numbers on the ultimate count than the example attributes to them, perhaps even as undeniable members of the great parties, though irregular ones. But even if the numbers be taken as they are put, we dispute the alleged injustice. Each set of Independents must either get one member or none, and the number of each is much nearer to a ninth part of all the voters than to zero. Why should the Liberals and Conservatives be allowed to spread their votes equally over their respective candidates, thereby leaving 11,000 voters unrepresented, when the quota system leaves only 9,999 unrepresented, and that, too, in a very modified sense? If the true principle is that each vote should have as nearly as practicable an effect equal to that of every other vote, the quota system carries out that principle better than the suggested spreading.

Objection. After all, bye-elections must be decided by simple majority.

Answer. In that respect the proportional system could at least be no worse than the system of local majorities, while being better in other respects. When it is proposed greatly to improve the representation of the people at the commencement of every Parliament, it is no answer to say that the full standard of improvement would not be maintained throughout the duration of the Parliament. But Mr. Parker Smith has pointed out that the great communities might still be divided into districts equal in number to their members, who, after each general election at which they had been returned for the whole community on the proportional system, should choose, in order of seniority, the districts for which in case of vacancies they should be deemed to have sat. Then, each member choosing that district remaining open to him in which his friends were strongest, and the bye-elections taking place in the respective districts by simple majority, a good deal of the improvement would be preserved throughout the duration of the Parliament.

To conclude; the system proposed in the Government Bill will necessitate continual rearrangements of boundaries, will greatly increase the difficulties of the Irish problem, and will fail to secure the main object of representation, namely, that a majority of the electors should secure a majority of representatives in the House of Commons.

JOHN LUBBOCK.
LEONARD COURTNEY.
ALBERT GREY.

J. WESTLAKE.

LIGHT FROM THE EAST ON THE

COLOUR QUESTION.

THE study of evolution has conferred a new significance on the question, which had been raised at least as far back as the days of Anaxagoras, whether the colour sense among men has undergone a sensible degree of development in historic times.

Teaching us, as it does, that the heterogeneity of structure on which the discrete transmission of different colours by the retina and its associated nerves to the brain depends is the result of progressive differentiation, and not of sudden endowment, it follows from that study that the colour sense in man must have reached its present state gradually. But the study of evolution does more than this. It shows us that differentiation of function is a more or less continuous process of adaptation to circumstances, to which, however it may from time to time pause or be retarded, no definitive limits can be assigned. It thus creates an à priori probability in favour of the conclusion that there is no period in the history of the human race during which the development of the colour sense has been absolutely stationary.

While, however, it justifies these general conclusions, it supplies us with no means of determining the stage at which the colour sense had arrived in any particular period. Not merely what amount of development it has undergone during historic times, but what advance it has made in human times, if that expression is susceptible of any definite meaning, and what during the time of any of our long series of progenitors in the line of descent from a primitive form of life, are questions on which it can throw, at the best, but a dim and uncertain light.

Nor is direct physiological evidence on these questions attainable. For while, on the one hand, the study of histology is of modern date, on the other hand the retina of the past is a subject regarding which the geological record gives, and can be expected to give, no sign.

Reasonings from analogy, based on a comparison of the state of the colour sense among civilised and uncivilised, educated and uneducated, men at the present day, or among men and the lower animals, and written testimony, for the most part indirect, as to its

state among men in past times, are the only sources from which we can hope to obtain any light on the subject.

With rare exceptions, such written testimony as is of sufficient antiquity to be of any value in the inquiry is incidental in its character; and not only is its interpretation beset by formidable obstacles, but the conclusion to be based on it is unavoidably ambiguous.

A noteworthy contribution to the literature of the question, and one which gave rise at the time to considerable discussion, appeared in an early number of this Review,' in the shape of an article on the colour sense from the pen of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.

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The main object of the writer of that article was to show, from a comparative examination of the light and colour epithets employed by Homer in his poems, that the poet's system of colour, or rather, to quote Mr. Gladstone, his system in lieu of colour,' was based, in the main, upon light and its negative, darkness, rather than on colour proper, and that his organ of colour and, by inference, that of the Greeks of his day, was but partially developed, as compared with our own, having, in fact, got no further than the stage at which red and yellow, and possibly deep purple, are definitely distinguished, but not green or blue.

This conclusion Mr. Gladstone based partly on the defectiveness of Homer's colour vocabulary, which, according to his view, includes no epithet for either green or blue, and partly on the vague, and not unfrequently contradictory, manner in which a large number of its terms are employed.

In stating his view, Mr. Gladstone did not go beyond a strong expression of opinion. The whole tone of the article, however, seems to indicate that he felt himself to be rather understating than overstating the force of the evidence brought forward by him.

I remarked just now on the formidable character of the obstacles which stand in the way of a perfectly satisfactory interpretation of evidence such as that furnished by the Homeric poems in a matter of this kind, and of the ambiguity of the conclusions to which the data lead.

Colour being entirely a matter of subjective impression, our only means of ascertaining the precise value of colour epithets, as used by others, is by reference to a common objective standard. In the case of contemporary language, a well-understood convention enables us to determine the meaning of such epithets within narrow, though not always exact, limits. In the case of an ancient language, however, not only is there no such convention, but the appeal to a common objective standard, which can alone supply its place, is impossible. We have to accept, in its stead, a presumably similar standard. Before we can know precisely what it was that a par

The Nineteenth Century, October 1877.

ticular colour epithet, as used, for instance, by Homer, indicated, we must compare together the objects to which he applied that epithet, in the aspects with regard to which he applied it. This we obviously cannot do. We can make the nearest approach to the process in the case of natural objects which still exist, or of natural phenomena which still occur; but in the vast majority of such cases we cannot be absolutely sure that they have undergone no change, and even where there is a strong probability that they have undergone no change, we cannot be certain that our appeal is to the same aspects of those objects as his was.

In the case of artificial objects the difficulty is still greater, for here we are dependent entirely on collateral evidence, often very imperfect, for any knowledge of what their appearance was.

Supposing, however, that, in spite of these difficulties, we have succeeded in arriving at a more or less probable presumption as to what was indicated by each of Homer's colour epithets, it does not necessarily follow that we have made much progress towards a comparison of his colour sense with our own. We have, indeed, obtained valuable information regarding the extent of his colour vocabulary and his classification of colours, but not necessarily anything more.

If, for instance, we have found that he classed together under one name colours which we distinguish by separate names, it does not necessarily follow that the defect of language was due to a corresponding defect of perception. Whatever doubt there may be about the gradual development of the colour sense in man as he advances from rudeness to civilisation, there is none whatever about the gradual development of language under the same circumstances. The application by man of special names to different objects is determined not so much by his power of perceiving the differences between them, as by the necessity he experiences of distinguishing between them in his communications with his fellow-men. It thus comes to pass that language lags far behind perception in discriminating capacity; and it is further certain that the language of poetry in this respect lags behind that of ordinary prose, as the language of ordinary prose does behind technical language.

If, then, on comparing the colour vocabulary of Homer with our own, we find that it is more meagre, and that each of the epithets comprised in it covers a wider range of colour, how are we to make sure that the defect is not one of language rather than of perception?

My purpose in the following pages is to examine the bearing of Indian usage on the question raised; and I think the result will be to show that, so far from the interpretation placed by Mr. Gladstone on the peculiarities of the Homeric colour vocabulary being a necessary one, deficiencies and apparent incongruities of nomenclature either analogous to, or actually identical with, those noticed by him.

are quite consistent with the possession of a highly developed sense of colour.

The first group of Homeric colour epithets discussed by Mr. Gladstone is that which comprises phoinix and its derivatives, phoinēeis, phoinos, phoinios, phoinikoeis, daphoinos; and he is led by what appear to him inconsistencies in the application of these terms to conclude that they could not have meant red, but vaguely and confusedly some idea of colour based on red, purple, or brown, 'verging into black.' The incongruities consist in the application of one or other of these words alike to blood, the coat of a horse, the back of a serpent, the fur of the jackal, the skin of the lion, cloaks or mantles, and the prows of ships. The same epithet, he remarks, sits very ill upon blood and the bay colour of a horse;' and the matter would not be mended if we were to render the word chestnut.' Referring to the application of the word daphoinos to the back of a serpent, he says, 'Thus we are thrown back at once from the colour red, the near neighbour of light, and from blood associated with it, upon blackness or darkness at the other end of the scale;' and, again, with reference to its use to describe the colour of a lion's skin, he observes that this could hardly be either black or red, except upon a signpost.'

To the untravelled Englishman, notwithstanding a similar eccentricity in his own use of the word red to describe the colour of cattle which are no more truly red than the horse mentioned in Il. xxiii. 454, this criticism may not improbably seem to suggest the conclusion founded on it by Mr. Gladstone. Persons familiar with Indian usage will, however, attach a different significance to the evidence. Wherever the Hindustani language is spoken, not only is the common word for red—lāl—applied to quite as wide a range of colours as that covered by the Homeric examples cited above, but current usage furnishes precise parallels for the most striking of these examples.

The brown horse, of any shade from bay to chestnut, is for the native of India a red horse. Dogs, cats, and cattle in which brown is the predominant colour, he calls habitually red dogs, red cats, and red cattle; and he applies the same epithet to the fox and the jackal, the tiger and the lion, the goat and the monkey; in short, wherever in animal nature any shade of reddish brown prevails.

One might be disposed, at first, to see in this usage an implicit assumption that these colours are the form taken by redness in mammalia; but such a theory becomes untenable when it is found. that the usage obtains equally in respect of inanimate objects. The colour assumed by well-baked pastry, for instance, by roasted coffee, by toasted bread, the native of India calls red, and he has no other term for it; while he describes the change of colour as reddening, not, as we call it, browning. He calls mahogany a red wood, and a