Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-03-14
Extraordinary
Human Faculties

Recently letter dropped down to
me out of the ether, as it were, from
a collateral descendant of Zerah Col
burn. that extraordinary methemati-
cal seer who appeared and disap-
peared like a rocket a century ago,
and while l have been re-reading it,
another letter has come from a young
lady. who pleasingly sends me her
photograph, and who illustrates in
her own person a phase of human
faculty quite different from Colburn's
but in some respects even more Won
derful, since it relates to impress
sions upon the brain that appear to
be entirely unknown to the vast ma
jority of mankind.
WhatZerah Colburn did was to
astonish the best mathematicians by
giving. with practical instantaneity,
answers to problems which they could
only solve by a long process of cal
culation on paper. There can be no
doubt that ne saw the answers, that
they were pictured in his brain along
with the problem itself. so that they
constituted a logical and mentally
visible continuation or completion of
1t. .s.
What zerah Colburn did was to
could only arrive at by a series of
successive steps this wonderful boy
he was only six years old when his
elders discovered his powers-was
able to reach at a single step. In fact,
he was hardly conscious of taking
any step at all or of making any
effort. The real effort for him came
when, in response to urgent question
ing, he tried to tell how he did his
amazing feats of calculation.
In some cases, apparently, he never
was able to find out. and the ex-
plantations that he finally did offer
were evidently concocted only to sat
isfy the insistence of the questioners
and did not represent any conscious
process that went on in his brain.
His mind acted like a calculating
engine, in which the arrangement of
the elements of the problem auto
matically sets forth the solution. In
the cases in which he was able'to go
back, by much effort, over the ground
that he had instantaneously covered
in reaching the result he showed that
the successive steps were of the same
order as those employed in formal
mathematics, but he had flown over
them without even knowing of their
existence.
1t is not improbable that the school,
ing which he received and the at
tempts. which were forced upon him,
to make his methods explicable to
others, as weL as to himself, grad
ually dulled and finally destroyed
his intuitive power for as lie grew
older he lost the faculty that had
made him world-famous for a few
years. .
Now, the faculty of the young lady
of whom 1 have spoken rests upon
mental vision of a different kind.
Her own words will best describe
it:
'Since early childhood 1 have had
the power of seeing sounds, devel-
oping until almost every sound rep
resents a distinct picture to my mind
in both color and shape. 20 illustrate,
the different notes of the violin pre-
sent different colors and shapes from
the same notes on other instruments.
1 do not mean that can differentiate
the color of. each treble note, but the
aggregation of treble notes will pre-
sent a different color from that of
the bass. On the organ, for instance,
the soft notes of the treble make a
picture as of a vapor, pale yellow or
golden mist. while the bass makes a
picture of dark rolling clouds. Again.
the tenor voice is a transparent
greenish yellow, whilst the soprano
is yellow without the green. Some
voices, however cultivated, present
no color to me. Within the last
year I have discovered that under
certain conditions of excitement, or
tensity. unknown persons speaking
to me through the telebhone present
such clear picture of themselves
to my mind, in minute detail-teeth,
coloring,l eyeglasses. etc.-that l have
afterwards recognized them on the
street. You have spoken, in your
Romance of the Brain about the
power to see the color of names.
which I do just as you describe. A
bird Is singing outside my window
now, and IL necessary 1 could paint
its song both in shape and color"
subject Of mental imagery. and on