314 
Homer Colour-blind. 
[June, 
has undertaken to prove that Mr. Gladstone’s views are 
altogether erroneous. The question, however, is not one of 
sentiment ; it is assuredly an intricate one, and difficult to 
decide, since many obstacles stand in the way of a satisfac- 
tory interpretation of evidence such as that furnished by the 
Homeric poems. On a careful consideration of the argu- 
ments employed by Mr. Gladstone, and those of his opponent 
in support of an opposite theory, I am led to think that the 
Homeric colour defeCt was due to a totally different cause to 
that suggested. 
In trying to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion on a subject 
of much obscurity, it is usual to base arguments on what is 
known with some degree of certainty through the results of 
science, experiments, and statistics, rather than on doubtful 
inference from theories not yet determined or positively 
ascertained. Mr. Gladstone’s critic may, however, be un- 
aware of the attention which has been bestowed of late years 
on a physical defeCt of vision, — colour-blindness, — and he 
consequently contents himself by arguing solely from words 
employed in ancient and foreign languages, the ordinary 
meanings of which are uncertain, while the subjective im- 
pressions which they describe are still mere matter of 
opinion. He nevertheless advances many interesting faCts 
about the spoken language of India, which, by his 
showing, presents an identical meagreness of colour epithets 
with those which characterise the ancient Greeks. But 
collateral evidence of this kind will not enable us to deter- 
mine whether Homer’s defective colour vocabulary was 
really “ one of language and not of perception.” 
Those members of the profession to which I belong, and 
who devote, as I do, much attention to defects of vision, 
will I believe find no difficulty in accepting the theory that 
Homer’s defect was congenital, — was, in faCt, a fault of per- 
ception, and not one of poverty of language. If the faCts 
furnished by Mr. Gladstone were the only evidence, they 
would point to this conclusion, — and to this conclusion 
above all others, — viz., that Homer was colour-blind. The 
vagueness of epithets employed by him to denote colour 
finds a close parallel in the language employed by those con- 
genitally colour-blind. Such persons are not conscious of 
the defeCt under which they labour, and this very vagueness 
of adjectives about colour is at all times one of the common 
proofs of colour-blindness in testing railway-guards, engine- 
drivers, and others. 
Mr. Gladstone tells us that Homer’s colour sense was 
limited at the “ stage at which red and yellow, and possibly 
