44 
antiquity, though they had fewer pigments at their dis- 
posal than we have, were quite as capable of distinguishing 
colours as we are. It may indeed be asserted that so 
far as appropriate arrangement of tints in dress and other 
articles of daily use is concerned, no advance has been made 
since the time of the ancients, but rather that we have in 
this respect retrograded. Evolutionists tell us that we may 
obtain a good idea of what our prehistoric ancestors were, 
by observing the present state of savage and uncivilised 
races, a state from which we have in the course of ages 
emerged. So far, however, as the appreciation of colour is 
concerned no superiority on our part can be discovered, for 
whoever will, with an unprejudiced eye, compare the har- 
monious combinations seen in the articles produced by the 
less civilised nations of India and China, or by the natives 
of America and Polynesia, with the hideous contrasts and 
tasteless arrangements so often displayed in our articles of 
dress and furniture, will probably incline to the opinion 
that in this respect we may rather be called savages, and 
that the incapacity for appreciating colour harmony inhe- 
rent in the Teutonic branch of the Aryan race has not been 
removed, but rather intensified by civilisation. Much has, 
indeed, been done of late to promote good taste in this as in 
other departments of art, though our progress has probably 
been retarded by the introduction of various artificial 
colouring matters, the extreme brilliancy of which acts as a 
lure to the uncultivated eye. 
Though much of the uncertainty which exists as to the 
precise meaning of the words used by the ancients to denote 
colour is of a philological kind, part of it is due, I think, to 
causes which are still in operation. 
1. The ancients, having no fixed scale of colour to refer to, 
such as we possess in the spectrum, were unable to compare 
any given tint with that which it exhibits in its highest 
state of purity, whilst we, by means of the fixed standard 
