Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
[Footnote 9: Zwangmässige Lichtempfindungen durch Schall und
verwandte Erscheinungen, von E. Bleuler und K. Lehmann. Leipsig, Fues'
Verlag (R. Reisland), 1881.]
The latter quotation is a sample of many that I have; I give it
merely as another instance of hereditary tendency.
I will insert just one description of other coloured letters than
those represented in the Plate. It is from Mrs. H., the married
sister of a well-known man of science, who writes:--
"I do not know how it is with others, but to me the colours of
vowels are so strongly marked that I hardly understand their
appearing of a different colour, or, what is nearly as bad,
colourless to any one. To me they are and always 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; the colour of deep water seen through
thick clear ice.
U, purple.
Y, a dingier colour than I.
"The shorter sounds of the vowels are less vivid and pure in colour.
Consonants are almost or quite colourless to me, though there is
some blackness about M.
"Some association with U 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 suggestions 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 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 aural. 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 colours quite differently from
this (A, blue; E, white; I, black; O, whity-brownish; U, opaque brown).
The other is only heterodox on the A and O; A being with her 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 instance partly on account of the hereditary interest. I
could add cases from at least three different families in which the
heredity is quite as strongly marked.
Fig. 69 fills the whole of the middle column of Plate IV., 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 tale sufficiently well. I need only string together a few brief
extracts from his letters, as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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