Part 9 (1/2)
Mr. Hershon has published an a.n.a.lysis of the Talmud, on the odd principle of indexing the various pa.s.sages according to the number they may happen to contain; thus such a phrase as ”there were three men who,” etc., would be entered under the number 3. I cannot find any particular preferences given there to especial numbers; even 7 occurs less often than 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10. Their respective frequency being 47, 54, 53, 64, 54, 51; 12 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 of them. There is a very amusing chapter in _Rome Contemporaine_, by E. About, in which he speaks of this in connection with the rage for lottery tickets.
COLOUR a.s.sOCIATIONS.
Numerals are occasionally seen in Arabic or other figures, not disposed in any particular Form, but coloured. An instance of this is represented in Fig. 69 towards the middle part of the column, but as I shall have shortly to enter at length into the colour a.s.sociations of the author, I will pa.s.s over this portion of them, and will quote in preference from the letter of another correspondent.
Baron von Osten Sacken, of whom I have already spoken, writes:--
”The localisation of numerals, peculiar to certain persons, is foreign to me. In my mind's eye the figures appear _in front_ of me, within a limited s.p.a.ce. My peculiarity, however, consists in the fact that the numerals from 1 to 9 are differently coloured; (1) black, (2) yellow, (3) pale brick red, (4) brown, (5) blackish gray, (6) reddish brown, (7) green, (8) bluish, (9) reddish brown, somewhat like 6. These colours appear very distinctly when I think of these figures separately; in compound figures they 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 princ.i.p.al figure in the dates of that century; thus events of the eighteenth century invariably appear to me on a greenish ground, from the colour of the figure 7. This habit clings to me most tenaciously, and the only hypothesis I can form about its origin is the following:--My tutor, when I was ten to twelve years old, taught me chronology by means of a diagram on which the centuries were represented by squares, subdivided in 100 smaller squares; the squares representing centuries had _narrow coloured borders_; it may be that in this way the recollection of certain figures became a.s.sociated with certain colours. I venture 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 a.s.sociation of my chronology with colour seems to plead in favour of that explanation.”
Figs. 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 ill.u.s.trate the gorgeousness of the mental imagery of some favoured persons. Of these Fig. 66 is by the wife of an able London physician, and Fig. 67 is by Mrs. Kempe Welch, whose sister, Miss Bevington, a well-known and thoughtful writer, also sees coloured imagery in connection with dates. This Fig. 67 was one of my test cases, repeated after the lapse of two years, and quite satisfactorily. The first communication was a descriptive account, partly in writing, partly 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 had not understood at the time. The small size of the Fig. in the Plate makes it impossible to do justice to the picture, which is elaborate and on a large scale, with a 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 a.s.sociation of colour with sound characterises a small percentage of adults, and it appears to be rather common, though in an ill-developed degree, among children. I can here appeal not only to my own collection of facts, but to those of others, for the subject has latterly excited some interest in Germany. The first widely known case was that of the brothers Nussbaumer, published in 1873 by Professor Bruhl of Vienna, of which the English reader will find an account in the last volume of Lewis's _Problems of Life and Mind_ (p. 280). Since then many occasional notices of similar a.s.sociations have appeared. A pamphlet containing numerous cases was published in Leipsic in 1881 by two Swiss investigators, Messrs.
Bleuler and Lehmann.[9] One of the authors had the faculty very strongly, and the other had not; so they worked conjointly with advantage. They carefully tabulated the particulars of sixty-two cases. As my present object is to subordinate details to the general impression that I wish to convey of the peculiarities of different minds, I will simply remark--First, that the persistence of the colour a.s.sociation with sounds is fully as remarkable as that of the Number-Form with numbers. Secondly, that the vowel sounds chiefly evoke them. Thirdly, that the seers are invariably most minute in their description of the precise tint and hue of the colour. They are never satisfied, for instance, with saying ”blue,” but will take a great deal of trouble to express or to match the particular blue they mean. Fourthly, that no two people agree, or hardly ever do so, as to the colour they a.s.sociate with the same sound. Lastly, that the tendency is very hereditary. The publications just mentioned absolve me from the necessity of giving many extracts from the numerous letters I have received, but I am particularly anxious to bring the brilliancy of these colour a.s.sociations more vividly before the reader than is possible by mere description. I have therefore given the elaborately-coloured diagrams in Plate IV., which were copied by the artist directly from the original drawings, and which have been printed by the superimposed impressions of different colours from different lithographic stones. They have been, on the whole, very faithfully executed, and will serve as samples of the most striking cases. Usually the sense of colour is much too vague to enable the seer to reproduce the various tints so definitely as those in this Plate. But this is by no means universally the case.
Fig. 68 is an excellent example of the occasional a.s.sociation of colours with letters. It is by Miss Stones, the head teacher in a high school for girls, who, as I have already mentioned, obtained useful information for me, and has contributed several suggestive remarks of her own. She says:--
”The vowels of the English language always appear to me, when I think of them, as possessing certain colours, of which I enclose a diagram. Consonants, when thought of by themselves, are of a purplish black; but when I think of a whole word, the colour of the consonants tends towards the colour of the vowels. For example, in the word 'Tuesday,' when I think of each letter separately, the consonants are purplish-black, _u_ is a light dove colour, _e_ is a pale emerald green, and _a_ is yellow; but when I think of the whole word together, the first part is a light gray-green, and the latter part yellow. Each word is a distinct whole. I have always a.s.sociated 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' a.s.sumes 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 have decided in that way. I believe this has often 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 cannot recall to mind anything that should have first caused me to a.s.sociate colours with letters, nor can my mother remember any alphabet or reading-book coloured in the way I have described, which I might have used as a child. I do not a.s.sociate 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: 'When I think of Wednesday I see a kind of oval flat wash of yellow emerald green; for Tuesday, a gray sky colour; for Thursday, a brown-red irregular polygon; and a dull yellow smudge for Friday.'”
[Footnote 9: Zw.a.n.gma.s.sige 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.