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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 788 



is not by any means a diseased condition, 

 represents a reversion to a more primitive 

 state of the color sense. If this is so, no 

 race of men remains in the primitive stages 

 of the evolution of the color sense; the 

 development of a color sense substantially 

 to the condition in which we have it, was 

 probably a pre-human achievement. 



In the actual histoiy of the discussion of 

 the color sense in various races, quite a dif- 

 ferent view of the evolution has been prom- 

 inent. It was Gladstone who first, as an 

 enthusiastic student of Homer, was struck 

 by the poverty of color names in ancient 

 literature, and who suggested that the 

 Oreeks of the Homeric age had a very im- 

 perfectly developed eye for color. He was 

 especially impressed by the application of 

 the same color name to blue and to gray 

 and dark objects. Geiger, adhering to the 

 same sort of philological evidence, broad- 

 ened its scope by pointing out the absence 

 of a name for blue in other ancient litera- 

 tures. It is indeed curious that the sky, 

 which is mentioned hundreds of times in 

 the Vedas and the Old Testament, is never 

 referred to as blue. The oldest literatures 

 show a similar absence of names for green. 

 Geiger found that names for black, white 

 and red were the oldest, and that names 

 for yellow, green and blue have appeared 

 in that order. He concluded that the his- 

 tory of language afforded an insight into 

 the evolution of the color sense, and that, 

 accordingly, the first color to be sensed was 

 red, the others following in the same order 

 in which they occur in the spectrum. 

 Magnus found that many languages at the 

 present day were in the same condition as 

 that shoviTi in the ancient Greek, Hebrew 

 and Sanscrit. Very many, perhaps the 

 majority, have no specific name for blue, 

 and a large proportion have none also for 

 green. A smaller number are without a 

 name for yellow, while nearly all have a 



name for red. It seemed that the back- 

 ward races of to-day had just reached the 

 stage, in the matter of color sensation, 

 which was attained by other races some 

 thousands of years ago. The underlying 

 assumptions of this argument are interest- 

 ing—the notion that the list of sensations 

 experienced by a people must find expres- 

 sion in its vocabulary; and the conception 

 of certain peoples now living as really 

 primitive. Fortunately, Magnus submitted 

 this theory to the test of facts, by supply- 

 ing travelers and traders with sets of colors, 

 by which various peoples were tested, first, 

 as to their ability to name the colors in 

 their own languages, and second, as to their 

 power to recognize and distinguish the 

 colors. The results of this inquiry were 

 that names were often lacking for blue and 

 green, but that every people was able to 

 perceive the whole gamut of colors known 

 to the European. This was a severe blow 

 alike to the philological line of argument 

 and to the ready assumption that early 

 stages of evolution were to be found repre- 

 sented in the backward peoples of to-day. 

 Accepting the facts as they stood, Magnus 

 still felt that there must be some physiolog- 

 ical or sensory reason for the curious lack 

 of certain color names in many languag'es; 

 and he therefore suggested that blue and 

 green might be less vividly presented by 

 the senses of many tribes, and that, being 

 duller to their eyes than to Europeans, 

 these colors did not win their way into the 

 language. The theory was, however, prac- 

 tically defunct for many years till Rivers 

 recently took it up, as the result of tests on 

 several dark-skinned peoples. His test 

 called for the detection of very faint tints 

 of the various colors, and the result was 

 that, as compared with twoscore educated 

 English whom he also tested, these peoples 

 were somewhat deficient in the detection of 

 faint tints of blue— and also of yellow — but 



