88 galton.org
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Inquiries into Human Faculty
if they are vivid and useful, they increase in vividness and definition by
the effect of habitual use. Hence, in adults, the two classes of seers and
non-seers are rather sharply defined, the connecting link of intermediate
cases which is observable in childhood having disappeared.
These Forms are the most remarkable existing instances of what is
called “topical” memory, the essence of which appears to lie in the
establishment of a more exact system of division of labour in the different
parts of the brain, than is usually carried on. Topical aids to memory are
of the greatest service to many persons, and teachers of mnemonics make
large use of them, as by advising a speaker to mentally associate the
corners, etc., of a room with the chief divisions of the speech he is about
to deliver. Those who feel the advantage of these aids most strongly are
the most likely to cultivate the use of numerical forms. I have read many
books on mnemonics, and cannot doubt their utility to some persons; to
myself the system is of no avail whatever, but simply a stumbling-block,
nevertheless I am well aware that many of my early associations are
fanciful and silly.
The question remains, why do the lines of the Forms run in such
strange and peculiar ways? The reply is, that different persons have
natural fancies for different lines and curves. Their handwriting shows
this, for handwriting is by no means solely dependent on the balance of
the muscles of the hand, causing such and such strokes to be made with
greater facility than others. Handwriting is greatly modified by the fashion
of the time. It is in reality a compromise between what the writer most
likes to produce, and what he can produce with the greatest ease to
himself. I am sure, too, that I can trace a connection between the general
look of the handwritings of my various correspondents and the lines of
their Forms. If a spider were to visualise numerals, we might expect he
would do so in some web-shaped fashion, and a bee in hexagons. The
definite domestic architecture of all animals as seen in their nests arid
holes shows the universal tendency of each species to pursue their work
according to certain definite lines and shapes, which are to them
instinctive and in no way, we may presume, logical. The same is seen in
the groups and formations of flocks of gregarious animals and in the
flights of gregarious birds, among which
