Symonds compared inversion to color-blindness; and such a
comparison is reasonable. Just as the ordinary color-blind person is
congenitally insensitive to those red-green rays which are precisely the
most impressive to the normal eye, and gives an extended value to the
other colors,--finding that blood is the same color as grass, and a florid
complexion blue as the sky,--so the invert fails to see emotional values
patent to normal persons, transferring those values to emotional
associations which, for the rest of the world, are utterly distinct. Or we
may compare inversion to such a phenomenon as color-hearing, in which
there is not so much defect as an abnormality of nervous tracks producing
new and involuntary combinations. Just as the color-hearer instinctively
associates colors with sounds, like the young Japanese lady who remarked
when listening to singing, "That boy's voice is red!" so the invert has
his sexual sensations brought into relationship with objects that are
normally without sexual appeal.[237] And inversion, like color-hearing is
found more commonly in young subjects, tending to become less marked, or
to die out, after puberty.
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