ical data and converting them into the poetry of the pageant. This, as Professor F. H. Koch, the presiding genius of the Society, remarks, recalls the very beginnings of literature- those happy days, as Herder calls them, when literature "lived in the ears of the people, on the lips, and in the harps of living bards." The story of the piece is retold as follows:

"The first three parts relate the remarkable adventures and achievements of three heroic Frenchmen - Radisson, LaSalle, and Verendrye-whose vision of a western empire impelled them to win for the flag of France all the wide wilderness of the great Northwest. First came the resourceful Radisson, preparing the way for the organization of the historic Hudson's Bay Company, in 1670; then the gallant LaSalle, striving to unite the warring tribes of the upper Mississippi Valley into a confederacy able to repel invasion and protect the fur-traders who were to follow him; next the far-sighted Verendrye, the first white man to follow the northern course of the Missouri River in the prairie country of what is now the Commonwealth of North Dakota. The fourth part, presenting the famous expedition of two intrepid Americans, Captains Lewis and Clark, marks the final conquest for the United States of all the country westward to the Great Sea."

All this, Professor Koch goes on to say, points to a revival of pageantry among us. Five hundred years agofully two centuries before William Shakespeare was born-merchants and tradesmen of England performed on pageant stages in their public squares long cycles of Miracles and Mystery plays. On the continent, too, these dramatic representations of Bible and Saint stories were widely popular. Such survivals as the celebrated Passion Plays of Oberammergau in Bavaria, and of other villages so remote as to be hardly known, suggest how intimately the religious pageant was cherished by the masses. It was indeed the open theater of the people. The first years of the present century

"The new pageantry is first and last of the people. The community furnishes at once its theme, its actors, its audience. For this reason it would seem peculiarly adapted to give to the people an adequate outlet for their constant desire to express in dramatic form their native, tho too often arrested, sense of beauty. The dramatic seems to be the dominant artimpulse in the masses, and in this, its latest phase, it is made to include all the other fine arts-poetry, music, dancing, coloring, modeling, building-in a comprehensive, communal drama. It becomes indeed a patriotic embodiment of the lifestory of the people, recreating their romantic yesterdays, interpreting their own stirring day, imaging forth their dreams of yet fairer to-morrows. If this new art can stir the imagination of the people to do such things for themselves, surely cooperative liberty should flower ere long in a fairer state than any we have yet known, into something of lasting beauty.

"A peerless Shakespeare came only after the continuing efforts of many generations of folk-players, after slow years of experimentation in which every English tradesman had a part. England a a nation of amateur actors prepared the way for him, made him possible. Perhaps now in their enthusiastic revival of this favorite form the people are preparing for another, this time for the Great One foretold by Ibsen in one of his last plays: 'Some one is coming after me who will do it better. . . . Only wait-you may be sure he will come, and let us hear of him.' Perhaps the people's pageant of to-day is making ready for the coming of another Shakespeare-this time one to interpret the American Age."

It would have been interesting to compare our pageant methods with those employed by that master of modern stagecraft, Max Reinhardt. Unfortunately "The Miracle," which was to be produced this fall in New York, at Madison Square Garden, will be withheld from us on account of the war. If we desire a play on the scale and of the type of "The Miracle," our own native writers will have to produce it. In this way the war may, ultimately, be of as much benefit to our drama as to our merchant marine.

ORE

M

than one student of heredity has protested abroad against the measures which in this country aim at the exclusion of certain classes of the American population from marriage. At a recent medical congress in London, for instance, one very high authority said in effect that a population brought into being according to standards set by state legislatures would perhaps prove anything but desirable. The latest plea for the degenerate, from this standpoint, is made by the distinguished Doctor T. Claye Shaw, lecturer on psychological medicine at St. Bartholomew Hospital. Many will agree, he says, that in the desire to produce a nation of sane and healthy people the eugenists overlook or underestimate the curative power of nature, while they advocate measures some of which are "unnecessary and intolerable." Their enthusiasm blinds them, he thinks, to the defects of even the best educated and most intelligent people, while it incites them to crush out a most useful and harmless section of the population even if it be in some respects "degenerate"-whatever may be the limits of that debatable term.

It is a proceeding of very doubtful wisdom, insists Doctor Shaw further, to limit marriage to those who are able to produce a medical certificate of validity for one reason because we can not always detect latent disease and, for another, because our views on hereditary transmission are still in the crucible, and biometric science is mostly in the apothegmatic stage-a matter of terse sayings of limited range. To argue that the safeguards of marriage should be tightened so as to produce only healthy stock is one thing, but to sacrifice everything to the development of educated intelligence is quite another thing. There are plenty of proofs that the comfort and even the safety of social conditions may be violently upset by suppressed or lessened emotional storms which are just as much the accompaniment of "higher" intellectual states as they are of the "lower," if, indeed, they are not more intense and compelling in the former than they are in the latter.

It will be observed, Doctor Shaw likewise notes, that those who advocate the legislative devices of the eu

genists are scientists and not physicians in the usual sense of the term:

"When the eugenists have had their way, and when disease is no more and world of strife it will be. There will be degeneration a thing of the past, what a no peace and quietness; no one to do the drudgery. As it is, the majority of people are commonplace, perhaps rather stupid, or, at any rate, not brilliant, and this wholesome leavening with mediocrity makes for the easy routine work which is of such advantage for the smooth working of the cosmic economy. To carry on the work of the world we do

...

not want everyone to be a model of ability and excellence of structure. . . When a long-established order or arrangement is upset, and what was below is placed on the top, a new crushing force of unknown extent and intensity is developed, a power which has no experience

the

of its new and unaccustomed existence, which in its spasmodic writhings to accommodate the environment to itself is pretty sure to make mistakes, because it tries to adjust in a day what has taken years of gradual subsidence to consolidate. And this subversion must occur when the forces of nature are interfered with by such drastic remedies as eugenists propound-viz., the unsexing or the destruction of all degenerates and the artificial cultivation of general excellence. In the organic kingdom there is no such thing as equality, but a graduated system of complexity and excellence can be detected all through its hidden recesses and in its open manifestations, whilst in the lower developments are found a peculiar adaptability and usefulness which could not be got from the more elaborated members of the family, do not, indeed, lie within their functioning capacity."

The greatest hereditary transmission is death. There is no doubt about that, declares Doctor Shaw, whose paper we take from the London Lancet. And probably disease is the next. The eugenists take refuge for their measures under the plea of civilization; but their practice is, after all, a return to savage methods, which are drastic and, as they think, beneficial to the social system, relieving it from what is irksome and a hindrance. For what is the tendency of our modern social system? It is really little more than the toleration of abuses. We let off murderers from the penalty of death in deference to public sentiment and we never inflict any extreme sentence on a woman because we are too "civil

ized." We treat crime as a disease and we deal with it mildly. We suffer fools gladly and we take the most beneficent care of them. We endure all sorts of inconveniences because of strikes and we are even now permitting strikers to practise coercion and picketing because our "high civilization" suggests toleration and not repression of anyone.

Now, there are two chief classes in civilized communities: those who find the means for work and those who use these. In the latter we want bodily fitness and a certain amount of intelligence:

"Nature steps in and provides for the early and efficient elimination of the extreme forms of degeneration by disease and death. We may assist nature by placing under lock and key every 'degenerate' in the country; but it would only be a respite, the condition would soon reassert itself, because however we try to eliminate it the measures cannot touch the elements which are present in many of the lives which would be passed by the eugenists as sound, tho they may only declare their existence too late and when the damage by transmission has been effected.

"There is often raised the cry 'Where is the man?' And when he is found it

is not by looking among pedigree stockpeople who have had notable ancestors, but by waiting until the right person 'arrives,' often an unknown growth from some dark, neglected, and unsuspected corner, the spawn of which has the latent endowments which the new environment

seizes upon and nourishes to its own ad

vancement. There never occurs a crisis without its hero of the moment-it may be a woman, as the Maid of Orléans, or it may be a diminutive degenerate, as was the ferocious Swiss hairdresser, the thief, the creature of hæmothymia, the infamous Marat. Now Marat was probably a degenerate, at any rate a bodily degenerate, and the eugenists might say, 'Such a person would be impossible if our suggestions were acted upon, and therefore you would never have had such a bodily or mental degenerate'; but cruel and bloodthirsty as Marat was, he was yet the man of the moment, and he may have been useful by bringing about the point in the tone of the environment, and satiety of revenge which was the turning

led to a change of atmosphere demanding a different set of agents. For, after all, it is not invariable that men set up an environment; as often as not circumstances arise which require men suited to the work to be done, and so the 'man of

the moment' may be wicked, unscrupulous, immoral, and degenerate from the standard of mental desirableness, but his very vices qualify him for the prominence

A KIND OF BLUE MONDAY

cessities too expensive if confined to the "regenerate." The eugenists want to do away with the pence and farthings and to substitute a more showy

181

may be the necessary prelude to a blessing. The history of human nature is that

of a condition of unstable equilibrium— at one time the good factor, at another

do the work of its lower representative except at the price of waste and inconvenience. If a new world is to be "regenerated," then we must be prepared to see changes in those mental elements which at present are viewed by so many as the traits in us of descent from a divine origin. Altruism and pity will die a natural death, because there will be no one requiring self-abnegation and commiseration-where all are strong there will arise an inability to understand weakness. The idea as a working hypothesis that mental deformity is dependent on bodily impairment and the converse- -that physical integrity implies mental adequacy or even perfection is not based on unprejudiced Doctor Shaw doubts if society could experience. The giant in strength and

the bad element in the ascendant; but inasmuch as 'good' and 'bad' are relative terms it is of no use to legislate for a special class to the exclusion of others, because that favored class may turn out to be the one undesirable and invalid at the moment. The distorted body may have a most excellent and beneficent mind, whilst an Apollo or a Hebe may be of a devilish intellect, and the system which would exterminate the one and perpetuate the other cannot be founded on right principles. The Marchioness of Brinvilliers and Beatrice Cenci would have been champion stock for the eugenists."

be carried on without the aid of the very qualities in certain classes of individuals which the eugenists are so eager to "eliminate." Just as small coinage has its advantages, so we should find the conduct of social ne

in grace of form is liable to abuse both. The weakling learns to husband what strength he has.

"The brainy person is driven forward to continual striving and knows no rest,

and if, as is not infrequent, his braininess is joined on to a weak bodily aca continual companiment, his life is effort, a war against discomfort; if, noteracy, he is yet able to add to the progress of the race, well and good—let him live and raise offspring if he desires, for tho eugenically unfit he may produce a fairly healthy stock, which, brought up in a healthy intellectual atmosphere, may, tho not perhaps most desirable from the physical point of view, be of use to his social environment.

"The man of first-rate physique is not

always proportionately endowed intellec

tually, and he, too, is wanted and called upon to energize to an excess which is not good for him. His very strength tempts him to despise moderation, and before long he is landed in difficulties which the more moderately endowed person never feels, and so the strong man ceases at an early stage to be a practical asset. Which is the better for a nation? To have good physique and moderate, unsensational brain development, or to have extraordinary intellect and poor or indifferent bodily quality? The eugenists will say that they want both body and brains, and tho it is true that now and then we do find these eclectic phenomena they are yet too rare to rest hopes upon."

are

and so on. Such examples are less numerous and less important than are the cases of persons who, whether they hear in colors or not, always think in colors. These persons, called "color thinkers," do not have any sensation of color when voices or notes heard, but they invariably associate some kind of color with such things =as the day of the week, the hour of the day, the month of the year, the vowels, the consonants and so on. This faculty is colored thinking, or, to use a technical term coming more and more into use, "chromatic conception," or, as some experts say, "psychochromesthesia." A typical colored thinker will tell you, for instance, that Sunday is yellow, Wednesday brown and Friday black; but he may not experience any sensation of color on hearing the organ played or a song sung. Certain persons are indeed colored hearers as well as colored thinkers, but we should distinguish the person who has linked sensations, a "synesthete," from the person whose thoughts are colored, whose mentation is chromatic, who is,

in fact, a "psychochromesthete." Doctor David Fraser Harris, professor of physiology at Dalhousie University, presents the following views in London Science Progress:

"Apparently the concepts to be most commonly colored are those for the vowels, the consonants, the months, the days, and the hours of the day. Thus the vowel 'a' as in 'fame' is mentally colored in the following five ways in five different persons-red, black, green, white-gray, and white respectively. Or take the vowel ‘u' as in ‘usual'; we find it psychically colored as gray-white, yellow, black, brown, blue, and green in six different colored thinkers. Similarly, whole words are associated with colors in the minds of this class of thinkers. One person says he divides all words into two great classes, the dark and the light. Random examples of dark words areman, hill, night, horse, Rome, London; and of light-sea, child, silver, year, day, and Cairo. Or again, another colored thinker divides up the numerals into those associated with cold colors-gray, black, blue, green, and those with warmred, yellow, orange, brown, purple, and pink. The odd numbers have the cold colors, the even the warm. In some cases, as might be expected, the colored concepts are appropriate or natural, as when the word scarlet is scariet, black black, and white white. But an examination of psychochromes shows us that this reasonableness does not necessarily always occur. Thus the word 'apple' is to one colored thinker a slate-gray, which is not the color of any real apple, and the word 'cucumber' to the same person is white;

now only the inside of the vegetable itself is white.

"Some kind of method, however, may be traced in this chromatic madness, for, according to Bleuler, high-pitched notes produce the lighter tints of color, but low-pitched the darker shades. According to this authority, the colors oftenest aroused in the synesthesia, sound-photism, are dark brown, dark red, yellow, and white, which is not at all the statement of the frequency of occurrence in colored thinking. From the records of the psychochromes of two brothers, the relative order of frequency of the colors is white or gray, brown, black, yellow, red, green and blue; violet and indigo not occurring. Dr. Hélène Stelzner says that green is the color least commonly thought of. But individual differences are extreme: thus both purple and violet are such favorites with some colored thinkers that they hardly ever think in terms of any other colors. The present writer has examined the psychochromes of two men, one woman, and one child, with the result that the relative order of frequency of occurrence comes out as white, brown, black, yellow, green, blue, red, pink, cream, orange, and purple. It is thus clear that the colors thought of are not exclusively the pure or spectral ones, for certain non-spectral colors like brown, pink, cream, white, and black are quite commonly reported. The novelist Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, in a private communication to the author, wrote: "The color which I always associate with myself, for no earthly reason that I can discover, is blue. Therefore "E," my initial letter, is blue, April, the month of my birthday, is blue, and 9, the date of

my birthday, is blue.' This is known as 'color individuation.'

or

that are habitually thought of as colored. Certain colored thinkers always

****

******

PROTECTIVE?

Here is an instance of color adaptation in the fire salamander to black earth.

associate a particular color with their thoughts about a particular person.

The first point that strikes one regarding the characteristic features of color thinking is the very early age at which these associations are fixed.

This was a feature recognized by Galton. Professor Harris's observations fully confirm this point. He has in his possession many letters from colored thinkers in which the details of their psychochromes differ in the widest possible manner, but all agree in that they testify to the very early age at which

the associations were formed. Another characteristic of colored thinking is the unchangeableness of the color thought of. Middle-aged people will tell you that there has been no alteration in the colors or even in the tints and shades of color which for many years they have associated with their various concepts.

The

A third characteristic of psychochromes is their extreme definiteness in the minds of their possessors. precise colors attached to concepts are by no means vague. A fourth characteristic is the complete non-agreement between the various colors attached to the same concept in the minds of colored thinkers. Thus nine different persons think of Tuesday in terms of the following colors: brown, purple, dark purple, brown, blue, white, black, pink and blue. Unanimity seems hopeless, agreement quite impossible. The fifth characteristic is their unaccountableness. No colored thinker seems able to say how he came by his associations. The sixth characteristic is the hereditary or inborn nature of the condition. The extremely early age at which colored thinking reveals itself would of itself indicate that the tendency was either hereditary or genital. To quote Dr. Harris again: "It may now be asked what manner of people are they who are colored hearers or colored thinkers, or both. The late Mr. Galton told us that they are

con

guished neurologist always sees the numerals I to 100 in the form of a ladder sloping upwards from left to right into the sky. As this concept is not colored it cannot be called a psychochrome, but it might be called a psychogram. A psychogram is, then, the uncolored thought-form of a concept, and people who have psychograms must be strong visualizers.

"The school of symbolist poets in France to which Ghil, Malarmé, Rimbaud, and Verlaine belong, appears to lay a great deal of stress on the so-called meaning of colors. The school evidently

includes both colored hearers and colored thinkers; but whereas the majority of colored thinkers derive no particular meaning from their psychochromes, the symbolists attach considerable significance to the colors which happen to be associated with their thoughts. The different vowels, for instance, mean to them or represent for them particular emotions or states of mind not in virtue

of the sound of the vowel, but entirely through the related color. The particular emotion symbolized by any given color seems to the ordinary person rather arbitrary."

It might now be asked whether we have any explanation of the causes or causal conditions of colored thinking. Why may thoughts be colored at all and why should particular thoughts come to be associated with particular colors? Why should only a few per

sons be found to be colored thinkers?

The answers, if answers they can be called, are, according to Professor Harris, extremely disappointing, for we have no satisfactory explanation of any of these matters. The very arbitrariness of the associations defies theoretical analysis. It has been suggested that the cause of colored thinking is no more recondite than the influence of some picture-book which in early life determined for us ever afterwards the colors of certain concepts. Now, tho many people do regard their color thinking as a childish survival, the picture-books will account for very

was

chromes. In some few cases, environmental influences do seem to have been causal. Thus in one case known to Professor Harris, the color of February as white was accounted for by the influence of the surroundings. The earliest February remembered snowy and, through the whiteness of snow, the concept of February came to be and ever afterwards remained white. But it is clear that if environmental influences are operative in anything like a large number of cases, the colors for such concepts as the months of the year ought to be far more uniform than they are.

rather above than below the average in- few of the best established psychotelligence. The writer's observations would in the main confirm this; they are at least invariably well educated persons who confess to being colored thinkers. In his book Mr. Galton gave a few names of distinguished persons of his acquaintance, and his list might be brought up to date by the addition of some names quite as distinguished. But all persons who have colored hearing or colored thinking are not necessarily distinguished-a large number, as we have seen, are yet children-but they are all probably more or less sensitive. Possibly they are more given to introspection than is the ordinary person. At any rate, what is quite certain is that both synesthetes and psychochromesthetes belong to the group of strong visuals or 'seers,' as Galton called them. Seers are persons who visualize or exteriorize their concepts either as uncolored forms or as colored in some way or other. The uncolored thoughtforms are very curious. . . . One distin

"Monsieur Peillaube has made a suggestion of a different kind as likely to explain some of these color associations. Monsieur Peillaube became acquainted with a Monsieur Ch-, who had colored hearing as well as colored thinking.