Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
am totally unable to do justice in a moderate space, are the most
full and striking of any I have received. His illustrations are on a
large scale, and are ingeniously arranged so as to express his
meaning.
Persons who have colour associations are unsparingly critical. To
ordinary individuals one of these accounts seems just as wild and
lunatic as another, but when the account of one seer is submitted to
another seer, who is sure to see the colours in a different way, the
latter is scandalised and almost angry at the heresy of the former.
I submitted this very account of Dr. Key to a lady, the wife of an
ex-governor of one of the most important British possessions, who
has vivid colour associations of her own, and who, I had some reason
to think, might have personal acquaintance with the 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 of numbers and of 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 to 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 than the space now at my disposal admits, or than I could
otherwise afford without wearisome 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 correspondents not to
have made more evident use of what they have sent than my few and
brief notices permit. Still their end and mine will have been gained,
if these remarks and illustrations succeed in leaving a just
impression of 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.
VISIONARIES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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