Class R fcllM 
 
 Book 
 
 Gopyrightls 10 
 
 C0EHHGHT DEPOSm 
 
Imaginary Playmates 
 
 an< 
 
 Other Mental Phenomena 
 of Children 
 
 NATHAN A. HARVEY 
 
 STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 
 YPS1LANTI. MICHIGAN 
 
/ 
 
 Imaginary Playmates 
 
 and 
 
 Other Mental Phenomena 
 of Children 
 
 NATHAN A. HARVEY 
 
 STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 
 YPSILANT1, MICHIGAN 
 

 Copyright 1918 
 NATHAN A. HARVEY 
 
 ©CIA50721 
 
 ^vQ \ 
 
10 
 
 X 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I. — Imaginary Playmates 7 
 
 Chapter II. — Projected Images 25 
 
 Chapter III. — Images in Reading 34 
 
 Chapter IV. — Hallucinations 40 
 
 Chapter V. — Number Forms 49 
 
 Chapter VI. — Mental Calendars and Alphabet Forms 60 
 
 Chapter VII. — Chromoesthesia 72 
 
 Chapter VIII. — Synesthesia 80 
 
 Chapter IX. — Original Languages of Children 85 
 
 Chapter X. — Double Personality 92 
 
 Chapter XL — Paramnesia 100 
 
 Chapter XII. — Dreams 107 
 
 Chapter XIII. — Turned Around; or, Illusions of Orien- 
 tation 120 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The material for the discussion of the topics in the follow- 
 ing pages has been drawn from individual reports and personal 
 interviews with more than five hundred different persons 
 whose experiences are recorded. I have the fullest confidence 
 in the accuracy of the reports and the sincerity with which 
 they were made. I knew each person intimately, and a per- 
 sonal interview permits a kind of cross questioning and com- 
 parison with the reports of others which it is impossible to 
 employ in a written questionnaire. The reports upon which 
 the following chapters are based are absolutely truthful, and 
 as accurate as the circumstances will permit. 
 
 This book has developed out of a series of lessons on Indi- 
 vidual Differences. In general, our psychology as a part of 
 the professional preparation for teaching, has failed to function 
 to the degree that it should. The reason for this partial failure 
 seems to be that we have been teaching only one phase of psy- 
 chology. The laws of psychology which we have been teaching, 
 are statements of the resemblances between the mental pro- 
 cesses of all persons. But teachers must deal with individuals, 
 and individuals manifest differences as well as resemblances. 
 It is as much a necessity for professional preparation to study 
 individual differences as it is to study general resemblances. 
 
 Individual differences are of two kinds; quantitative and 
 qualitative. The quantitative differences are studied by a 
 process of mental measurement. They exist in processes that 
 are common to all individuals, but manifested in different de- 
 grees. An example of this kind of difference is seen in reac- 
 tion time, which differs widely in different persons. 
 
 But there are qualitative differences as well as quantita* 
 tive. Some persons have mental experiences that are alto- 
 gether wanting in others. The topics treated in this book 
 represent this kind of individual differences. 
 
 The topics selected for treatment are of different degrees 
 of familiarity to psychologists. Some of them have already 
 been very thoroughly treated, but others, such as Imaginary 
 Playmates, Images in Reading, Paramnesia, Illusions of Orien- 
 tation, and Original Languages, have been but slightly in- 
 vestigated. All of these topics are of special interest to all 
 
persons, and constitute the most attractive feature of psychol- 
 ogy to a very large number of students. They are to psychol- 
 ogy classes, what electricity is to a boy beginning to study 
 physics. 
 
 The bibliographies are not intended to represent anything 
 like a full list of publications upon the subject, but merely to 
 indicate the kind and amount of reading that may be expected 
 to be done in connection with each chapter. 
 
 Ypsilanti, Michigan, September 12, 1918. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES. 
 
 The soul of a child embraces elements that are incompre- 
 hensible to the grown up man. It contains chambers into 
 which the light of mature intellect can with difficulty pene- 
 trate. Its experiences seldom receive their proper appreciation, 
 and the child and the parent are of necessity, comparative 
 strangers. To know the child, we need to know what his child- 
 ish experiences are, and we must inquire of the child what 
 those experiences may be. 
 
 The experiences of children differ widely from each other. 
 The experience of one child is no criterion by which to judge 
 of the experiences of another. Children differ as wide as the 
 poles in the experiences which they encounter. Only by a col- 
 lection of many divergent experiences of different children are 
 we able to comprehend what the actions of any particular child 
 may mean. 
 
 Some children have playmates that are wholly imaginary, 
 but which are as vivid and real to them as living playmates 
 would be. These playmates are not merely vivid ideas, or 
 imaginings, but actual visual and auditory projections. They 
 can be seen and heard as vividly as if they are living children. 
 Some typical cases will best show the characteristics of these 
 imaginary playmates. 
 
 Miss Ruby C. was an only child. She had two imaginary 
 playmates whom she knew by the names of Katie Fendus and 
 Nellie Brosus. These playmates were two little girls of about 
 her own age, who were as vivid and distinct to her as two liv- 
 ing children would be. She could see them very plainly, and 
 could hear the tones of their voices when they were talking. 
 She describes clearly how they were dressed, and how they 
 wore their hair. Sometimes the three of them would play to- 
 gether, and sometimes she would sit still and watch them play. 
 The three of them sometimes played school, and she remem- 
 bers that they used to tell her how to spell words. One time 
 they told her to spell meat, meqfeg, which was not correct. 
 
 Miss C. remembers seeing these two playmates as early as 
 she can remember anything. Certainly they appeared to her 
 by the time she was three years old. She does not remember 
 
8 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 the circumstances of their first appearance, nor how they re- 
 ceived their names. Neither does she know the occasion for 
 their disappearance, which occurred when she was about eight. 
 She often talked with her mother about the doings of Nellie 
 and Katie. In fact, it was rather a common subject of conver- 
 sation with her. 
 
 Another case will emphasize the same features of this 
 typical example. Miss Bessie C. reports that she had an imag- 
 inary playmate whom she called Dorothy. Dorothy began to 
 appear to her when she was about seven or eight years of age, 
 and continued until she was about twelve. Dorothy was a little 
 girl of just about her own age. She could see Dorothy as clear- 
 ly as she could see a living child, and could hear the tones of 
 her voice when she talked. Dorothy went to school with her, 
 and in fact, the two girls were together nearly all the time. 
 She and Dorothy played with their dolls, and would have tea 
 parties together. She always insisted upon an extra place at 
 the table for Dorothy, with plate and knife, and would become 
 indignant at her mother, who could not understand who Dor- 
 othy was, and the necessity for the extra equipment. At 
 Christmas time, Bessie always hung up an extra stocking for 
 Dorothy. She never quarreled with Dorothy, but she does not 
 remember that Dorothy ever told her anything which she did 
 not already know. 
 
 These two cases manifest the characteristics of at least 
 half of all the reports of imaginary playmates. 
 
 1. Vividness. Nearly always they are described as being as 
 vivid as a living child would be. 
 
 2. Both visual and auditory. They can be both seen and 
 heard. 
 
 3. They are children of about the same age as the child 
 who experiences them. 
 
 4. They are really playmates, whose society is enjoyed by 
 the one who experiences them. 
 
 5. They are known by some name similar to that of other 
 children. 
 
 6. They begin to appear early in the life of the child. 
 Usually, they are seen by the time the child begins to remem- 
 ber anything, and the manner of their beginning is indefinite 
 and not known. 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 9 
 
 7. They disappear gradually, without attracting atten- 
 tion, either about the age of eight, or about the age of twelve. 
 
 8. The occasion for their disappearance is seldom recog- 
 nized. 
 
 9. Their appearance is generally described, and often 
 made the subject of conversation with parents, or with other 
 children. 
 
 10. They are not hallucinatory. The child recognizes 
 that they differ from real, living, objective children. 
 
 While these are the points in which a very large number 
 of imaginary playmates will agree, there is not a single one of 
 them in which great variations do not occur. Let us examine 
 each characteristic separately. 
 
 1. Vividness. It is difficult to convey to a person who 
 has not had a similar experience, just what is meant by the 
 vividness of an imaginary playmate. Many persons can re- 
 member how an object looked, who have no capacity for visual- 
 izing it, projecting it, or re-seeing it. The difference between 
 an idea of a thing and a percept of a thing consists principally 
 in the difference in intensity of the nervous impulse that ac- 
 companies the two processes. For the moment, we may be sat- 
 isfied with the statement that the imaginary playmates are as 
 vivid as living children would be, and that there is no percep- 
 tible difference in their appearance. 
 
 2. They are both visual and auditory. They are both seen 
 and heard. While this is the general rule, it is not universal. 
 Miss Christine M. describes a playmate, who was a little girl 
 always dressed in white, stiffly starched, and with a short skirt, 
 whom she could see very clearly. The appearance was visual 
 only, and she never heard the playmate talk. Similarly, Mr. 
 Rollin R. reports that for several years he had an imaginary 
 playmate, who was a little Indian boy of about his own age, 
 whom he followed frequently through the woods, and from 
 whom he learned many things in wood craft, but whose voice 
 he never heard, and with whom he never talked. 
 
 Less common is the experience of an imaginary playmate 
 that is exclusively auditory. Miss Lucille B., however, reports 
 that she had a toy telephone, by means of which she regularly 
 visited with an imaginary playmate, whose voice she could dis- 
 tinguish clearly and knew it well, but whom she never saw. 
 
10 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 Every day she would report to her playmate over the telephone 
 that happenings of her day at school, and would receive similar 
 reports from her playmate at the other end of the line. 
 
 Even more emphatic is the case of Miss Lurah M, who with 
 her two sisters, had two imaginary playmates whom they knew 
 by the names of Banter and Dedy. Banter and Dedy were 
 two boys who lived in the upper story of an old granary, the 
 lower floor of which constituted the regular playhouse of the 
 three girls. Miss M. never saw the boys, but she talked freely 
 with them and they talked freely to her. She knew intimately 
 the sounds of their voices, and they talked with her and with 
 her sisters a great deal. The boys were great travelers, and 
 would often tell the girls about the places they had visited. 
 The girls often played keeping house, and would have tea 
 parties and make mud pies. These mud pies they regularly 
 handed up to the boys in the loft, asking their opinion of the 
 excellence of the pies. 
 
 3. In more than half of the cases, the playmates are 
 children of approximately the same age as those to whom they 
 appear. The variations from this rule are interesting and very 
 funny. In some cases, instead of being children, the playmates 
 are grown up men and women. Miss Fay P. had three play- 
 mates; one of them was a tall dark man whom she knew as 
 Patty. She did not like Patty, and was rather afraid of him, 
 and avoided him whenever she could. A second was a tall man 
 with a high hat whom she knew as Dr. Cady, and whom she 
 liked greatly. A third was a negro woman who always wore a 
 red bandanna handkerchief around her head. She liked her 
 very much. These three persons were very commonly with her 
 for several years. 
 
 A somewhat similar case is that of Miss Phyllis S., who had 
 a playmate whom she called Sister Ogle. Sister Ogle was a 
 young lady about "high school age," probably seventeen or 
 eighteen years old. She sometimes came to see Phyllis, who 
 was six or seven, and on such occasions Phyllis would get out a 
 large sachel, which she always referred to as Sister Ogle's 
 sachel. In this sachel were many presents that Sister Ogle 
 always brought for Phyllis, as well as a wonderfully beautiful 
 party dress which Phyllis greatly admired. The presents and 
 the dress were wholly imaginary. 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 11 
 
 But the imaginary playmates are not always even persons. 
 Miss Wilma G. reports the case of her little brother who has a 
 flock of sheep which manifest all the characteristics of imag- 
 inary playmates. There are several lambs in the flock, and he 
 sometimes carries one lamb under his arm while driving the 
 other sheep from one room to another. 
 
 Miss Lottie G. reports that after having visited a county 
 fair, at which she was much interested in an exhibit of collie 
 dogs, two imaginary collie dogs, which she called Popsie and 
 Wopsie, appeared to her and were her constant playmates tor 
 two years. 
 
 Miss Bessie S. reports her experience with an imaginary 
 playmate who was not a little girl. When she was four or five 
 years old, her family lived in a house that had considerable 
 ground around it, and which was near a railroad. In one place 
 there were several thornapple trees, under one of which was a 
 pile of rocks. This particular spot was especially attractive to- 
 ner as a place to play. But this particularly attractive place 
 was inhabited by a ferocious little dwarf who would rush out 
 at her whenever she went to that place to play, and chase her 
 home, swinging his arms, clawing at her and shouting. He was 
 not so large as she was, and he always wore a funny cap. She 
 discovered, however, that she could placate the dwarf, or pre- 
 vent his appearance, by carrying to that place a dish contain- 
 ing water with a mixture of pepper and salt^ It was a very 
 vivid experience, and continued as long as her family lived in 
 that place. 
 
 The imaginary playmate is not necessarily a person, nor 
 even an animated creature. Miss Marguerite H. lived in a 
 town only two blocks from a railroad. Her house had a front 
 door that was seldom used, and a side door which was the usual 
 means of entrance. Whenever she was going from the front 
 around to the side door, she would see a train of cars moving 
 along at her side. Whenever she was walking down town, the 
 train would accompany her, moving along at her side until it 
 came to the railroad track, when it would jump onto the rails 
 and continue its journey. She was not in the least afraid of 
 the train, and even designated it familiarly by the name of 
 John. When her family removed from that town, the train 
 never reappeared. 
 
12 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 4. When we think of playmates, we think of something 
 that maintains an enjoyable relation to us. So an imaginary 
 playmate may be expected to hold an agreeable relation to the 
 child who experiences it. In many cases, however, the imag- 
 inary playmate is not enjoyed, nor liked, but sometimes is an 
 object of hatred. Thus, Miss Frances B. says that she had a 
 whole family of imaginary playmates. The family was named 
 Kangaroo, and consisted of a man and his wife, with several 
 children. One of the children was especially prominent in the 
 experience. This was a girl named Polly, who was a bad girl 
 and far from handsome. Polly was often left in the care of 
 Frances who hated her, and was quite tyrannical with her. 
 She would sometimes shake Polly, and shut her in the closet, 
 where she could hear her cry and sob very distinctly. 
 
 Mr. Pearl B. and his real playmate, a boy named Kops, had 
 an imaginary playmate whom they knew by the name of Gor- 
 don. Gordon was a grown up man with a dark beard and 
 backwoods clothes, and quite tall. A favorite sport of the boys 
 was to build dams in the stream, and Gordon was always try- 
 ing to tear them out. Their entire association with Gordon 
 was a fight, or contest. 
 
 Somewhat similar is the experience of Miss Bessie R. who, 
 with her sister, had an imaginary playmate whom they called 
 Ella. Ella was about eleven years old, had dark eyes and dark 
 hair, which she always wore in a single braid down her back. 
 Neither of the girls liked Ella. Ella was mean and mischiev- 
 ous. She always hurt their dolls, and they would feel distress- 
 ed when they saw Ella coming, and would feel relieved when 
 she went away. Miss Bessie and her sister still speak of Ella, 
 and when their room manifests a very disorderly appearance, 
 they remark that it looks as if Ella had been there. 
 
 5. Nearly all the imaginary playmates have names ap- 
 plied to them, but in only a few cases is it possible to suggest 
 why the particular names are applied. The name is not an es- 
 sential attribute to the experience, and in some cases the play- 
 mate has no name. Thus Miss Pearl Y. had an imaginary play- 
 mate who began to appear to her when she was about four 
 years old and continued with her until she was eight. The 
 playmate had dark hair which she wore down her back in two 
 braids. Miss Y. could see the playmate very clearly and could 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 13 
 
 hear the tones of her voice when she was speaking. The play- 
 mate had no name, and Miss Y. has never before had her at- 
 tention called to the singularity of the whole experience. 
 
 In a few cases it is possible to suggest the probable origin 
 of the name. Blanche B. and her sister had two families of 
 imaginary playmates. One family was named Spoopendyke 
 and lived on the south porch. The family consisted of a father, 
 mother, and several children, one of whom, Sarah, was the one 
 with whom the girls were especially acquainted. The other 
 family was named Boosenbark, and the member of the family 
 in whom the girls were especially interested was Nellie. They 
 liked Nellie very much, but Sarah Spoopendyke was not very 
 agreeable, and they rather avoided her. The name Spoopen- 
 dyke was probably suggested by the fact that Spoopendyke was 
 the name of a character around which was built a large and 
 long continued series of very humorous stories. Similarly we 
 find that Miss Ruth W.'s playmate had the name of McGunty, 
 a slightly modified form of the name of the hero of a very 
 popular song. 
 
 6. In nearly all cases, the testimony shows that the imag- 
 inary playmate began to appear to the child very early. Much 
 the larger number of persons having the experience say that 
 they have seen the playmate always, or as early as they can 
 remember anything. But in some cases, the origin and de- 
 velopment of the playmate can be traced. Thus Miss Anna Y. 
 says that she had a girl chum who read fairy stories, and ro- 
 manced a great deal. She and her chum developed out of the 
 fairy stories, an imaginary playmate whom they called the 
 Mermaid. She could see the Mermaid very clearly, and could 
 hear her talk. She and her chum would both take their dolls 
 and go to see the Mermaid, and they both played with her. 
 
 Another case will show the development of the imaginary 
 playmate out of make-believe. Miss Lida C. says that she and 
 her three sisters had a whole town of imaginary playmates 
 who lived in the fence corners around the fields. They had all 
 of them named, and would visit with them, and play with them 
 by the hour. To her, the children were vivid as living persons 
 would be, and she could see them as clearly as she could see 
 living persons. In this case, there can be no doubt that the 
 playmates were developed out of make-believe. The children 
 
14 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 said at first "let us play" so and so. Finally, a really vivid 
 visual projection occurred. 
 
 Make-believe implies a conscious purpose on the part of the 
 one who employs it. In much the greater number of cases, 
 there can be no supposition of conscious purpose, and the cause 
 for their appearance, and for the particular forms that they 
 take is altogether beyond the reach of explanation. 
 
 Another case, which really belongs to a different category, 
 will illustrate another aspect of the process by which such ap- 
 pearances begin. Miss Hazel G. heard her mother read aloud 
 the story of Ann of Green Gables. Later, she read another 
 book, Ann of Avon Hall, in which were recorded the deeds of 
 the same characters. Ann soon became to her a vivid person- 
 ality, as real as a living person would be. She could see Ann 
 very clearly, and Ann was regarded as a very dear friend. 
 She often consulted Ann about her plans, and Ann was very 
 sympathetic with her. 
 
 Similarly, Katherine McL. when she was about six years 
 old, together with a girl friend, came to know something about 
 the activities of Jesse James. They either read about him, or 
 heard some one else read about his exploits. Shortly afterward, 
 they became able to see Jesse James. He appeared to them 
 rather frequently, sometimes in the capacity of a robber about 
 to attack and rob them, and again in the character of a friend 
 willing and ready to lend them assistance. She could see Jesse 
 James as clearly as if he had been a living person, and she 
 could hear him speak. She and her friend often talked about 
 him, and they described to each other how he looked, so that 
 she believes that the appearance was the same to both. 
 
 7. The disappearance of the playmate is not often attend- 
 ed with any noticeable event. The disappearance is gradual 
 and does not attract the attention of the child, so that few of 
 the persons who report their experiences are able to fix a def- 
 inite occasion for their disappearance. However, in a few 
 cases the occasion for their disappearance has been noted. 
 
 Miss Alice B. had two imaginary playmates, Doty and 
 May. She liked Doty the better, although May was a welcome 
 playmate. When they had tea parties, Doty always asked the 
 blessing. One day in winter, they were all in the house, and 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 15 
 
 May was sitting in a rocking chair by the fireside, when Miss 
 B.'s mother came in and sat down in the rocking chair on May 
 and killed her. Miss Alice says that she screamed, and did her 
 best to keep her mother from sitting down in the chair, but 
 her mother laughed, not seeing anything in the chair, and sat 
 down. Miss Alice was terribly distressed, and cried for half a 
 day, but May was dead and never reappeared. 
 
 Similarly, Miss Marian C. reports that her little brother had 
 an imaginary playmate who was a baby. One day, the little 
 brother accidentally killed the baby with a hoe. He was ter- 
 ribly distressed over the circumstance, and still grieves (at the 
 time of the report) over the occurrence, but the baby has not 
 reappeared. 
 
 Sometimes the disappearance is the result of punishment 
 or scolding, or reasoning with the child by the parent. In the 
 case of Miss Phyllis S. whose imaginary playmate, Sister Ogle, 
 is referred to above, Miss Phyllis had a grandmother, who had 
 an imaginary playmate whom she called the Mermaid, and in 
 whose companionship she took a great deal of satisfaction. 
 Some visitors, however, when they discovered that the grand- 
 mother was talking to imaginary persons, were very much con- 
 cerned, and advised the parents to take measures to stop it 
 because they were sure that it was an indication of mental un- 
 soundness, or some other terribly disgraceful condition. This 
 the parents did, much to the distress of the grandmother, who 
 cried long and hard over the disappearance of the Mermaid, 
 and the conviction that she was not a real creature. So when 
 Phyllis grew into the companionship of Sister Ogle, the grand- 
 mother was determined that she should not be caused the same 
 kind of distress that had occurred to her in the disappearance 
 of the Mermaid. Consequently Phyllis was permitted to enjoy 
 the experience with Sister Ogle to her heart's content. 
 
 8. An examination of the accounts of different persons 
 who have experienced imaginary playmates indicates that 
 most of them disappear principally at two periods. There is a 
 tendency in the reports to fix the age at which they disappear 
 either at the age of seven or eight, or at the age of eleven or 
 twelve. These dates correspond approximately to the period 
 of transition from infancy to childhood, or the time of transi- 
 tion from childhood to adolescence. These dates may be rough- 
 
16 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 ly described as the time of the second dentition, or the oncom- 
 ing of the adolescent changes. 
 
 Such disappearances are not, however, universal. In the 
 case mentioned above, where Miss Bessie R. and her sister had 
 an imaginary playmate Ella, Miss Bessie says that she still 
 catches occasional glimpses of Ella. 
 
 Miss Mabel B. had two imaginary playmates, whom she 
 knew as Fred and his sister. The sister had no other name, 
 and was rather insignificant in the experience. Fred was about 
 the same age as herself, and grew up, as she grew up herself. 
 She often consulted Fred about what was best for her to do, 
 and she came to believe that it was a pretty good thing to fol- 
 low Fred's advice. She gave several examples of serious con- 
 sequences following occasions when she had refused to heed the 
 admonitions of Fred. I said, "When did they cease to appear?" 
 "Why," Miss Mabel said, "I see them yet. Yesterday, I saw 
 Fred's sister looking over your shoulder in the class." 
 
 Similarly, Miss Grace M. reports the case of her brother, 
 who is a young man, eighteen years old, and who is very fond 
 of hunting. He has an imaginary playmate who has been with 
 him ever since he can remember, and who still persists. Her 
 brother assures her that whenever he goes to shoot, he looks 
 carefully to see that his playmate is not in the way, and in 
 danger of getting shot. However, this is unusual, and these 
 three cases are about the only ones in the series of 109 that 
 have been carefully studied, in which there is a persistence of 
 the playmate experience into the adult years. 
 
 9. Most of the cases referred to above, have been com- 
 paratively simple. But in some examples, the experience be- 
 comes almost bewilderingly complex. Miss Winifred B. when 
 a little girl, liked very much to play with paper dolls. It ap- 
 pears that her imaginary playmate grew out of this circum- 
 stance, and seems to have been developed from make-believe. 
 Her imaginary playmate was her husband, and the father of 
 her paper dolls. Her husband's name was Samuel, and he was 
 decidedly a henpecked husband, for she ordered him around 
 unmercifully. She could see Samuel as clearly as she could see 
 a living person, and could hear him talk, and knew the tones 
 of his voice. When she ceased to play with paper dolls, Samuel 
 gradually faded away. 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 17 
 
 Miss Vaida B. had an imaginary playmate whom she called 
 Salt Nellie. Salt Nellie was a little girl of just her own age, 
 whom she was able to see very clearly. Nellie was sullen in 
 appearance, had brown hair, and always wore a rather old, 
 faded dress. She and Nellie never played together, and Nellie 
 never appeared except when Vaida had been naughty. She 
 had the feeling that somehow she had been changed into Nellie 
 when she had been naughty. 
 
 In this case, it might appear a reasonable suggestion that 
 the appearance of Nellie grew out of a circumstance such as 
 the mother's saying to Vaida, for punishment, "You have been 
 a bad girl. Stand in front of the looking glass, and see how a 
 bad girl looks." 
 
 Another complex case is illustrated by the experience of 
 Elsie F. Miss Elsie had an imaginary playmate whom she 
 knew as Leah Lynn Jones. Leah was a little girl about as old 
 as herself, who lived in the playhouse in the back yard. Leah 
 had dark hair and always wore a pink and white checked dress. 
 She could see Leah very clearly, and she could also see Leah's 
 mother. She and Leah played together a great deal. They 
 would play school, and study arithmetic together. She would 
 sometimes read aloud to Leah, and she remembers that she 
 read Peck's Bad Boy in this way. 
 
 Leah had another playmate, a wholly imaginary girl, 
 named Eula. Elsie and Leah frequently quarreled over Eula. 
 It appears that Elsie was jealous of Eula, who was Leah's espe- 
 cial friend. Sometimes Elsie would quarrel directly with Eula, 
 and she never liked her. 
 
 An exceedingly complex case of imaginary playmates is 
 the experience of Miss Bertha L. Miss Bertha had several real 
 playmates, all of them boys. One boy told her one day, that 
 he had proposed marriage to a girl, wholly imaginary, or make- 
 believe. Both she and the boy friend from that time began to 
 talk about that make-believe girl, whom they came to know as 
 Hazel. Shortly afterward, she began to see Hazel as clearly 
 and as vividly as she could see a living child. Soon thereafter, 
 an imaginary boy named John began to appear. John was a 
 dark complexioned boy. They all played with John, and invited 
 him to their tea parties. 
 
 They told another family of real children about John and 
 
18 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 Hazel,, and soon the other children began to see them. John 
 subsequently brought with him his imaginary friend, Sam, who 
 was a red headed boy, light complexioned, living down near an 
 old appletree. The real children and the imaginary children 
 played together, and would laugh and shout. They played tag, 
 and fox and geese, and the imaginary children would run and 
 catch them and be caught by them just as real children would 
 be. 
 
 Not very long afterward, two imaginary grown up persons 
 were added to the list. These were Mr. and Mrs. Shopey who 
 had a large, white, imaginary bulldog. The children, real and 
 imaginary, did not like Mr. and Mrs. Shopey, and would tease 
 Mrs. Shopey in an exasperating manner, which would incense 
 Mr. Shopey who would run after them, and chase them, and 
 set his white bulldog on them. 
 
 10. A question would seem natural concerning the places 
 in which these imaginary playmates lived. In probably half 
 the number of cases, the question does not arise in the minds 
 of the children who experience the playmates. The question 
 simply does not occur to them. Inquiry concerning their no- 
 tion of the playmate's place of habitation produces such an- 
 swers as the following: Whenever she went out on the play- 
 ground, the playmate came; or, she just thought about the 
 playmate, and the playmate appeared. 
 
 But in some cases, the playmate has a definite location. 
 Miss Blanche T. had an imaginary playmate whom she knew 
 as Giddy. Giddy was a grown up woman who lived in a hollow 
 log about a quarter of a mile from her house. When she want- 
 ed to talk to Giddy, she would go to Giddy's house and talk 
 things over with her. Giddy never came to her house. She 
 would sometimes take other persons to Giddy's house, and try 
 to get them to talk to Giddy, but generally the other persons 
 were but little interested in Giddy. She never saw Giddy, and 
 does not know how Giddy looked, for the appearance was al- 
 together auditory. 
 
 In the accounts referred to above, we have seen that the 
 two imaginary boys, Banter and Dedy, who were the playmates 
 of Miss Lurah M., lived in the upper floor of the old granary. 
 In Miss Bertha L.'s account, the second imaginary boy, Sam, 
 lived down the road under an apple tree. So the playmates of 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 19 
 
 Miss Lida C. were located in the fence corners around the farm. 
 The little dwarf of Miss Bessie S. lived in a pile of rocks under 
 a thornapple tree. 
 
 Miss Julia S. had an imaginary playmate whom she knew 
 as Mary, who would meet her every morning at a certain spot 
 and go to school with her. Mary lived somewhere in an in- 
 definite place up the road that came into Julia's road at that 
 meeting point. In the afternoon, Julia and Mary would come 
 from school together until they reached that spot, when Mary 
 would turn off to go to her own home, while Julia would con- 
 tinue her own road and not see Mary any more until the next 
 day. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons, when Julia wished 
 to play with Mary, she would go down the road to the regular 
 meeting point, when Mary would come to that place and play 
 with her. Mary never came to her house, and she never went 
 to Mary's house. 
 
 11. The last case is an example of another feature of this 
 experience which is perhaps the most important of the entire 
 series. In the case of Julia S. she never told anybody else 
 about Mary, at all. It was a repressed idea. The present 
 writer is the first person to whom she has related her experi- 
 ence with Mary. Neither did Rollin R. ever mention to any 
 one, his acquaintance with his little Indian. It is in cases of 
 this kind that we find the greatest injury done to children by 
 parents and teachers. In the case of Mabel B. mentioned 
 above, whose playmates, Fred and her sister, still appear to 
 her, she talked freely to her parents about them. The circum- 
 stance distressed her mother very much, and Mabel says that 
 she has often got her ears boxed, and been called crazy, for re- 
 porting the sayings and doings of Fred and his sister. So in 
 the case of the grandmother of Phyllis S. referred to above, 
 the friends were confident that the talking to herself, since 
 they knew nothing of the imaginary playmate, the Mermaid, 
 was a symptom of insanity, or something else that was very 
 bad. Hence it was that a course of action was adopted, which 
 brought great distress, if not positive injury to the little girl. 
 
 A really pathetic case appeared in the course of these in- 
 vestigations. One day in the class, I had mentioned that the 
 next day we should consider the matter of imaginary play- 
 mates, and indicated something of the nature of the topic. The 
 
20 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 next day, as soon as that topic was reached, one of the stu- 
 dents, Miss LaP, went out of the room, and returned with her 
 mother. At the conclusion of the discussion, Mrs. LaP. came 
 up to the teacher with her eyes shining, and an expression on 
 her face, that indicated the greatest satisfaction, relief, and ap- 
 proval. Then she related her experience. When she was a 
 little girl, she had two imaginary playmates whom she knew as 
 Jessie and Mollie. They lived in a place near a small creek that 
 ran through her father's farm. She would go to see them al- 
 most every day, and the visit was something of a ceremony. 
 She always dressed up for the occasion, changing her clothes. 
 They always greeted her effusively, and they parted with con- 
 siderable ceremony, inviting her to come back soon for another 
 visit. The appearance of the two imaginary girls was very 
 vivid. She could both see and hear them. She had a brother 
 and a sister with whom she might have played, but she pre- 
 ferred to play with Jessie and Mollie. 
 
 She thinks that the appearances developed out of make- 
 believe, but they became as vivid as living children would be. 
 Now, after the lapse of forty years, she has a very vivid recol- 
 lection of exactly the appearance they presented. She never 
 told any one about Jessie and Mollie, until she told her daugh- 
 ter the night before. She was rather ashamed of the experi- 
 ence, and apprehensive that it indicated mental derangement, 
 or something else very bad. She experienced a feeling of the 
 greatest relief when she found that they were natural and 
 normal phenomena, and her face was perfectly radiant when 
 she found that I was interested in her account, and that she 
 could talk to me about Jessie and Mollie without being appre- 
 hensive that she would have her sanity questioned.. 
 
 It is this repression of an idea for many years that con- 
 stitutes the pathetic feature of some cases of imaginary play- 
 mates. What would naturally be an enjoyable and helpful as- 
 sociation, becomes something of which the child feels ashamed 
 and conceals it. The unsympathetic attitude of some parents, 
 playmates and teachers, due to ignorance of the nature of this 
 childish experience, is responsible for this feature. 
 
 Thus Miss Eva R. had an imaginary playmate whom she 
 called Bertha. Bertha seemed to have something of the rela- 
 tion of an older sister to her. Her association with Bertha was 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 21 
 
 very helpful, pleasant, and vivid. One time, she told some 
 other real playmates about Bertha. They laughed at her. 
 From that time Bertha disappeared, and was never seen again, 
 much to her own regret. 
 
 Another case that is equally pathetic is that represented 
 by Miss Ruth W. Ruth had four sisters older than herself, to 
 whom she was the baby. She had an imaginary playmate 
 whom she called McGunty. McGunty contrasted strongly with 
 herself, having light hair, and being tall, while she herself was 
 short and dark. She could see McGunty very clearly, and could 
 hear her talk. They played keeping house, and made many 
 mud pies. She did not tell her sisters about McGunty, and 
 never talked about her. The older sisters commented upon the 
 fact that she played much alone, and seemed to have such a 
 good time by herself, and would sometimes observe that sne 
 laid a second place at her tea table. One day, when she was not 
 observing the fact, an older sister came quietly up to where 
 she was playing with McGunty, and heard the conversation 
 that she and McGunty were carrying on. In great glee, the 
 older sister went into the house and described the conversation. 
 She was quite ashamed of the fact having become known, and 
 McGunty never appeared again. She tried as hard as she 
 could to bring McGunty back, and was very lonesome without 
 her, but McGunty never reappeared. She had formerly told 
 McGunty all her troubles, as soon as they occurred, which was; 
 a great relief. She was very unhappy when McGunty went 
 away, and regretted it very much, but McGunty's disappear- 
 ance was permanent. 
 
 Now, what is the explanation and the significance of these 
 experiences of childhood? Are they indications of a diseased 
 mind, or are they real objective existences which are discover- 
 able to the children who have the experience, while invisible to 
 others? There are many persons who will be ready to offer a 
 mystical, mythical, spiritualistic explanation of all these ap- 
 pearances, and whose belief cannot be shaken. The following 
 is a case of imaginary playmate to which the parents of the 
 child have given such a mystical explanation. 
 
 Wilma G. is a little girl about five years old. Her twin 
 sister, named Winnie, died at about the age of two. Wilma is 
 very bright, almost precocious, learned early to read, and is a 
 
22 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 good speller. She has an imaginary playmate whom she calls 
 Winnie. Almost every day she will report to her mother what 
 she and Winnie have done. She tells her mother how Winnie is 
 dressed, what Winnie says, and describes in detail the circum- 
 stances of her activities. 
 
 The parents are confident that Wilma sees the spirit of 
 the little dead sister, which is visible to her, but not to other 
 persons, in consequence of the close affinity between the 
 twins. In consequence of the removal of the earth limitations 
 from Winnie, she has progressed more rapidly than other 
 children, and is able to teach Wilma, so that she also progresses 
 rapidly. No amount of argument could, in all probability, con- 
 vince the parents of the truth of any other explanation. 
 
 Of the same general character is the experience of Orla G. 
 Orla has no recollection of ever having seen his father, who 
 died when Orla was less than three years old. Their table is a 
 square table, and was always set for four. When he was about 
 six years old, Orla began to pull out one of the chairs from the 
 table at meal time, and in reply to a question from his mother, 
 said that he pulled it out for his father. Shortly afterward he 
 began to see his father. The visual appearances at first were 
 faint, but gradually became stronger, until he was able to see 
 his father very clearly, and observe him eating. He described 
 the appearance of his father in such a way that the mother 
 said it was an accurate description. 
 
 The mother was very much distressed over the circum- 
 stances, and talked to him about it. When Orla was about 
 twelve years old, he decided to discontinue pulling the chair 
 from the table, and not very long afterward, the appearances 
 of the father ceased. 
 
 It is probable that we have in the phenomena of imaginary 
 playmates, an explanation of all the materializing phenomena 
 of spiritiualism that are not deliberately fraudulent. The 
 spiritualistic and mystical explanation collapses at once when 
 we trace the development of many cases of imaginary play- 
 mates out of make-believe, and arrange a large number of cases 
 in a series that proceed by infinitesimal gradations from those 
 that are scarcely to be classed as genuine cases of imaginary 
 playmates, to those that furnish spiritualists with their stock 
 arguments. 
 
IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 23 
 
 An imaginary playmate is a visual or auditory idea that 
 becomes as vivid as a visual or auditory percept would be. It 
 is accompanied by a centrally initiated impulse, that is, one 
 which starts in the brain, instead of being accompanied by a 
 peripherally initiated impulse, that is, one which starts in the 
 eye, or the ear, as a percept would be. The centrally initiated 
 impulse that accompanies the experience of the imaginary play- 
 mate, traverses the same brain centers that would be traversed 
 by the peripherally initiated impulse, if it were a real child, 
 or other object that is seen. The principal distinction between 
 the idea which is projected as the imaginary playmate, and 
 other ideas is found in the unusual strength of the centrally 
 initiated impulse which accompanies the process. Children 
 generate a great amount of nervous energy, and as a conse- 
 quence, their centrally initiated impulses are more likely to 
 approximate the strength of the peripherally initiated impulse 
 than are the centrally initiated impulses of grown up persons. 
 
 This large amount of nervous energy, and the strong cen- 
 trally initiated impulse, is one condition for mental capacity. 
 Hence it is that we find nearly all cases of imaginary play- 
 mates manifested in children who are distinctly above the 
 average capacity for children of their own age. No stupid 
 child ever had an imaginary playmate. Instead of the experi- 
 ence indicating mental derangement, it is rather an indication 
 of unusual mental capacity. 
 
 It will be observed that a very large number of the cases 
 of imaginary playmates are reported by those who have been 
 only children, or who have been compelled to play much alone. 
 But this lonely condition of the child is not necessary for the 
 development of an imaginary playmate. In the cases already 
 cited, it will be remembered that Mrs. LaP. stated distinctly 
 that she had other brothers and sisters with whom she might 
 have played, but she preferred to play with Jessie and Mollie. 
 Also, in the case of Miss Lurah M., there were several children 
 to whom the two boys, Banter and Dedy, appeared in an audi- 
 tory manner. And then, the complex case of Miss Bertha L. 
 in which several children developed the same group of imagin- 
 ary playmates, including Mr. and Mrs. Shopey and their white 
 bulldog. All such cases show that while the lonely condition of 
 a child may be favorable to the development of an imaginary 
 
24 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 playmate, it is not an essential condition, nor one of very great 
 importance. 
 
 Not every child has an imaginary playmate. Investigation 
 shows that about six children out of a hundred have this expe- 
 rience. It is possible that the number is somewhat greater 
 than this, but that is the largest proportion that any accurate 
 counting is able to show. There is always the possibility that 
 some persons may have had the experience, and have forgotten 
 it, but the number of such cases is likely to be very small. 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The references to imaginary playmates are very few in 
 number, and none of them treat the phenomena in an adequate 
 way. The following represent about the only references that 
 are readily available. 
 
 1. Caton — The Invisible Playmate. This is a book that 
 gives on pages 15 and 17 an account of a single instance of an 
 imaginary playmate, which there is given a mystical setting. 
 
 2. C. H. Cooley — Human Nature and the Social Order. 
 Imaginary playmates are referred to on pages 52 and 53. Mr. 
 Cooley seems to think that imaginary playmates arise out of 
 the developing social nature of the child. He fails to recognize 
 that they are vivid, visual appearances, generally originating 
 in the period of infancy, before even the first indication of a 
 social instinct. 
 
 3. H. L. Brittain — A Study in Imagination. Pedagog- 
 ical Seminary, volume 14, p. 137. Imaginary playmates are 
 briefly referred to on page 170. 
 
 4. Lillien J. Martin — Ghosts and the Projection of Vis- 
 ual Images." American Journal of Psychology, volume 26, p. 
 251-257. Accounts of three persons who saw Ghosts. All 
 showed by experiment a capacity to project visual images. 
 Imaginary playmates are briefly referred to. 
 
 5. James P. Munroe — Self Projection in a Child. Peda- 
 gogical Seminary, volume 3, p. 182. A fairly good account of 
 an imaginary playmate without any satisfactory recognition of 
 the real nature of the phenomena. 
 
 6. F. W. Burnham — Imagination in Children. Peda- 
 gogical Seminary, volume 2, p. 204. Imaginary playmates are 
 briefly referred to on page 212. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PROJECTED IMAGES 
 
 In order to understand imaginary playmates, it is neces- 
 sary that we should examine some closely related phenomena 
 that are concerned in the study of visual images. It was 
 Francis Galton, in 1883, who first called our attention in an 
 emphatic way to the great differences among individuals in the 
 power to visualize, or to remember and to reproduce images of 
 things that have once been seen. Since that time, comparative- 
 ly little has been done in investigating the differences among 
 persons in this respect, and we have advanced in the knowledge 
 of this capacity only a little way beyond the point at which 
 Galton left it. 
 
 Galton spoke of all kinds of visual recollection, or repro- 
 duction, as mental imagery, and described three different de- 
 grees; high, medium and low. His method of determining the 
 capacity of different individuals was to ask them to image some 
 scene, such as their breakfast table, and to describe it, judging 
 of the degree of vividness that the image presented. It came 
 as a surprise to him that some of his most eminent scientific 
 friends could scarcely visualize the object at all, and had great 
 difficulty in describing its appearance. He was rather inclined 
 to believe that the power to reproduce clearly an object that 
 had once been seen was detrimental, rather than advantageous, 
 to one who had abstract thinking to do. 
 
 Galton made no distinction between a visual idea and a 
 projected image. He included projected images under his high 
 degree of visualization, and grouped them with clearly recog- 
 nized visual ideas. It will be necessary to understand the dif- 
 ference between a percept, a visual idea and a projected image. 
 The distinction can be most clearly made by considering tne 
 nervous processes that accompany each of these three mental 
 processes. 
 
 When we perceive anything visually, a nervous impulse is 
 started in the retina by the light reflected from the object seen, 
 and this impulse is transmitted through some combination of 
 cells in the sight center of the brain. Such an impulse, started 
 in a sense organ by force from the outside, is called a peri- 
 
26 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 pherally initiated impulse. The mental process accompanying 
 a combination of such impulses is called a percept. 
 
 If, after having perceived an object, we turn away, or 
 close our eyes and try to think of how the object looked, we 
 are experiencing the mental process known as a visual idea. A 
 nervous impulse is traversing the same combination of cells in 
 the sight center that was traversed before, but in this case, the 
 nervous impulse originates, not in the sense organ, but in the 
 brain itself. Such an impulse is called a centrally initiated im- 
 pulse. It is seldom so strong as is the peripherally initiated 
 impulse, and the visual idea is never so vivid, under ordinary 
 circumstances, as is the percept. 
 
 But sometimes, under extraordinary circumstances the 
 centrally initiated impulse that is transmitted through the 
 brain center, becomes as strong as the peripherally initiated 
 impulse would be; and the accompanying visual idea becomes 
 as vivid as the percept. The centrally initiated impulse may 
 become so strong that it not only goes through the brain center, 
 but flows backward to the retina, producing the same kind of a 
 nervous disturbance in the retina that would be produced by 
 the light waves from an object entering the eye. When such 
 is the case, we experience the kind of a process that may be 
 called a projected image. A projected image, then, is a visual 
 idea that becomes as vivid as a percept would be. It is dis- 
 criminated from a percept by the fact that it is accompanied 
 by a centrally initiated impulse, instead of a peripherally in- 
 itiated impulse. 
 
 We may also discriminate a visual percept from a visual 
 idea by means of the after image. If we look at an object in a 
 good light, and then shut out the light by closing our eyes, we 
 shall see a representation of the object with Our eyes closed. 
 This representation is known as the after image. It arises 
 from the fact that the nervous processes that are going on in 
 the retina when we look at an object, persist for a short time 
 after the light has been cut off. The after image is called posi- 
 tive, if the relations of light and dark are the same in the 
 after image as they are in the object. The after image is call- 
 ed negative, if the relations of light and dark in the after 
 image are the reverse of what they are in the object. If we 
 close our eyes after having looked at a window, and see the 
 
PROJECTED IMAGES 27 
 
 panes light and the sash dark, the image is a positive after 
 image. If, however, under the same conditions, the panes are 
 dark and the sash is light, the image is negative. When vve 
 glance at the sun and then close our eyes, we are likely to see 
 a round black spot, which is the negative after image of the 
 sun. 
 
 If we look intently at a red spot for a few seconds and 
 then look away at a blank wall or a white object, we are likely 
 to perceive on the wall a green spot of the same shape as the 
 red spot at which we previously looked. This is the comple- 
 mentary image, and depends upon the fact that the light en- 
 tering the eye finds a condition which gives rise to the green 
 sensation unchanged, while that which gave rise to the red 
 sensation has been partially exhausted. 
 
 In the light of the preceding discussion, we may make the 
 following definitions. A vivid sensation is a simple mental 
 process, whose concomitant is the transmission of a peripheral- 
 ly initiated impulse through some brain center. 
 
 A faint sensation is a simple mental process whose con- 
 comitant is the transmission of a centrally initiated impulse 
 through some sensation center. 
 
 A percept is a combination of sensations, some of which 
 must be vivid. It is a vivid process. 
 
 An idea is a combination of faint sensations. It is a faint 
 process. 
 
 A positive after image is an image accompanied by retinal' 
 changes persisting after the light has been excluded from the 
 eye, in which the relations of light and dark are the same as 
 they are in the object. 
 
 A negative after image is an image accompanied by retinal 
 changes that persist after the light has been excluded from the 
 eye, in which the relations of light and dark are the converse 
 of what they are in the object. 
 
 A complementary image is one seen with the eyes open, 
 in which the color is complementary to that shown by the ob- 
 ject. 
 
 A visual percept manifests an after image. A visual idea 
 will show no after image. But in cases where the visual idea 
 becomes very vivid, and is accompanied by a centrally initiated 
 impulse so strong that the impulse will flow backward to the 
 
28 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 eye and produce a retinal disturbance, there will be an after 
 image, and we may call the mental process a projected image. 
 The projected image, then, differs from a visual idea in its 
 vividness, in the fact that the impulse is very strong, that 
 there is an after image, and that a retinal disturbance occurs. 
 It differs from a percept in the fact that the nervous impulse 
 which accompanies it is centrally initiated while in the percept 
 the accompanying impulse is peripherally initiated. 
 
 This discussion has been necessary to make clear the dis- 
 tinctions between the different visual processes, and to under- 
 stand what an imaginary playmate is. An imaginary playmate 
 is a projected image. 
 
 The capacity to project an image, or to project a visual 
 idea is not unusual, but it is far from being universal. Chil- 
 dren differ widely in their capacity to project. The method 
 employed to determine whether a person is able to project an 
 image was as follows: The object employed was a Red Seal Dry 
 Cell Battery. The general color of the cell is red, with a white 
 rectangular space on one side, in which is a red, many-pointed 
 star. On this star printed in white letters, are the words Dry 
 Battery, with the word Red in a curved line above, and the 
 word Seal in a curved line below. The battery was exposed to 
 the observation of the persons for two or three seconds, and 
 then they were asked to see it off to one side, out in space, 
 when the object was covered up. If they said they could see 
 it clearly, they were then asked to place their hands over their 
 eyes and try to discover an after image. If they reported an 
 after image, it was accepted as evidence that they had really a 
 projection of the object. Some examples will show the process, 
 as well as some interesting applications of projection with in- 
 structive modifications. 
 
 Miss Genevra W. was able to project the image of the bat- 
 tery cell out in space very clearly, and described accurately the 
 color and appearance of the object from the projected image. 
 The image was at least ninety per cent as bright as the real 
 object would be, and an after image appeared in about three 
 seconds. 
 
 The phenomena are always the same. The image can be 
 projected out in space, it is of different degrees of brightness 
 varying from fifty per cent to one hundred per cent as bright 
 
PROJECTED IMAGES 29 
 
 as the object, an after image is seen, the time of whose ap- 
 pearance is invariable in the same person, but which differs in 
 different persons. In the larger number of persons the after 
 image is positive, but in some cases it is negative. 
 
 The presence of the after image is taken as an evidence of 
 the reality of the projection experience. We are so much ac- 
 customed to using the expression, "see a thing," or seeing a 
 relation, or any object of thought, that its use in connection 
 with an object of perception whose material figure is not pres- 
 ent, is likely to be misunderstood. In the projection of the 
 image, there is a real sight experience. There is a real dis- 
 turbance of the retina, which does not occur when we merely 
 remember how a thing looked, or when we conceive it, or when 
 we perceive a relation. This disturbance of the retina is evi- 
 denced by the after image, and there can be little question 
 that the nervous impulse which constitutes the retinal dis- 
 turbance is transmitted backward from the brain center. This 
 is the only satisfactory way of accounting for the observed 
 phenomena, and this does not necessarily contradict the Bell- 
 Magendie law. 
 
 One example of projection was of such a nature that it led 
 to a line of investigation which seemed at first to promise 
 much. Miss Margaret M. reported that she could see the pro- 
 jected image very clearly and she described it fully. She could 
 read the words on the label, could describe the color, and then 
 in describing the image, remarked that she saw in the image, 
 in the upper left hand corner, a white mark that she had not 
 noticed in the object itself. If she had been describing the ob- 
 ject from memory, she would not have mentioned it. She did 
 not know what it was. An examination of the object showed 
 that it was a small white label, bearing the words Size A, and 
 it was seen in perspective, showing scarcely more than a white 
 line. 
 
 This experiment, with several similar circumstances re- 
 ported by other subjects, led to a series of tests based upon 
 the assumption that what was projected was the object that 
 had been presented to the eye*. Thus Miss D. stated that when 
 she has read her lesson over, although she has not learned it 
 very well, she is able to project the page of the book out in 
 space, and read from the projected page the words of the text. 
 
30 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 Similarly, the testimony of Miss Loretta B. is to the same ef- 
 fect. Miss B. says that she has had only a single case that she 
 believes would fall into the class described as a projected 
 image. On one occasion, she with other members of her class, 
 was required to commit to memory for recitation, a short poem. 
 She neglected her study, but read the poem over without mak- 
 ing a really serious attempt to commit it to memory. Being^ 
 called upon suddenly to recite, she arose in a somewhat bewild- 
 ered state of mind. While much startled and chagrined, she 
 suddenly saw the page of the book containing the poem pro- 
 jected, and made a brilliant recitation. 
 
 A few cases such as those described led to a series of ex- 
 periments as follows: A person who had been recognized as 
 having the power of projection, was presented with a page of 
 a book printed in large clear type, without any great number 
 or confusing arrangement of lines and sentences. She was 
 asked to look at a single point on the page, without reading the 
 words and then, after a few seconds of looking, to project the 
 page out in space and read the words. The results from sev- 
 eral experiments seemed to be very promising, but some very 
 instructive errors occurred. Thus Miss Mary A. was shown 
 the title page of a text book on Elementary Psychology. She 
 then projected the page, and read from the projected image, in 
 the proper place, not the conspicuous words Elementary Psy- 
 chology, but the words Holy Bible. Students of Psychology do 
 not generally class the two books together in such a way as to 
 form a really close association. Miss A. said that she knew it 
 was wrong, but those were the words which actually appeared 
 on the projected page. . 
 
 A similar instructive error occurred in the report of a test 
 with the Red Seal Dry Battery, in the case of Miss Eva K. 
 Miss K. projected the image readily, and described it as at 
 least ninety per cent as vivid as the real object was. A posi- 
 tive after image appeared in about three seconds. The words 
 Red Seal occurred on the label in curved lines, and between 
 the word Red above and the word Seal below, Miss K, read the 
 word guaranteed. The word guaranteed does not occur in this 
 place, but it is found in some lines of smaller printing above 
 the seal. The words Dry Battery occur in the place Miss K. 
 described as occupied by the word guaranteed. 
 
PROJECTED IMAGES 31 
 
 Such indications demonstrate rather clearly that the pro- 
 jected image is not a projection of the object, nor of the image 
 on the retina, but of the idea in the mind. There is no possi- 
 bility of reading from the projected page anything that has 
 not been read consciously or unconsciously when the page was 
 presented to the eye. The results of the experiments in this 
 direction which at first seemed so promising, are merely de- 
 rived from the fact that all or a portion of the page has really 
 been read, while the subject may believe that the eye has not 
 moved in such a way as to -read it. 
 
 The only purpose in presenting the object, such as the dry 
 cell in the experiment, is to enable the person to obtain a clear 
 idea that may be projected. After this clear idea has been ob- 
 tained, it may be projected, time after time, and reinstated 
 after the lapse of a considerable interval. 
 
 Any other clear idea may be projected in the same way, 
 even though it be of something that the person has never di- 
 rectly observed, or experienced* Miss Theresa K. states that 
 she has a friend whose image she is able to project at will. She 
 can see her friend as clearly as if the living person were pres- 
 ent in the room with her. She described on the test occasion 
 the vivid appearance of her friend, could see how she was 
 dressed, described how her hair was combed, and could see her 
 walk. This projection is most vivid, and most easily obtained 
 when she is alone in her room, although she is not limited to 
 this condition. It is possible for her to project the image of 
 her friend in a classroom where other students are, although 
 not so readily as if she were alone. 
 
 Similarly, Miss Eva K. projected and described clearly a 
 room in her house at home, and indicated an indefinite number 
 of minute details, which she testified that she could see as 
 clearly as if she were present in the room at the time. 
 
 Miss Edith B. projected the image of her mother, seated 
 in a rocking chair, with her knees crossed, and assured me 
 that the image was as clearly visible to her as the actual living 
 presence of her mother would be. She assures me that what 
 she sees is a really visible, projected image of her mother, not 
 merely a memory of how her mother looked on some particular 
 occasion. 
 
 Comparatively few students make use of their power of 
 
32 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 projection in studying their lessons. Miss Jean S. states that 
 when she is demonstrating a problem in geometry, she does 
 not depend upon the figure in the book nor upon the black- 
 board, but projects a figure out in space and employs that in 
 making the demonstration. Nearly all the persons who can 
 project an image testify that it is of assistance to them, but 
 they make little systematic use of it. However, Miss Mary A. 
 says that she has rather avoided its use. She has a kind of 
 feeling that it is somewhat improper, or likely to be injurious, 
 or indicative of a mental tendency that is not to be talked 
 about in public, but rather to be concealed. Her capacity to 
 project is rather high. 
 
 Some teaching methods appear to have been devised by 
 some teacher who has a capacity to project, apparently in the 
 belief that this power is universal in children, or may be culti- 
 vated until every child can project. When such methods are 
 employed in classes that are not especially selected, it will be 
 found that some children are bright and shining lights, capable 
 of being employed to demonstrate the revolutionary character 
 of the teaching methods. These children may be paraded at 
 teachers' meetings to the amazed wonder of less fortunate 
 teachers whose children show by other methods no evidence of 
 approximating the wonderful ability of the show pupils. But 
 it is likely to be the case that a large majority of the children 
 left at home are not so responsive, and must be ranked with 
 the lower incapable, common herd. The methods that demand 
 a power of projection are not likely to be suitable for a very 
 large proportion of the children. 
 
 The number of persons who have the capacity to project 
 an idea, while large in the aggregate, is not proportionally 
 very great. A casual inquiry of any large class, after an ex- 
 planation of what is meant by projection, will elicit a response 
 of about thirty per cent. The actual results, obtained by care- 
 ful tests, show about three per cent. The actual number 
 probably lies between the two estimates. I have obtained posi- 
 tive results from about half as many persons as have reported 
 the experience of imaginary playmates. It seems probable that 
 the number of cases among grown up persons is much less than 
 in children. 
 
PROJECTED IMAGES 33 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Alexander — Visual Images. Psychological Review, 
 volume 11, p. 139. 
 
 Some discussion of projected images. Says criterion diffi- 
 cult to obtain. (See page 324). Says no distinction really be- 
 tween the mental image, the projected image, and the after 
 image. 
 
 2. J. M. Gillette — After Images. Psychological Review, 
 volume 6, p. 420. Experiments which are believed to prove 
 that an after image is accompanied by a retinal process. 
 
 3. Burnham — Imagination in Children. Pedagogical 
 Seminary, volume 2, p. 205-6. Cites many examples of project- 
 ed images. Emphasizes the importance of studying individual 
 differences. 
 
 4. Colvin — Nature of the Image. Psychological Review, 
 volume 15, p. 158. Claims for the image the same sort of ob- 
 jectivity as that which belongs to sensation. Rather a good 
 synopsis of the opinions of other writers. Little value as an 
 original contribution. 
 
 5. Downey — After Images From Mental Image. Psy- 
 chological Review, volume 8,, p. 42. Account of a series of ex- 
 periments. Not clear that the images are projected images, 
 but they appear to be so. 
 
 6. Galton — Inquiries into Human Faculty. P. 57-79. 
 Everyman Edition. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 IMAGES IN READING 
 
 The explanation of projected images in the preceding chap- 
 ter not only discloses to us the real nature of imaginary play- 
 mates, but contributes to our understanding of a series of 
 closely related phenomena which we may know as Images in 
 Reading. The experience is one which is manifested in a com- 
 paratively small number of persons, but is of great importance 
 in several directions. Some persons experience a series of pro- 
 jected images of the events as they are reading, and get the 
 meaning of what they read by means of these projected images. 
 
 The most difficult thing in teaching reading is to cause the 
 children to get an adequate meaning from what they read. 
 The words may be perfectly meaningless to the children, and 
 may cause no thought to originate in their minds. Such read- 
 ing is, of course, of no value as reading, and the child derives 
 no benefit from it. Pronunciation of the words, inflection, em- 
 phasis, expressive utterance, all are worse than useless, unless 
 these qualities are the expression of thought aroused in the 
 mind. 
 
 The nature of meaning is not very satisfactorily deter- 
 mined. Some persons who are extreme advocates of what has 
 been described as the muscular movement theory of conscious- 
 ness, assert that the meaning is the muscular movement that 
 accompanies the perception of the words. The muscular move- 
 ment that this theory contemplates, may be the movement of 
 the muscles of the arms, or exterior parts of the body, but it 
 is generally the movement of such muscles as those of the 
 larynx, the vocal organs or the internal organs of the body. 
 This theory of meaning, however,, has very little to commend 
 it, to any one who is not obsessed with the theory that all con- 
 sciousness is motor, and that we think with our muscles instead 
 of with our brains. 
 
 The meaning is something associated with the recognition 
 of the words, but it is different from them. Words have no 
 meaning unless they are associated with something already 
 known. Meaning comes as the result of association, and it de- 
 pends upon the recognition of the relation between the ideas 
 that the words express, and some previous experience. Differ- 
 
IMAGES IN READING 35 
 
 ent words have different meanings and different shades of 
 meaning, dependent upon the mental processes which are 
 caused to arise in the mind as a result of the recognition of the 
 words. Hence we may say that oral reading is the expression 
 of the thought that is aroused in us by the words on the print- 
 ed page. 
 
 Different persons have different methods of making the 
 associations that constitute the meaning of what is read. With 
 a small number of persons, the meaning consists of a series of 
 visual pictures projected out into space, or appearing in some 
 definite position on the page that is read. Thus the following 
 accounts, brought out by careful questioning and comparison 
 with the experience of others,, will indicate the manner in 
 which some persons obtain meaning from what is read. 
 
 Mr. Ralph E. reports that he projects images of the scenes 
 of nearly everything that he reads. The images appear as a 
 succession of scenes which, while they are decidedly real, are 
 less vivid than the real objects would be. If he is reading Hia- 
 watha, a succession of scenes appear that are about as vivid as 
 the real scenes would be if they were seen in the late dusk of 
 the evening. His estimate is about fifty per cent as bright as 
 the real object would be. 
 
 In the scenes appear all the primary colors. If he were 
 reading about a field of clover, or any scene in which clover is 
 mentioned, he would experience the sensation of clover color. 
 When he is reading about a baseball game, he projects the 
 movements of the players, and the entire game is enacted be- 
 fore him. He has no image for relation words, but the story 
 of what he is reading appears before him in visual scenes. 
 
 These visualized scenes belong to the same group of phe- 
 nomena as do the projected images described in the preceding 
 chapter, and whenever the test is made, an after image ap- 
 pears. Miss Avis R. visualizes everything that she reads, and 
 the projected images follow one another along the line of her 
 reading, just above the top of the line. There is no color in 
 the images, but they appear to be at least fifty per cent as 
 bright as the real scene would be. There is a negative after 
 image that appears whenever she makes the test for it by clos- 
 ing her eyes. 
 
 The definite location of the images which Miss R. describes, 
 
36 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 occurs in many cases of projection in reading, but it is not uni- 
 versal. The following account presents in the clearest possible 
 way, the extent to which this power of visualization in reading 
 may go. 
 
 Miss Clarissa F. visualizes everything that she reads. In 
 reading Hiawatha, she sees clearly the scenes and the charac- 
 ters of the story. The images that she sees do not appear as 
 pictures, but seem to be real objects, full of color, and quite as 
 vivid as the real objects would bej. She feels herself to be in 
 the midst of them, and the images are vividly real and all 
 around her. She dislikes to have pictures in books, because 
 they do not correspond to her images, and are not so vivid and 
 beautiful as those which she projects. She prefers reading a 
 book to going to a moving picture show. In fact, she rather 
 dislikes to go to the movies, because she can more easily enjoy 
 a better show of more brilliant and more beautiful pictures by 
 reading a book at home. 
 
 In the case of Miss Avis R. referred to above, mention is 
 made of the fact that the images are seen with reference to 
 the lines of print that are read. In many cases, the images 
 are not definitely located, but in some examples their location 
 can be definitely described. Miss Grace L. reports that she 
 seems to interpret all her reading by means of the projected 
 visual images of the ideas which she reads. When she is read- 
 ing Hiawatha, she sees a succession of images that shade into 
 one another. The images are seen, not as pictures, but as real 
 objects would seem, and are always in front of her. Miss L. 
 says about four feet in front of her, but her answers to other 
 questions indicate that her conception of measured distance is 
 rudimentary. The images are located with reference to the 
 person and not with reference to the page. • The visualized 
 images are at least fifty per cent as bright as the real objects 
 would be. 
 
 Miss Mildred M. also visualizes everything that she reads, 
 and the succession of pictures that she projects is located at 
 the top of the page. 
 
 When the images are not located with reference to the 
 page, they are more likely to be represented as real objects 
 than as pictures. When the projected images are conceived to 
 be real objects, they are located somewhere out in space, and 
 
IMAGES IN READING 37 
 
 the person is likely to have the feeling of being in the midst of 
 the scenes. In some such cases, the background on which the 
 images are projected is some locality with which the person is 
 already familiar. 
 
 An example of the last characteristic is the case of Mr. 
 Robert T. Mr. T. projects images of the situations in almost 
 everything that he reads. The images are not pictures, nor 
 illustrations, but images of real things with color and move- 
 ment of the characters. These images are very nearly one 
 hundred per cent as bright as the real objects would be. They 
 are not located with reference to the page of the book, but 
 seem to be located out in space. Associated with nearly all the 
 projected images of the reading, is a background of a single 
 familiar locality. They seem to be projected upon a back- 
 ground of King's Flats, a definite Ypsilanti situation. 
 
 Very similar is the testimony of Miss Helen H. Miss H. 
 visualizes everything that she reads,, and she reads very slowly 
 in order that the pictures shall have time to pass along. She 
 does not like to have pictures in books, because the illustrations 
 are not likely to agree with the scenes that she projects, and 
 when they do not, she does not like the book. 
 
 The images that she projects do not seem to be pictures, 
 but seem to be images of real things, or objects that she per- 
 ceives. She estimates that they are at least seventy-five per 
 cent as bright as the real objects would be under the same 
 conditions. 
 
 The images that she projects are likely to be associated 
 with familiar localities. If she is reading a story in which a 
 river is mentioned as one of the circumstances, the river that 
 would appear in the projected images would be the Huron 
 River, with which she is familiar. In reading, she loses the 
 consciousness of the words, and watches the changing scenes 
 as they are projected. 
 
 It is highly interesting to listen to the testimony of a per- 
 son who has two methods of getting meaning from his reading. 
 Mr. Lloyd G. reports that when he is reading, he is not con- 
 scious of the words of the book, but is conscious of looking upon 
 a continuous series of scenes. They are not pictures, but 
 scenes of real objects that he projects. They seem to be in the 
 
38 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 distance, and are rendered small by perspective. They seem to 
 partake of the nature of miniature scenes. 
 
 Mr. G. likes to have pictures in books, especially pictures 
 of the characters of the story. He sees the characters that 
 are pictured in the book, but in his projected images he sees 
 them in a wholly different setting - . His own characters seem 
 to have no distinguishable faces, but they take on the faces 
 represented by the pictures in the book. The projected scenes 
 are about seventy-five per cent as bright as the real scenes 
 would be. 
 
 Mr. G. finds it difficult to read technical works, because it 
 is hard to project, or picture, the things told about there. He 
 has two ways of reading; one by means of projected images 
 and one without. The second method is very laborious and 
 slow. He is somewhat at a loss to understand how some per- 
 sons can enjoy reading at all without the capacity to picture 
 the incidents in visual form. 
 
 Miss Marguerite S. projects images of almost everything 
 that she reads. The images are extraordinarily vivid. She be- 
 lieves that they are one hundred per cent as vivid as the real 
 objects would be. The objects appear in their natural colors, 
 and are not the colors of pictures, but visual projected repre- 
 sentations of real objects, with their motions, colors, and she 
 even listens for the sounds that they make. 
 
 Miss Evelyn B. also projects images of what she is reading 
 about. These images are in their natural colors, and fully one 
 hundred per cent as bright as the real object would be. The 
 images are not located with reference to the page, but they 
 seem to be all around her, and she seems to be living in the 
 midst of them. She dislikes to have pictures in books, because 
 the pictures do not agree with her projections,- and the discrep- 
 ancy makes her feel uncomfortable. 
 
 Miss Irene S. projects images of the scenes and characters 
 of the story that she is reading, and these projected images are 
 at least seventy-five per cent as bright as the real objects would 
 be. They seem to be some distance away from her, and there 
 is considerable color in the images. They contribute a great 
 deal to her enjoyment of what she is reading, and she believes 
 that she would not enjoy reading if she could not see the 
 images of her own projection. 
 
IMAGES IN READING 39 
 
 This capacity to project ideas of what she reads is of much 
 service to her in arithmetic. Whenever she is asked such a 
 question as "A man had seventeen cows in one pasture and 
 eight in another. How many cows did he have in both?" she 
 sees a group of brown cows in a square pen, moving around 
 and feeding, and a similar group in another pen. 
 
 Words that express relation have their projected counter- 
 parts as truly as do words that represent material objects. 
 The word of, for example, presents a picture of two words with 
 something between. So the relation words are all of them 
 represented by some kind of a visual projected image. 
 
 The above discussion represents the general tendency of 
 the description of the process of projecting images from read- 
 ing, as it is illustrated in twenty-one cases that have been 
 studied. These twenty-one cases have been collected from 
 about eight hundred students, but the proportion must not be 
 considered representative. The census is far from complete 
 among this number of students. The probability is great that 
 twice the number of cases might have been collected,. 
 
 These cases represent examples of visual projection. No 
 attempt was made to study the reading of those who obtain 
 the meaning of what they read by visual ideas which are not 
 projected. Many persons obtain the meaning of what they 
 read by means of visual ideas that are not projected, some by 
 means of auditory projection, and still others seem to obtain 
 meanings in ways that are neither visual nor auditory. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HALLUCINATIONS 
 
 The subject of hallucinations has attracted a great deal of 
 attention ever since the mind of man was turned to the study 
 of his own mental experiences. Many volumes have been de- 
 voted exclusively to this one topic, and hundreds of articles 
 may be discovered by turning to the files of psychological mag- 
 azines. 
 
 Hallucinations constitute one of the psychological topics 
 that are of perennial interest to the non-psychological reader. 
 They furnish the basis for ninety-nine per cent of all ghost 
 stories, and constitute the determining factor for many his- 
 torical events of world wide importance. The justification for 
 introducing a discussion of such a well known topic in this 
 place is the fact that they belong to the same category as do 
 imaginary playmates, projected images, and images in reading. 
 
 A hallucination is a mental process which is accompanied 
 by a centrally initiated impulse as strong as a peripherally 
 initiated impulse would be under the same circumstances. It 
 is an idea that becomes as vivid as a percept. We distinguish 
 a percept from an idea by its greater vividness; and when an 
 idea takes on an unusual vividness, we are unable to distin- 
 guish it, and consequently believe that we experience a per- 
 cept. Hence it is that we rarely discover that we have experi- 
 enced a hallucination. No doubt, many persons really have the 
 experience without knowing it. 
 
 Any condition that induces an unusual strength of. a cen- 
 trally initiated impulse in the brain is likely to be favorable to 
 hallucinations. Any condition that induces inflammation of 
 brain tissue, such as the condition that occurs in cases of brain 
 fever, delirium tremens, or maniacal insanity, is likely to be 
 accompanied by hallucinations. 
 
 So, also, children and young persons, are more likely to ex- 
 perience hallucinations than are older persons, since they gen- 
 erate nervous energy in excess. No doubt, little children ex- 
 perience a very great number of hallucinations, and the life of 
 a little child is a constant struggle to distinguish hallucinations 
 from actual percepts. 
 
 We shall need, for our study, to distinguish a hallucination 
 
HALLUCINATIONS 41 
 
 from a closely related experience that is often confounded with 
 it, that is, an illusion. We can best make the distinction clear 
 by reference to the nervous impulses that accompany them. In 
 a hallucination, there is no peripherally initiated impulse. The 
 impulse is altogether centrally initiated. A common way of 
 describing this is to say that in a hallucination we see some- 
 thing when there is nothing to see. In the case of an illusion, 
 there is a peripherally initiated impulse, but it is carried to 
 the wrong brain center. There is something there to see, but 
 we see the wrong thing. We do not see the thing that is there, 
 but we see something else. 
 
 With this distinction, we can examine some examples of 
 hallucinations with great profit. As an example of a typical 
 hallucination, we may consider the following: Miss Edna P. 
 was staying all night with a friend whose father, as well as the 
 rest of the family, had gone away. The two girls were alone 
 in the house, and slept late the following morning. About ten 
 o'clock, Miss P. got up and went into an adjoining room, when 
 she saw her friend's father standing at a wash stand washing 
 his hands. He looked at her and smiled. She went back to 
 her friend and told her that her father had returned, which 
 surprised her friend very much. They went back to the room 
 to see him, when he could not be found, and there were no in- 
 dications that any one had been there. The friend's father re- 
 turned the next day. 
 
 This is a good example of a hallucination. Miss P. was 
 fortunate in the conditions being of such a nature that the 
 hallucinatory character of the experience was easily discovered. 
 If the father had been dead, or died soon afterward, there 
 would have been a strong tendency to assert that the appear- 
 ance was connected with the fact of death. The appearance 
 would have been explained as a ghost, or a materialized spirit. 
 A slight tendency toward mysticism, or spiritualism, would 
 have adduced it as indubitable evidence of the existence of a 
 separable astral body. But under the circumstances, there can 
 be little disposition to adopt a mythical, mystical, supernatural 
 explanation of the event, especially in the light of our preced- 
 ing studies of projected images, images in reading, and imag- 
 inary playmates. 
 
 A similarly clear case of hallucination, uncomplicated by 
 
42 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 any contributory circumstance is seen in the following: Miss 
 Mabel B. was one day walking with a friend from the Normal 
 School building to the Science building between classes. She 
 met a little boy with a blue cambric waist and corduroy trou- 
 sers. The boy passed her on one side, stepping off the sidewalk 
 to do so. Almost as soon as he had passed, Mabel asked her 
 companion, Mrs. McC, what that little boy was doing there at 
 that time in the day, and turned around to look again at him. 
 There was no little boy there, and Mrs. McC assured her that 
 no little boy had passed them, or was present at the time. 
 
 This case is instructive from the fact that it occurred in 
 bright daylight, with other persons present. There was noth- 
 ing confusing nor mystical about the entire experience, and no 
 temptation to give it a supernatural nor mythical interpreta- 
 tion. 
 
 Both of the preceding examples have been cases of simple 
 hallucinations, in which the hallucinatory experiences involved 
 persons. But hallucinations are frequently much more com- 
 plex, and are not limited to appearances of persons. Miss 
 Phebe C. reports that one afternoon she was standing at the 
 gate by her house, looking toward the northwest. In front of 
 her she saw a large house surrounded by a big fence, and in 
 front of it a large suspension bridge. The appearance was 
 very clear and definite. The background toward the northwest 
 consisted of a mass of trees and shrubs. The image disappear- 
 ed in a few minutes. 
 
 On another occasion, when she was about nine years old, 
 she was hanging upon a farm gate near the back of her house. 
 She was looking up into the sky, and she saw near the zenith, 
 a number of trees somewhat enclosing a small .lake. Behind 
 the trees she saw a deer come out running away from three 
 hunters on horseback. The deer ran through the pond and 
 escaped. At least, she did not see the hunters catch the deer. 
 
 The general characteristic of a hallucination is the fact 
 that it occurs a single time, and there is no regular periodic 
 recurrence of the experience. It is this fact more than 
 any other that induces a belief in the reality of the perception. 
 Cases of imaginary playmates are not hallucinatory, because 
 by continued repetition, the children come to recognize that 
 the playmate, despite its vividness, is not a real, living child. 
 
HALLUCINATIONS 43 
 
 But the single instance of any particular hallucination does not 
 permit a comparison of one experience with another, and there 
 is little opportunity to correct the false perception. Conse- 
 quently, a hallucination is generally believed to be a real per- 
 cept, or a perception of a real thing. 
 
 However, there are cases of recurrent hallucinations. Thus 
 Miss Fay P. frequently sees a cat, which is usually black, but 
 may be of other colors. The cat is generally seen on the floor, 
 nearly in front of her, so that she feels herself in danger of 
 stepping on it. The appearance never lasts more than half a 
 minute, and very quickly disappears when she looks directly at 
 it. She does nol remember when the cat first appeared to her, 
 but probably as early as she was able to remember anything. 
 It now appears to her perhaps once in three months. ' 
 
 Somewhat similar is the experience of Miss Hazel S. who 
 reports that she experiences the hallucination of a woman m a 
 black dress, passing outside of her sitting room window. The 
 person is a stranger, and investigation invariably shows that 
 no person has passed the window, nor is there any one in sight 
 when she undertakes to investigate. The experience began 
 when she was about fifteen years old, and then it occurred al- 
 most every day. She sees it occasionally yet, the latest appear- 
 ance being about six weeks previous to this report. 
 
 In the last two cases there is very little distinction to be 
 discovered between such a hallucination and an imaginary 
 playmate. The recurrence of the event leads to a recognition 
 of its non-real character, and a disbelief in the veridical nature 
 of the experience. This is one of the principal distinctions oe- 
 tween the imaginary playmate and the hallucinatory experi- 
 ence. 
 
 The distinction between a hallucination and an illusion is 
 the fact that there is a real objective basis for the illusion, 
 while there is none for the hallucination. But in some cases 
 even this distinction becomes obscured, as in the following in- 
 stance. Mrs. May W. reports that when she was a little girl, 
 one day she was lying on the. floor- looking at some plates in a 
 fashion magazine. Suddenly, two of the lady figures in the 
 plates walked out of the picture into the room and disappeared. 
 She called to her mother inquiring where the two ladies had 
 gone, and searched for them a long time without finding them. 
 
44 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 Somewhat similar is the report of Miss Laura McN. Miss 
 McN. says that her father died before she was born. There 
 was an enlarged picture of him hanging at the foot of her bed 
 in her room. One night, when she was in bed, and much 
 troubled over some circumstance of the day, her father walked 
 right out of the picture and took on the size of a man. She 
 was frightened at first, but gradually became less so. Her 
 father talked to her and comforted her. Since that time, she 
 has frequently seen her father and has consulted with him 
 when she was in trouble. She disclaims any belief in spiritual- 
 ism, and knows the distinction between her father's appear- 
 ance and that of a living man. 
 
 In this case we have a peculiar combination of an illusion, 
 whose material basis is the picture, an imaginary playmate, 
 recognized in the habitual character of the experience, and a 
 hallucination. It is of the kind, too, in which certain types of 
 mind would revel in furnishing a mystical explanation of the 
 circumstance. 
 
 Another illustration of the close relation between halluci- 
 nation and illusion is found in the experience of Miss Kather- 
 ine D. Miss D. was one time talking to a woman at her own 
 home. Suddenly, the woman changed into a skeleton, showing 
 the appearance of the articulated bones. Miss D. was very 
 much startled, but reached out her hand and touched the 
 woman, when she immediately changed back again from a skel- 
 eton to a woman. 
 
 There can be no explanation of such an experience as this, 
 and in fact none is needed, except that for some unexplained 
 reason, the nervous impulse, established in the retina, had 
 ceased to pass through the combination of cells in the brain 
 that corresponded to the appearance of the woman, and had 
 switched off to the combination that corresponded to the ap- 
 pearance of the skeleton. 
 
 It was intimated above that little children are more sus- 
 ceptible to hallucinations than are grown up persons. This 
 must be associated with the fact that children generate ner- 
 vous energy in large amounts, in excess of the demands made 
 upon it by the bodily activities. They would neither play, nor 
 grow, if they did not. Hence we shall find that children ex- 
 perience hallucinations as naturally as they play or grow, and 
 
HALLUCINATIONS 45 
 
 for the same reason that we find in children the phenomena of 
 imaginary playmates. 
 
 We fail to consider the hallucinatory experiences of 
 children as much as we ought to do, principally because the 
 children themselves do not recognize their hallucinatory char- 
 acter. They cannot testify to their experiences, except by 
 their actions. It is impossible for us to inquire systematically 
 of a baby, "See here. Will you kindly tell me whether you ex- 
 perience hallucinations or not?" 
 
 But in many cases we can discover that children have ex- 
 periences which we can interpret and understand only if we 
 are acquainted with the nature of hallucinations, and if we 
 have them in mind as possible explanations of children's ac- 
 tions. The following case will indicate the highly necessary 
 character of the knowledge of hallucinations if we are to deal 
 justly and wisely with children. 
 
 Miss Clare 0., when a little girl, went to bed one night, in 
 a dark room. Suddenly the room seemed to be illuminated 
 brightly, although no source of illumination was apparent. In 
 the light she saw two figures, like Brownies, fantastic creatures 
 of rainbow colors, and very animated. They pointed at her 
 and laughed and talked, although she was unable to hear their 
 voices. She screamed, and her aunt came and took her into 
 the next room where it was quite light. Her aunt placed her 
 on the arm of a chair, and the two figures (Miss 0. did not use 
 the word Brownies) perched upon the other arm and looked at 
 her and laughed. 
 
 In some such experience as this, we find the explanation 
 of the fears and terrors that many children manifest. If the 
 children could tell us what they see, or if we had sufficient 
 knowledge of the facts of hallucinations, we should be able to 
 deal more wisely than we now do in many cases, with children. 
 
 In all the cases adduced as examples of hallucination above, 
 the experience has been a visual one. But hallucinations may 
 occur in any sense, and may be of hearing or touch, or of other 
 kinds. The following examples will illustrate hallucinations of 
 hearing: 
 
 Miss Lulu M. reports that she has often heard her mother 
 calling her, and has heard her mother make some remark when 
 she was far distant from her. On several occasions she has re- 
 
46 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 turned home from a distance of two or three blocks, asking 
 what her mother had said, only to find that the entire experi- 
 ence was hallucinatory. 
 
 Similarly, Miss Mabel B. was studying in her room when 
 she distinctly heard her mother call her. She went out into 
 the hall, opening the door to do so, but no one was in the halL 
 Then she went down stairs and asked of the family living in 
 the house, where her mother was. She was assured that no 
 one was present in the house except the immediate family, and 
 that her mother had not called her. 
 
 In these cases, the impulse of exaggerated intensity had 
 traversed the brain centers in the region for hearing rather 
 than in the more common one of sight. So the hallucinations 
 may be observed in any sense, although sight and hearing are 
 the more common. 
 
 In all cases of hallucination heretofore adduced there can 
 be no supposition of any disease, present or prospective, phy- 
 sical or mental. A hallucination is not an abnormal experi- 
 ence, nor is it indicative of disease of any kind. However, 
 where there is a diseased condition of the brain that is accom- 
 panied by inflammation, hallucinations are likely to occur. 
 Brain fever and delirium tremens are nearly always accom- 
 panied by hallucinations. 
 
 Miss Ethel K. reports that one day she had the unusual 
 experience of hearing a band of music all day. The band play- 
 ed no recognizable tune, but all day there were strains of beau- 
 tiful music heard. The experience was very pleasant, and she 
 enjoyed it very much. Soon afterward, she had a spell of ty- 
 phoid fever. It seems rather likely, in this case, that the hal- 
 lucinatory audible experience of the music was associated with 
 the oncoming of the disease. 
 
 A less pleasing experience associated with disease is of the 
 kind reported by Miss Gertrude P. Miss P. was suffering from 
 nervous prostration induced by overwork. While lying in her 
 bed, she would frequently see various friends of hers assuming 
 strange attitudes and grotesque shapes. They would appear 
 to her to be dancing upon the window sills and perched upon 
 various parts of her bed. Various kinds of animals would ap- 
 pear to her as different kinds of religions, and would demand 
 that they be worshiped. There is no limit to the kinds of hal- 
 
HALLUCINATIONS 47 
 
 lucinations that may accompany disease, but hallucination 
 must not be considered as essentially indications of present or 
 oncoming disease. 
 
 The phenomena of hallucinations have attracted the at- 
 tention of investigators for a long time, and a whole library of 
 books has been written upon the subject. In European coun- 
 tries an investigation was undertaken many years ago to dis- 
 cover how many persons had ever experienced hallucinations, 
 and the same kind of an inquiry was carried out in the United 
 States by Professor James. The result showed that about ten 
 per cent of all the persons who answered the inquiries had had 
 the experience. Also, it was found that the greater number 
 of cases of hallucination reported, had occurred when the per- 
 sons were young. More persons had experienced hallucinations 
 between the ages of fifteen and twenty, than between the ages 
 of twenty and twenty-five. More had experienced hallucina- 
 tions between twenty and twenty-five than between twenty- 
 five and thirty, while the number of hallucinations decreased 
 as the persons grew older. 
 
 If it were possible to secure an accurate report from 
 younger persons, it would probably be found that the number 
 of hallucinations rapidly increases as the age becomes less. It is 
 nearly certain that all persons have experienced hallucinations, 
 especially when they are very young children. The reason why 
 so small a number of persons report the experience is because 
 the hallucinatory character of the experiences has not been 
 discovered. Unless a person discovers that the thing he really 
 saw was not there to see, he would never report it as a halluci- 
 nation!. Only those hallucinations that are discovered can be 
 reported. Also, it is extremely probable that many of the hal- 
 lucinations that are experienced in early childhood, are for- 
 gotten. 
 
 In my own inquiries, I have found that about thirteen per 
 cent of the persons have recognized experiences as being of a 
 hallucinatory character; but this does not prevent the conclu- 
 sion that all persons have, or may have had hallucinations. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. James — Principles of Psychology, volume 2, p. 114- 
 131. Note especially that Mr. James admits the possibility of a 
 
48 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 backward flowing impulse, on p. 131. He describes a halluci- 
 nation as a true perception, but makes rather a difficult mean- 
 ing for perception. 
 
 2. Parish — Hallucinations and Illusions. Contemporary- 
 Science Series. Chapter 3, p. 77-109. Especially devoted to a 
 report of the International Census of Hallucinations, classify- 
 ing them according to various characteristics. Footnote on 
 p. 65 says children are especially susceptible to hallucinations. 
 On p. 109,, says hallucinations are very quickly forgotten. His 
 theory of the nature and the cause, as well as his definition of 
 hallucination, is very obscure and involved. 
 
 3. Boris Sidis — Nature of Hallucinations. Psychological 
 Review, volume 11, p. 15-104. A long, technical, and involved 
 paper. Discusses the nature of perception, and says that hal- 
 lucination is a secondary perception. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 NUMBER FORMS 
 
 It was Francis Galton who first called our attention in an 
 emphatic way, definitely to an experience that many persons 
 have, but which many others do not have. This experience has 
 come to be known by the name of number forms, and consists 
 of a definite way of thinking of the series of ordinal numbers. 
 This can best be explained by a description of a few examples. 
 
 Miss Ethel G. always thinks of the numbers from 1 to 100 
 in a definite form. The numbers from 1 to 15 run in a series 
 of three curves joined to each other in a general horizontal di- 
 rection from left to right. She sees the numbers 4 to 10 crowd- 
 ed together, while the others are more widely spaced. Then 
 the form turns vertically upward in a sharp curve carrying 
 the numbers 16 to 20. From 20 to 40 the numbers are ar- 
 ranged in a line nearly horizontal, running toward the left, 
 approximately parallel to the line 1 to 15. From 40 to 60 the 
 figure makes a round turn upward, and the numbers 60 to 1 00 
 are borne on a vertical extension of this line. 
 
 There are two facts to be observed in the description of 
 such a figure. The first fact is that when we say a person sees 
 the numbers arranged this way, we mean that he has a visual 
 idea, not a projected image, of these numbers. In no case of 
 the 67 examples which have been collected for this study has 
 any one described the figures as being projected. The second 
 fact to be considered, is that, although in our description we 
 may use the phrase that the line runs so and so, and bears the 
 numbers, this phrase does not necessarily mean that there is 
 an actual line apparent in the figure. In some cases,, the lines 
 actually appear; but in many other cases, the figure consists of 
 an arrangement of the numbers in a certain sequence to each 
 other, and the figure is drawn on paper, by making lines that 
 connect the positions of successive numbers. In Miss G.'s case, 
 there are no lines in the figure, but the numbers are arranged 
 in such a position that the line connecting their positions will 
 assume the shape indicated in the diagram. 
 
 Another figure will also be very instructive. Miss Bertha 
 So always sees (has a visual idea of) the numbers arranged in 
 a well defined form. It consists of a series of curves extending 
 
50 IMAGINAKY PLAYMATES 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF PLATE I. 
 
 Fig. 1.— Number form of Ethel G. 
 
 Fig. 2. — Number form of Bertha S. 
 
 Fig. 3. — Number form of Marjorie V. 
 
 Fig. 4. — Number form of Marguerite S. 
 
 Fig. 5. — Number form of Carrie G. 
 
 Fig. 6. — Number form of Martha M. 
 
 Fig. 7. — Number form of Ruth R. 
 
 Fig. 8. — Number form of Ruby C. Note the two branches. 
 
(tfcULX 
 
 too 
 
 ttu.*, 
 
 
 
 <§> 
 
 lO HO * V 
 
 V& 
 
 %\ *<r w *% <*<t ft %v w 
 
 
 V* 
 
 
 ^^<^^<^t<tAXAZ S. 
 
 ifi^*" noi-f*v ^,-^e 
 
 
 
52 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 from right to left in a generally horizontal direction, and carry- 
 ing the numbers from 1 to 19. From 20 to 29 the numbers 
 are borne on a vertical downward extension of the preceding 
 line. Other numbers to 100 are borne on vertical lines parallel 
 to the line from 20 to 29, with the tens multiples at the top 
 and the 9's at the bottom. 100 is nearly below 1. 
 
 The definiteness of a number form is well illustrated by 
 that of Miss Marjorie V. Miss V.'s number form begins with 1 
 at the bottom of a vertical line, and the numbers extend up- 
 ward to 12. Here the line turns to the right, not quite hori- 
 zontal, but ranging slightly upward carrying the numbers 
 from 12 to 20. Thence it turns upward and slightly backward 
 to 25. Then changing its direction slightly forward toward 
 the right, only five or ten degrees from the vertical, it con- 
 tinues to 30. Then it runs toward the left, horizontally to 100 
 nearly above 1%. Thence it turns 45 degrees upward to 120. 
 From this point the numbers run indefinitely upward in a vert- 
 ical direction. 
 
 The above examples may be considered fairly typical, 
 neither the most complex nor the most simple. Many persons 
 have number forms in which the numbers are arranged in a 
 single straight line running vertically or horizontally, toward 
 the right or toward the left, or directly forward from the per- 
 son. But there are examples of number forms of a bewildering 
 degree of complexity in three dimensions of space. 
 
 One of the most complex is that of Miss Carrie G. who 
 sees the numbers from 1 to 100 borne on a conical spiral of 
 ten turns in which she is enclosed. 1 is at her left about on a 
 level with her waist. Then the spiral lines run toward the 
 right, clockwise, and 10 is just above 1. The turn of the spiral 
 that bears the numbers 10 to 20 is just above the first one, and 
 the turns of the spiral continue upward becoming smaller and 
 smaller, until the last turn is just above her head with 100 at 
 the center. The numbers from 101 to 200 are borne on a sim- 
 ilar spiral, about four feet in front of her, and the turns of the 
 spiral are smaller. The other numbers are borne by hundreds, 
 each hundred on its corresponding spiral in front of her, and 
 each spiral becoming smaller than the preceding, and separated 
 from it by a greater distance^ Beyond 1,000, the numbers run 
 straight away from her in an indefinite straight line. 
 
NUMBER FORMS 53 
 
 Another kind of complexity is illustrated by the number 
 form of Miss Marguerite S. This form is rendered even more 
 complex by the fact that there is a duplication of the same 
 succession of figures for the higher and larger numbers. One 
 series of numbers from 1 to 9 occupies a vertical line at the be- 
 ginning of the figure, with 1 at the bottom and 9 at the top. 
 The continuation of the line terminates at 10. The figure then 
 makes a square turn to the left to 12, then turns vertically 
 upward to 15, then turns to the left to 20; thence downward 
 to 100. From 100 the numbers to 109 are carried on an as- 
 cending line joining the first at 9. The figure then duplicates 
 the first part to 200 and is almost a repetition of the first part 
 to 300. Then the figure turns upward to 350, downward to 
 400, upward again to 500 continuing to 1,000,, then almost a 
 repetition of the first part again to 1,200, 1,500, and 2,000. 
 
 Mr. Robert T. has a number form that consists of a defi- 
 nite arrangement of figures and mathematical characters scat- 
 tered promiscuously over a surface. He says this arrangement 
 is definite and permanent, and he is able to reproduce the 
 same arrangement at any time. In a test, he did write two 
 copies exactly alike, writing the second without any reference 
 to the first. Whenever a number or operation is mentioned, 
 Mr. T. always sees the corresponding character or process rep- 
 resented in this figure. 
 
 No explanation can be offered why the persons see or 
 think of numbers in these several ways. No one is able to 
 make any suggestion why the number forms assume the shapes 
 that they do. No one is able to record the process by which a 
 number form began, and in some cases, the person does not 
 know that he has a number form until his attention has been 
 called to it by an inquiry. However, much the larger number 
 of persons who have number forms are quite surprised when 
 they are informed that other persons do not have number 
 forms, or think of numbers in a different way. 
 
 Almost the nearest suggestion of the beginning of a num- 
 ber form is derived from the testimony of Miss Martha M. 
 Miss M. has a number form that begins with a spiral of two 
 turns at the right bearing the numbers from 1 to 20. The other 
 numbers to 100 are borne on a series of semicircles joined to 
 each other with the convex side downward, each semicircle car- 
 
54 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF PLATE II. 
 
 Fig. 1. — Number form of Robert T. 
 Fig. 2.— Number form of Fred F. 
 
<2Uun: 
 
 y~ 
 
 01/ 
 
 o9 
 
 'P 
 
 ** ,/ 9 a. 
 
 3 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 
 4- 
 
 © /<? nwua- 
 
56 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 rying ten numbers, and each becoming smaller than the preced- 
 ing, so that the entire series constitutes a straight horizontal 
 line toward the left. The numbers from 100 to 1,000 are borne 
 on a large semicircle continuing the direction of the smaller 
 units of the series. 
 
 Miss M. first learned to count to 20. When she started to 
 school, she got a whipping because she could not count farther 
 than 20, so she knows that the figure did not extend beyond 20 
 at that time. She supposes that she had the spiral part of the 
 figure then. In the figure, she seems to be located at the point 
 that represents her age. Beyond her age, the figure extends 
 to the left. 
 
 The number form of Miss M. is interesting for another 
 circumstance. In Galton's book, "Inquiries Into Human Fac- 
 ulty," is published a number form almost identical with it, and 
 in an article by Mr. G. T. W. Patrick, in the Popular Science 
 Monthly, in 1893, is another that is very similar. That there 
 should be published three number forms of such a complex 
 nature so closely similar is certainly a coincidence. 
 
 In the case of Miss M. it will be recognized that there is a 
 definite relation between the number form and the position of 
 the person. The number form occupies a definite location with 
 reference to her body. In many cases we find that the same 
 relation exists. In another case mentioned above, that of Miss 
 Carrie G., the person was included within the turns of the 
 spiral. So in the figure of Miss Florence S., the number form 
 begins with 1 at her right and below her waist, runs upward 
 and across until 10 is directly in front, then turns upward and 
 backward reaching above her head on the left side at 20. 
 
 In a very few cases we find two branches to the number 
 form. Miss Ruby C. has a number form that begins at a point 
 about a foot in front of her, as high as her shoulder. The first 
 branch runs directly upward, and bears the number 1 to 20. 
 The second branch begins at the same point as the first, curves 
 around toward her right getting farther from her as it pro- 
 ceeds. This branch bears the numbers from 1 to 100; the 1 to 
 20 being duplications of the numbers on the first branch. 100 
 on the second branch,, which does not appear on the first, is 
 about an arm's length away from her. This second branch is 
 
NUMBER FORMS 57 
 
 curved so much that the numbers above 100 are lost, as if they 
 had got beyond the range of her vision. 
 
 Similarly Miss Hattie M. has a number form with two 
 branches, although this character would not be discovered by 
 simply looking at the figure. Miss M. says that the figure be- 
 gins at 7 and runs both ways, 7 is the starting point in all her 
 number conceptions. 
 
 In some cases there are features of the number forms that 
 distinguish it clearly from the common experiences. Thus Miss 
 Ida F. has a very simple number form, consisting of a broken 
 line somewhat ascending from left to right in a series of steps 
 of unequal value. The numbers from 4 to 8 are dark. 14 to 
 20 are light. 13 is dark. Very much the same is the report of 
 Miss Irene S., who has a simple number form, the special pe- 
 culiarity of it being that in the various parts of the figure 
 there are variations in the brightness of the line, and the num- 
 bers located along it. The numbers 1 to 7 are dark, then the 
 figure gradually grows lighter until about 40, when it darkens. 
 From 40 to 56 there is a curve, and from 70 onward, the figure 
 gradually becomes darker. 
 
 The testimony of nearly every one concerning the number 
 forms is that they are very helpful, not only in remembering 
 numbers, but in making computations. The testimony of Mr. 
 Fred F. will be found representative of much the larger num- 
 ber of those who have number forms. 
 
 Mr. F. has rather a complex number form. The numbers 
 from 1 to 19 are located along a series of four curves ascending 
 from the left toward the right, joining each other at sharp 
 angles. 20 does not follow 19 directly, but is located at the end 
 of a curve which begins about one number to the left of 19, 
 and extends toward the right,. A series of two curves still as- 
 cending toward the right carry the numbers from 20 to 29, 
 with 24 at the angle of junction. 30 to 39 are carried on 
 two curves nearly horizontal joining the preceding curves at 
 31 and extending toward the left, with 35 at the angle of 
 junction. 40 to 49, 50 to 59, are on. double curves parallel to 
 that of 30 to 39. 
 
 Mr. F. is a mathematician of high rank. He has carried 
 his mathematical studies far beyond the point at which most 
 students stop, and his opinions concerning the utility of num- 
 
58 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 ber forms are of decided interest. .Asked if the number form 
 was of any particular value to him, he replied that he made 
 constant use of it, and he was unable to understand how per- 
 sons lacking a number form could carry on mathematical com- 
 putations at all. 
 
 The testimony of other persons is almost invariably the 
 sama^. Miss Lucile A. says that she does not know how she 
 could learn arithmetic without her number form. Miss Vira F. 
 states that it is of much help to her in arithmetic, and she can 
 think of numbers in no other way. If she were deprived of it, 
 she thinks it would be very difficult for her to calculate num- 
 bers at all. Miss Marjorie V. believes this figure is of consid- 
 erable assistance to her in remembering numbers, although she 
 does not use it in computation. Miss Georgia F. says that she 
 has had her number form "always," and it seems to be some 
 advantage to her in arithmetic, although not a great deal. 
 Miss Ruth R. says that she does not know why she sees num- 
 bers in this way, but she always does so, and the form is of 
 considerable assistance to her in her number calculations. Miss 
 Martha M. states that her number form is of much assistance 
 to her in addition and subtraction. 
 
 A very few persons assert that the number form is of no 
 value to them. Thus Miss Lillian W. does not believe that her 
 number form is of any assistance to her in arithmetic or com- 
 putation, although she always sees the numbers in this definite 
 way. Miss Genevra W. has a number form, as do her father 
 and her brother. Her father is a very skillful mathematician 
 and her brother is also proficient. She herself has studied 
 mathematics, even taking trigonometry as an optional subject 
 in the high school. Nevertheless, she has no love for the sub- 
 ject and considers herself a poor mathematician. She believes 
 that her number form is a detriment to her in learning mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 It is difficult for a person with no number form to under- 
 stand what is meant by a number form,, and how it is employed 
 in making calculations. The testimony is that whenever a per- 
 son who has a number form hears a number mentioned, he im- 
 mediately sees or thinks of the number in its proper position, 
 in the figure, and always in its proper relation to the other 
 numbers. In making computations, Mice Lucile A*, testifies 
 
NUMBER FORMS 59 
 
 that if she were asked to multiply two numbers, such as 7 and 
 8, she would see the 7 in the figure, and then she would see 
 the 8, and would know the product by its location in the figure. 
 This is about as much of a description of the process of using 
 a number form as one is able to give. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Galton — Inquiries Into Human Faculty — p. 79-105 
 (Everyman Edition). One of the first investigations into num- 
 ber forms and still one of our best. 
 
 2. G. T. W. Patrick — Number Forms — Popular Science 
 Monthly, February, 1893. One of the best accounts. 
 
 3. Phillips — Genesis of Number Forms — American 
 Journal of Psychology, volume 8,, p. 506-527. Gives many 
 forms. Says seven per cent of all persons have them. 
 
 4. Buchner — Fixed Visualization — American Journal of 
 Psychology, volume 13, p. 255 (Number Forms and Calendars). 
 A very good description of the forms experienced by a single 
 subject. 
 
 5. Lillian H. Chalmers — Studies in Imagination. Peda- 
 gogical Seminary, volume 7, p. 117. Some figures are given. 
 
 6. Stratton — Experimental Psychology. P. 252-3. A 
 brief notice. Two figures are given. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MENTAL CALENDARS AND ALPHABET FORMS 
 
 A phenomenon very similar to that of number forms is 
 found in Mental Calendars. Some persons have a definite, fixed 
 method of imaging the months of the year and the days of the 
 week. They are unable to explain the origin or the occasion 
 for these mental calendars, which are generally more or less 
 useful. An examination of a few cases will disclose the gen- 
 eral nature of the phenomena. 
 
 Miss Minna W. always sees the months of the year located 
 on a vertical circle, just in front of her, and about two feet in 
 diameter. January is located at the top of the circle, February 
 is at the left of January, and the other months are distributed 
 at about equal intervals around the circumference of the circle. 
 The months run counter-clockwise. Whenever any month is 
 mentioned,, she always sees the month located in its proper 
 place in the figure. 
 
 Similarly, Miss Bertha S. has a mental calendar consisting 
 of the months arranged on a circle. But in this case, the circle 
 is horizontal, and the months run clockwise, with January 
 nearest to her. The circle is definitely located with reference 
 to the person, being directly in front of her. 
 
 Miss Mira F. has a mental calendar, which is also a circle, 
 about as large as the "top of a bushel basket." It is vertical, 
 perpendicular to the line of sight, but is located toward the 
 right hand, instead of being directly in front. 
 
 Another variation of the position of the circular calendar 
 is found in the one described by Miss Maude R., who describes 
 the months as located on a circle, with January nearest to her, 
 and the months running counter clockwise. Instead of being 
 horizontal, the circle is tilted downward toward the left. 
 
 In all the cases referred to above, the circle has been 
 rather small, easily managed, but the size varies considerably. 
 Thus Miss Florence J. has a calendar that is a very large circle, 
 so large that it would take her a year to walk around it. She 
 is located at the center of the circle, and the months run count- 
 er clockwise. Another young woman describes the circle of iier 
 calendar as being large enough to reach all around the city in 
 which she is living. 
 
MENTAL CALENDARS AND ALPHABET FORMS 61 
 
 The calendar of Miss Marjorie S. presents an interesting 
 variation in circular calendars. Miss S.'s calendar is a hori- 
 zontal circle, just in front of her, with the months running 
 clockwise, and about evenly distributed around its circumfer- 
 ence. The noticeable thing about this calendar, however, is 
 the fact that each month is represented by a group of six- 
 pointed stars. Every month except February consists of a 
 group of five such stars, while February has only four. Miss S. 
 describes the circle as about two feet in diameter. 
 
 But the calendar is not always conceived as a circle. That 
 seems to be the most common form, and we may associate it in 
 some way with many pictures in almanacs, in which the 
 months are so arranged. But such an explanation will not ac- 
 count for the peculiar shapes and variations that many mental 
 calendars assume. Thus Miss Marjorie V. has a mental cal- 
 endar that assumes the general shape of a square, with the 
 right hand upper corner cut off. The months run clockwise, 
 with January near the upper right hand corner. 
 
 Miss Florence S. has a calendar consisting of an elongated 
 oval, with the longest axis of the oval pointing away from her. 
 January is near the middle of the right side, and the months 
 run counter clockwise. 
 
 In several cases the calendar is a semicircle. Thus Miss 
 Ethel G. describes her calendar as consisting of a semicircle 
 with the diameter horizontal and extending from left to right. 
 The circumference is convex upward, and January is at the 
 left. Similarly, Miss Etta G. has a calendar consisting of a 
 semicircle in which the diameter projects straight out in front 
 of her, and January is farthest from her, with December 
 nearest. 
 
 Many times the calendar consists of merely a straight line. 
 Thus Miss Genevra W. experiences the months arranged m a 
 straight line extending away from her toward the right and 
 upward. Mr. Fred F. always sees the months arranged in a 
 straight line extending downward and toward the right, except 
 that July and August occupy the two sides of a sharply acute 
 angle extending toward the right. 
 
 Miss Marian B. has a calendar that presents another var- 
 iation. The months are arranged along a line that is distinctly 
 spiral, with April at the center, and the months very unevenly 
 
62 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF PLATE III. 
 
 Fig. 1.— Monthly Calendar of Mina W. 
 Fig. 2.— Monthly Calendar of Ethel G. 
 Fig. 3. — Monthly Calendar of Marjorie S. 
 Fig. 4. — Weekly Calendar of Marjorie S. This represents 
 the star of which the groups of stars in Fig. 4 are composed. 
 Fig. 5. — Monthly Calendar of Marian B. 
 Fig. 6. — Hourly Calendar of Marguerite S. 
 Fig. 7.— Weekly Calendar of Hetta F. 
 Fig. 8. — Chronological Figure of Fred F. 
 
(piuAnr, 
 
 ck\o<£ c& 
 
64 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 distributed along its course. In this figure the line is distinct- 
 ly seen, and along a large part of its course, no months are 
 located, while the months are not serially arranged. December 
 is at the extremity of the spiral, April is at the center, and 
 January and November are in proximity. It would seem al- 
 most as if we might describe the figure as having two branches. 
 
 In some cases, even when the general shape of the calendar 
 is a circle, the months are not symmetrically placed. Thus 
 Miss Ida F. has a circular calendar which is vertically placed 
 in front of her, with January at the top and August at the 
 bottom. One side of the circle contains eight of the months 
 and the other half only four. 
 
 In nearly every case, there is a definite location for the 
 calendar, whatever its shape may be; but the location of the 
 person with reference to the figure varies greatly. In the 
 cases described above, the person has been located in front of 
 the figure, to one side of it, or in the center, and we may dis- 
 cover another variation. Miss Myrtle H. has a calendar that 
 consists of a circle about on a level with her waist, and the 
 circumference of the circle runs through her body. January 
 is at her right, and the months run coounter clockwise. 
 
 WEEKLY CALENDARS 
 
 In all the cases described above, the calendar has been one 
 for the months. But many persons have similar calendars for 
 the days of the week. Miss Marjorie V. describes her calendar 
 for the week as consisting of a series of four straight lines, 
 joined at obtuse angles with Sunday at the right, and the first 
 horizontal line carrying the days from Sunday to Wednesday. 
 The next line joins the first with a downward slant, and carries 
 the days Thursday and Friday. The third line continues the 
 horizontal direction and bears Saturday, while the fourth line, 
 on which Sunday is located, turns upward. 
 
 Miss Leona H. has a calendar that is a horizontal circle 
 with Sunday at the right near herself, while the days run 
 couonter clockwise, with Saturday at her left. 
 
 Miss Genevra W. has a calendar that is circular, approxi- 
 mately horizontal, and in front of her, but considerably in- 
 clined toward the right. The quite unusual thing about this 
 calendar is that the days have each a marked day form. The 
 
MENTAL CALENDARS AND ALPHABET FORMS 65 
 
 days are arranged on the circumference of the circle, but each 
 day consists of a circular part, which is the night, and a hook 
 bent twice at right angles which represents the day. The cir- 
 cular nights are placed toward the outside of the week circle. 
 
 This figure illustrates very satisfactorily the definiteness 
 with which the days and the weeks are imaged. Another ex- 
 ample will exemplify the same characteristic. Miss Maude R. 
 has a calendar for the week that may best be described by say- 
 ing that it is a rectangle with the angles rounded, except the 
 upper left hand corner, which is sharp. The figure is vertical- 
 ly placed, and is about as high as her shoulder. Monday is lo- 
 cated at the upper left hand corner, and the days run clock- 
 wise. 
 
 Miss Hetta F. has a calendar for the week that consists of 
 a combination of straight line segments and curves, extending 
 in a generally horizontal direction toward the left. Each day 
 is located on its own segment, and Saturday night and Sunday 
 night have each their own segments, which are vertical. She 
 does not know why Saturday night and Sunday night are dif- 
 ferentiated from their corresponding days, when none of the 
 other nights are,, but the description of this peculiarity always 
 provokes audible amusement in the class. 
 
 This differentiation of nights and days is carried to its 
 natural limit in the calendar of Miss Margaret McG. Her cal- 
 endar consists of fourteen straight lines connected at their ex- 
 tremities so as to form a series of V-shaped angles, the angles 
 being at the top and bottom. The nights are located at the top 
 in a straight horizontal position, and the mornings are located 
 at the bottom, with a straight line connecting each night with 
 its corresponding antecedent and subsequent morning. These 
 mornings are in a straight horizontal position, except Friday, 
 Saturday, and Sunday. The lines connecting the nights and 
 mornings of these days are longer than the others, and Miss 
 McG. suggests that it may be associated with the fact that Sat- 
 urday and Sunday are school holidays. 
 
 Miss Tidy P. describes a weekly calendar that contains one 
 element which is not found in any of the others, and which 
 might probably make its description be placed more appro- 
 priately with another series of phenomena. Her calendar con- 
 sists of a series of seven circles of solid color. The first one at 
 
66 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 the left is Monday. It is a solid circle of greenish blue. The 
 next circle toward the right is Tuesday, which is yellow. Wed- 
 nesday is red with a black spot in the center. Thursday is 
 yellow. Friday is green, Saturday is white,, Sunday is purple 
 or black. Miss P. supposed that everybody saw the days of the 
 week in just this shape, and with identical colors, and her first 
 knowledge that others did not have the same experience came 
 from the investigation originating in the class. 
 
 HOURLY CALENDAR 
 
 In a few cases, there has been discovered a calendar for 
 the hours of the day. Miss Marjorie V., who images nearly 
 everything in visual experiences, describes a daily calendar. 
 This consists of a series of seven straight lines joined together 
 at angles to constitute a broken line extending toward the 
 right and upward. The first segment is horizontal and carries 
 the hours from 1 in the morning to 10. The next segment car- 
 ries the hours from 10 to 12 and extends to the right and up- 
 ward about 45 degrees. Each succeeding segment is alternate- 
 ly horizontal and upward about 45 degrees, bearing the time 
 of about two hours. 
 
 Miss Marguerite S. has a calendar for the hours of the 
 day. It is an irregular figure, placed horizontally and she finds 
 herself standing within its outlines. The calendar begins at 
 twelve o'clock, noon, passing toward the right,, clockwise, and 
 she feels herself to be standing near the six o'clock position. 
 The numbers on it are of different degrees of brightness. The 
 hours of the day are bright, and the hours of the night are 
 dark. 
 
 Very similar to these mental calendars is a chronological 
 calendar, which may be illustrated by a very, complete one re- 
 ported by Mr. Fred F. Mr. F. remembers dates in history 
 very satisfactorily by the aid of a historical calendar. The 
 dates from 700 B. C. to 410 are located on a line beginning at 
 the right and extending upward and toward the left. From 
 410 B. C. to the dates are locatecj on a line that makes a 
 curve downward and toward the left. From to 1400 A. D. 
 the dates are located on a curve extending toward the left and 
 upward, concave above. From 1400 to 1492 the dates are on a 
 straight line that continues the general direction of the figure. 
 
MENTAL CALENDARS AND ALPHABET FORMS 67 
 
 Then another curve, concave above, carries the dates from 
 1492 to 1500. The four hundred years from 1500 to 1900 are 
 carried on four parallel curves, one above another, and corres- 
 ponding to the left hand side of the figure. From 1900 to 1911, 
 the numbers are borne on a compound curve composed of two 
 elements, 1904 and 1908 being at the upper nodes of the curve, 
 and 1906 and 1911 being at the lower nodes. 
 
 There seems to be no possibility of accounting for the 
 forms that these mental calendars assume, nor indeed for the 
 fact that some persons experience them while others do not. 
 The only thing that can be gained from their study is that 
 some persons have these psychological experiences and find 
 them to be very helpful in some of their mental processes. 
 While it is impossible to reduce the various kinds to systems, 
 their great variety will show us that we must not expect to 
 teach children by imposing upon them plans and methods of 
 teaching that rest upon the assumption that all children possess 
 them, can develop them, or may employ any particular kind. 
 Here as everywhere, individual peculiarities of children must 
 be taken into account, if we are to deal with them wisely, and 
 the more we can learn of these individual peculiarities, the less 
 we shall be inclined to treat children as beings cast into one 
 common mold. 
 
 The number of persons who experience mental calendars 
 is in the aggregate very great, but the proportion of those that 
 have been ascertained is comparatively small. The above con- 
 clusions have been derived from a study of about fifty cases, 
 collected from about eight .hundred students. This would seem 
 to imply that mental calendars can scarcely be anticipated 
 from more than six per cent of the people. It is probable that 
 this proportion is too small, and that a more careful search 
 would disclose a greater number. 
 
 ALPHABET FORMS 
 
 A phenomenon very similar to that of number forms is 
 found in what may by analogy be called alphabet forms. 
 Nearly everybody learns the alphabet sometime, and some 
 persons have particular ways of holding it in mind. Thus Miss 
 Hetta F. has a very definite form for the letters of the alpha- 
 bet. The letters are always imaged or seen in a very complex 
 
68 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF PLATE IV. 
 
 Fig. 1. — Weekly Calendar of Genevra W. Note the shape 
 of the days. 
 
 Fig. 2. — Alphabet form of Genevra W. 
 
 Fig. 3.— Alphabet form of Mabel P. 
 
 Fig. 4. — Alphabet form of Irene S. 
 
 Fig. 5.— Alphabet form of Hetta F. 
 
 
C^oAJF- 
 
 
 
70 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 line, consisting of a series of compound curves running down- 
 ward and toward the right. The figure is copied from a draw- 
 ing that Miss F. made herself, and is a very definite and posi- 
 tive statement of the form. Miss F. describes the alphabet as 
 being experienced with a great deal of vividness, and says that 
 she invariably sees any letter that is mentioned as located in 
 this line. 
 
 Mr. Fred F. also has a very definite manner of imaging the 
 alphabet. His alphabet form consists of a combination of a 
 series of curves and broken lines joined at various angles, but 
 the general direction being approximately horizontal, and ex- 
 tending from the left toward the right. 
 
 Miss Marjorie V. describes an alphabet form in which the 
 letters are seen arranged along a series of straight lines joined 
 at various angles, beginning at the left and extending toward 
 the right. The letters are not equally distributed along the 
 lines, but in some sections are much more closely crowded to- 
 gether than in other parts of the form. 
 
 Miss Mabel P. sees the letters of the alphabet arranged 
 along a line which in its shape, reminds one of a greatly en- 
 larged figure 6. The bottom part of the 6 has no letters, and 
 1 is at the left of this vacant space with m at the right. 
 
 Miss Irene S. images the letters in the form of a spiral, 
 beginning at her left and running around her clockwise. She 
 stands near the center of the spiral, and z is nearest to her 
 on her left. The position that she assumes with reference to 
 the spiral is facing north. 
 
 The alphabet form of Miss Genevra W. differs from those 
 described above, and is equally definite and exact. . Miss W.'s 
 alphabet form takes the shape of a horseshoe. The horseshoe 
 is almost in front of her and about as high as her waist. The 
 bars of the shoe are turned away from her with "a" at the 
 right hand end of the bar; n, o, p, are nearest to her, and z 
 is at the left hand end of the bar not very far from a. 
 
 The testimony of every person who describes an alphabet 
 form asserts the definiteness and clearness with which the 
 letters are seen, and the invariableness of the figure. None of 
 them is able to suggest v/hen nor how the figure assumed its 
 present form, but all of them testify to the advantage that 
 
MENTAL CALENDARS AND ALPHABET FORMS 71 
 
 comes from using the figure in remembering things that are 
 associated with the letters. 
 
 In several of the examples adduced above, it will be seen 
 that the general direction of the form is from the left toward 
 the right. As this is the direction in which we read, we may 
 be inclined to suppose that it is this fact which has determined 
 the general direction that the alphabet lines take. Beyond 
 this, we have no way of suggesting any reason for the shape 
 of the form, nor why some persons have alphabet forms while 
 others do not. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHROMOESTHESIA 
 
 The present chapter treats of a phenomenon of individual 
 experience which is known by the name of chromoesthesia, or 
 colored hearing. It is a phenomenon which was first brought 
 conspicuously to the notice by Psychologists by Francis 
 Galton, and more particularly popularized in this country 
 by the personal experiences of President David Starr Jordan, 
 who published his personal account in the Popular Science 
 Monthly for July, 1891. The phenomena are well known to 
 psychologists, although a knowledge of it has penetrated into 
 the common knowledge of the people so little that we some- 
 times observe in newspapers an account of a single case, her- 
 alded as an extraordinary manifestation of supernatural phe- 
 nomena, baffling to science, and unexplainable by any hypo- 
 thesis that scientific men are willing to recognize. 
 
 We may best understand the phenomena by an examina- 
 tion of several particular instances: The case of Miss Dorothy 
 D. is very typical, and involves nearly all the characteristics 
 that are to be found in a majority of cases. Miss D. says 
 that she experiences color sensations when she hears the names 
 of any letters of the alphabet. When she reads,, or hears, the 
 letter a, she experiences the same sensation that she would 
 experience if she were looking at a pink object. The letter b 
 arouses in her a sensation of brown; c is white; d is black; e is 
 blue; f is light gray; g is green; h is pink, although of a dif- 
 ferent shade from a; i has no color; j is gray, but of a differ- 
 ent shade from f; k is lavender; 1 is yellow; m is brown; n is 
 tan; o is white; p is a kind of vivid pink; q is brown; r is 
 bright pink; s is grayish white; t is dark gray; u is greenish 
 gray; v is lavender; z is brown. Some names appear to furn- 
 ish a color sensation, but in nearly every case, the name seems 
 to take its color from the initial letter. Her own name, Dor- 
 othy, is black and white, which constitutes the color sensations 
 aroused by the two letters that are conspicuous in it; d, the 
 black, and o, the white. 
 
 Miss D. furnishes also another bit of testimony which is 
 significant in the theory by which these color sensations can 
 be explained. She says that sometimes it is the letter that 
 
CHROMOESTHESIA 73 
 
 furnishes the sensation of color, and sometimes it is the back- 
 ground. R is a white letter on a background of pink. A is a 
 pink letter without any background. 
 
 That the letters of the alphabet should be colored is a very 
 common experience. Or, if we wish to speak accurately, that 
 the sound of the letters should arouse color sensations, is very 
 common. Miss Blanche C has a very pronounced case of color- 
 ed hearing. The sound of the letter a always arouses in her 
 the sensation of white; b is blue; d is dark brown; g is gray; 
 i is black; 1 is black; m is black; o is yellow; p is pink; r is 
 red; s is red; t is brown; u is blue; v is pink; w is olive; x is 
 red; y is yellow. Other letters have no color. 
 
 It is significant in this case that so many of the letters 
 are the initials of the words that represent the color sensations 
 aroused by the letters themselves. Thus b, d, g, p, r, y, are all 
 of them the initials of the words used in describing the sensa- 
 tions of color, while u is the most conspicuous sound in the 
 word blue, which is its concomitant color sensation. 
 
 Miss C. also experiences color sensations when she hears 
 the names of the months. March is red; August is white; 
 September is yellow; the other months are not colored. Sun- 
 day is yellow; Monday is black. Some names are colored, al- 
 though not nearly all. Her own name, Blanche, is blue. This 
 is rather unexpected, for we find in a good many cases that 
 the name which is significant of a color, is likely to be experi- 
 enced in that color. In a majority of cases of colored hearing, 
 the name Blanche is likely to arouse the sensation white. Sim- 
 ilarly, in a majority of cases, when the days of the week arouse 
 the sensations of color, Monday is likely is be colored blue. 
 
 Another very exceptional statement of Miss C, which is 
 important because of its exceptional character, is the fact that 
 in her experience, the less familiar names are likely to be col- 
 ored,, while the more familiar are likely not to have any color. 
 This experience has occurred ever since her earliest recollec- 
 tions. 
 
 To show the definiteness of the color sensation, and its 
 lack of dependence upon teaching, we may examine the report 
 of Miss Leona H. who has a very pronounced experience with 
 colored hearing. Miss H. reports that the sounds of nearly all 
 the letters arouse in her the sensations of color. Thus a is red; 
 
74 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 b is light green; c is cement color; d is yellowish brown; e is a 
 pinkish yellow; f is a peculiar coolor, something like the color 
 of the blackboard, but bluer, although not quite blue. This is 
 a color for which she has no name, although it is very distinct, 
 and appears in connection with several auditory symbols. It 
 appears on inquiry, that she once had a German dictionary 
 which was exactly the color described under f . 
 
 G is dark brown; h is yellowish brown; i is white with 
 black lines around it; j apparently has no color; k is like f; 
 1 is white; m is a dark blue; n is light brown; o is white; p is 
 green; q is a kind of funny yellow; r is blue; s is slate color; 
 t is yellow; u is black; v is green; w is dark brown; x has no 
 color; y is yellow; z has no color. 
 
 An examination of the colors aroused by the different let- 
 ters in the three cases described above, will show that there is 
 no uniformity in the color sensations aroused by the same let- 
 ter. Thus in the three cases, a is white, pint and red; b is 
 light green, brown, and blue. So it is perfectly evident that 
 the color sensation connected with hearing is not a natural or 
 systematic affair, but a wholly individual acquisition, arising 
 from some experience in the life of the individual herself. 
 
 In Miss H's case, nearly all words are colored, and it seems 
 that the initial letter gives color to the whole word, although 
 this rule is not invariable. The names of the months are all 
 colored. January is that blackboard color like f and k; February 
 is bluish green; March is like f and k; April is red; May is 
 like f and k; June is slate color; August is red; September is 
 a dirty white; October is pure white; November is brown; 
 December is yellow. 
 
 The days of the week are all colored. Sunday is white; 
 Monday is light blue; Tuesday is yellow; Wednesday is brown; 
 Thursday is yellow; Friday is red; Saturday is slate color. 
 
 Nearly all names are colored. Thus Annie is red; Harold 
 is reddish brown; Florence is like f and k; Bernice is green; 
 Charlotte is light blue; Edith is light yellow; Irene is white 
 with black lines around it; Mae is like f and k; Blanche is 
 green. Every name is colored, and the examples above are 
 merely the colors applied to the names on my class list taken 
 down in order. 
 
 Names of all states and countries are colored. There is in 
 
CHROMOESTHESIA 75 
 
 some things more or less of a variation. While nearly every 
 word has a constant color, some words will appear at times in 
 one color, and again in another. 
 
 Miss H. testifies that this color phenomenon has been an 
 experience with her ever since she can remember anything. 
 When a child, she had a set of colored blocks of various colors, 
 and she believes that the reason that i is white with black lines 
 around it is because the letter i on her set of blocks was a 
 white block with a black letter. 
 
 The above cases may be called the typical cases. They 
 represent a degree of color sensation with almost every letter 
 and word. All variations of colored hearing may be found be- 
 tween these elaborate experiences and that of the person who 
 has no color sensation at all when hearing words. Thus Miss 
 Mary P. says that the sound of the letter always arouses in 
 her the sensation of yellow. No other letter and no other word 
 has any such effect. So Miss G. has a single experience. The 
 name Mabel always appears purple to her, and no other name 
 or sound has any color association. With Miss Faye P. the 
 letter always arouses the sensation of black, and the month 
 January is always white. No other words have any corre- 
 sponding effect. 
 
 Miss Marjorie W. experiences color sensations upon hear- 
 ing four letters; r is always red; o is ydllow; x is black, and 
 f is blue. 
 
 It is seldom that we can discover any fact that would in- 
 dicate anything about the time of the beginning of these ex- 
 periences, but the following are two very instructive examples. 
 Miss Ida P. says that she formerly experienced a sensation of 
 color when she heard words, but that she no longer does so. 
 She has forgotten nearly all the colors that pertained to the 
 different words, but remembers that all the letters of the al- 
 phabet were colored, and that e was yellow. She has forgotten 
 what were the colors of the other letters. All names appeared 
 to her in color. She states that there was no shape to the 
 names of the letters, but when she heard them she experienced 
 a vivid sensation of color. She knows that when she was ten 
 years old, she had these experiences, and thinks that they per- 
 sisted for two or three years afterward. 
 
 Miss P. had a sister who also experienced color sensations 
 
76 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 when she heard letters and words,, and the two girls would fre- 
 quently play games with the colors of words;. They would ask 
 each other the colors of particular names and words, and she 
 remembers that they did not agree upon the colors they experi- 
 enced when the different letters and words were heard. 
 
 We may contrast the above account with the following: 
 Miss Ethelyn W. experiences the sensation of red whenever she 
 hears the letter a. Any word that contains a is red, although 
 it sometimes is the case, that while the a in the word is red, 
 the rest of the word is green. S is white; r is red; y is yellow; 
 and o is white. Words containing these -letters are colored, but 
 no other words. 
 
 The rest of the statement of Miss W is quite unusual. She 
 says that these color sensations began to be experienced about 
 the time that she was fourteen years old. She has had, there- 
 fore, experiences with the perception of these letters when 
 they were not colored, as well as after they became so. Her 
 case is a direct contrast with that of Miss P. who has changed 
 from a condition where she perceives the letters as colored to 
 one in which she does not. These two conflicting cases render 
 any possible explanation of the phenomena very difficult. 
 
 "When two letters of different colors appear in the word, 
 the influence of the color of the two upon the color of the word 
 is noticeable in many cases. In the example mentioned above, 
 sometimes a part of the word is colored green in consequence 
 of its complementary relation to the color of the dominant let- 
 ter in the word, a, which is red. But we have clear testimony 
 to another effect in the following example: 
 
 Miss Alta M. manifests the phenomena of colored hearing 
 in a high degree. Nearly all of the letters of the alphabet are 
 colored. A is white or yellow, sometimes one color and some- 
 times the other; b is red; c has no color; e is red; f is brown; 
 g is green; h is gray; i is light, either white or yellow; j is 
 brown; k is like j. Practically every letter gives its own sen- 
 sation of color. 
 
 Words take their color from the color of the letters. The 
 initial letter seems to have the greater influence upon the color 
 of the word. The word Earl is of a reddish, or pinkish color, 
 seeming to have its color determined by the combined effect of 
 the first two letters. The white of the a seems to modify the 
 
CHROMOESTHESIA 77 
 
 red of the e. The letters r and 1 seem to have no effect upon 
 the color of the word. 
 
 The names of the months are nearly all colored. January 
 is brown; September is golden yellow; March is purple. Feb- 
 ruary has no color; April is light, and May is reddish; June is 
 gray, the u in the word seeming to give color to the word. 
 July is grayish brown, the j in the word seeming to modify the 
 effect of the u. 
 
 Every day in the week has its own color. Sunday is yel- 
 low. Practically every name is colored. Agnes is white; Ber- 
 tha is purple; Nola is brown; Loretta is bluish black. 
 
 A very large proportion of the persons who have related 
 their experiences are surprised to find that other persons do 
 not have the same experience. They have expressed surprise 
 when informed that other persons do not hear the same things 
 in color. One young man is pleased with names of one color, 
 and not with names of another codor, and his preference for 
 persons is quite largely determined by the color of their names. 
 Another person, a young lady, expressed wonder about how 
 persons who had no color sensations from names could remem- 
 ber who persons were, or how they could distinguish their 
 names. All of these suggestions go to show the individual 
 characteristic of the experience, as wel! as the extreme im- 
 portance of it to the individual. They also show how necessary 
 it is for parents and teachers to have a knowledge that such 
 experiences occur in the children under their care. 
 
 Two possible explanations of this phenomenon of colored 
 hearing have been offered. We know that the brain is com- 
 posed of a large number of separate cells, or brain units called 
 neurons. We know also that no mental process of any kind is 
 ever experienced unless a nervous impulse passes through some 
 combination of neurons. This nervous impulse is some kind of a 
 molecular change in the substance of the neurons, and it ap- 
 pears that the essential part of the nervous impulse is the 
 transmission from one neuron to another. 
 
 Also, we know that the different combinations of neurons 
 are not all alike. We know that when a nervous impulse 
 paasses through one combination of neurons, it may accompany 
 one kind of a mental process, and when it passes through an 
 other combination of neurons, a different mental process is 
 
78 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 experienced. When we experience a sensation of sound, a ner- 
 vous impulse passes through a certain combination of neurons, 
 and when we experience a sensation of color, the impulse trav- 
 erses a different combination. 
 
 The first explanation of colored hearing rests upon the 
 supposition that in some persons, the separation and differen- 
 tiation of color neurons from the hearing neurons has not 
 been complete, but that the two are so combined that the same 
 impulse traverses both, as a result of this lack of differentia- 
 tion. There seems to be very little ground for making this 
 supposition, and it is incapable of explaining some of the cases 
 adduced above. 
 
 The other hypothesis rests upon a physiological law known 
 as the law of the attraction of the impulse. That law may be 
 stated as follows: When two impulses are established in the 
 brain at the same time, they tend to run together and to con- 
 stitute a single impulse. 
 
 Also another physiological law is involved in the explana- 
 tion, which is called the law of neural habit. This law may be 
 stated by saying that when a nervous impulse traverses a 
 combination of neurons, it modifies the combination, or brain 
 center, so as to diminish the resistance, and to render the path- 
 way more easy of access to the impulse. 
 
 Now we may suppose that a child has experienced the 
 sound sensation of the letter, or the word, or the name, and at 
 the same time has experienced the color sensation. These two 
 impulses combine, and traverse the connection between the 
 two brain centers. Suppose the letter to be printed in black. 
 The sound of the 0, and the color black, are experienced at the 
 same time. The two impulses, started in two different und 
 organs and traversing two different sensation centers, com- 
 bine, and run together, marking out a pathway between the 
 two centers. Subsequently, an impulse started by the sound 
 center will traverse the center corresponding to the sound 0, 
 and then,, finding the resistance slight, will pass over into the 
 color center for the sensation of black. Similarly, if a child 
 becomes acquainted with a girl whose name she hears is 
 Jane, who wears a pink dress, ever afterward, the impulse 
 that traverses the brain center that was first traversed when 
 she heard the name Jane, is likely to flow over into the pink 
 
CHROMOESTHESIA 79 
 
 center, when the name Jane is heard and an impulse started 
 in the Jane center. 
 
 This hypothesis will explain practically every case de- 
 scribed above. It is so simple that it may need more or less 
 modification to meet all cases, for the phenomena are much 
 more complex than would appear from the explanation given. 
 However, this answers very satisfactorily for a working hypo- 
 thesis. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. W. 0. Krohn — Pseudochromoethesia. American Jour- 
 nal of Psychology, volume 5, p. 20. 
 
 About our best article on the subject. Quite a history of 
 it. First mentioned by Goethe in 1810. Refers to a writing 
 by Hoffman in 1786. Gives a long bibliography. 
 
 2. Galton — Inquiries Into Human Faculty. Page 305- 
 112. (Everyman Edition). One of the best references. 
 
 3. Calkins — Statistical Study of Pseudochromoesthesia. 
 American Journal of Psychology,, volume 5, p. 439. Rather an 
 important study. 
 
 4. David Starr Jordan — Colors of Letters. Popular 
 Science Monthly, volume 39, 1891, July. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SYNESTHESIA. 
 
 Chromoesthesia, or colored audition, or colored hearing, is 
 a special example of a general phenomenon. Chromoesthesia is 
 an example of the association of a hearing sensation with a 
 color sensation. But almost any two kinds of sensations may 
 be associated, so that when one is experienced, the other will 
 be aroused. The name for this entire class of phenomena is 
 synesthesia. 
 
 Color and taste are very commonly associated. Thus Miss 
 Lillie C. always experiences the sensation of green whenever 
 she tastes anything sour. Also, when she hears the name of 
 anything that is sweet, she experiences a reddish sensation of 
 color. In this case it appears that the green color is associated 
 with the taste, while the reddish color is associated with the 
 hearing, although the thing heard must be known as sweet. 
 
 Miss Emily B. experiences a sensation of taste whenever 
 she hears the names of some of the months. Thus September 
 has a slightly sweet taste; March is bitter. 
 
 Mr. J. J. J. experiences a very clear and decided sweet 
 sensation whenever he hears the name April. 
 
 Miss Olga M. experiences a rather vivid sensation of bright 
 color, not quite red, whenever she tastes anything sour. The 
 taste of anything sweet arouses a distinct sensation of blue. 
 Bitter is a brightly tinted red. In this case, the color sensation 
 is aroused by the taste, and not by hearing of the word denot- 
 ing the taste. 
 
 Another example illustrating the same thing is that cf 
 Miss Teresa K. who testifies that she experiences a' positive 
 sensation of green whenever she tastes anything that is sour. 
 She asserts that there can be no question of the fact, because 
 of its vividness. 
 
 But other sensations than those of color and taste may be 
 so associated that an experience with one will arouse the other. 
 Miss Dessie I. reports that she experiences a distinct sensation 
 of warmth whenever she hears the letter r. The sensation is 
 quite noticeable, and she feels very confident that there is no 
 chance for her to be mistaken in the fact. 
 
 Besides the simple sensations of sound and color, taste and 
 
SYNESTHESIA 81 
 
 color, there are many other kinds of sensations that become as- 
 sociated so that when one is experienced, it will call up the 
 other. As would be anticipated, these associations are of the 
 most diverse character. Thus we may experience the sensation 
 of brightness, or light and dark, as distinguished from color. 
 Miss Edna S. experiences a decided sensation of black whenever 
 she hears slow music. To her, slow music is black. She seems 
 to have no other associations of different sensations. 
 
 Miss Grace T., however, reports that lively music is always 
 light, while slow and loud music is dark. In very much the 
 same manner, Miss Tacy A. always hears slow strains as blue. 
 They are never pink, while classical music is always pink. She 
 supposed, until I made inquiries of her, that everybody heard 
 music in that way. Also, Miss Marie McC. experiences sensa- 
 tions of brightness, not color, in connection with names. Thus 
 Edith is always dark; Madge is light; Nora is dark. 
 
 Of a similar nature, although differing in considerable de- 
 gree, is the experience of Mr. Floyd E. Whenever he hears the 
 letter R, he always experiences the sensations of a chord m 
 music. Names of persons that contain the letter R induce in 
 him the same sensation, and he decidedly prefers such names. 
 The experience may be described by saying that the letter R 
 induces in him the sensation of the chord of music, or that it 
 gives him the same emotional experience that the strain of 
 music would give. 
 
 More complex, and less easy to understand, or to explain, 
 are some other synesthetic experiences, in which the materials 
 associated are more complex than the sensations previously de- 
 scribed. Miss Mira M. distinguishes names by their form. She 
 illustrates by the similar names Gertie and Gertrude. The two 
 names are recognized under the form of two lines, nearly par- 
 allel. Gertrude is experienced as a line with a series of waves. 
 Gertie is a similar line, extending in almost the same direction, 
 but the waves are shorter and of greater amplitude. 
 
 Miss Frances H. always recognizes the long letters like 
 f and b as tall persons. A somewhat similar association is ex- 
 perienced in the case of numbers. Especially is this true with 
 6 and 8. Whenever 6 is subtracted from 8, her conception of 
 the process is that the numbers are engaged in a conspiracy, of 
 which 8 is the victim. 
 
82 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 Miss Clare 0. also associates numbers with various human 
 characteristics. 2 always fights with 3* Among the other 
 numbers, there is no definite dueling, but all of them seem to 
 engage in a general melee. However, each number has its own 
 characteristic qualities. Thus 3 is timid; 5 is a rocking chair; 
 2 is impertinent. This association may be described by saying 
 that the same idea, or the same feeling, is aroused by the num- 
 ber that is aroused by the quality which the adjective ex- 
 presses. 
 
 A somewhat similar association is that which is experi- 
 enced by Miss Geneva S. with the letters of the alphabet. 3ach 
 letter has its own personal characteristics. This is especially 
 noticeable when the letters constitute the initials of given 
 names. An initial on the wrong person is very annoying to 
 her. C is dainty and "Frenchy." D is stubborn and phleg- 
 matic. H is elusive and ephemeral. L is smooth and deceitful; 
 M is soothing and maternal. is comical and "giggly." Q is 
 eccentric. 
 
 Miss Sadie M. experiences a different kind of association 
 with numbers. Every number up to fifteen is associated with 
 color, but is experienced in a different way from most of the 
 examples that have been given with numbers and letters. In- 
 stead of visualizing the number as a digit with color, Miss M. 
 experiences the number as a series of dots of red and blue. 
 The red dots always precede the blue, and the sum of the dots 
 is the number expressed by the digit. Thus 4 brings about an 
 experience of two red dots and two blue dots. The figure 7 
 represents four red and three blue. 
 
 The example of Miss M. is very similar to that of Miss 
 Edith W. whose experience might be grouped with number 
 forms, rather than with synesthetic experiences. Each number 
 appears to Miss W. as a series of dots, dark in appearance, and 
 she must see the series of dots before the number idea occurs. 
 Thus 7 consists of a series of dots, three in one row, three in a 
 row just below the first, and one below the two rows of six, 
 Eight appears as eight dots in two rows. Sixteen is represent- 
 ed by two series of eight dots each, one series above the other. 
 
 Miss W. believes that this method of visualizing numbers 
 is decidedly disadvantageous to her. She finds it difficult to 
 
SYNESTHESIA 83 
 
 work with numbers, and she wishes that she had some other 
 way of thinking of them. 
 
 The suggestion is at least reasonable that this method of 
 imaging numbers had its origin in the teaching of some over 
 enthusiastic teacher, in her desire to make the work concrete, 
 and teaching numbers according to the ideas of the old Grube 
 method, established an injurious association which it is im- 
 possible to get rid of. 
 
 So also, it may be that Miss Sadie M. was taught the early 
 ideas of number by a teacher who employed colored crayon to 
 make the marks which were the concrete symbols of numbers 
 from which the child derived her ideas. 
 
 Of a somewhat different class of associations is the one de- 
 scribed by Miss Mary S. who testifies that whenever there is a 
 winter storm and the wind shrieks and howls outside, she ex- 
 periences a feeling of being in a castle hall, with a wide fire- 
 place and a long table, the furniture quite rude, and the castle 
 walls very high. Every time the experience occurs, it is the 
 same castle and the scene is identical in every respect. 
 
 It will be seen from the above examples how varied and 
 how different are the mental experiences of children. It is 
 with these different materials that a teacher has to work, and 
 to elaborate out of them the same general laws for teaching. 
 In learning to read, and in learning arithmetic, the children 
 are supposed to be learning the same things; but the materials 
 out of which they construct the system of thought that is em- 
 bodied in the subject are as varied as the children themselves, 
 and this merely emphasizes the difficulty that the teacher en- 
 counters. A knowledge of the various mental processes em- 
 ployed in thinking the elementary associations will enable the 
 teacher sometimes to explain her failures, that otherwise would 
 seem unaccountable. 
 
 The fact of early association will in every case explain the 
 apparent mystery involved in these synesthetic experiences. 
 They may be designated as queer, erratic, morbid, mysterious, 
 abnormal; and a mystical, supernatural, spiritualistic explana- 
 tion be suggested for them. But in every case, where we are 
 able to penetrate sufficiently into the early experiences of the 
 children, we shall find a perfectly natural and clear explanation 
 for the phenomena. They are mysterious only because they 
 
84 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 are individual. The mystery appears only because children 
 are not alike. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. June Downey — Colored Gustation. American Journal 
 of Psychology, volume 22, p, 525-539. 
 
 2. A. H. Pierce — Gustatory Audition. American Journal 
 of Psychology, volume 18, p. 341^352. 
 
 3. Leroy C. Day — Alphabet Friendships. Pedagogical 
 Seminary, volume 21, p. 321. 
 
 4. Margaret C. Whiting — Individuality of Numbers. 
 Pedagogical Seminary, volume 2, p. 106. A good article, re- 
 lating Miss Whiting's own experience. 
 
 5. G. M. Whipple — Two Cases of Synesthesia. American 
 Journal of Psychology, volume 11, p. 377. An elaborate study 
 of two cases. Valuable as showing the method. Says pain, 
 pressure, and temperature have not before been recorded in 
 synesthetic associations. 
 
 6. K. B. Rose — Synesthesia. American Journal of Psy- 
 chology, volume 20, p. 447. A statistical study of the number 
 of persons who experience synesthesia. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ORIGINAL LANGUAGES OF CHILDREN 
 
 Children do not learn to talk. They begin to talk as the 
 result of the development of an instinct. By this statement 
 we mean that if two or more children were brought up in such 
 a manner that they might never have heard a word of spoken 
 language, nevertheless, they would begin to communicate with 
 each other by means of articulate speech. 
 
 The child, and human beings in general, use articulate 
 speech as a means of communication, because they have a 
 speech center in the brain. This speech center is in nearly all 
 cases, on the left side of the brain, just above the fissure of 
 Sylvius. An injury to the brain in just this spot will invari- 
 ably produce an inability to speak; while a similar injury in 
 the corresponding spot on the right side of the brain will not 
 diminish the speaking ability. 
 
 This portion of the brain is called the speech center, be- 
 cause, whenever a person speaks, a nervous impulse is travers- 
 ing some combination of cells in this portion. It is true, that 
 other portions of the brain are connected with this part, and 
 an injury to those other portions will modify the ability to 
 speak in various ways; but an injury to this portion will com- 
 pletely destroy the ability to speak. 
 
 The speech center becomes organized as the result of a 
 tendency to grow and organize, not as the result of experience. 
 Without any speech, the brain center would become organized 
 so that impulses would be able to traverse its cell combinations. 
 
 Speech is not necessarily a measure of intelligence. A dog 
 or a horse cannot speak, and never by any possibility can be- 
 come able to speak, because they have no speech center. Some 
 dogs have more intelligence than some men, but the men can 
 speak and the dogs cannot. 
 
 A child does not learn to talk, but he does learn a language. 
 He has an instinct to speak, and as soon as the instinct de- 
 velops, he will begin to talk. But he has no instinct to speak 
 any particular language. There is no English language in- 
 stinct, nor French language instinct, nor an instinct for any 
 other language. The fact that we confuse the instinct of 
 speech with the learning of the language is the occasion For 
 
86 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 the difficulty in understanding the processes of a child's he- 
 ginning to talk. 
 
 If children were brought up where they heard no spoken 
 language, they would develop a language of their own. In our 
 present complex society, where children hear one language 
 every day of their lives, there is little opportunity for any 
 child to develop a language of his own. Especially is this true 
 when, if a language should be developed by a child, there is im- 
 mediately an effort on the part of all concerned to stamp out 
 his language, and to cause him to speak the language used by 
 those around him. Occasionally, however, conditions are such 
 that children do develop a language of their own, and the study 
 of a few cases of such languages will contribute much to our 
 knowledge of children. 
 
 In the following pages, twenty-one different cases of lan- 
 guages invented by children have been considered. Unfortu- 
 nately, it has not been possible for the writer to study these 
 cases at first hand, but reports have been examined that were 
 made by persons who knew the circumstances, and were in 
 position to know the children themselves. Most of those mak- 
 ing them were little skilled in the observation of such phe- 
 nomena. The most that can be learned from them is the fact 
 that there are such languages invented by children, and the 
 characteristics of the children who invent the languages, to- 
 gether with the situations under which such languages develop. 
 
 An examination of the reports made of several cases will 
 disclose the chief characteristics of the development of such 
 languages. The first case is one which was reported by Miss 
 Ivol S. 
 
 Miss S. reports that she lived on the adjoining farm to the 
 one on which the children lived, whose language constitutes 
 the subject of this report. She went to the school with the 
 children, and heard the children talk with each other. The 
 matter was one of serious concern to the parents and to the 
 teacher, but the real significance of the phenomena did not ap- 
 pear to either. 
 
 The name of the family was R. and they lived on a farm 
 near R. C, Ohio. There were six children in the family, the 
 oldest of whom did not manifest the linguistic peculiarity of 
 the three children next in age. The next three children were; 
 
ORIGINAL LANGUAGES OF CHILDREN 87 
 
 not widely different in age, and they were the ones in whom 
 the new language appeared. The youngest two children did 
 not manifest the linguistic character. 
 
 The parents were rather taciturn persons, talked but little 
 at home, and both went out to work, either in the fields of 
 their own farm, or as hired help to the neighbors. The children 
 were left very much to themselves at home, and visiting with 
 neighbor children was not only difficult, but was forbidden and 
 discouraged by the parents. All of these circumstances were 
 favorable to the development of an original language. 
 
 The children, numbers 2, 3, and 4, talked freely with each 
 other, and could understand readily what each other said. 
 They never talked with the parents, nor with other children, 
 and these could not understand what they said when they were 
 talking with each other. It was supposed by the parents that 
 the children had an unfortunate defect in speech, but the real 
 explanation did not occur to them. Finally, when the oldest 
 of the three was seven or eight years old, they all started to 
 school. Their inability to speak the language that the teacher 
 and the other children employed was a source of great annoy- 
 ance to the teacher. Miss Si, believes that at this time neither 
 one of the children knew twenty-five words of English. 
 
 The children talked freely with each other, and could un- 
 derstand what each other said, but no one else could under- 
 stand them, nor could they understand the speech of other 
 persons. As soon as it was recognized that they were unable 
 to speak the language of the school, efforts were made to teach 
 it to them. They learned it rapidly, and soon forgot their orig- 
 inal language. 
 
 Here we have all the conditions favorable to the develop- 
 ment of an original language; three children, neither of whom 
 knew any language, isolated, seldom hearing any speech. Then 
 when they developed a language that no one lese could under- 
 stand they were thought of as having a defect in speech. 
 
 A quite similar case is one reported by Miss Lulu M. The 
 C. family, living on a farm near C. C, Michigan, consists of a 
 father and mother, and eight children. Mr. and Mrs. C. are 
 very hard working people with a common school education. 
 Their children were left alone much of the time, and invented 
 a language of their own, which they used for communicating 
 
88 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 with each other. All the children used this language, or did 
 use it until they became old enough to "work out" in other 
 communities. The general impression among the neighbors, 
 when they were little children, was that they were mentally 
 defective. But as soon as the children began to work in other 
 communities, and learned the language of other people, it was 
 found that they were mentally very quick and bright. 
 
 In this case, the conditions were favorable for the develop- 
 ment of an original language, and for its continuation until its 
 recognition was forced,. Persons are generally very slow to 
 recognize an original language. They are likely to explain the 
 language by saying that the children in whom it appears have 
 a defect in speech, or that they are mentally defective. In the 
 two cases above, one explanation prevailed in one case, and the 
 other in the next. 
 
 The next case introduces another feature into the situa- 
 tion. The case is reported by Mr. Henry S., who lived in the 
 same neighborhood with the children, and went to school with 
 them. His observations, moreover, are corroborated by reports 
 of the neighbors who have talked with him about the children. 
 
 The family was named H. and they still live near S., Mich- 
 igan. There were five children in the family, the oldest three 
 being girls, and the youngest two being boys. It was with the 
 boys that the new language appeared. The family lived on a 
 large farm, and the boys were left much alone. The older boy 
 seems to have been the one with whom the new language de^ 
 veloped, and the younger adopted his method of speaking. The 
 two boys talked freely with each other, and could readily un- 
 derstand what each other said, but other persons could not 
 understand them. When they started to school, the other 
 pupils could not understand what they said, and they had to 
 begin to learn the English language, as they did not know how 
 to speak it. 
 
 The family and the neighbors did not regard the boys as 
 deficient in intellect, but thought they had a serious impedi- 
 ment in their speech. They recognized a peculiarity in their 
 method of speaking, and commented upon it. The boys are 
 now about twenty-six years old, and still employ some forms 
 of their original language when they talk with each other. 
 
 In this case, there are indications of the persistence of 
 
ORIGINAL LANGUAGES OF CHILDREN 89 
 
 some portions of the language, even though the boys learned 
 to speak the common language of the other people very well. 
 
 It is very difficult to discover any of the word forms that 
 are employed in these original languages, and much more so to 
 discover the grammatical constructions that children use. Miss 
 Sarah R^ reports the case of two children of her brother, who 
 seem to have had a language of their own. They were two 
 boys, and were two or three years old when they began to use 
 their original language. They conversed fluently with each 
 other in this language, which no one else could understand. 
 By the time they started to school, they could converse with 
 other persons in the common English language, but when they 
 were by themselves, they employed their own language. So 
 far as Miss R. is able to determine, it was principally in the 
 nouns and adjectives that the original language differed from 
 the common language. The construction, and the verbs, so far 
 as she remembers, were similar to the English. She has asked 
 her mother for any words that the boys used, and she has re- 
 membered two. Bebbleboarm, and contragooeye, were names 
 of toys with which the boys played. 
 
 The clearest case of the development of an original lan- 
 guage, in which the instinctive character of speech seems con- 
 clusively demonstrated, is one reported by Miss Gladys McA. 
 It is the case of two children whose parents live in Detroit. 
 The parents are both deaf and dumb. The father is an archi- 
 tect and the mother is also well educated. There was no spoken 
 language in the home, but the children began to talk by them- 
 selves, and had a clearly defined vocabulary, although of a lim- 
 ited number of words. The fact that the children were learn- 
 ing to speak a language of their own, which no one else could 
 understand, was interpreted by their grandmother as being 
 something very bad so she took them to her home and kept 
 them until they had learned to speak English. 
 
 This seems as if it were a natural experiment, which fur- 
 nishes conclusive evidence of the instinctive character of 
 speech. Of course, it is possible to set up the claim that, 
 although the children did not hear any language in their home, 
 they might have heard speech from other persons, and so have 
 learned to speak in that way. But if that had been the origin 
 of their language they would have talked as other persons talk 
 
90 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 and not in such a way that no one else could understand them. 
 
 It is almost invariably the case that the use of the original 
 language is discouraged by the parents, and the children made 
 to feel that it is something discreditable and to be concealed. 
 This will account for the very slight persistence in these orig- 
 inal languages. Occasionally, however, the language persists. 
 Miss Marian H. reports the case of two children in a family 
 named G. who now live about two miles east of P. in Michigan. 
 Miss H. lived in the same neighborhood, and knows the children 
 herself. The two children who possessed the language talked 
 freely with each other, and the parents and the older sister 
 could understand the greater part of what the children said, 
 although other persons could not. There seems to have been 
 no suspicion of mental deficiency in the family, for the older 
 girl was unusually bright. The speech of the younger children 
 was rather encouraged by the parents, who could understand 
 the greater part of it. So far as Miss HL knew at the time of 
 the report, the children still used the language. 
 
 An interesting bit of testimony is found in the account of 
 Miss Marjorie S. Miss S). herself began to talk when she was 
 about twelve months old. She was quite sociable, and as a child 
 enjoyed playing with other children. She had a brother about 
 fifteen months younger than herself, who began to talk about 
 the age that other children do, but who employed a language 
 of his own. Miss S. could understand what he said, but other 
 persons could not. She could translate what he said to the 
 other members of the family, although she did not speak the 
 boy's language even to him. The brother liked very much to 
 play with her, but would not play with other children;. When 
 he could not get his sister to play with him, he would go off 
 and play by himself. 
 
 Miss S. remembers some of the words that the boy used. 
 One of them was dabo, meaning skirt,. He had a prefix to the 
 word dabo for red skirt, and another prefix to indicate black 
 skirt. Emboon meant bread, and yish meant sister. He show- 
 ed a decided preference for his own language, even when it 
 became clear that he was able to learn the language of other 
 persons. 
 
 One other example is quite instructive as showing in a 
 measure a rather unusual tendency of an original language to 
 
ORIGINAL LANGUAGES OF CHILDREN 91 
 
 persist, notwithstanding the very strong influences that tend 
 to eliminate it. Miss Hester P. reports the case of a woman 
 living near P., Michigan, who, as a small girl, employed an 
 original language. Later, she learned English, but the 
 original language persisted. She grew up, married, and has 
 taught her original language to her husband, so that they use 
 it now. 
 
 The above represent types of the twenty-one cases of orig- 
 inal languages that have been reported to me. It seems that 
 the tendency to develop original languages is almost universal 
 in children, but it is too strong a statement to make, that they 
 are very common. When one is inclined to make such an esti- 
 mate, it would be well for him to try to describe a few., But 
 they are more common than a casual observer is likely to dis- 
 cover. The reason that so few are recognized is not very diffi- 
 cult to understand. Children who employ them are likely to be 
 classed as defective in speech or deficient in intellect. Also, 
 the disposition to speak an original language is a stimulus to 
 the parents and others to teach the children English. So al- 
 most every circumstance contributes to the elimination of the 
 language, and there is no circumstance except the original na- 
 ture, or the instinct of the child, that leads to their develop- 
 ment. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Horatio Hale — Origin of Language and the Antiquity 
 of Speaking Man. Proceedings of the American Association 
 for the Advancement! of Science, volume 35, p. 279-329. A 
 most important contribution to the subject. 
 
 2. Conradi — Speech Development in the Child. Pedagog- 
 ical Seminary, volume 11, p. 328. On page 337 mention is made 
 of Hale and the invention of languages. Important paper. 
 
 3. Tracy — The Language of Children. American Journal 
 of Psychology, volume 6, p. 107. See especially Heredity versus 
 Education in Language, p. 108-9. Refers to Hale with an ac- 
 count of five cases of languages invented by children. 
 
 4. Chamberlain— The Child. P. 132-136. Refers to Hale 
 and to several other writers. Chamberlain says such languages 
 are not uncommon. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 DOUBLE PERSONALITY 
 
 The phenomenon of double, or alternating, personality has 
 attracted much interest, and has been quite thoroughly in- 
 vestigated by many persons. In its general phenomena, it is 
 quite well understood; but in its relations to the ordinary ex- 
 periences of normal persons, it is far from having received 
 anything like a satisfactory explanation. 
 
 The cakses principally reported have been those present- 
 ing the extreme types of the experience, and perhaps all of 
 them necessitating an assumption of pathological conditions, 
 so that we are inclined to believe that the experiences are al- 
 ways and inevitably pathological in their nature, belonging to 
 abnormal psychology proper, and having no counterpart nor 
 relation to the normal experiences of a healthy individual. 
 
 The best known examples, and the most instructive, have 
 been described in the writings of Professor James, Ribot, Binet, 
 Weir Mitchell, Morton Prince, Sidis, Coriat, and other writers 
 who have investigated the different cases with a great deal of 
 care. To any one who has given the smallest attention to the 
 subject, it will be sufficient merely to mention the names of 
 such cases as Ansel Bourne, Mary Reynolds, Felida X, Lurancy 
 Vennum, with many others that are almost equally well known. 
 These are all of them extreme cases and some of them have 
 been studied with an assumption of a mystical explanation that 
 does not furnish a connection with examples of the less ex- 
 treme form, and they fail to furnish a connecting link with 
 the ordinary experiences which occur in the life of nearly 
 every person. Instead of referring to these celebrated ex- 
 amples, I should prefer to examine some related cases that 
 have been reported to me by the persons who have had such 
 experiences themselves. 
 
 The first case is that of Mrs. Zaida C f who had the ex- 
 perience, and whose report of it is given in her own words. 
 It is written rather appropriately, in the third person, for she 
 says that her knowledge of what occurred in the second state 
 is altogether derived from the information that her mother has 
 given to her. She remembers no single circumstances that oc- 
 curred in the second state. 
 
DOUBLE PERSONALITY 93 
 
 "When a little past the age of eleven, the following curious 
 experience happened to the writer. One day in May, she took 
 a nap in the afternoon, which was an unusual thing for her to 
 do. About two hours later, her mother wakened her, and ask- 
 ed her to go and find out why the woman who was expected to 
 come and do some work had failed to do so. The mother said 
 afterward that she noticed that the child appeared indifferent, 
 and went out of the back door instead of the front, as she us- 
 ually did, but at the time, no thought was given to the slightly 
 unusual circumstance. The child, instead of going four blocks 
 straight east, as she should have done, went in an entirely dif- 
 ferent direction, going some distance west and south. Passers- 
 by said afterward that she walked in a very listless manner. 
 She passed playmates whom she did not appear to recognize, 
 but to their questioning, she replied that she was going to 
 borrow some carpet tacks of — (giving a name unknown and 
 on an unknown street). She must have wandered some time 
 during which she stopped at a house and rapped on the door, 
 but did not wait for a reply to her knocking. Upon her return 
 home, she said nothing, which was rather unusual for her, but 
 just seated herself and gazed out of the window. 
 
 "To her mother's inquiry concerning the message sent by 
 her, she made no reply. When asked where she had been, she 
 said "Nowhere." Then after some investigation, the foregoing 
 facts were discovered. She gave herself a new name, Patty. 
 Her own name is Zaida. She failed to recognize her parents, 
 her playmates, or her surroundings. She seemed rather indif- 
 ferent to all around her. Up till two months previously, she 
 had been the only child in the family, and when a little baby 
 sister came, she was exceedingly interested and happy. But 
 during this interval, she seemed to care nothing for the little 
 sister, and she could not be interested in her. She was ordi- 
 narily very fond of books and school, but for these few days, 
 she did not care to read. (Query: Had she forgotten how to 
 read, or was she unable to read.) nor did she care to go to 
 school, nor to play the usual games with her playmates. In- 
 stead, she seemed fond of sewing, a thing she usually looked 
 upon with great dislike. 
 
 "A doctor was consulted, but he said wait a few days long- 
 er and see if things would not adjust themselves. During this 
 
94 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 period of four days, she was quite a different person; quiet, 
 listless, thoughtful, and utterly unconcerned about the things 
 around her. 
 
 "Finally, one morning when her mother called her and she 
 awoke, her own merry, inquisitive, active self had returned. 
 She believed that she had been visiting, remembered nothing 
 that had happened in the preceding four days, and expressed 
 great delight at seeing the baby again. 
 
 "As clearly as the writer remembers what was told her, 
 this is all that transpired. There has not been any similar re- 
 currence of the experience. About this time, however, cover- 
 ing a period of two or three years, or more, she had peculiar, 
 indefinable sensations, as if she were slipping away. It was a 
 feeling that she never could describe, even to the doctors who 
 were consulted. When these feelings began to appear, she 
 would go to her mother and say, "Mamma, I am feeling that 
 way again. Take hold of my hands and talk loud." In fifteen 
 minutes or so, the feeling would pass away." 
 
 In the above account, we may observe the regular features 
 of an extreme case of double personality. First, the oncoming 
 of the experience occurred just as the person was waking from 
 sleep. While this condition is not at all universal, we shall find 
 it represented in several of the standard examples. There was 
 a total absence of the recognition of the things that were 
 known in the first state, and upon the changing back to the 
 first state, a total failure to remember any of the events that 
 occurred in the second state. This condition of amnesia is the 
 most nearly universal characteristic of this condition, and some 
 times is almost the only indication of there having been a 
 change. Third, there was a noticeable change in the habits, 
 disposition, and interests accompanying the change from the 
 first to the second state. Like several other cases, that may be 
 considered classical in their nature, there was no recurrence to 
 the second state besides this one noted, although there were 
 preliminary symptoms indicating its approach. 
 
 A very similar case, although less complete and less ex- 
 treme, is the experience of Miss Genevieve H. Miss H. reports 
 that one morning when she was about eleven years old, she 
 came down to breakfast and remarked to the family that it 
 was an unusually bright day, and she felt extraordinarily good 
 
DOUBLE PERSONALITY 95 
 
 for Monday. She remarked that on Mondays she usually felt 
 blue. Her sister said that this was not Monday, but Thursday. 
 Genevieve said, "No, it is Monday, because I did not go to 
 school yesterday." Her sister said that she had gone to school. 
 At least, she had left the house at the regular school hour, had 
 come home for dinner, gone away again, and returned for 
 supper. Genevieve says that she had no recollection of either 
 circumstance. She then went to school, and the teacher in- 
 quired rather accusingly, why she had not been at school the 
 day before. Genevieve says that she does not know now, and 
 did not know them, why she did it; perhaps the assertion of 
 her sister a short time before, and her willingness to defend 
 herself, but she lied. She told the teacher she had been at 
 school, although she had no recollection of it at all. The teach- 
 er condemned her for lying, and kept her after school as a 
 punishment, every night for a week. Miss H. says that to this 
 day, she does not know any single thing that occurred on the 
 day when she was absent from school, and when her family 
 supposed that she was there. She has never found out from 
 any one else what her experiences were. Her family afterward 
 said that they had observed that she was somewhat different 
 in her manner on that day; not so noisy, playful, nor boister- 
 ous as was her usual habit. 
 
 All that is needed to make this a thoroughly typical ex- 
 ample, is to find out the events in the experience of the child 
 on that lost day. If the condition had recurred several times, 
 it would duplicate the features of the most extreme types. 
 
 Somewhat similar, and yet more closely approximating the 
 normal condition, less extreme and even more instructive is 
 the case of Miss Marjorie S. Last spring, in June, Miss S. was 
 feeling very bad at supper. She was almost fainting, and ask- 
 ed to be excused from the table. She started for her room, but 
 fainted before she reached it. She was found in a fainting 
 condition by one of the girls in the house, who assisted her to 
 her room. 
 
 She was responsible for a meeting of her sorority that ev- 
 ening, and was very much concerned over the event. However, 
 the girl who had found her fainting, was much alarmed over 
 her condition, and assisted her to get into bed. When the time 
 for the meeting of the sorority approached, Miss S. insisted 
 
96 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 upon getting up, and went to the meeting. She presided at 
 the meeting, and made a speech upon the matter under con- 
 sideration. It was observed that she looked intently at one girl 
 in the audience all the time she was speaking. 
 
 The next morning, she inquired of her friend how the 
 meeting went off, whether it was held or not, and what was 
 done. She remembered nothing whatever about the meeting, 
 nor of her own experiences while there. She remembered 
 nothing that had occurred after her fainting spell as she was 
 leaving the supper table. 
 
 In this case we have the amnesic experience which is the 
 most noticeable feature of all cases of double personality. We 
 do not have in the statement as made, any information about 
 the kind of changed personality in the second condition, and 
 there is not the complete separation of the first state from the 
 second that we find in a strongly marked typical case. The 
 fact that she was able to make a speech upon a matter 
 whose details had been accumulated while in the first state 
 implies that there was not a perfect separation of the two 
 states. It is in consequence of this fact that the example is 
 very instructive. It furnishes a step in the transition from 
 the most complete cases of separation to the normal condition 
 of every day experience. 
 
 Another example that is very instructive because of its 
 transition character between the extreme types of cases and 
 the normal condition is that of Mr. Orla G. Mr. G. had learned 
 a piece to speak in his elocution class. He was reciting the 
 piece in the presence of an audience composed principally of 
 the members of his class, when suddenly he was unable to go 
 on. The selection was from Ben Hur, and it was the scene be- 
 tween the Angel and the Shepherd. He had come to the end 
 of the Angel's speech, "A voice of sweetness more than human" 
 — when all suggestions of the scene were suddenly replaced by 
 a flood of ideas totally unrelated to the scene, and which con- 
 cerned a series of troubles connected with his home affairs, 
 blotting out all associations with the theme of his speech. 
 Promptings by the class, at first of single words, then entire 
 sentences, failed to replace the connections. Promptings could 
 not suggest a single idea connected with the story. 
 
 Another member of the class got up and recited the same 
 
DOUBLE PERSONALITY 97 
 
 selection, but even then he could not understand it. It was a 
 full hour before he was able to get back the train of thought 
 that had been interrupted, or could understand any part of 
 the selection when it was spoken to him. When the selection 
 was read to him in this condition, it was absolutely meaning- 
 less. Mr. G. reported the case to me immediately, on the same 
 day that it occurred. 
 
 In this case there was only a partial interruption of the 
 personal continuity. However, it is an experience of the same 
 order, and would find its explanation in the same series of con- 
 ditions that would explain double personality. 
 
 In all cases of this kind, we shall recognize without any 
 hesitation, that there is a pathological condition involved. It 
 is impossible, in the present state of our knowledge to offer 
 even a tentative explanation of the things that cause the ior- 
 getfulness, and the change of disposition. We can, however, 
 very plausibly and with much justification, make the supposi- 
 tion that there is an interruption of the usual paths of nervous 
 conductivity in the brain, and that the nervous impulses are 
 conducted through the brain centers in new ways, entering 
 upon the brain centers from new synaptic approaches, and in- 
 volving new and different combinations of brain cells. All this 
 is a much more promising and helpful speculation than those 
 which involve the conception of a "split off consciousness," or 
 the bringing to the surface of an "unconscious," "subconscious" 
 or "subliminal" self. 
 
 The words, "unconscious self," subliminal self," subjective 
 self," all constitute phrases that are so full of misleading im- 
 plications that they vitiate any argument into which they 
 enter. 
 
 Personality is a word that has been much abused. It is 
 used in two distinct senses. First, it is often used to mean a 
 general characteristic of an individual, which is so indefinite in 
 its character that it cannot be attacked in an argument. A 
 person is said to have a strong personality, while another per- 
 son has a weak personality. The nearest approximation to a 
 meaning for this expression is a character which will be found 
 to depend upon the clearness or obscurity of ideas. A person 
 who has, as a general rule, clear and vivid ideas, is one of a 
 strong personality. The person whose ideas are generally weak 
 
98 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 and obscure, who never knows exactly what he wants nor how 
 to go to work to get it, is a person of weak personality. The 
 vividness of the ideas is the distinguishing feature of a strong 
 personality. The feeling that accompanies the ideas is merely 
 an incident, an inevitable concomitant, not the principal char- 
 acter. 
 
 But when we use the word personality, in the phrase al- 
 ternating personality, or double personality, we mean some- 
 thing different from the above. We mean by personality in 
 this sense, the content of the word I when it is used by any 
 individual. It is the sum of the characters that separate one 
 ego from all other egos. 
 
 There are two characters by which one ego may be dis- 
 criminated from all other egos. The first is that there is a cer- 
 tain kind of sameness existing between the psychical states of 
 one ego, that does not exist between the psychical state of one 
 ego and that of another. This sameness of psychical states 
 may be easily understood by recognizing that there is a cer- 
 tain kind of sameness between the physical elements of the 
 ego at one time, and at another, which does not exist between 
 the physical elements of one ego and those of another. One 
 person uses the same brain cells and centers for different 
 psychical processes while another person uses a different series 
 of brain cells and centers. The same kind of sameness exists 
 between the psychical processes that exists between the physi- 
 cal elements. Or it might be better to say that the same kind 
 of difference exists between the psychical processes of two 
 egos, that exists between the two physical organisms connected 
 with them. 
 
 The second difference that discriminates one ego from all 
 others, is that there is a continuity existing between the psy- 
 chical processes, so that the same designation may be employed 
 for them at widely different times. The continuity is more 
 apparent than real. The psychical processes of two men of 
 twenty-one years old are more nearly alike than are the psy- 
 chical processes of one of the men at twenty-one, and the same 
 person at the age of three. Yet we assert that the man of 
 twenty-one is the same person that he was at three, and is not 
 the same person as the other man at twenty-one. 
 
 The continuity consists in the slowness of the changes, so 
 
DOUBLE PERSONALITY 99 
 
 that it is easy to follow its progress; and also the same connec- 
 tions that have been once formed between processes both 
 mental and nervous, have been maintained. It is not that the 
 personality has not changed, but that it has changed so slowly 
 that there has not been at any time a serious interruption of 
 the continuity. 
 
 The human being in his psychical processes uses certain 
 brain areas and certain groups of brain cells. If it were pos- 
 sible to open up new sense organs, and to employ new and 
 totally different groups of brain cells and centers, a new and 
 different personality would be born. If by pathological con- 
 ditions, the continuity of nervous processes should be inter- 
 rupted, new combinations of cells employed, and new nervous 
 pathways marked out, we should have a new series of mental 
 actions to correspond. It is in some such a conception as this 
 that we must seek for a truly scientific explanation of the phe- 
 nomena of double personality. 
 
 Many such experiences as those described above have been 
 observed and recorded. They have attracted attention because 
 of their unlikeness to the usual phenomena of mental life, and 
 have induced study thereby. But if we examine our own ex- 
 periences, we shall discover that each one of us in his own 
 mental processes experiences phenomena identical with those 
 recorded above, which fail to attract attention because they 
 are very common, much less exaggerated, and less noticeable 
 from their milder intensity. Many of our forgettings, many 
 cases of unconscious activity, many of the changes in moods, 
 and different impressions that the same set of circumstances 
 make upon us, are due to the same kind of causes which bring 
 about the extreme forms of double personality. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Ribot — Diseases of Personality. 
 
 2. James — Psychology, volume 1, p. 379-393. 
 
 3. Weir Mitchell — The Case of Mary Reynolds. Harper's 
 Magazine, May, 1860. 
 
 - 4. Cutten — The Case of John Kinsel. Psychological Re- 
 view, volume 10, p„ 465 and 615. 
 
 5. Dana — The Case of M. S. Psychological Review, 
 volume 1, p. 57. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 PARAMNESIA 
 
 Occasionally a person will find himself in a situation where 
 he has the feeling that every circumstance has been in exactly 
 the same relation to himself on some previous occasion. There 
 is the feeling that everything has happened just as it is now 
 in some past time. It is recognized as having been previously 
 experienced. There is a feeling of familiarity that is almost 
 startling in its convincingness. This experience is called par- 
 amnesia. It is this feeling of familiarity, the has-been-experi- 
 enced-before consciousnessv About twelve per cent of all per- 
 sons have had this experience, although some estimates place 
 it as high as thirty per cent. 
 
 It is this feeling that constitutes the chief evidence for 
 the doctrine of reminiscence, which is a doctrine that states 
 that the soul has existed in some place before it's induction 
 into the body of a little child, and remembers in a fragmentary 
 way, some of the incidents of its previous existence. This is 
 the idea that is poetically exploited in Wordsworth's Intima- 
 tions of Immortality. 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 
 Hath elsewhere had its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar. 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 Not in utter nakedness, 
 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God who is our home. 
 
 It is this same paramnesia experience that constitutes the 
 psychological basis for the doctrine that all events occur in 
 cycles. In some of the Eastern forms of the doctrine, it is as- 
 serted that events happen in exactly the same way and in the 
 identical succession every fifty thousand years. No doubt, too, 
 it is the psychological foundation for the belief in metempsy- 
 chosis, or the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. The soul 
 in some previous incarnation may have witnessed exactly such 
 a scene, and now, in its present incarnation, has a faint rec- 
 
PARAMNESIA 101 
 
 ollection of that previous experience when he observed it under 
 changed conditions. It seems evident that a mental experi- 
 ence which can furnish corroborative evidence for doctrines of 
 such great influence as these, is deserving of serious considera- 
 tion. 
 
 An examination of the reports of cases of this experience 
 will enable us to discover the essential features. Mr. Arthur 
 M. reports that he has often experienced the phenomena. On 
 one occasion, on a trip into the Rocky Mountains, he discovered 
 a little valley of rather peculiar nature. Suddenly, he appear- 
 ed to recognize that valley, as having been seen before, down 
 to the most minute detail. He knew that it was impossible for 
 him ever to have seen that valley, or any valley similar to it. 
 Nevertheless, there was exactly the same feeling experienced 
 that there would have been had he been looking at a valley that 
 he had previously seen. He inquired if he might not have 
 dreamed of such a valley. It seemed improbable that he had 
 ever seen a picture that was similar, and the circumstance 
 made a deep impression upon him. 
 
 The feeling of familiarity which constitutes the element of 
 recognition, is the essential feature of this experience. In this 
 case, the recognition occurred in surroundings that were whol- 
 ly unfamiliar. But in quite half of the cases, the feeling is ex- 
 perienced in surroundings with which the person is already 
 thoroughly acquainted. 
 
 Miss Zilpha P. reports that just the day before the report 
 was given, while passing down a street that she had passed 
 over hundreds of times, she suddenly experienced the feeling 
 of having been in exactly the same situation in every detail on 
 some previous occasion. The locality was the same, but per- 
 haps never, in any experience, is there a perfectly complete 
 combination of the thousands of details a second time. But in 
 this case it seemed as if every detail had been experienced in 
 just this combination. About half of these experiences occur 
 when the locality is the same with which the person is familiar, 
 while the other half of all experiences reported occur in un- 
 familiar localities. 
 
 Mr. Glenn H. records an example of paramnesia that is 
 very clear and instructive. When he was about seventeen 
 years old, he drove about fifteen or twenty miles with a dog- 
 
102 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 and gun, for the purpose of hunting rabbits. He carried his 
 lunch with him, and coming to an open place, he sat down to 
 eat it. Suddenly there came to him a feeling of familiarity as 
 if he had been in exactly the same situation before, and every 
 detail of the situation had been perfectly reproduced. It was 
 certain that he had never experienced this situation before, 
 and it was impossible for many reasons, that he could have 
 done so. 
 
 The above examples disclose the essential characteristics 
 of the experience. There are some incidental features of the 
 experience that ought to be noticed. It is somewhat common, 
 in paramnesic experiences, for a person to believe that he could 
 have predicted the next event in the series, or the next thing 
 that would be seen around the corner. Thus Mr. Harry H. 
 reports that something more than a year ago he visited for the 
 first time, the town of B. As he was passing down one of the 
 streets of the little town, he experienced the feeling that he 
 must have been in exactly the same conditions in every respect 
 on some previous occasion. So familiar did everything appear 
 to be that he was confident that he could have described the 
 location and the appearances of all the houses around the 
 corner in the next cross street into which they had not yet 
 turned. 
 
 It is probable that this feeling of being able to predict 
 what is yet coming is an illusion., Very seldom is it possible 
 to try the experiment, but one report is a perfectly satisfac- 
 tory account of such an attempt. Miss Blanche T. was in an 
 auto, with her father, coming from the city of T. late one ev- 
 ening, when they got off the direct road, and were for a time, 
 in effect,, lost. Suddenly, she experienced a feeling- of famil- 
 iarity, and seemed to have been in exactly the same situation 
 before^ She announced that she knew where they were, and 
 could describe the very turns that they must make to get into 
 the proper road for their journey. Her father followed her 
 indications and not a thing turned out as she felt it ought to. 
 She was mistaken in every particular. It seems probable that 
 such will be found to be the case very generally, in paramnesic 
 experiences when a person undertakes to predict what will be 
 the next incident in the situation. 
 
 However, it is very probable that some person, who already 
 
PARAMNESIA 103 
 
 has a profound conviction of the truth of the doctrine of rem- 
 iniscence, will report experiences to the contrary. Miss Muriel 
 G., who is a Christian Scientist, reports that she has a friend, 
 a Mr. A., who is a firm believer in the doctrine of transmigra- 
 tion of souls. He believes that in his just preceding incarna- 
 tion he was a Frenchman and lived in Paris. He asserted that 
 on his first visit to Paris (in his present incarnation), every- 
 thing was so very familiar to him that he was certain that he 
 could find his way without difficulty to a particular hotel, in 
 consequence of remembering it from his previous existence. 
 He reported that he did find the hotel, without any directions 
 from other persons, and that the entire route was perfectly 
 familiar to him, An account like this is to be considered re- 
 liable to just about the extent that one is able to prove it in- 
 dependently. 
 
 It appear? from the reports, that younger persons experi- 
 ence the phenomena of paramnesia more frequently than do 
 older persons. As a person becomes older, the almost universal 
 testimony is that the experiences become less frequent. 
 
 The number of times the experience occurs is not very 
 great. In the reports of the fifty cases that have been exam- 
 ined for this chapter, many of the persons reporting state that 
 they have experienced the phenomena many times. When 
 pressed to make an estimate of what they mean by many times, 
 the estimates run from once every week to three or four times 
 a year. It seems probable that with persons twenty years old, 
 most of those who experience the phenomena will notice on the 
 average, one experience in a month. 
 
 There are some experiences that have been described under 
 the name of paramnesia to which the designation does not 
 properly apply. Not every feeling of familiarity, is a param- 
 nesic experience. The recognition of something as having been 
 seen before, is not necessarily paramnesia. If a thing has been 
 seen before, its recognition, even though it be faint and uncer- 
 tain, is not properly paramnesia. Some experiments have been 
 made for the purpose of studying paramnesia, that cannot be 
 commended for the purpose. The experiments are such as fol- 
 lows: A person is caused to look at a series of picture cards. 
 These cards are then shuffled with another set of cards that 
 have not been examined. The subject is then caused to look at 
 
104 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 the cards, and when a person recognizes one as having been 
 seen before, that feeling of familiarity is described as param- 
 nesia. Such recognitions, and feelings of familiarity with 
 things that have been seen before, is not properly described 
 by the name. The name paramnesia ought to be limited to the 
 feeling of familiarity with that which has never been seen 
 before. 
 
 Even in some cases where an object, or more commonly a 
 person, is recognized, and the feeling of familiarity is experi- 
 enced, the phenomenon is not paramnesia. Miss Mildred A. 
 says that one day she met a girl whom she had never seen be- 
 fore, but whom she felt as if she recognized immediately, and 
 with whom she felt quite well acquainted. The other girl ex- 
 pressed the same kind of feeling toward her, but neither could 
 suggest any opportunity for having met before. It seems 
 probable that there were elements of similarity between the 
 girl and some one else whom Miss A. knew that might have led 
 to the feeling of recognition. 
 
 But such an explanation cannot account for the cases of 
 genuine paramnesia. In the case mentioned above, that of 
 Miss Zilpha P., there were any number of points of similarity 
 in the situation, but the feeling at just that particular time 
 when the experience occurred was noticeably different from 
 what it was the day before, or the hour before, when walking 
 down the same street. Neither does it seem possible that the 
 first presentation of the scene with its attending circumstances 
 might have been made in a dream, as Mr. Arthur M. suggests 
 above. 
 
 The phenomena of paramnesia have attracted a sufficient 
 amount of attention to serve as a basis for many philosophical 
 theories, as stated in the beginning of this chapter. Each 
 theory is an attempt to explain the phenomena. Also, many 
 theories of a different character have been advanced to serve 
 as an explanation for the mental processes involved. 
 
 One such theory is that of Wigan, who supposed that it 
 might be due to the lack of synchronism in the operation of 
 the two hemispheres of the brain. He supposed that the two 
 sides of the brain always worked together, somewhat after 
 the manner of the two eyes; but if for any reason, the two 
 sides should not work quite together, we should have ji param- 
 
PARAMNESIA 105 
 
 nesic experience. Such a theory seems altogether impossible, 
 in the light of what we know concerning the localization of 
 function, and the relation of the two hemispheres to each other. 
 Another theory is that paramnesia is due to, first an uncon- 
 scious perception, followed by a conscious perception which is 
 recognized as being partially familiar, at least. Although the 
 assumption is not necessary, this theory generally assumes the 
 existence of an unconscious mind, or a subliminal self, or some 
 mystical conception of that nature. There is very little evi- 
 dence in support of such a theory as this. 
 
 Paramnesia is an illusion of memory, and it would seem 
 that we can best understand the phenomena by an examination 
 of the nervous processes that accompany an act of memory. 
 Memory is the reinstatement of a previous mental experience 
 with the same conscious elements. It is the reproduction of a 
 mental state and the recognizing it as having been experi- 
 enced before. Unless the process is both reinstated and recog- 
 nized, it is not memory. It includes both mental reproduction 
 and mental recognition. The illusory process which we know 
 as paramnesia occurs in the second element, that of mental 
 recognition. 
 
 The nervous processes that accompany memory may be 
 described by saying that memory is the concomitant of the 
 transmission of the nervous impulse through the same nervous 
 arc that it passed through before, and the radiation out into 
 the same fringing cells. Mental reproduction is the concomit- 
 ant of the the transmission of the nervous impulse through 
 the same nervous arc that it passed through before, and mental 
 recognition is the concomitant of the radiation out into the 
 same fringing cells. 
 
 Whenever the nervous impulse passes through the same 
 nervous arc that it passed through before, without radiating 
 into the same fringing cells, we experience mental reproduc- 
 tion without mental recognition. Whenever the nervous im- 
 pulse passes through the same fringing cells without passing 
 through the corresponding nervous arc, we experience mental 
 recognition without mental reproduction. Something of this 
 kind probably occurs when we are trying to recall a name, and 
 are able to recognize it if we hear it. Either of the elements 
 of memory may occur without the other. 
 
106 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 Using this conception of the nervous processes accompany- 
 ing memory, we may establish a hypothesis that will give us a 
 clear understanding of the paramnesic process. In paramnesia, 
 the error, or illusion, is due to the second element, mental rec- 
 ognition. It is not an error in mental reproduction. 
 
 Let us suppose that for some reason, the initial impulse 
 passes through the fringing cells without having first trav- 
 ersed the brain center. Then it immediately corrects itself, 
 passes through the brain center, and radiates out into the 
 fringing cells in the usual way. We shall then have the ner- 
 vous impulse traversing, or entering upon, the fringing cells 
 twice, while there has been only one transmission through the 
 brain center. There will have been two experiences of mental 
 recognition, while there has been only one perception. This 
 would seem to explain all the phenomena that we have noted 
 in the examples described above* 
 
 This hypothesis of the transmission through the brain 
 center and radiation out into the fringing cells to accompany 
 a consciousness of the thing perceived, is almost identical with 
 the hypothesis proposed by Elliott Park Frost, in the Psycho- 
 logical Review, of May, 1914. What he calls there the alpha- 
 arc, I have called the brain center. When he calls the beta-arc 
 1 have called the fringing cells. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 
 volume 2, p. 74. Article Metempsychosis. 
 
 2. LaLande — Des Paramnesie. Psychological Review, 
 volume 1, p. 94. Review of the article by W. J. Speaks of the 
 theories of Wigan and Anjel. 
 
 3. Burnham — Paraamnesia. American Journal of Psy 
 chology, volume 2, p. 431-464. Indicates that Kraepelin first 
 used the word, and limited it to pseudo-reminiscence. See 
 Burnham's most favored explanation, p. 448. 
 
 4. Baldwin's Dictionary — volume 2, p. 65. Article Mem- 
 ory. Mentions three kinds. The one called Identifying Param- 
 nesia is the one to which the word is limited in this chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DREAMS 
 
 The subject of dreams has been a favorite topic for specu- 
 lation from the earliest times of which we have any record. 
 Dreams have influenced the thinking and the actions of the 
 whole world, and are still exceedingly influential in determin- 
 ing the philosophy and conduct of nearly every person. Dream 
 books that profess to indicate the significance of dreams, ar- 
 ranged according to the alphabetical order of their subjects, 
 are published, sold and read in great quantities. Religious 
 systems find in dreams the apperceptive basis which renders 
 their promulgation easy. 
 
 The theories advanced to account for dreams are almost 
 as many and as varied as the dreams themselves. Many the- 
 ories of dreams find in the dreams themselves, the evidence of 
 two wholly unlike systems of mental processes, described in 
 the terms of a duality, such as subjective and objective mind; 
 conscious and unconscious mind; and have postulated this 
 duality, to use it as an explanation of the dream phenomena 
 themselves. 
 
 The most elaborate and the most ingenious theory of 
 dreams, supported by an almost incredible amount of investi- 
 gation, is that of Freud. Freud's theory of dreams may best 
 be understood by mentioning briefly a few of its most char- 
 acteristic features. First, Freud believes that every dream is 
 an unconscious wish. The wish must be unconscious before it 
 can induce a dream. Consequently, the person who experi- 
 ences the dream, may be wholly unconscious of entertaining 
 the wish. This thesis is worked out by Freud in a most in- 
 genious way, but by the method employed to demonstrate the 
 presence of the wish, it would be possible to prove that the 
 world is a hazel nut. 
 
 Second: — The Fruedian theory of dreams postulates the 
 presence of a psychic censor, whose description is that of a 
 mischievous little devil. This psychic censor may also be de- 
 scribed as the unconscious mind. 
 
 Third: — A very large proportion of dreams are sexual in 
 their origin and character. In order to demonstrate this point, 
 an elaborate system of symbolism is evolved, such as that every 
 
108 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 dream that involves going up a hill, or upstairs is sexual. 
 
 Fourth: — Nearly every dream involves the reproduction of 
 some experience, under a changed form, that occurred in the 
 very early life of a child. These early experiences may have 
 occurred before the child was a year old, and before there was 
 any possibility of remembering them. 
 
 These are merely some of the features of Freud's theory, 
 and they are the features that have been most successfully 
 criticised. Personally, the writer is lost in admiration of the 
 great ingenuity of the theory, but is unable to agree with a 
 single major proposition involved in it. 
 
 It seems to be necessary to apply the same principles of 
 interpretation to dreams that we apply to any other natural 
 phenomena. We must not introduce into the explanation any 
 mysterious and mystical element, so long as we have a simpler 
 explanation that is adequatev This principle is known in logic 
 as the law of parsimony, and it will enable us to avoid many 
 absurdities of interpretation. Applying this principle, it seems 
 possible to find a simple and easy way to understand the gen- 
 eral phenomena of dreams. 
 
 A dream is any mental action in sleep. Any mental action 
 has for its inevitable concomitant the transmission of a ner- 
 vous impulse through some combination of brain cells which 
 we may call a brain center. When nervous impulses traverse 
 brain centers during sleep, we have the phenomena of dreams. 
 
 Sleep is a condition of unconsciousness due to a diminished 
 amount of nervous energy. When the amount of nervous en- 
 ergy liberated decreases below a certain point, then we experi- 
 ence the condition of sleep. Unconsciousness brought . about in 
 any other manner cannot be called sleep. 
 
 A dream, then, is always accompanied by a smaller amount 
 of nervous energy transmitted through a brain center, than is 
 a waking mental process. In consequence of this fact, the 
 dream is always less vivid than a corresponding waking ex- 
 perience. Also, in consequence of the same fact, a dream is 
 very easily forgotten, and it is not likely to be reported with 
 any high degree of accuracy. This is one of the most notice- 
 able characteristics of dreams. It is almost impossible to re- 
 produce or reinstate a dream experience unless it is rehearsed, 
 reinstated or reported within a few minutes after waking up. 
 
DREAMS 109 
 
 An example of this will be seen in an experience of the 
 writer. One time the writer was coming from Cincinnati to 
 Detroit in a sleeping car. Just about the usual time for wak- 
 ing up in the morning, my suitcase, in the berth with me fell 
 over and struck me on the knee. Just at that instant, I ex- 
 perienced a dream which seemed to me such a clear example 
 of a dream peripherally directed, that as soon as possible there- 
 after, I wrote it out in full detail. 
 
 A few months after that, having occasion in my classes to 
 refer to the peripheral direction of dreams, I related this cir- 
 cumstance, stating that a wooden box came downward from 
 the left and above, and perched upon my knee. I said that the 
 dream was so vivid that I could distinctly see the grain of the 
 wood in the box. As soon as convenient afterward, I examined 
 my notes on that particular case, and found that instead of 
 its being a wooden box, my notes said that it was the sugar 
 bowl on our dinner table that came down from above and from 
 the left and perched upon my knee. My notes said that it was 
 so clear and distinct that I distinctly perceived the figures in 
 the decoration on the china sugar bowl. 
 
 Here was a dream that had been vivid. It had been re- 
 instated clearly, and so definitely that it had been written out 
 and its significance and importance as an illustration had been 
 recognized. Notwithstanding all this, in a comparatively short 
 time, it was related in all sincerity, with startling inaccuracy. 
 
 If we realize that dreams occur when there is a very small 
 amount of nervous energy being liberated, we shall be able to 
 understand several characteristics that would otherwise seem 
 unexplainable, as well as avoid being deceived by inconsist- 
 encies in the report. It is this fact that explains why dreams 
 are less vivid than waking experiences, and why they are so 
 easily forgotten. 
 
 It is this fact, more perhaps than any other, that makes it 
 impossible to credit the accounts of dreams which are related 
 as evidence of a supernatural connection between dreams and 
 subsequent events. Frequently we are asked to accept as evi- 
 dence of a dream's coming true the testimony of some person 
 whose mother told her that a friend had such a dream thirty 
 years ago. No real confidence can be placed in the report of 
 
110 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 such a dream unless the person has written it out as soon as? 
 he has awakened after the dream occurred. 
 
 The fact that a dream experience is so easily forgotten ac- 
 counts for another characteristic. Many persons affirm that 
 they seldom, or never dream. Miss Tina H. says that she rare- 
 ly dreams. She experiences a dream no more than once a year. 
 Miss Mildred M. states that she has experienced only one dream 
 in the past seven weeks. Miss Gladys M. states that she 
 dreams not more than once a year. In these reports, shall we 
 accept it as a fact that dreams do not occur, or shall we rather 
 believe that dreams occur but are forgotten? Do the weak 
 nervous impulses traverse the brain centers, or is there a total 
 cessation of brain activity? Some indications would seem to 
 imply that the dream activities are in progress, but that they 
 are forgotten. 
 
 Thus Miss Florence G. states that she never dreams. So 
 far as she knows, she has never experienced a dream, such as 
 other persons describe to her, but her family report that she 
 talks in her sleep. Similarly, Miss Lillian S. states that her 
 father has told her that on several occasions he has found her 
 in the library at night, with the lights going, reading a book, 
 but thoroughly asleep. On such occasions he does not wake 
 her up, and she remembers nothing of the circumstances in 
 the morning. 
 
 Probably nearly all of our dreams are thus forgotten. 
 Only those that are accompanied by the strongest of the ner- 
 vous impulses when we are asleep, such as those which occur 
 just as we are at the point of waking up, are remembered. 
 Those which occur as we are just passing into the conscious 
 condition, at the point of waking, are not only accompanied by 
 the strongest impulses that occur in sleep, but they are at the 
 same time the most recent, and consequently have had the least 
 time in which to be forgotten. 
 
 The second characteristic of dreams, in which they differ 
 specifically from waking mental experiences, is that they are 
 fantastic in character. The dream is fantastic, the parts often 
 disjointed, and in consequence of this disjointed character, ap- 
 parently illogical. Much of the inaccuracy in reporting dreams 
 comes from the attempt of the person so reporting to make a 
 connected sequence of the incidents of the dream, when it is 
 
DREAMS 111 
 
 impossible for him to do so. The dream consists of a series of 
 elements between which there is little logical coonnection ap- 
 parent. 
 
 The explanation of this fact has been the stumbling block 
 in all interpretations of dreams. It seems difficult to propose 
 any hypothesis that will account for the apparently contra- 
 dictory phenomena that dreams manifest. It appears, however, 
 that we may account for all the phenomena by a reference to 
 the nervous processes that accompany dreams. In a dream, 
 the nervous impulses are not directed by attention, but follow 
 the paths of least resistance at any particular moment. What 
 these least resistant paths may be at any time is determined oy 
 such a large number of infinitesimal determining factors, that 
 it is impossible to predict the course of the impulse. 
 
 When we are awake, we may by a process of attention di- 
 rect the path of the nervous impulse. We can think of one 
 thing and refuse to think of another. The mechanism by which 
 this result is accomplished is a matter of conjecture and hypo- 
 thesis, but the fact is clearly evident. In our waking thoughts, 
 we are not dependent upon the fortuitous circumstances of the 
 brain conditions at any particular moment. In our dreams, 
 destitute of the attentive processes, we are. 
 
 These fortuitous circumstances may be of two kinds. One 
 is peripheral and the other is central. The direction that our 
 dreams take is sometimes determined in part by an outside 
 stimulus. The example cited above to illustrate the difficulty 
 of making an accurate report of a dream, is a good example. 
 Another is the following: Miss Florence R. dreamed for two 
 nights in succession that the house in which she was sleeping 
 was burning. On both occasions she waked up, and found that 
 the moon was shining in her eyes. The next night, she closed 
 the window shade and no repetition of the dream occurred. 
 
 But the principal factor upon which the fantastic charac- 
 ter of our dreams depend is the series of central circumstances. 
 The nervous impulse follows the path of least resistance at any 
 moment, undirected by attention^ It is this fact that enables 
 us to understand the most contradictory phenomena of dreams. 
 
 With these two differences, which are comparatively un- 
 important, the mental work in sleep is identical with that of 
 the waking hours. When we recognize that the mental pro- 
 
112 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 cesses in sleep are essentially identical in their nature, with 
 those of our waking hours, we shall not be surprised that much 
 mental work of a highly important character is done in sleep. 
 
 Miss Lillian S. reports that on one occasion, when her 
 mother was away from home, she found on her table in the 
 morning, a letter to her mother, in her own handwriting. It 
 was a good letter, stating very clearly just the things that 
 would most interest her mother, and which her mother would 
 most wish to know. It seemed evident that she had arisen in 
 the night, and had written the letter without waking up. The 
 letter was so satisfactory that she enclosed it in an envelop, 
 and mailed it without making any change in it. 
 
 Miss Catherine C. states that when she was a student in 
 the high school, she was much troubled over a problem in alge- 
 bra. She went to sleep thinking of it, and dreamed exactly 
 the steps that must be taken in the solution. As soon as she 
 awakened, she placed the solution of her dream on paper, and 
 it was correct in every particular. 
 
 In this account we must suppose that in the waking hours, 
 when attention was active, she was trying to force the nervous 
 impulses over paths that were difficult of access, and which 
 were not those which stood in the closest relation to those 
 through which the impulses were already passing. But in 
 sleep, the nervous impulses found the pathways most easily 
 accessible, and the corresponding mental processes represented 
 an easy solution. 
 
 The process is quite similar to that by which we try to 
 recall a name, or think up an appropriate word. The more 
 intense the attention which we give to the attempt to recall 
 the name, the less likely the name is to appear. But when we 
 cease to attend to the process, and leave our mind blank, as 
 nearly as possible, attention held in abeyance, the name or the 
 word is more likely to appear. 
 
 The same explanation will very satisfactorily account for 
 the instances in which a lost article has been found, or its loca- 
 tion disclosed, in a dream. Mrs. Bessie J. says that one time 
 when she was a little girl, she had a fifty cent piece which was 
 a great treasure to her. She lost it and no amount of search- 
 ing would enable her to find it. In the course of several days, 
 she dreamed that her coin was in a hat box where she kept a 
 
DREAMS 113 
 
 new hat that she treasured highly. When she awoke, she went 
 to the hat box and there found her coin,. 
 
 As in similar examples, we may easily understand the 
 dream result by supposing that the nervous impulse, undirect- 
 ed by attention, found its way into the channels most easy of 
 access, and traversed nervous arcs that had been traversed on 
 the occasion when the coin had been placed in the hat box, but 
 which by conscious attention, it was prevented from entering 
 in the waking period. 
 
 A somewhat similar example is reported by Mr. Arthur il. 
 who relates a dream that occurred to his brother, who is a 
 book keeper. He had failed for two weeks to obtain a proper 
 trial balance. He was very much concerned over the matter. 
 In fact, it worried him greatly, and worry means intense and 
 continued negative attention. One night, he dreamed of a voice 
 saying to him, "Eighty cents in Sid Fuller's account." He 
 awoke, finding himself standing on the floor, looking at the 
 wall. He immediately examined Sid Fuller's account, and there 
 discovered the error. 
 
 This account seems to verge on the mysterious, but if we 
 realize that in sleep the impulse is not directed by attention, 
 but follows the path of least resistance, we shall see why in so 
 many cases an accurate judgment is rendered from the data 
 at hand, which in our waking hours, when we are directing 
 the impulse by our attentive processes, it fails to enter upon 
 the proper combination for a correct judgment. There is 
 nothing mysterious about such cases, except the mystery that 
 is involved in the making of any judgment/. 
 
 This fact that attention is lacking in dreams will explain 
 for us all the examples in which long forgotten experiences 
 are reproduced or remembered. Many experiences are repro- 
 duced in sleep without their being recognized as having been 
 previously known. There is without any doubt, some truth 
 in Freud's assertion that early experiences which are not re- 
 membered, give direction to many dreams. 
 
 Possibly the following two cases may be examples of this 
 principle. Miss Louise H. reports that she rarely dreams. She 
 has experienced only one dream in her life (that she remem- 
 bers) but that dream has occurred to her three times; the 
 second time after an interval of several months from the first, 
 
114 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 and the third after a still longer interval of several years, ibhe 
 is sure that there is nothing prophetic in the dream, and has 
 no knowledge of any circumstance that might have determined 
 its direction. The dream is one in which she finds herself 
 standing at the top of a high tower, near the foot of which .m 
 army is passing, and she is throwing things down upon them. 
 
 Perhaps the second example is to be explained in the same 
 way. Miss Ina F. rarely dreams^ She has had an experience 
 with only one dream (that she remembers) but that dream 
 has been repeated four times at long intervals. The dream is 
 one in which she finds herself seated at the top of a high hill 
 at the base of which a river is flowing. A big hog comes along 
 and roots her off into the river. She struggles in the water, 
 and sinks twice, but before she sinks the third time she wakes 
 up. 
 
 It is very possible that some long antecedent experience 
 occurring too early for her to remember it, has furnished the 
 basis for this dream. 
 
 Nearly all dreams are either visual or auditory, but other 
 sensations may enter into a dream. Miss Hattie C. reports a 
 tactual dream that has been repeated three times in about five 
 years. The dream is one in which she feels the touch of her 
 father's hand upon her head. Smell sensations sometimes oc- 
 cur in dreams, and the present writer has on more than one 
 occasion experienced a taste dream. One such dream involved 
 a scene in a barber shop. I went to take a drink of water from 
 the receptacle provided, and the water tasted stale, flat and un- 
 profitable. It tasted about as water tastes after it has stood 
 all night in a cedar bucket. Perhaps a long antecedent experi- 
 ence with such a situation induced this particular form of the 
 dream. The barber called attention to a vessel of fresh drink- 
 ing water, but other incidents crowded in, and I did not get a 
 taste of the fresh drinking water. 
 
 It is safe to say that any sensation that is, or has been, 
 experienced in the waking hours, may enter into a dream. 
 
 One form of intellectual work in dreams is so unexpected 
 and so curious that examples of it invariably provoke interest. 
 Sometimes a person has a dream of poetry, and Coleridge is 
 said to have dreamed the entire poem of Kubla Khan, and after 
 awaking, he wrote it out just as he had dreamed it. He said 
 
DREAMS 115 
 
 that there were thirty or forty lines more of the poem which 
 he was never able to reproduce. 
 
 Miss Muriel P. has described to me an experience of dream 
 ing poetry, on the very day of its occurrence. Following is 
 the account of it in her own language just as she wrote it out: 
 "On the evening of July 26, 1914, I was trying to study a hard 
 lesson in bacteriology, and was greatly annoyed by the yowling 
 of a cat on the side lawn. It seemed impossible for me to con- 
 centrate my thoughts on that lesson. Finally, I went to bed 
 and for a long time continued to hear that cat. When I awoke 
 the following morning, the appended verses were running 
 through my mind. I wrote them out immediately, and the 
 words and sentences seemed fairly to tumble out. The sixth 
 word in the second stanza was the only word about which there 
 was any hesitation. 
 
 An accomplished cat with extremely good lungs 
 
 In the side yard paused last night. 
 
 There were squalls and growls, and snarls and howls, 
 
 He started a beautiful fight. 
 
 That accomplished cat was a (pagan) (heathen) at heart, 
 
 For till far in the early hours, 
 
 His war dance went on with accompanying song 
 
 As he dodged the local showers. 
 
 My ink bottle went, can't imagine how,, 
 To join the motley array 
 Of various things, all given that cat. 
 They were found on the lawn next day. 
 
 For hours I dozed and cursed that cat 
 
 In a voice persuasively clear, 
 
 While the murderous thoughts I thought that night 
 
 Make me shudder even here. 
 
 I was not there when he left this sphere; 
 Aid, — a brick from the watchman. Oh, 
 But I fully expect to meet that cat 
 When to future worlds I go. 
 
116 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 His basilisk eyes will welcome me 
 
 To the warm climate of his land 
 
 The devil himself will appoint me to lead, 
 
 And have the wail of that cat in his band. 
 
 In somewhat a similar manner, Miss Hester P. relates that 
 on one occasion, very recently, she had been assigned the task 
 of writing a parody on the Lost Chord for a lesson in English. 
 She had discovered that it was very difficult for her, and had 
 delayed writing it, or had failed to accomplish the task until 
 the time for the exercise to be turned in was close at hand. 
 She went to sleep thinking about it, and dreamed a whole 
 poem, which she wrote out immediately upon waking up. The 
 poem consisted of six stanzas, and the character of it may be 
 judged from the first stanza: 
 
 Seated one day in the schoolroom, 
 
 I was weary and ill at ease 
 
 And my pencil was tapping nervously 
 
 As it struck my shaking knees. 
 Similarly Miss Margaret McG. reports having dreamed a 
 poem of four stanzas, which she wrote out immediately upon 
 awaking. The quality of it may be judged from the first 
 stanza: 
 
 As I was walking down the street 
 
 A little man I met 
 
 Whose face was just the kind of face 
 
 That I would like to pet. 
 The absurdities of such poetry do not impress of dreamer. 
 There is no feeling of the absurd, ludicrous, nor ridiculous 
 when such a dream is being experienced. The dreamer has no 
 feeling of surprise nor emotion of any such nature, in the 
 dream. Such poetry appears to the dreamer to be of the high- 
 est degree of excellence. 
 
 The present writer has had a somewhat similar experience, 
 and can testify definitely to the circumstances. On four sepa- 
 rate occasions, I have had a dream of poetry, three of them 
 limericks, which is about the limit of my poetical ability, but 
 in the morning, I have been unable to remember or reproduce 
 a single line of it. It appeared to me when I was dreaming it, 
 to be remarkably good poetry. It seemed to me in my dream, 
 
DREAMS 
 
 117 
 
 that the fourth poem was decidedly better than anything that 
 Browning or Shelley ever wrote. But on a subsequent occa- 
 sion, I had a dream of poetry, and immediately upon waking 
 wrote it out without the least hesitation. It was a reproduc- 
 tion of what was dreamed, not a composition at the time of 
 writing. The excellence of the poetry of the previous dreams 
 may be judged by the fact that in the dream, this poetry ap- 
 peared to be a masterpiece. It appeared to be quite the equal 
 of Tennyson's Crannied Wall, or Browning's God's in His 
 Heaven. 
 
 When the winter is sped, 
 
 And the trees are dead, 
 
 A voice comes cold and gray; 
 
 Go scan your van 
 
 And trap your man 
 
 And don't let him get away. 
 There was a slight uncertainty about the fourth line which 
 disappeared as soon as I recognized the occasion for it. In my 
 waking experience I was trying to make the thing have some 
 sense to it, to make it represent some logical connection, while 
 in the dream there was none, and the lack of logical reason in 
 the dream did not make itself felt. 
 
 In dreaming, the lack of anything approximating logical 
 connection is not felt, and occasions no discomfort nor surprise. 
 This same fact will also account for the exaggerated estimate 
 of the excellence of the poetical effusions composed in a dream. 
 It might be described by saying that the critical sense is al- 
 together lacking in a dream, but this is not only a crude, but 
 an inaccurate method of describing the condition. 
 
 It is this lack of logical connection in our dream and our 
 attempts to make the connection logical in our waking reports 
 that is the occasion for so much inaccuracy in accounts of 
 dreams. A dream is generally a series of incidents, slightly 
 related to each other, with only a slender thread of connection, 
 very easily forgotten. We try to make the dream connected, 
 and thereby introduce into the account, elements that really 
 did not appear. 
 
 It is a curious fact that this lack of logical connection, 
 which awakens no surprise in the dreamer, is taken by many 
 persons to indicate a supernatural origin for dreams, and io 
 
118 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 show that the dreams are engendered by higher processes of 
 reason than the person is able to manifest in his ordinary 
 waking hours. The real explanation is one that is far removed 
 from this. 
 
 As a result of the small amount of nervous energy in 
 sleep, there is a small amount of feeling experienced. The lack 
 of surprise, or other feeling attending the perception of the 
 dream absurdities, which we have already noticed, is equally 
 manifest in all dream experiences. Even in those dreams 
 which we believe to be attended by a great deal of feeling, we 
 shall be compelled to recognize that the feeling is a good deal 
 less than it would be in our waking condition, if we were to be 
 placed in the same situation in which we find ourselves in our 
 dream experience. We think that if we can go to sleep, our 
 pains and worries will disappear. As a matter of fact, our 
 pains and worries must disappear before we go to sleep, or 
 they disappear as we go to sleep. The decrease of the amount 
 of nervous energy liberated is an essential condition, both of 
 the sleep and of the decrease of feeling. 
 
 Notwithstanding the very common belief in the prophetic 
 character of dreams, an examination of every so-called verid- 
 ical dream, in which a prophetic anticipation has been followed 
 by its verification, will be found lacking in accuracy of report, 
 omission of some important circumstance, lack of connection 
 between the dream and the event that is described as its veri- 
 fication, or accounted for by mere coincidence. In a few cases, 
 the approach of oncoming disease has been foreshadowed in a 
 dream before it was apparent in the waking experience. This 
 arises from the lack of direction of the nervous impulse by at- 
 tention, the impulse taking the path of least resistance, which 
 in our waking hours it might not do. As a result of this course 
 of the impulse, diseased organs or diseased centers may have 
 been detected. 
 
 Let us then repeat, that the mental processes in sleep are 
 of exactly the same kind as are the mental processes when 
 awake, The differences that are noticed arise from two char- 
 acteristics, first, they are less vivid, in consequence of the di- 
 minished amount of nervous energy in sleep, and second, the 
 nervous impulses are not directed by attention. Practically 
 every difference between a dream and a waking experience 
 
DREAMS 119 
 
 will find its explanation in one or the other of these two char- 
 acteristics. There is no occasion for the introduction into the 
 discussion of dreams, of such conceptions as an unconscious 
 mind, a subliminal self, an objective or a subjective mind, a 
 psychic censor, nor any other of the mystical creations that 
 are so highly favored by many persons. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Freud, Sigmund — Interpretation of Dreams. Transla- 
 tion by Brill. 
 
 2. Manaceine, Marie de — Sleep; Its Psychology, Pathology, 
 Hygiene, and Physiology. P. 315-326. The Significance of 
 Dreaming. 
 
 3. Child, C. M. — Unconscious Cerebration. American 
 Journal of Psychology, volume 5, p. 249. Gives many examples 
 of mental work in sleep. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 TURNED AROUND; OR ILLUSIONS OF ORIENTATION 
 
 It is a very uncomfortable situation when a person's con- 
 sciousness and compass do not agree. When he has a feeling: 
 that a certain direction is east, and the compass says it is 
 north, the disagreement is anything but pleasant. It is a phe- 
 nomenon that is difficult to explain, but it is no uncommon ex- 
 perience with many persons. The accounts of the experiences 
 that have been collected from several persons are very instruc- 
 tive. 
 
 The experience of Miss Grace E. is one of the most common 
 type. When Miss E. is in Battle Creek, she knows that the di- 
 rection which seems to her to be north is really east, and that 
 the sun will rise in that place. The same condition exists in 
 Kalamazoo. It is always and invariably a shifting of the 
 cardinal points ninety degrees to the left. 
 
 In much the larger number of cases, the shifting of direc- 
 tions amounts to exactly ninety degrees, although in some in- 
 stances the shifting is through 180 degrees:. It is almost in- 
 variably one or the other of these two amounts. Possibly this 
 may be accounted for by the fact that according to our system 
 of noting directions, there are only four cardinal points. If we 
 habitually employed a system of six cardinal points, we might 
 find that the shifting would be generally, through GO, 120 or 
 180 degrees. 
 
 Different places may show different degrees of shifting fcr 
 the same person. A person may be turned around 90 degrees 
 in one place, and 180 degrees in another; but it is rarely that 
 the shifting is for any different number of degrees than 90 
 or 180. 
 
 In nearly all cases the amount and direction of the shifting 
 is constant for any one locality. It is rare to meet with a 
 variation in the shifting for any person in the same place. 
 However, the case of Miss Alice F^ is one which shows this 
 variable shifting. Miss F. lives several miles from the nearest 
 town, and has occasion to go from her home farm to town sev- 
 eral times a week. She always goes over the same road. Some- 
 times it seems to her that she is going west when she goes to 
 town, and at other times it appears that she is going south. 
 
TURNED AROUND 121 
 
 There is no uniformity in the experience. The direction that 
 she really is going when she is on her road to town is east. 
 
 Generally, the directions are learned primarily for one 
 place, and this system of direction is transferred subsequently 
 to other places. If the systems of the two places agree, there 
 is experienced the feeling of harmony, or of being straight. 
 But if the system of directions in the second place fails to 
 agree in consciousness, then there is a feeling of strangeness. 
 It is the lack of agreement which seems to give rise to the un- 
 comfortable feeling. It is this fact which constitutes the ex- 
 ceptional character of the experience of Miss Geneva S. 
 
 Miss S. has an experience with direction that is very an- 
 noying to her. She is permanently turned around. At home, 
 or in any other place to which she may go, north is always 
 south, and east seems always west. She has never been in any 
 place in which this annoying contradiction did not occur. She 
 attributes it to the fact that as a child, she learned the direc- 
 tions in school, from a map that was hung on the south side of 
 the room. She expresses her opinion that a teacher who teach- 
 es children from a map hung on the south side of a room, ought 
 to be hung up on the north side herself. 
 
 The present writer has had many experiences with being 
 turned around, and has studied his own experiences with a 
 great deal of care. Two examples, noted carefully at the time 
 they occurred, are very instructive. As a preliminary, it may 
 he stated that the writer lived for four years in one place 
 where east always seemed north. Coming back to that place 
 after a return to his early surroundings, the directions would 
 be all straight until he stepped off the train, when suddenly it 
 seemed that the entire universe would swing through an angle 
 of 90 degrees. In another place, he lived six years where ex- 
 actly the same condition prevailed. So long did this system of 
 directions persist in this period, that, while the strangeness 
 was never overcome, the directions in the locality of his early 
 home, where the directions had been originally learned, began 
 to feel equally strange. In another place, he lived more than 
 a year, where as in the other two, the s;m rose directly in the 
 north every morning. 
 
 The first of the incidents referred to above, may be de- 
 scribed as follows: I was going from Chicago to Mattoon over 
 
122 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 the line of the Illinois Central railroad, the general direction of 
 which is straight south. As the train approached Champaign, 
 one of the towns where, according to my experience the sun 
 rises in the north, I began to wonder if the directions would 
 change, or would it be different from what it was when I was 
 a resident of that place. With note book and watch in hand I 
 waited for anything that might happen. As the train drew 
 into the station and came to a halt, there was a period of ten 
 seconds, or such a matter, when it seemed as if the situation 
 hung in the balance. It was uncertain which direction would 
 prevail. Finally, the former direction prevailed, and the uni- 
 verse swung 90 degrees around, and the train was headed east. 
 Careful note was then made to see if the reverse change would 
 be made when we had passed the town. The train appeared 
 to be going east for a distance of about two miles, when sud- 
 denly, without any hesitation, the directions changed again and 
 we were going south. A mental map was then drawn in the 
 notebook to show the direction of the train. It could be pic- 
 tured as making two turns, one to the east, and another about 
 two miles farther along to the south. 
 
 Another experience will perhaps assist to an understand- 
 ing of the psychological conditions that enable one to determine 
 directions. One time the writer spent one week in New York, 
 where for him, the same system of directions prevails that ex- 
 ists at Champaign. The sun rises in the north. Leaving New 
 York in the early morning, Buffalo was reached over the Lack- 
 awanna line late in the afternoon. Buffalo was somewhat fa- 
 miliar from previous visits, and the directions in that town are 
 straight. Consciousness and the compass agree. But the Lack- 
 awanna depot was an unfamiliar locality, never having travel- 
 ed to Buffalo over that route before. Starting north, or what 
 seemed to be north, to reach the main streets of the town, the 
 writer found himself getting into a part of the city that looked 
 as if it was not likely to lead to the intersection of Main and 
 Seneca Streets. Then arose the question Why? Which way did 
 it lead, and why did this direction that seemed to be north, not 
 take us up toward the streets from which the desired inter- 
 section could be reached, Could it be that the New York sys- 
 tem of directions was still prevailing? If so, I was going east 
 instead of north. A trip back to the Lackawanna depot, and a 
 
TURNED AROUND 123 
 
 new start in the direction that seemed to be west, but which 
 must be north, if the New York directions still prevailed, soon 
 demonstrated the truth of the hypothesis. In a short distance, 
 the directions changed, and the direction that had seemed to be 
 west, now appeared to be north. 
 
 This experience will enable us to suggest a hypothesis to 
 explain the turning around. To some persons, and the writer 
 is one, a system of directions constitutes an invariable back- 
 ground for any experience in space. The perception of di- 
 rections, with the transmission of an impulse through the brain 
 centers that correspond to the perception of the directions, is 
 an invariable accompaniment for any such experience. But 
 in a new place, where the actual directions, as would be indi- 
 cated by a compass, are unknown, a new background of direc- 
 tions is built up, and if there is a misjudgment of the direc- 
 tions on which the background is built, we subsequently find 
 ourselves turned around. When such a background is built up 
 on a wrong foundation, it is very difficult subsequently to re- 
 place it by one built on a correct foundation. The false di- 
 rections are likely to persist. 
 
 The example of Miss Elizabeth M> is a very clear case of 
 the persistence of the false directions after years of repeated 
 experience in shifting from one set of directions to the other. 
 Miss M. lives several miles out of Jackson, and she attended 
 school in that city. Whenever she goes from her home to Jack- 
 son, the directions are perfectly correct until she arrives at a 
 certain corner in the town, when they appear to change. No 
 amount of reasoning, or observation can produce any other 
 effect. 
 
 The persistence of the false system of directions is pro- 
 nounced in nearly every case. However, after a prolonged ab- 
 sence from one locality, especially if the original stay has been 
 brief, it is possible that a different system of directions may be 
 substituted for the false system that was first acquired. With 
 the present writer, such a change has occurred in a few places, 
 noticeably so in Philadelphia. On a first visit to that city, the 
 directions were wrong, and the sun rose in the north. After 
 an interval of two years, the directions were recognized on a 
 second visit as correct. But in places where the stay was pro- 
 longed, as at Champaign, the background built up on the basis 
 
124 IMAGINARY PLAYMATES 
 
 of the correct directions, is never likely to be substituted for 
 the illusory one. 
 
 Whether the directions appear correct or not, will depend 
 upon the background of directions upon which the locality is 
 perceived. This background evidently has for its concomitant, 
 some particular combination of cells, in the brain which is 
 slightly different for each series of directions. So a substitu- 
 tion of one background for another is accompanied by a slight 
 shifting of the nervous impulse from one combination of cells 
 into another only slightly different. 
 
 An inquiry of one class of 63 students disclosed the fact 
 that more than two-thirds of them did not have any back- 
 ground of direction for their perceptions, and did not feel the 
 need of any. Forty-four of them asserted that it made no dif- 
 ference to them whether they knew which way was north or 
 not. Such persons can never experience the feeling of being 
 turned around, which makes some of us so uncomfortable. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Binet, Alfred — Reverse Illusions of Orientation. Psy- 
 chological Review, volume 1, p. 337. The classical article. Prac- 
 tically the only original contribution of much value. Gives ac- 
 counts of nine persons who have had the experiences, together 
 with his own. Suggests that perhaps it is caused by an affec- 
 tion of the semicircular canals. 
 
 2. Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. 
 Volume 2, p. 242. Article Orientation. 
 
 Gives merely a definition of the state,, and refers to Binet's 
 article for references. Says the turning is nearly always ex- 
 actly 180 degrees, or 90 degrees. 
 
Index of Cases Cited 
 
 Alice B. 14 
 
 Alice F. 120 
 
 Alta M. 76 
 
 Anna Y. 13 
 
 Arthur H. 113 
 
 Arthur M. 101 
 
 Avis R. 35, 36 
 
 Bertha L. 17, 18, 23 
 
 Bertha S. 49, 60 
 
 Bessie C. 8 
 
 Bessie J. 112 
 
 Bessie R. 12, 16 
 
 Bessie S. 11 
 
 Blanche B. 13 
 
 Blanche C. 73 
 
 Blanche T. 18, 102 
 
 Carrie G. 52, 56 
 
 Catherine C. 112 
 
 Christine M. 9 
 
 Clare 0. 45, 82 
 
 Clarissa F. 36 
 
 Dessie I. 72 
 
 Dorothy D. 72 
 
 Edith B. 31 
 
 Edith W. 82 
 
 Edna P. 41 
 
 Edna S. 81 
 
 Elizabeth M. 123 
 
 Elsie F. 17 
 
 Emily B. 80 
 
 Ethelyn W. 76 
 
 Ethel G. 49, 61 
 
 Ethel K. 46 
 
 Etta G. 61 
 
 Eva K. 30, 31 
 
 Eva R. 20 
 
 Evelyn B. 38 
 
 Faye P. 10, 43, 75 
 
 Florence G. 110 
 
 Florence J. 60 
 
 Florence K. 111 
 
 Florence S. 61 
 
 Floyd E. 81 
 
 Frances B. 12 
 
 Frances H. 81 
 
 Fred F. 57, 61, 66, 70 
 
 Geneva S. 82, 121 
 
 Genevieve H. 94 
 
 Genevra W. __ 28, 58, 61, 64, 70 
 
 Georgia F. 58 
 
 Gertrude P. 46 
 
 Gladys M. 110 
 
 Glenn H. 101 
 
 Grace E. 120 
 
 Grace L. 36 
 
 Grace M. 16 
 
 Harry H. 102 
 
 Hattie C. 114 
 
 Hattie M. 57 
 
 Hazel G. 14 
 
 Hazel S. 43 
 
 Henry S. 88 
 
 Helen H. 37 
 
 Hester P. 91, 116 
 
 Hetta F. 65, 67 
 
 Ida F. 57, 64 
 
 Ida P. 75 
 
 Ina F. 114 
 
 Irene S. 38, 57, 70 
 
 Ivol S. 86 
 
 Jean S. 32 
 
 J. J. J. 80 
 
 Julia S. 19 
 
 Katherine D. 44 
 
 Kathryn McL. 14 
 
 Laura McN. 44 
 
 Leona H. 64, 73 
 
 Lida C. 13, 19 
 
 Lillian S. 110, 112 
 
 Lillian W. 58 
 
 Lillie C. 80 
 
 Lottie G. 11 
 
 Lloyd G. 37 
 
 Loretta B. 30 
 
 Lucile A. 58 
 
 Lucile B. 9 
 
 Louise H. 113 
 
 Lulu M. 45, 87 
 
 Lurah M. 10, 18, 23 
 
 Mabel B. 16, 19, 42, 46 
 
 Mabel P. 70 
 
 Margaret M. 29 
 
 Margaret McG. 65, 116 
 
 Marguerite H. 11 
 
 Marguerite S. 38, 53, 66 
 
 Marian B. :___ 61 
 
 Marian C. 15 
 
 Marian H. 90 
 
 Marie McC. 81 
 
 Marjorie S. 61, 90, 95 
 
 Marjorie V. __ 52, 61, 64, 66, 70 
 
 Marjorie W. 75 
 
 Martha M. 55, 58 
 
 Mary A. 30, 32 
 
 Mary P. 75 
 
 Mary S. 83 
 
Maude R. 60, 65 
 
 Mira F. 60 
 
 Mira M. 81 
 
 Mildred A. 104 
 
 Mildred M. 30, 110 
 
 Nathan H. __ 109, 114, 117, 121 
 
 Olga M. 80 
 
 Orla G. 22, 96 
 
 Pearl B. 12 
 
 Pearl Y. 12 
 
 Phebe C. 42 
 
 Phyllis S. 10, 15, 19 
 
 Ralph E. 35 
 
 Robert T. 37, 53 
 
 Rollin R. 9, 19 
 
 Ruby C. 7, 56 
 
 Ruth R. 58 
 
 Ruth W. 13, 21 
 
 Sadie M. 82 
 
 Sarah R. 89 
 
 Tacy A. 81 
 
 Teresa K. 80 
 
 Tidy P. 65 
 
 Tina H. 110 
 
 Vaida B. 16 
 
 Wilma G. 11, 21 
 
 Winifred B. 16 
 
 Zaida C. 92 
 
 Zilpha P. 101, 104 
 
 Index of Authors 
 
 Alexander, H. B. 33 
 
 Binet, Alfred 124 
 
 Brittain, H. L. 24 
 
 Buchner, E. F. 59 
 
 Burnham, W. H. 24, 33, 106 
 
 Calkins, M. W. 79 
 
 Canton, William 24 
 
 Chalmers, Lillian H. 59 
 
 Child, C. M. 119 
 
 Colvin, S. S 33 
 
 *Conradi, Edward 91 
 
 Cooley, C. H. 24 
 
 Cutten, George B. 99 
 
 Dana, C. L. 99 
 
 Day, Leroy C. 84 
 
 Downey, June 33, 84 
 
 Freud, Sigmund 119 
 
 Galton, Francis 33, 59, 79 
 
 Gillette, J. M. — 33 
 
 Hale, Horatio 91 
 
 James, William 47, 99 
 
 Jordan, David Starr 79 
 
 Krohn, W. O. 79 
 
 Lalande, A. 106 
 
 Manaceine, Marie de 119 
 
 Martin, L. J. 24 
 
 Munroe, James P. 24 
 
 Parish, Edmund 48 
 
 Patrick, G. T. W. 59 
 
 Phillips, D. E. 59 
 
 Pierce, A. H. 84 
 
 Ribot, Theodule 99 
 
 Rose, K. B. 84 
 
 Sidis, Boris 48 
 
 Stratton, George M. 59 
 
 Tracy, F. 91 
 
 Whipple, G. M. 84 
 
 Whiting, Margaret C. 84 
 
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