Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Visualised numerals / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
10/24 (page 8)
![there is of them is distinguished from the dark by a thin whitish tracing. It is the place they take and the shape they make collectively which is invariable. Nothing more definitely takes its place than a person’s age. The person is usually there so long as his age is in mind.” [The engraver took much pains to interpret the meaning of the rather faint hut carefully made drawing, by strengthening some of the shades. The result was very very satisfactory, judging from the author’s own view of it, which is as follows:—“Certainly if the engraver has been as successful with all the other representations as with that of my shape and its accompaniments, your article must he entirely correct.”] In some cases, the mental eye has to travel along the faintly- marked and blank paths of a form, to the place where the numeral that is wanted is known to reside, and then the figure starts into sight. In other cases, all the numerals as far as 100 or more, are faintly seen at once, but the figure that is wanted grows more vivid than its neighbours; in one of the cases it rises as if an unseen hand had lifted it. There are as many varieties as there are persons, but I will not nojv describe their shapes in detail, partly because I want to draw attention to the points they have in common, and principally because I hope that some of the forms will be explained by the persons them- selves who see them. I have, however, written at the side of each of the pictures that are suspended against the walls, those details which are required to explain their individual peculiarities. It is beyond dispute that these forms originate at an early age, though they are so far developed in boyhood and youth as to include the higher numbers, and, among mathematical students, the negative values. Nearly all of my correspondents speak with confidence of their forms having been in existence as far back as they recollect. One states that he knows he possessed it at the age of four; another, that he learnt his multiplication table by the aid of the elaborate mental diagram he still uses. Not one in ten is able to suggest any clue as to their origin. They cannot be due to anything written or printed, because they do not simulate what is found in ordinary writings or books. The figures run frequently to the left, and more often upwards than downwards. They do not even lie in the same plane. Sometimes a form has twists as well as bends, sometimes it is turned upside down, sometimes it plunges into an abyss of immeasurable depth, or it rises and disappears in the sky. In one case it proceeds, at first straightforward, then it makes a backward sweep high above head, and finally recurves into the pocket, of all places! It is often sloped upwards at a slight](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22462363_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
