Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/373

Rh with Isaiah I recognized that he had come rather late to the elements; this happens also with many white boys, and is by no means an insuperable obstacle to future progress. The circumstance really facilitated my study, as it gave me mental states more positive and well defined than those of younger children. Evidently the problem before me resolved itself into two conditions: the mind of the boy—his environment. The estimates of mind, reading, writing, etc., which formal education employs were evidently not applicable to this individual upon whom the school had left so slight an impress. While I was revolving the matter a new mode of testing his mental powers was suggested. I chanced one evening to be arranging some sets of small color cards in Isaiah's presence. It was evening, the light was dim, and I had difficulty in distinguishing the slightly different tints of the French blues and greens. Whenever I hesitated the boy, who was watching the work with undisguised interest, would instantly pick out the right card. As it was in a range of æsthetic tints which I was certain had had no part in his customary surroundings, I inferred that he had been through color exercises in school. Inquiry proved that I was mistaken; color perception and color distinction were natural powers improved simply by the observation of familiar things. Here too I discovered that a network of associations had arisen, the very condition whose absence had made advance in reading so difficult. His color associations were with natural objects, chiefly fruits and birds—for example, red with an apple, the inside of a melon, a robin's breast; blue with the sky and the jay, yellow with a lemon, and so on. Flowers he seldom mentioned. The reason is obvious. He had a gourmand's taste, and was already quite an experienced hunter. Associations ended with the primitive colors, his ready recognition of shades and hues being a mere matter of immediate perception.

A possible mode of applying the hint thus obtained was suggested by the memory tests described by Prof. Munsterberg in the Psychological Review for January, 1894. The material employed (i. e., colored squares, three and a half centimetres) was easily secured and was of precisely the kind to excite distinct perceptions in Isaiah's mind. Beyond the arrangement of the cards there was, however, no likeness between my experiments and those of Prof. Munsterberg alluded to. The series employed by me were shorter than his, consisting each of ten cards instead of twenty, arranged either for simultaneous or for successive presentation. My subject went through no preliminary training, and no time limit was set for his observation. He was at liberty to look at a series till he thought he knew it, when he proceeded to arrange a duplicate set of the cards in the same order from