1885.] 
Homer Colour-blind. 
3i5 
deep purple, are definitely distinguished, but not green or 
blue. This is no uncommon experience of the red-colour 
blind.* When a railway-guard confounds together not only 
reds, greens, and browns, but also, as it occasionally hap- 
pens, shades of violet and reddish purple, he is pronounced 
incompletely colour-blind. When, however, he further 
confounds all shades of colour, having the same intensity of 
light, his colour-blindness is complete. Judging from 
language alone, Homer, it would appear, suffered from an 
incomplete form of colour-blindness. In such like cases we 
are unable to appeal to a common or ordinary objective 
standard of comparison, or test, for determining the precise 
value of the colour epithets generally in use. Although 
with the major part of mankind colour is entirely a matter 
of subjective impression, the colour vocabulary is, most 
assuredly, capable of educational improvement. On the 
other hand, colour-blindness is purely a physical defeCt of 
an intractable nature. 
Some confusion and a certain amount of annoyance were 
occasioned, a few years ago, by the published conclusions of 
one who believed himself to be a connoisseur of pictures, 
but whose unfitness for the task consisted in his being 
colour-blind. 
Dyschromatopsy, partial colour-blindness, is known to 
be prevalent among civilised nations. Mr. Gladstone’s 
critic is probably aware of this, although no mention is made 
of so important a faCt, he seemingly preferring to discuss 
Homer’s defective colour system — or, as Mr. Gladstone pre- 
fers to put it, “ his system in lieu of colour, since it was 
based upon light and its negative darkness rather than on 
colour proper ” — entirely from a philological point of view, 
nothing daunted by the formidable character of the obstacles 
which “ stand in the way of a perfectly satisfactory inter- 
pretation of the evidence furnished,” meaning furnished by 
Philology alone. Homer, he infers, possessed a certain 
sense of colour redness, because he frequently employed the 
word eruthros ; but as the adjective red is frequently used to 
denote other colours than red, this must be taken simply for 
what it is worth. To know that “ wherever the Hindustani 
language is spoken red is used to designate a great variety of 
natural objeCIs, — that horses, dogs, cows, tigers, lions, 
monkeys, in short all animals of a brown or reddish brown 
colour, are called red, and if of a darker brown (or even 
* “ White light for the red-blind person is a mixture of the two primary 
colours in proportions which would appear to the normal eye a greenish blue, 
verging on black.” — Helmholtz. 
