkish in better otherwise. It is a flight of pink roses floating in a mass from left to right, and this cloud of massive roses is presently effaced by a flight of sparks, or gold speckles around them. The sparks totter or vibrate from left to right, but they fly distinctly upwards, where they are like tiny blocks, half gold, half black, rather symmetrically placed behind each other, and they are always in a hurry to efface the roses. Sometimes they have come at my call, sometimes by surprise, but they are always equally pleasing. What interests me most is that, when a child under nine, the flight of roses was light, slow, soft, closed to my eyes, roses so large and brilliant and palpable that I tried to touch them. The scent was overpowering, the petals perfect, with leaves peeping here and there, texture and motion all natural. They would stay a long time before the sparks came, and they occupied a large area in black space. Then the sparks came slowly flying, and generally, not always, but faced the roses at once, and every effort to retain the roses failed, since in early age the flight of roses has annually grown smaller, swifter, and farther off, till by the time I was grown up, my vision had become a speck. So instantaneous that I had highly time to realise that it was there before the fading sparks showed that it was past. This is how they still come. The pleasure of them is past, and is always depresses me to speak of them, though I do not know, as I did when a child, connect the vision with any elevated spiritual state. But when I read Tennyson's Holy Grail, I wondered whether anybody else had had my vision. Rose read, with beatings in it. I might add, I was a London child who never was in the country but once, and I connect no particular flowers with that visit. I may almost say that I have never seen a rose, certainly not a quantity of them together. A common form of vision is a phantasmagoria, or the appearance of a crowd of phantoms, sometimes hurrying past like men in a street. It is occasionally seen in broad daylight, much more often in the dark. It may be at the instant of putting out the candle, but it generally comes on when the person is in bed, preparing to sleep, but by no means yet asleep. I know no less than three men, eminent in the scientific world, who have these phantasmagoria in one form or another. They will seem curious, but it is a fact that I know of no less than five editors of very influential newspapers who experience these night visitations in a vivid form. Two of them have described the phenomena very forcibly in print, but anonymously, and two others have written on congenit experiences. A near relative of my own saw phantasmagoria very frequently. She was eminently sane, and in such good constitution that her faculties were hardly impaired until near her death at 90, she frequently described them to me. It gave her amusement during an idle hour to watch these faces, for their expression was always pleasing, though never strikingly beautiful. No two faces were there alike, and no face ever resembled that of any acquaintance. When she was not well, the faces usually came nearer to her, sometimes almost suffocatingly close. She never stalked them for reality, although they were very distinct. This is quite a cool case, similar in most respects to many others that I have. A notable proportion of same persons, who had not only visions, but actual hallucinations of sight, sound, or other sense, had one or more periods of their lives. I have a considerable packet of instances contributed by my personal friends, besides a large number communicated to me by other correspondents. One lady, a distinguished authoress, who was at the time a little fidgeted, but in no way overwrote or real, assured me that she once saw the principal character of one of her nobles glide through the door straight up to her. It was about the size of a large doll, and it disappeared as suddenly as it came. Another lady, the daughter of an eminent musician, often imagines she hears her father playing. The day she told me of it the incident had again occurred. She was sitting in her room with her maid, and she asked the maid to open the door that she might hear the music better. The moment the maid got up, the hallucination disappeared. Again another lady, apparently in vigorous health and belonging to a vigorous family, told me that during some past months, she had been played by voices. The words were at first simple nonsense, then the word pray was frequently repeated. This was followed by some more or less coherent sentences of little import, and finally the voices left her. In short, the familiar hallucinations of the insane are to be met with far more frequently, as commonly supposed, along people moving in society and a good working health. I have now nearly done with my summary of facts. It remains to make a few comments on them. The weirdness of visions lies in their sudden appearance and their vividness while present, and their sudden departure. An incident in the zoological garden struck me as a helpful smile. I happened to walk to the seal pond at a moment when a sheen rested on the unbroken surface of the water, out waiting a while became suddenly aware of the head of the seal. Black, conspicuous and motionless, just as though it had always been there, had a spot on which my eye had rested a moment previously and seen nothing. Again, after a while, my eye wandered, and on its return into the spot the seal was gone. The water closed in silence over its head without leaving a ripple, and the sheen on the surface of the pond was as unbroken as when I first reached it. Where did the seal come from and where did it go? This could easily have been answered if the glare had not obstructed the view of the movements of the animal underwater. As it was, a solitary link in their continuous chain of actions stood isolated from all the rest. So it is with the visions, a single stage in a series of mental processes emerges into the domain of consciousness. All that precedes and follows lies outside of it, and its character can only be inferred. We see in a general way that a condition of the presentation of visions lies in the owe of sensitiveness of certain tracks or domains, brain action, and the undersensitiveness of others. Certain stages in a mental process being represented very vividly in consciousness, while the other stages are unfelt. Also that individualism is changed to divisualism. I do not recollect saying yet remarked that the ordinary phenomenal dreaming seemed to show that partial sensitiveness is a normal condition during sleep. They do so because one of the most marked characteristics of the dreamer is the absence of common sense. He accepts wildly incrogarious visions without the slightest skepticism. Now common sense consists in the comprehension of a large number of related circumstances and implies a simultaneous working of many parts of the brain. On the other hand, the brain is known to be imperfectly supplied with blood during sleep and cannot therefore be at full work. It is probable enough, from hydraulic analogies, that imperfect irrigation would lead to partial irrigation and therefore to suppression of action in some parts of the brain, and that is really the case seems to be proved by the absence of common sense during dreams. A convenient distinction is made between hallucinations and illusions. Hallucinations are defined as appearances wholly due to fancy illusions as fanciful perceptions of objects actually seen. There is also a hybrid case which depends on fanciful visions fancifully perceived. The problems we have to consider are, on the other hand, that is connected with induced vision, and on the other hand, that is connected with the interpretation of vision, where the vision may direct to induced. It is probable that much of what passes for hallucination proper belongs in reality to the hybrid case, being an illusive interpretation of some induced visual color or blur. I spoke of the ever-varying patterns in the optical field. The use under some slight functional change may become more consciously present and be interpreted into fantasmal appearances. Many cases could be induced to support this view. I will begin with illusions. What is the process of which they are established? There is no simpler way of understanding it than by trying, as children ought to do, to see faces in the fire, and to carefully watch the way in which they are first caught. Let us call to mind, at the same time, the experience of the past illnesses, when others' scales watered over the patterns on the wallpaper and the shadows of the bed curtains, and slowly evoked the appearances of faces and figures that were not easily laid again. The process of making the faces is so rapid in health that it is difficult to analyze it without the recollection of what took place more slowly when we were weakened by illness. The first essential element in their construction is, I believe, the smallness of the area covered by the glance at an instant, so that the eye has to travel over a long track before it has visited every part of the object towards which the attention is directed generally. It has, with a plow, that must travel many miles before the whole of the small field can be tilled. But with this important difference, the plow travels methodically up and down in parallel furrows, the eye wanders in devious curves, where abrupt bends and the direction of its course in the ear scent depends on four causes. One, on the easiest sequence of muscular motion, speaking in a general sense. Two, on idiosyncrasy. Three, on the mood. And four, on the association's current at the moment. The effect of idiosyncrasy is excellently illustrated by the number forms, where we observe that a very special, sharply defined track of mental vision is preferred by each individual who sees them. The influence of the mood of the moment is shown in the curves that are felt appropriate to the various emotions, as the length-dripping lines agree, which make the weeping billow so fit and emblem of it. In constructing firefaces it seems to me that the eye, in its wanderings, tends to follow a favourite course, and it especially dwells upon the marks that happened to coincide with that course. It feels its way, easily diverted by associations based on what has just been noticed. Until it lasts by the unconscious practice of a system of trial and error, it hits upon a track that will suit one that has easily run over, and that strings together external marks in a way that happens to form a well-connected picture. This fancy picture is entoured upon, or that is incogruous with it becomes disregarded, while all deficiencies in it are supplied by the fantasy. The latest stages of the process might be represented by a diorama. Three lanterns would converge on the same screen. The first throws an image of what the imagination will discard, the second of that which it will retain, the third of that which it will supply. Turn on the first and second, and the picture on the screen will be identical to that which fell on the retina. Shut off the first and turn on the third, and the picture will be identified with the illusion. Turn of the painter made frequent use of a practice, and that listed that of looking for firefaces in the burning coals. It was known to give colours to children to daub, in play on paper, while he keenly watched for sensitive but accidental combinations. I have myself had frequent experience of the automatic construction of fantastic figures through a practice I have somewhat encouraged for the purpose. Of allowing my hand to scribble at its own will, while I am giving my best attention to what has been said by others, as are small committees. It is always a surprise to me to see the result whenever I turn my thoughts on what I have been subconsciously doing. I can really recollect even a few of the steps by which the drawings were made. They grew piecemeal, with some almost forgotten notice from time to time of the sketches all. I can trace the similarities between what I draw and the images that present themselves to me in dreams, and I find that a very trifling accident, such as the chance dot on the paper may have great influence on the general character of any one of these automatic sketches. Vision and slight dreams are often more patchworks built up with bits of recollections. The following is one of these. When passing a shop in Totterham Court Road, I went in order, I dutched cheese, and the propitiary, a bullet-headed man whom I had never seen before, rolled a cheese on the marble slab of his counter. I asked me if that one would do. I answered yes, left the shop, and I thought no more of the incident. The following evening, on closing my eyes, I saw a head detached from the body rolling about slightly on a white surface. I recognised the face, but could not remember where I had seen it, and it was only after thinking about it for some time that I identified it as that of the cheese mongo who had sold me the cheese on the previous day. I may mention that I have often seen the man since, and that I found the vision I saw was exactly like him, although I had been asked to describe the man before I saw the vision I should have been unable to do so. Recollections need not be combined like Mosaic work, they may be blended, on the principle of a composite portraiture. I suspect that the Phantasmagoria may be in some part due to blended memories. The number of possible combinations would be practically endless, each combination would give a new face. There would thus be no limit to the dies and the coinage of the brain. I found the peculiarities of visualisation, such as the tendency to see a number of forms, and the still rare tendency to associate colour with sound is strongly hereditary, and I should infer, what facts seem to confirm that the tendency to be a seer of visions is equally so. Under these circumstances we should expect that it would be unequally developed in different races, and that a large natural gift for the visionary faculty might become characteristic, not only of certain families as among the second site seers of Scotland, but of certain races as that of the Gypsies. It happens that the mere acts of fasting or want to sleep, and of solitary musing are severely conducted to visions. I have myself been told of cases in which persons accidentally long deprived of food became for a brief time subject to them. One was of a pleasure party driven out to sea, not being able to reach the coast till nightfall. At a place where they got shelter but nothing to eat. They were mentally at ease and conscious of safety, but all were troubled with visions that were half dreams and half hallucinations. The cases of visions followed, protracted wakefulness are well known, and I have collected a few of them myself. I have already spoken of the manly effect of solitarness, its influence may be inferred from the recognised advantages of social amusements in the treatment of the insane. It follows that the spiritual discipline undergone for purposes of self-control and self-mortification have also the incidental effect of producing visions. It is to be expected that these should often bear a closer relation to the prevailing subjects of thought, although they may be really no more than the products of one portion of the brain which another person of the same brain has engaged in contemplating. They often, through error, perceive religious sanction. This is notably the case among half civilised races. The number of grey men who have been once, twice or more frequently subject to hallucinations is considerable. A list to which it should be easy to make large additions is given by Breyer de Boisemont, hallucinations etc., 1862. From whom I translate the following account of the star or the first Napoleon, which he heard second hand from General Rapp. In 1806, General Rapp, on his return from the Siege of Danzig, having occasioned to speak to the emperor, entered his study without being announced, he found himself so absorbed that his entry was unperceived. The general, seeing the emperor, continued motionless. Thought he might be ill and purposely made a noise. Napoleon immediately browsed himself, and without any preamble, seizing Rapp by the arm said to him, born into the sky, look there, up there. The general remained silent, but on being asked a second time he answered that he perceived nothing. What? replied the emperor. You do not see it? It is my style. It is before you, brilliant. Then, animating by degrees, he cried out. It has never abandoned me. I see it on all great occasions. It commands me to go forward. It is a constant sign of good fortune to me. Napoleon was no doubt a consummate actor, ready and unscrupulous, imposing on others. But I see no reason to distrust the geminists of this particular saying that it is not the only instance of his referring to the guidance of his star, as a little vision and not a mere phrase that his belief in destiny was notorious. It appears that stars of this kind, so frequently spoken of in history, and so well known as a metaphor in language, are a common hallucination of the insane. Brio, dear Boisemont, has a chapter on the stars of great men. I cannot doubt that visions of this description were in some cases the basis of their firm belief in astrology, which done a few persons of eminence formally entertained. The hallucinations of great men may be accounted for in pie by their showing of Tennessee, which we have seen to be not uncommon in the human race, and which, if it happens to be natural to them, is liable to be developed in their overwarp brains by the isolation of their lives. As a man in the position of the first Napoleon could have no intimate associates, a great philosopher who explores ways of thought far ahead of his contemporaries must have an inner world in which he passes long solitary hours. Great men may be even indebted to touches of madness for their greatness, the ideas by which they are haunted, and whose pursuit they devote themselves, and by which they rise to eminence, having much in common with her monomania of insanity. Striking instances of great visionaries may be mentioned, who had almost beyond doubt those very nervous sages with which the Tennessee to hallucinations is intimately connected. To take a single instance, Socrates, whose diamond was an audible, not a visual appearance, was, as has been often pointed out, subject to cataleptic seizure, standing all night through in a rigid attitude. It is remarkable how largely the visionary temperament has manifested itself in certain periods of history and epochs of natural life. My interpretation of the matter to a certain extent is this, that the visionary tendency is much more common among same people than is generally suspected. In early life it seems to be a hard lesson to an imaginative child distinguished between the real and visionary world. If the fantasies are habitually laughed at and otherwise discouraged, the child soon acquires the power of distinguishing them. Any incongruity or nonconformity is quickly noted. The visions are found out and discredited, and are no further attended to. In this way the natural tendency to see them is blunted by repression. Therefore, when popular opinion is a matter of fat kind, the series of visions keep quiet. They do not like to be thought fans of all mad, and they hide their experiences, which only come to light through inquiries such as these that I have been making. But let the tide of opinion change and grow favorable to supernaturalism, then a series of visions come to the front. The frankly perceived fantasies of ordinary persons become invested by the authority of revered men, with acclaimed a serious regard. They are consequently attended to and encouraged, an increase in definition therapy habitually dwelt upon. We do not suppose that a faculty previously non-existent has been subtly evoked, or that a faculty long smothered by many in secret has been suddenly allowed freedom to express itself, and to run into extravagance only to the removal of reasonable safeguards.