THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BED. 367 



It seems that in every country the words for the colors at the red end 

 of the spectrum are of earlier appearance, more definite and more nu- 

 merous, than for those at the violet end. On the Niger it appears that 

 there are only three color words, red, white and black, and everything 

 that is not white or black is called red. The careful investigation of 

 the natives of Torres Straits and New Guinea by Dr. W. IT. R. Rivers, 

 of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, has shown that at Mur- 

 ray Island, Mabuiag and Kiwai there were definite names for red, less 

 definite for yellow, still less so for green, while any definite name for 

 blue could not be found. In this way as we pass from the colors of long 

 wave-length towards those of short wave-length we find the color no- 

 menclature becoming regularly less definite. In Kiwai and Murray 

 Island the same word was applied to blue and black, and at Mabuiag 

 there was a word (for sea-color) which could be applied either to blue or 

 green, while Australian natives from Fitzroy River seemed limited to 

 words for red, white and black. In a neighboring region of Northern 

 Queensland Dr. Walter Roth has reached almost identical results, the 

 tribes having distinct names for red and yellow, as applied to ochre, 

 while blue is confounded in nomenclature with black. In Brazil, again, 

 while all tribes use separate words for red, yellow, white and black, only 

 one had a word for blue and green. Even so aesthetic a people as the 

 Japanese have no general words for either blue or green, and apply the 

 same color word to a green tree and the unclouded sky. 



Here again we may trace similar phenomena in Europe; the same 

 greater primitiveness, precision and copiousness of the color vocabulary 

 at the long wave end of the spectrum are found among Europeans as 

 well as among the lowest savages. The vagueness of the Greek color 

 vocabulary, especially at the violet end of the spectrum, has led to 

 much controversy. Latin was especially rich in synonyms for red and 

 yellow, very poor in synonyms for green and blue. The Latin tongue 

 had even to borrow a word for blue from Teutonic speech; caeruleus 

 originally meant dark. Even in the second century A. D. Aulus 

 Gellius, who knew seven synonyms for red and yellow, scarcely men- 

 tions green and blue. Magnus has pointed out that a preference for the 

 colors at the violet end of the spectrum coincided with the spread of 

 Christianity, to which we owe it, he believes, that yellow ceased to be 

 popular and was treated with opprobrium.* Modern English bears wit- 

 ness that our ancestors, like the Homeric poets, resembled the Aus- 

 tralian aborigines in identifying the color of the short wave end of the 

 spectrum with entire absence of color, for 'blue' and 'black' appear to be 

 etymologically the same word. 



*In this connection I may mention that the preference for green, which, as I have shown 

 elsewhere ("The Color Sense in Literature," Contemporary Review, May, 1896), developed in 

 English literature with the rise of Puritanism in the seventeenth century. 



