E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 233 



peripheral retina proves too much. For if, by the aid of indirect 

 vision, large expanses are better seen and more readily named than 

 small patches of color, how is it that the brilliant blue stretches of 

 sea and sky are still called golegole by subjects whose attention has 

 been called to their color? And how is it that the blue of the rain- 

 bow is called golcgolcP^ 



On behalf of the Papuan, then, let so much have been said. I am 

 not in the least concerned, in the present paper, with his macular 

 pigmentation ; that is another story. I am concerned only with the 

 adequacy of Rivers' tests to various problems of sense-psychology. 

 The tests appear to me to be inadequate. If Rivers can meet my ob- 

 jections, he must at any rate go beyond the limits of his printed 

 report, and I shall have done some service in bringing out further 

 observations and further arguments. 



III. General Remarks. 



What, now, are the requirements of a field-test? It should set 

 the subject a task which is both simple and definite; it should be 

 capable of performance in a relatively short time and with apparatus 

 that is strong, portable and relatively cheap ; it should be laid out so 

 simply that its conduct is easily mastered and so definitely that there 

 can be no variation in its procedure ; and it should yield results 

 that are directly relevant to the object of the test, are expressible in 

 numbers and thus are intercomparable. These, in general terms, are 

 the requirements : how shall we go to work to meet them ? 



We must realize, first of all, that the test is not a laboratory ex- 

 periment; we must set ourselves at a certain remove from the 

 laboratory; and especially we must avoid misleading analogies drawn 

 from laboratory technique. I have pointed out that McDougall offers 

 his sesthesiometric method as a combination of the methods of mini- 

 mal changes and right and wrong cases ; and I daresay that this 

 title gives the method a sort of cachet in the minds of many readers ; 

 it may have had a reassuring influence upon McDougall himself. 

 Rivers makes, I think a like mistake in his introductory discussion. 



^■'' R, 69 f. The good observer who described the rainbow from memory 

 as red, white and black probably used the terms kakckakek and golegole, so 

 that the description might be interpreted as red, faded-looking, blue. 



