1878.] Doctrine of Development . 461 
living men and women in modern civilised nations (according 
to some authorities about 5 or 6 per cent), whilst perfectly 
able to distinguish by the eye the outline and texture of any 
objeCt placed before them, its apparent distance, and its 
degree of illumination, fail more or less completely to 
recognise colours. To such persons scarlet and green are 
respectively undistinguishable, and are both liable to be 
confounded with grey. In other cases the eye perceives no 
difference between blue and yellow, and in some extreme 
instances the solar speCtrum appears merely as a band 
lighter in some portions and darker in others, and all objects 
are viewed as if by a monochromatic light. 
But imperfeCt as is the human colour-sense at the present 
day, there is, in the opinion of some, evidence that it has 
distinctly advanced within the brief span known as “ histo- 
rical time.” Philologists have been struck with the faCt 
that in the most ancient writings extant, such as the Bible, 
the Vedas, the Zendavesta, and the poems of Homer, no 
definite nomenclature for colours can be traced. 
The phenomena of colour seem to have attracted less 
attention at the times when the above writings were pro- 
duced than at the present day. One and the same term is 
applied to blue, to green, and to black objects. Iron is 
called by Homer “ violet-coloured.” In the autumn of 
1877 an article by Mr. Gladstone on the colour-sense, as 
exhibited in the poems of Homer, appeared in the “ Nine- 
teenth Century,” and has since been reproduced in the 
“ Revue Internationale des Sciences.” The writer there 
formally undertakes to show that the few colour-terms used 
by Homer are applied to objects so different among them- 
selves “ that they cannot denote colours as we perceive and 
differentiate them, but seem more applicable to different 
intensities of light and shade. Thus, to give one example, 
the word porphureos (ordinarily rendered purple) is applied 
to clothing, to the rainbow, to blood, to a cloud, to the sea, 
and to death, and no one meaning will suit all these appli- 
cations except comparative darkness.” In other cases the 
same objeCt has varying colour-terms applied to it, the 
meaning of these being indicated merely by a reference to 
other objects fluctuating in themselves, so that the difficulty 
of determining what hue the writer meant in any particular 
case is insuperable. “ Mr. Gladstone concludes that archaic 
man had a positive perception only of degrees of light and 
darkness, and that in Homer’s time he had advanced to the 
discrimination of red and yellow, but no further, the green 
of grass and foliage and the blue of the sky being never 
once referred to,” 
