ACCIDENTS BY RAIL AND SEA. 161 



their defective seuse of color bad uever been suspected by themselves 

 or any one else, and the majority had correctly jjerformed their duties. 

 Such a condition of things furnishes us with food for reflection, and it will 

 not be uninteresting to examine some of the peculiar circumstances 

 which explain it. All the details connected with the subject cannot be, 

 ot course, enumerated here. We will content ourselves by merely indi- 

 cating the course to be followed to obtain this explanation. 



Agreeably to the property of our senses to serve as sentries before 

 the external world, we interpret the information they give us in a partic- 

 ular manner. In fact, we do not consider the changes that take place in 

 our sensitive apparatus, of which alone, however, we possess any im- 

 mediate perception, but refer everything immediately to the cause that 

 has provoked it (that is to say, to the external objects), and we attribute 

 as qualities properly belonging to them what in truth is merely a pro- 

 cess of our own organs. If an object simply reflects certain kinds of 

 rays of light to our eye, we preceive a certain corresponding color, red, 

 for example. We ascribe this perception to the object itself as an 

 attribute, and we say it is red. A red carpet seen by daylight is and 

 remains red. It is red by no matter what kind of light. It is red even 

 when behind our backs or before our eyes in the dark. We discard the 

 sensation of red, which belongs to our optic nerve, for the quality of red, 

 which we ascribe once and forever to the carpet, and by this name of 

 red we supply a whole definition, which, to be complete, should be stated 

 nearly thus: "A red carpet is a carpet which, by the ordinary light of 

 -day, reflects only ethereal waves creating, when in contact with the 

 retina of a normal eye, the perception of red, but absorbing, ^er contra, 

 all the other luminous waves." It is owing to this manner of imputing 

 qualities to objects that the name hlach has been admitted amongst the 

 names of colors, although properly speaking it would designate the 

 quality of absorbing all light, and consequently of not at all aflecting 

 our eye. Kow the tendency to employ our senses, as we have just inci- 

 dentally stated, is often promoted by a school education so limited and 

 partial that the immediate impression is referred to the external object, 

 and the faculty of observation is suppressed to give place to descriptions 

 and to names. 



As color is an immutable quality in a variety of objects of difl"erent 

 colors, it is not very dilficult to learn their names by heart. The direct 

 impression is not even necessary. We may hear a really blind man, 

 even one born blind, give the exact names to colors of common objects of 

 which he has often heard. To the color-blind this is still more easy, as 

 he derives some assistance from his incomplete chromatic sense. On the 

 other hand, it must be comparatively very rare to meet one color-blind, who 

 influenced as Dalton was by individual interest carries his reflections 

 on colors and the chromatic sense so far as to reach the point of discov- 

 ering his own anomaly. Amongst the color blind discovered by us, 

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