44 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



PRIMITIVE COLOR VISION.* 



By Dr. W. H. R. rivers, 

 st. john's college, cambridge university. 



THE importance of language as an instrument of anthropological en- 

 quiry lias been the subject of much difference of opinion. On the 

 one hand, there are those who believe that the relation between language 

 and thought is so close that the former has always been an almost exact 

 mirror of the latter, and that every increase in intellectual development 

 has been accompanied by, if not conditioned by, a corresponding in- 

 crease in the development of language. On the other hand, the tend- 

 ency which perhaps now prevails among anthropologists is to attach 

 too little importance to language as an indication of the mental develop- 

 ment of a race. The subject of the color sense of primitive races is one 

 which is especially useful in studying how far the capacity for appre- 

 ciating differences goes with the power of expressing those differences in 

 language. We are able to put to the test how far the ideas of a people 

 may be deduced from their language. We can collect the epithets used 

 for color in various races, both of the present and of the past, and from 

 a study of these epithets we can draw conclusions as to the nature of the 

 color sense in these races. In the case of still existing races, we can 

 then examine the color sense objectively and ascertain how far the 

 conclusions derived from the study of language are verified by the result 

 of the objective examination. 



Historically, this is more or less what has been done. In 1858, in his 

 'Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,' Gladstone called attention to 

 the great vagueness of the color terminology of Homer; he showed that 

 Homer used terms for color which indicated that his ideas of color must 

 have been different from our own, and he was inclined to go as far as to 

 suppose that Homer had no idea of color as we imderstand it, but 

 distinguished little beyond differences of lightness and darkness. 



Ten years later, Geiger, t from a more extended investigation of 

 ancient writings, also came to the conclusion that the color sense of the 

 ancients must have been very defective. He found, not only in Greek 

 literature, but in the Vedic hymns of India, in the Zendavesta, in the 

 Norse Edda, and in ancient Chinese and Semitic writings that there 

 was evidence of great imperfection, especially in the names for green 

 and blue. In hardly any of these ancient writings is any word used from 



* A lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, January 25, 1900. 



t 'Contributions to the History of the Development of the Human Race,' p. 48. 



