THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLORS. 683 



was equal to it. He buried the missing man in effigy* and, according 

 to all the laws of primitive logic, an effigy is every bit as good as its 

 original.! Therefore, when a man is buried in effigy with all due for- 

 mality, that man is dead and buried beyond a doubt, and his ghost is 

 as harmless as it is in the nature of ghosts to be. 



But it occasionally happened that this burial by proxy was prema- 

 ture that, in fact, the man was not really dead, and, if he came home 

 in person and positively declined to consider himself as dead, the 

 question naturally arose, Was he alive, or was he dead ? It was a deli- 

 cate question, and the solution was ingenious. The man was dead, 

 certainly that was past praying for. But then he might be born 

 again ; he might take a new lease of life. And so it was.; he was put 

 out to nurse, he was dressed in long-clothes in short, he went through 

 all the stages of a second childhood. \ But, before he was eligible even 

 for this pleasing experience, he had to overcome the initial difficulty 

 of getting into his own house. For the door was as ghost-proof as 

 fire and water could make it, and he was a ghost. As such, he had to 

 do as ghosts do : in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he had to 

 come down the chimney.* And down the chimney he came and this 

 is an English answer to a Roman question. The Contemporary Re- 

 view. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF COLORS. || 



By M. E. MASCAKT. 



ALIGHT is defined by two qualities, brightness and color. The 

 comparison of two lights of the same color can be made without 

 the assistance of our eyes, and by physical means alone, but it is im- 

 possible to compare different colors without bringing in the interven- 

 tion of the physiological impression. It has been known since New- 

 ton's experiments that white light, or, to be more precise, the light of 

 the sun, is formed of a large number of different colors, and that the 

 union of all these in equal proportion, acting upon the eye, either 



* The practice of burial in effigy prevailed in ancient Greece, Mexico, and Samoa, and 

 it prevails to this day in modern Greece, Albania, India, and China. See Chariton, iv, c. 

 1 ; Bancroft, "Native Races of the Pacific States," ii, p. 616; Turner, "Samoa," p. 150; 

 C. Wachsmuth, "Das Alte Griechenland im neuem," p. 113; Hahn, " Albanesische Stu- 

 dien," p. 152 ; Monier Williams, " Religious Thought and Life in India," p. 300; Gray, 

 "China," i, p. 295. Compare Doolittle, "Social Life of the Chinese," p. 164; Apuleius, 

 "Metam.,"i, c. 6; Brent, "The Cyclades," pp. 223, 224; Servius on Virgil, "^En.," 

 vi, 366. 



f For evidence see Tylor's "Early History of Mankind," p. 116 sqq. 

 % Plutarch, " Rom. Quaest.," v. 



# See the passages cited in note ** to p. 678. 



|| An address before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Translated from the 

 French for " The Popular Science Monthly." 



