Statistics of mental imagery / by Francis Galton.

  • Galton, Sir Francis, 1822-1911.
Date:
[1880]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statistics of mental imagery / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/22 (page 17)
    I can half project an image upon paper, but could not draw round it, it being too indistinct. I see the effect, but not the details of it. I find it very hard to project an image on a piece of paper, but if 1 think for some time and look very hard at the paper, I sometimes can. I can project an image on to anything, but the longer I keep it the fainter it gets, and I don’t think I could keep it long enough to trace it. I find indirectly from the answers to other questions that visual representations are by no means invariably of the same apparent size a3 the real objects. The change is usually on the side of reduction, not of enlargement. Among the Charterhouse boys there are thirteen of the one to two cases of the other, and I think, but I have not yet properly worked it out, that the returns from adults generally, male and female, show somewhat similar results. The following are extracts from the reports of the boys:— Images Larger than Reality. The place and objects in a mental picture seem to be larger altogether than the reality; thus a room seems loftier and broader, and the objects in it taller. They look larger than the objects [? such objects as may be handled] really are, and seem much further off, . . they look about five yards off. Images Smaller than Reality. ,Very small and close. Much smaller and very far off. All the objects are clearly defined, but the image appears much smaller. The difference that I see is, that everything I call up in my mind seems to be a long way off. The difference is that it is much smaller. Space does not admit, neither is this the most suitable oppor- tunity of analysing more of the numerous data which I have in hand, but before concluding I would say a few words on the “Visualised Numerals” which I described first in Nature, Jan. 15, 1880, but very much more fully and advisedly in a memoir read before the Anthropological Institute in March, 1880, which will be published in its Transactions a few weeks later than the present memoir. It will contain not only my own memoir and numerous illustrations, but the remarks made on it at the meeting by gentlemen who had this curious habit of invariably associating numbers with definite forms of mental imagery. It is a habit that is quite automatic, the form is frequently very vivid and sometimes very elaborate and highly coloured, and its origin is always earlier than those who see it can recollect. Those who visualise numerals in number-forms are apt to see the letters of the alphabet, the months of the year, dates, &c., also in forms; but whereas they nearly always can suggest some clue to the origin of the latter, they never can, or