the statesman and the ophthalmologist: gladstone and magnus on the evolution of human colour vision,...
Post on 28-Mar-2017
215 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [York University Libraries]On: 23 November 2014, At: 05:42Publisher: Taylor & FrancisInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK
Annals of SciencePublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tasc20
The Statesman andthe Ophthalmologist:Gladstone and Magnus onthe Evolution of HumanColour Vision, One SmallEpisode of the Nineteenth-century Darwinian DebateElizabeth Henry BellmerPublished online: 05 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Elizabeth Henry Bellmer (1999) The Statesman and theOphthalmologist: Gladstone and Magnus on the Evolution of Human ColourVision, One Small Episode of the Nineteenth-century Darwinian Debate, Annalsof Science, 56:1, 25-45, DOI: 10.1080/000337999296517
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/000337999296517
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions andviews of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information.Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly inconnection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
A n n a l s o f S c i e n c e , 56 (1999), 25± 45
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist: Gladstone and Magnus onthe Evolution of Human Colour Vision, One Small Episode of the
Nineteenth-century Darwinian Debate
E l i z a b e t h H e n r y B e l l m e r
Professor Emeritus, Program of Biology, Trinity College, 125 Michigan Ave NE,
Washington, DC 20017, USA
Received 10 December 1997
SummaryAmong the numerous nineteenth-century sorties into particular aspects of the
Darwinian debate are two 1877 publications. The ® rst, Die Geschichtliche
Entwickelung des Farbensinnes, was a treatise on the evolutionary development of
human colour vision by Hugo Magnus, an obscure German ophthalmologist. The
other, `The Colour-Sense ’ , was an article by William Ewart Gladstone, the great
British statesman. Magnus, working from linguistic science and opticalphysiology,
developed the theory that humankind had passed through successive stages of
colour recognition, from none to full perception, brightest colours ® rst. Gladstone
supported the theory with data from his studies of Homeric colour words, placing
Homer at a very early stage. Their theory was not accepted. It assumed colour
vocabulary to be an index of colour recognition, and too little was known about
the nature or age of early man. The present study intends to follow this particular
episode as an excellent example of the scholarship, argumentation, and limited
scienti® c knowledge of the time, as applied to human evolution.
Contents1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252. Gladstone’ s early work on Homer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273. Hugo Magnus and his book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294. Gladstone’ s `Colour-Sense ’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315. The widening of the debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.1. Kosmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345.2 Beyond Kosmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427. Appendix: summaries of data from `The Colour-Sense ’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
1. Introduction
By 1877, eighteen years after the ® rst appearance of Darwin’ s Origin of Species,
and six years after the publication of his Descent of Man, a wide gap still existed
between the theories and the demonstrable realities of human evolution. The gap was
kept open by the virtual absence of acknowledged human fossil remains, by disputes
within the scienti® c community over the age of the universe, by unresolved general
con¯ ict concerning the source of variations, and by apparent contradictions between
scienti® c explanations and strong religious and philosophical beliefs. These factors
predictably fostered a climate of wide speculation on early man’ s age, nature, and
development, resulting in a plethora of publications and vigorous arguments.
Annals of Science ISSN 0003± 3790 print/ISSN 1464± 505X online ’ 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltdhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/JNLS/asc.htm
http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/JNLS/asc.htm
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
26 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
In one such instance, the researches of an oddly assorted pair of individuals
produced a theory concerning progressive development of colour perception in
human evolution. It stated that mankind had moved through a series of stages, from
total non-recognition of colour to its full perception. Dr Hugo Magnus, Lecturer in
Optical Medical Science at the University of Breslau, approached the subject in terms
of language development and optical science;1 William Ewart Gladstone, statesman
and recent British Prime Minister, reinforced it through his studies on Homer and his
interest in contemporary science.2 The purpose of this present paper is twofold: ® rst,
to analyse how these two authors developed what seemed at ® rst to be an excellent
instance of human evolution, and second, to follow the public and scienti® c reaction.
The knowledge of the time could not provide either Magnus or Gladstone with any
valid concept of the nature or age of early man. Their research was necessarily limited
to the use of colour words in literature, beginning with the great ancient civilizations,
so that a tremendous chasm of both time and human development lay between their
earliest resources and the then little-known prehistoric realities of total human
evolution. Even though numerous tools and other human artefacts had long since
been excavated, by 1877 there were only four known ® nds of human fossil remains.3
One of these later became the type specimen of Neanderthal Man; none of them could
be dated accurately. They are now recognized as Homo sapiens, from Pleistocene
deposits dating back approximately 24000 years. The eminent physicist Lord Kelvin
had assigned a maximum of 24000 years for the age of the earth,4 thereby severely
limiting the geological and evolutionary theories of Lyell and Darwin, which
demanded almost unlimited time. As we now deduce it, the geological time table
encompasses a period of approximately 4 ± 5 billion years. In addition to these
problems concerning human evolution, neither Magnus nor Gladstone could have
disentangled the apparent contradictions between the conclusions of Newton
regarding the physical nature of colour, and those of Goethe concerning its reception
by the eye.5 Certain other lingering concepts, such as mere progressionism in
opposition to true evolution6 and Lamarckian use and disuse as opposed to
Darwinian natural selection, were somewhat more hidden in their total discussion
and more than subtly alive in the minds of their readers. Thus, in 1877, Gladstone and
Magnus launched their respective publications into an already broiling sea of debate.
Further, in their unique approach, they worked from certain basic assumptions:
in the literature of any speci® c period of time the colours or conditions of light
mentioned and named would be limited to those which the poets and writers could
1 Hugo Magnus, Die Geschichtliche Entwickelung des Farbensinnes (Leipzig, 1877).2 William Ewart Gladstone, `The Colour-Sense ’ , The Nineteenth Century, 2 (1877), 366± 88.3 Excellent accounts of Victorian concepts of early man from fossil tools and skeletal remains are given
in Loren Eisely, Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It (New York, 1958) , and inA. Bowdoin Van Riper, Men among the Mammoths (Chicago, 1993).
4 L. Eisely (note 3), Chapter IX, Darwin and the Physicists, 233± 53.5 The issue of Goethe vs Newton on colour was introduced into `The Colour-Sense ’ by Gladstone, to
solve an apparent discrepancy between Magnus’ s theory and Gladstone’s analysis of Homer’ s colourwords. It thus became an element of their total presentation, even though taken up by few of their critics.For a careful analysis of Goethe’s rejection of the Newtonian theory of colour, see Rudolf Magnus, Goetheas a Scientist, translated by Heinz Norden (New York, 1949), Chs 7 and 8, 125± 99.
6 Progression implied periodic de novo arrival of new forms within a changing series over time.Transformism, the basis of what is now termed evolution, invoked the continual arrival of new forms byunbroken physical descent. These terms had to be put into proper relationship with the somewhatanalogous geological catastrophism and uniformitarianism, as well as with biblical and theological/philosophical positions. See L. Eisely (note 3), Ch. IV, 92± 115; also see Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin andthe Darwinian Revolution (Garden City, NY, 1959), Ch. 4, 86± 108.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 27
discern; over a succession of time periods an increasing number of colours would
become discernible to the eye and thus successively named ; each writer and his
contemporaries would be at the same stage of colour perception; potential selectivity
stemming from literary style, focus of interest, or avoidance of the obvious would not
be taken into account in analysing the use of colour words.
2. Gladstone’s early work on Homer
In 1858 Gladstone published his Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. He
regarded Homer as one historic person, the undoubted author of both the Iliad and
the Odyssey. In Section IV, Volume III of the Studies, he analysed Homer’ s
perception and use of colour.7 Arguing from the excellence of the poet’ s descriptions,
his intense feeling for form, and his powerful use of light and dark, he concluded that
Homer was neither blind nor suŒering from any defect of vision. He then commented
on the paucity of colour adjectives in the Iliad and Odyssey , and listed them as only
eight in number. Four of these represented speci® c colours of the spectrum: eruthros
for red, xanthos for yellow, porphureos for violet, and kuaneos for indigo. The ® fth
colour word, phoinix, functioned as a possible equivalent for either red, yellow, or
violet. The remaining three were polios for grey, melas for black, the absence of all
colour, and leukos for white, the compound of all colours. He calculated that melas
and leukos were used ® ve times as often as xanthos, eruthros, or porphureos . While
eruthros and xanthos were usually reserved for things actually red or yellow, the
colour words in general were used with the greatest inconsistency of application or
apparent meaning. For example, Gladstone found porphureos applied to blood, a
dark cloud, the wave of a river when disturbed, the ball of the Phaeacian dancers,
wool, garments, carpets, the rainbow, death, the sea darkening, the mind brooding.
He made a second list of thirteen more words, and showed them to be even less
reliable as colour designators. Rather, they described other properties, such as the
play of light on a surface, passion, emotions, or freshness. He ® nally stated that the
poet’s limited perception of prismatic colours was generally vague and indeterminate,
concluding that `the organ of colour and its impressions were but partially developed
among the Greeks of the heroic age ’ .8 Seeking some other basis for Homer’ s system
of colour, Gladstone proposed quantitative criteria rather than qualitative, in that
`the Homeric colours are really the modes and forms of light, and of its opposite or
rather negative, darkness ’ .9 His judgement of the Homeric `organ of colour’ as
`partially developed’ shows his acceptance then of the concept of continual
development of human faculties over time. His closing re¯ ection in 1858 relates this
development to increased knowledge and training:
Perceptions so easy and familiar to us are the results of a slow traditionary
growth in knowledge and in the training of the human organ, which commenced
long before we took our place in the successions of mankind.10
In 1869, eleven years later, Gladstone devoted a small section of his Juventus
Mundi11 to the sense of colour in Homer. He rephrased his thesis, contrasting the poet’ s
7 W. E. Gladstone, Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, 3 vols (Oxford, 1858) , vol. 3, part IV,section iv, 457± 99.
8 Ibid. (note 7), 488.9 Ibid. (note 7), 488.10 Ibid. (note 7), 496.11 W. E. Gladstone, Juventus Mundi: The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age (Boston, 1869), section vii,
under Miscellaneous, 544± 6.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
28 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
Figure 1. William Ewart Gladstone, 1809± 98. 1880 Portrait. By permission of the FlintshireRecord O� ce, Hawarden, CH5 3NR, Wales. Reference 28(A)/30.
Figure 2. Hugo Magnus, 1842± 1907. Portrait from the 1901 edition of J. L. Pagel’sBiographisches Lexicon ¼ p. 1078. By permission of the British Library, Shelfmark 10600W 9.
very indeterminate perception of light decomposed (prismatic colours) with his vivid
and eŒective perceptions of light not decomposed (light and dark, black and white),
and concluding that `his descriptions of colour generally tend a good deal to range
themselves in a scale (so to speak) of degrees, rather than of kinds of light’ .12
So far, Gladstone had performed a fundamental analysis of the use of colour and
light in very old Greek poetry. From his vast range of scienti® c reading he further
considered the eŒects of the chemical improvement of dyes, the continuing possibility
of more colours, the limits on the amount of colour provided by nature in a given
place, and the known occurrence of colour-blind individuals. He continued his earlier
discussion of human development with the statement that `the acquired knowledge
of one generation becomes in time the inherited aptitude of another’ ,13 seeming to
imply physical inheritance of acquired characteristics. In the light of his closing
re¯ ection of 1858, quoted above, it would appear either that he had become more
attuned to some form of Lamarckian evolution by 1869, or that he was simply
recasting the idea of a growing body of knowledge being continually assimilated and
then passed on by instruction and training. He had not made much of a case for
Darwinian evolution, ignoring the possible role of natural selection in the
development of colour vision.
It is important to note that Gladstone had read Darwin’ s Origin of Species
immediately upon its publication in 1859. Between 1859 and 1877 he included, in his
daily diary entries of general and scienti® c reading, 53 diŒerent works relating to
12 Ibid. (note 11), 545.13 Ibid. (note 11), 544.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 29
human evolution, representing more than a fair cross-section of the views of the day.14
Except for the brief section in Juventus Mundi in 1869, and despite his obvious
continued interest in both the state of Homeric colour vision and its possible relation
to human evolution, he let the matter rest.
3. Hugo Magnus and his book
In May of 1877, Dr Hugo Magnus wrote to Gladstone, sending him a copy of his
new book, The Historical Development of the Colour Senses. In it he had made
extensive use of Gladstone’ s research on Homer, at one point quoting him at some
length in English:
Of light, shadow, and darkness thus regarded, Homer had lively and most
poetical conceptions. This description of objects by light and its absence tax[es]
his materials to the uttermost. His iron-grey, his ruddy, his starry heaven, are
so many modes of light. His wine-coloured oxen and sea, his violet sheep, his
things tawny, purple, sooty, and the rest, give us in fact a rich vocabulary of
words for describing what is dark so far as it has colour, but what also varies
between dull and bright, according to the quantity of light playing upon it.15
In his letter, Magnus credited Gladstone with the theory that `in Homeric times the
sense of colour was only in a rudimentary phase ’ ;16 he thought the Prime Minister
might be interested in his book, and would perhaps call it to the attention of the
medical profession in England.
Magnus opened his treatise by pointing out its unique interdisciplinary character,
and its assumption of the progressive development, over time, of a human faculty. He
would use a philological approach to study a scienti® c problem, assuming the
development of colour vocabulary to follow closely upon colour recognition, so that
it became an index to the extent of human colour vision at any one time. Relying
heavily on the philological work of Lazarus Geiger,17 and armed with Gladstone’ s
observations, Magnus laboriously wound his way through the use of colour
description in such sources as the Zendavesta, the Rigveda Poems, Scripture, and the
whole of Greek and Roman literature. After these classic sources, the number of
Magnus’ s examples decreased, becoming reduced to generalities with very few data
drawn from his own time.
He ® nally concluded, from literary evidence, that mankind had progressed
through a sequential pattern of colour recognition: bright or `light-rich ’ colours ® rst
(red, then yellow), the less bright greens next, and blue and violet last, as dull or `light-
poor ’ colours. Even though this sequence coincides with that of the Newtonian
spectrum, Magnus viewed it as a gradient of light intensity, decreasing from red
through violet. The ® rst colour to come to early man’ s conscious recognition, then,
would have been red, the brightest colour. It is di� cult to follow, today, why Magnus
14 This survey covers from 10 December 1859, when he read Darwin’s Origin, to 17 May 1877, whenhe noted having read Hugo Magnus’s Die Geschichtliche Entwickelung des Farbensinnes. See vols 5 to 9 ofThe Gladstone Diaries with Cabinet Minutes and Prime-Ministerial Correspondenc e, edited by ColinMatthew (Oxford, 1978± 94). Hereafter referred to as Gladstone Diaries.
15 Magnus (note 1), 12.16 H. Magnus, letter to W. E. Gladstone (3 May 1877), British Library, Gladstone Papers, Additional
MSS 44454, fol. 85. Author’ s translation.17 Lazarus Geiger, Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit (Stuttgart, 1871). The German scholar
Lazarus Geiger wrote on human evolutionary development, especially that of speech and language.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
30 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
considered red as the brightest colour of the spectrum, but his argument for its early
perception is ingenious: it would have appeared to be the same as white at ® rst,
having the same high intensity of light, according to Geiger’s analysis of the Rigveda.
This would render both red and white as diŒerent from black. Eventually red would
become discernible from white, later followed by oranges and yellows. Magnus placed
Gladstone’ s Homer into an early stage of red± yellow recognition. Mention of chloros,
a true pale green, appeared in later Greek literature, while that of dark green, blue,
and ® nally violet, took well into the ® fth and sixth centuries of the Christian era.
These last three colours would have emerged from a vague shadowy darkness given
various designations; Magnus was not sure that they, especially green and blue, were
accurately distinguished by all peoples or nations even in the nineteenth century.
Having derived a sequential pattern for colour recognition from literary sources,
Magnus had to account for its retinal physiology. He assumed a very early prehistoric
`no-colour’ period in which only light and dark could be discerned, thus establishing
the early response of the retina to amount, or intensity, of light. Uninterrupted
penetration of light would cause constant bombardment of the retina by ether
particles. The `sensitive portion of the retina’18 would become increasingly more
sensitive to `the impinging and stimulating light rays according to their brightness ’ .19
Eventually the retina would reach a state of sensitivity su� cient for the ® rst
discernment of colour, or of kind of light. Assuming red to be the colour with the
highest `internally generated kinetic energy ’ ,20 Magnus postulated that it would be
the ® rst hue recognized by the retina. Further light entry and bombardment by ether
particles would continue to raise the sensitivity of the retina to successively higher
levels, making possible the further perception of less energetic colours, through to the
dull violet end of the spectrum. The most sensitive area of receptivity, where
successive colours would be most clearly perceived, would surround a central portion
of the retina. The perception of each colour in turn would fade oŒperipherally into
an appropriate shade of grey at the margin.
So far, Magnus had correlated philological evidence and optic physiology, to
support his theory that the human colour senses were developing in stages. He
predicted the widening of the range of colours visible to man, to include ultraviolet
light; he expected further expansion of the highly sensitized area of the retina, to do
away with marginal grey areas in colour vision. It was, he wrote:
¼ a universal fact, that all organized structure calls for gradual development, to
rise from a basically low beginning stage nearer and nearer to an even greater
ful® llment.21
Magnus further added another element : `The state of activity of each organ improves
gradually under use, and greatly increases its essential capacity’ .22 His Geschichtliche
Entwickelung thus has a decidedly Lamarckian character, and is de® nitely non-
Darwinian. His term Historical Development designated an inevitable process of
continual improvement, driven by an intrinsic tendency towards perfection and by
continued use, and passed on through succeeding generations. Magnus made no
explicit attempt to relate his theory to evolution by means of natural selection, nor
18 Magnus (note 1), 47. Author’s translation.19 Ibid. (note 1), 48. Author’s translation.20 Ibid. (note 1), 53. Author’s translation.21 Ibid. (note 1), 44. Author’s translation.22 Ibid. (note 1), 50. Author’s translation.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 31
did he mention any of the knowledge of his day concerning the existence and general
function of rods and cones. He was aware of contemporary investigations of colour-
blindness, regarding it as a present-day de® ciency not to be equated with the
rudimentary colour vision of the ancients. He passed oŒthe superior senses of
`savages ’ and animals either as special cases associated with their environments, or
as superior only objectively, with no discernment of beauty, or of meaning. His book
could thus be viewed as a construct very neatly ® tted to his already conceived theory,
within the parameters of his basic assumptions, within historic time.
4. Gladstone’s `Colour-Sense ’
Gladstone read Magnus’ s book, Die Geschichtliche Entwickelung des Farbensinnes,
immediately upon receiving it, remarking `Most interesting’ in his diary entry for 24
May 1877.23 After receiving a shorter version of the theory (Die Entwickelung des
Farbensinnes)24 from Magnus in mid-July, Gladstone was inspired to further research.
He turned back to his un® nished thesaurus of Homer,25 begun in 1867, renewing his
concentration on the colour vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey . His diary entries
during the summer of 187726 show a stepwise progression from the receipt of
Magnus’ s book in May, through several weeks of work on the thesaurus in August,
to the production in early September of an article entitled `The Colour-Sense ’ which
appeared in the October issue of Nineteenth Century. In it, he brie¯ y reviewed
Magnus’ s book, and then went on to add relevant material of his own. He sent a copy
to Magnus in Breslau, who acknowledged it enthusiastically on 7 November, stating
that he had promptly distributed it among German scienti® c organizations, had
received such interested positive response that a German translation was no doubt
needed, had already secured a competent translator and willing publisher, and needed
only Gladstone’ s permission for the task.27 Gladstone gave the permission, and
Magnus sent him a copy of the published translation of `The Colour-Sense ’ in
January of 1878.28
In `The Colour-Sense ’ , after explaining and reviewing Magnus’s theory,
Gladstone reiterated his own early conclusions on the rudimentary development of
the sense of colour in the Homeric Age. Referring to Wilson’ s 1855 work on colour-
blindness,29 he argued that Homer was not colour-blind in the contemporary sense.
The confusion of red and green, colours some distance apart in the spectrum, would
characterize a much later stage of colour vision than would Homer’s limited
progression through neighbouring colours. Wilson had also postulated the need for
the education of the eye to colour in individual cases, meaning simply the training of
a conscious eŒort to be more aware of all colours perceived, and of their names.
23 Gladstone Diaries, vol. 9, 24 May 1877.24 H. Magnus, Die Entwickelung des Farbensinnes (Jena, 1877) .25 Gladstone Diaries, vols 6± 10. Sporadic work on the thesaurus is mentioned in diary entries from Sept.
Oct. & Nov. of 1867, Feb. 1868, Aug. 1869, Apr. & May of 1874, Dec. 1875, Jan. 1876, Aug. 1877, Sept.1878, Feb. & Mar. of 1879, and Sept. 1886. Gladstone never published it as such, but probably usedversions of it in one or two of his works on Homer, and certainly in his support of Magnus’s theory in `TheColour-Sense ’ .
26 Gladstone Diaries, vol. 9, 17± 24 May, 13± 29 August, 30 August± 7 September, 1877.27 H. Magnus, letter to W. E. Gladstone (7 November 1877) , BL, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44455,
fol. 226. Translated and summarized by author.28 W. E. Gladstone, `The Colour-Sense ’ , authorized German translation by J. U. Kern (Breslau, 1878),
published by Max Mueller.29 George Wilson, Researches on Colour Blindness (Edinburgh, 1855).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
32 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
This need for education of the eye was extrapolated by Gladstone from the level
of the individual to that of `races ’ . He regarded it as an evolutionary process,
involving the three mechanisms which he had accepted from Magnus: the inherent
tendency of the eye to improve gradually in a given direction, its increase in sensitivity
resulting from constant stimulation by light, and the passing on of the newly acquired
improved state by inheritance. Within the space of a few lines Gladstone invoked
these mechanisms, regardless of their degree of compatibility with each other or with
Darwinism. He quoted from Magnus: `in the progressive education of the human
organ ¼ [the colours] successively disclosed to it ¼ have by degrees come to be part of
its regular perceptions’ .30 He echoed Lamarckism : `The increase of susceptibility
acquired by the retina has become hereditary , and has grown with a long series of
generations’ .31 He did not try to comment on the physiology of the retina, or on the
application of a brightness gradient to the spectrum, but chose to leave that material
entirely in Magnus’ s professional hands.
In speculating on Homer’s genius even in his limited use of light- and colour-
related description, Gladstone turned to Darwinism:
And what have natural selection, and the survival of the ® ttest, with their free
play through three thousand years, done for us, who at an immeasurable
distance are limping after him, amidst the laughter, I sometimes fear, of the
immortal gods?32
By this addition of natural selection to his amalgam of evolutionary forces accounting
for the development of colour vision, Gladstone created further inconsistency. It did
not appear to cause him concern. He had introduced natural selection into his
discussion as a way of emphasizing Homer’ s transcendent genius, undoubtedly much
more germane to his purpose than the relative merits of diŒerent mechanisms of
change. He accepted the reality of evolution, and simply added natural selection to
the mechanisms already oŒered by Magnus. He did not address the absence of
Darwin’s theory from Magnus’ s paper, nor did he really discuss it at any depth in his
own. Inadvisedly, perhaps, since one hardly expects any work of evolutionary import
written in 1877 to give Darwinism only passing mention, or to ascribe only non-
Darwinian mechanisms to a process of change over time. Gladstone was too well read
and generally interested in science and human evolution to ignore one of the most
controversial positions of the time.
Further, Gladstone felt that both he and Magnus had originally placed the Greeks
of Homer’ s time a step too high in the stages of colour recognition. He moved them
back to the de® nite recognition of red, and perhaps of orange, but not of yellow. This
done, he took the opportunity:
¼ to make a contribution to the stores of material, upon which the questions
at issue will ultimately be determined, from the quarter where I feel myself most
competent, or least incompetent, to search for it.33
Here was his chance to support an account of human progress in colour recognition
with material from his beloved Homeric studies.
In the `Colour-Sense ’ Gladstone selected and re-evaluated ten of Homer’s colour
epithets plus those for black, grey, and white. Five of the ten colour words overlapped
30 Gladstone (note 2), 369.31 Ibid. (note 2), 369.32 Ibid. (note 2), 371, 2.33 Ibid. (note 2), 367.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 33
his ® rst list of 1858: xanthos, eruthros , porphureos , kuaneos, and phoinix. Five were
either on the second list, or new: chloros, rodoeis, aithops, ioeides, and kallipareos .
Even though his order of treatment of these words and their cognates at ® rst seems
haphazard and rather rambling, there is a pattern. The six categories, slightly
rearranged and condensed for the convenience of the present-day reader, are
presented in section 7.1 of the Appendix to this paper. Of the ten colour words,
Gladstone considered only three of them, eruthros (red), kallipareos (rosy-cheeked),
and xanthos (auburn, or orange), to represent true colours discernible to Homer and
his contemporaries.
After combing the entire text of the Iliad and Odyssey for colour words and their
derivatives, and relating them to the consistent perception of speci® c colours, or of
light and dark, Gladstone then went to produce a ® nal tabulation of `the statistics of
colour, so to speak, taken from some su� ciently extended portions of the poems’.34
As outlined in Appendix 7.2, he made a careful count of colour- and light/dark-related
words in passages of approximately equal length from the two poems. Even though
their total occurrence in the Iliad was approximately twice that of the Odyssey , the
proportions of colour to light-related words in each poem were very similar. Further,
the colour-related words represented both ends of the spectrum. He now had his
statistics of incidence in neat quantitative terms, and was able to note that their
similarity in the two poems supported a single authorship.
Gladstone had now shown that Homer’ s colour sense, if limited to the recognition
of light, dark, and red, and just beginning to verge on orange, re® ned and supported
Magnus’ s theory. Yet, in also recognizing, however vaguely, hues going from reds
into purples. Homer was apparently discerning colours from both ends of the
Newtonian spectrum, contrary to Magnus’s theory. This point troubled Gladstone,
who came to a solution via Goethe’s studies on colour. He compared Magnus’s
brightness scale as applied to the Newtonian spectrum with Goethe’ s colour system.
Using a mixture of paraphrasing and quotation from the Farbenlehre, he explained:
He [Goethe], too, establishes a scale between light and non-light: `Next to light
a colour appears which we call yellow; another appears next to the non-light,
which we call blue. When these in their purest state are so mixed that they are
exactly equal, they produce a third colour, called green.’ Condensed and
darkened, blue and yellow may become red, respectively ; blue passing into a
blue-red, yellow into a yellow-red. Also red may be produced by mixing.35
Here, in Goethe’ s theory, were not only light and non-light, but also the possibility
of simultaneous perception of the spectral extremes. Gladstone reasoned that
Homeric colour perception might well have started at each end of the spectrum, and
that later stages of colour sense would progress toward the middle.
In `The Colour-Sense ’ Gladstone produced a document which was, in turn, a
book review, a unique and painstaking tabulation of the kinds and incidence of
colour words in Homeric poetry, an interpretation of the perception of colour as
explained by Goethe, and an interdisciplinary reinforcement to what Magnus would
later call `our theory’ .36 It would be possible to commend him for his accurate data
on colour-words, and to accuse him of very blurred usage of the ideas of Goethe,
34 Ibid. (note 2), 381.35 Ibid. (note 2), 387.36 H. Magnus, letters to W. E. Gladstone (27 January and 18 May 1878, 5 August 1880) BL, Gladstone
Papers, Add. MSS 44456, fols 69 and 330, Add. MSS 44465, fol. 186.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
34 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
Newton, Magnus, Lamarck, and Darwin ; to commend him for his interest in human
evolution, and to accuse him of simply ® nding more information of the kind which
would ® t well into an already established pattern. `The Colour-Sense ’ is not a
scienti® c study per se but an ancillary endeavour. It is most useful as an indicator of
at least one of the many ways of investigating human evolution and its related
theories facing the Victorian reader. This is especially true in view of the vast array
of oŒerings, the small knowledge of human fossils and of time expanse, and the
necessary dependence on other disciplines. As Magnus put it, in his introduction,
`there are no distinct criteria for the investigation of an evolutionary process which
takes hundreds of years to produce functional evidence ’ .37 In the case of developing
colour vision, not even the traditional studies in comparative anatomy, `the essential
research material of the modern sciences ’ ,38 would have served the purpose. Hence the
philology, hence Gladstone’ s use of Homer.
5. The widening of the debate
5.1. Kosmos
Response to Gladstone’ s `Colour-Sense ’ and to Magnus’ s work was immediate
and de® nite. Charles Darwin wrote to Gladstone on 2 October 1877. He had just seen
the `Colour-Sense ’ in his October issue of Nineteenth Century, and thought
Gladstone would be interested in some of the coverage of Magnus’ s material. He
oŒered to lend him his summer issues of the German science journal Kosmos,
containing a thorough review of Magnus’ s book,39 Magnus’ s reply to the reviewer,40
and an article by Darwin himself.41 In the latter were `some facts tending to show that
very young children have great di� culty in distinguishing colours; or as I suspect, of
attaching the right names to them’ .42 On 25 October Darwin sent the oŒered journals
to Gladstone, and continued his thoughts on colour epithets: `A missionary could say
whether the savages have names for shades of colours. I should expect that they have
not, and this would be remarkable for the Indians of Chile and Tierra del Fuego have
names for every slight promontory and hill,Ð even to a remarkable degreeÐ ’ .43 In
these brief statements Darwin neatly and courteously identi® ed development of
colour vocabulary as the central issue of Gladstone’s article. Further, he unerringly
drew out and reversed two of Gladstone’s (and Magnus’ s) basic assumptions: early
colour naming was a matter of word association, not of colour perception per se ; a
re® ned colour vocabulary would tend to develop around some focus of interest.
Darwin left it for the Kosmos reviewer, Ernst Krause, to acquaint Gladstone with
arguments on the larger questions based upon evolution and natural selection.
Darwin had faced the relationship between his theory and beauty in living things by
resolving it down to very utilitarian features of plant and animal life, such as food-
getting and reproduction. Krause cited examples : speci® c insects’ visits to ¯ owers of
37 Magnus (note 1), Foreword. Author’ s translation.38 Ibid.39 Ernst Krause, `Die Geschichtliche Entwickelung des Farbensinnes ’ , Kosmos, Band I (1877), 264± 75.
A review of Magnus’s book by Ernst Krause, a staunch advocate of Darwinism in Germany.40 H. Magnus, `Zur Entwickelung des Farbensinnes, von Dr. Hugo Magnus’ , Kosmos, Band I (1877),
423± 7. Magnus’s reply, which Krause had invited in his review.41 Charles Darwin, `Biographische Skizze eines Kleinen Kindes ’ , Kosmos, Band I (1877), 367± 76.42 C. Darwin, letter to W. E. Gladstone (2 October 1877) , BL, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44455,
fol. 120.43 C. Darwin, letter to W. E. Gladstone (25 October 1877), BL, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44455,
fol. 210.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 35
the same colour, regardless of their morphology; the extraordinary coloration of
many birds as a means of attracting a mate ; camou¯ age and mimicry as protection.
He stated that the fundamental laws illustrated by these examples `are based
essentially upon the proposition that colour-perception is a general aspect of the
development of the organ of sight, present from the onset, or, let us surmise,
developed very early on ’ ,44 negating Magnus’s original attempt to separate `the
historical development of the sense organ in general ’ from that of `the colour senses
in particular ’ .45 Krause could not allow colour vision to primitive animals, and yet
deny it to primitive man until Homer’ s time; this was resoundingly labelled
`Unbelievable! ’ .46 Upon an archival scrap of paper in the category `miscellaneous’
retrieved from Gladstone’s desk, we ® nd some of his jottings concerning this section
of Krause’ s paper, ending with the same `Unglaublich ! ’47 Krause had to admit that
most mammals, in contrast with other animals, are not very brightly coloured. Yet,
in 1877, the presence of visual purple (rhodopsin) had been determined in the eyes of
humans and other vertebrates, its presence in the eyes of invertebrates having long
been known. The possible role of this pigment in colour vision had yet to be
determined, but here was a link between non-human and human. Krause ® nally came
to the conclusion that it was only with civilized man that the beauty of colour in nature
could be appreciated as such, and that man had inherited the full capacity to
recognize colours from the very beginning, as part of the general aspect of the organ
of sight.
After this strong exposition of the kind of material which Magnus had ignored,
Krause took up an example from ancient literature, namely the very early appreciation
of and preference for the stones lapis-lazuli, turquoise, sapphire, and amethyst. Their
respective colours, he noted, were at Magnus’s dull end of the spectrum, to be
recognized and named at much later periods. He ascribed diŒerences in colour
vocabulary, even when applied to the same thing, such as the rainbow, to diŒerences
in culture and technology, ie. the development of dyes, or changes in focus of interest.
Krause then returned to matters of physical science. The colours of the spectrum do
not represent a brightness scale ; their names entered spoken language in that order
because of their wave lengths or frequencies (quality, not quantity of light). Yellow,
not red, is the brightest colour, but red has a certain suggested quality of heat or
glowing pulsation stemming from its speci® c frequency. This, plus the rarity of bright
reds in the environment, would have made it immediately attractive to primitive man
as a colour to be used and named, whereas the ever-present greens of foliage and blue
of the sky did not need continual mention. Krause terminated his review of Magnus’s
book with a discussion of colour-blindness, a leading contemporary issue. He
completely disassociated it from early stages in the development of colour vocabulary,
identifying it as a matter of colour vision which is speci® cally limited in certain
individuals only.
Krause now had a set of basic assumptions: human beings were always able to see
all colours. Over time, an increasing number of colours were successively named, in
accord with their pleasing or unusual qualities, or with their appropriateness to a
situation, and de® nitely in response to later developments in dyeing. In his review of
Magnus’ s theory, Krause had touched upon the related issues of evolution, natural
44 Krause (note 39), 270. Translated by Mr Michael Goodchild, MA.45 Magnus (note 1), 1. Author’ s translation.46 Krause (note 39), 270. Translated by Mr Michael Goodchild MA.47 Hawarden, Wales, Flintshire Record O� ce, Glynn-Gladstone MSS 1454.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
36 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
selection, the physics of colour, colour-blindness, and the use of literature and
philology. He had treated the ophthalmologist’ s work as a matter of contemporary
natural science, expecting to see in it the major components thereof, and he invited
Magnus to reply in the pages of Kosmos.
In his reply, Magnus not only did not change his original basic assumptions, but
argued from them, as from irrefutable fact : man had passed through successive stages
of colour vision. If animals, starting from a no-colour stage, had progressed through
to higher stages, the same thing would be true of man. In man it would take longer,
because his sense of colour is so well developed ultimately. It is not so unbelievable,
then, that in Homeric times man should appear to lag behind animals in this respect,
only having got as far as recognition of red and yellow.
Magnus used Darwin to good eŒect in tracing the colour development of plumage
in birds. Here he very ably showed a reciprocal process, whereby plumage would
become more splendid as colour sense improved, and vice versa, each process both
promoting and limiting the extent of the other. But animals, in responding to colours,
do not have to name them; they need only to recognize them. Response to plumage
demonstrates neither generally established retinal sensitivity to all colours nor stages
in perception; the same ¯ aw could be applied to either Magnus’ s or Krause’ s
arguments, as each man started from his own presupposition.
Magnus then shifted to the philological: he ascribed the preference of the ancients
for lapis lazuli to religious or cultural reasons, again on the basis that its colour would
not have been early recognized. He ended with a long defence of Homer’ s extremely
re® ned descriptions of the play of colour on surfaces, and of light eŒects, concluding:
It just does not seem credible that a language such as Homer’ s which possessed
such a treasury of words to describe the most varied and subtlest eŒects of light,
should not have been capable of creating its own words for the major colours,
the more so since the perception and diŒerentiation of subtle eŒects of light is
a much more di� cult task than perceiving a clearly pronounced colour, such as
green or blue ¼ Thus we may conclude, with some justi® cation that the striking
lack of colour in Homer’ s images is due to a lack of colour-sense at the time in
question, and not to any de® ciency in the level of langauge reached.48
The debate had started. The various threads of argument had been laid down within
a month of the appearance of Gladstone’ s paper. The crux of the matter, development
of colour-sense or of language, came to focus on Homer and Homeric times.
This focus was even more apparent as soon as the German translation of
Gladstone’ s `Colour-Sense ’ appeared. Krause reviewed it in Kosmos,49 giving
Gladstone very little mercy. He noted the somewhat circular process by which
Magnus had ® rst relied on Gladstone, who in turn had then relied on Magnus, so that
`the matter needing clari® cation, instead of becoming clearer, became more and more
obscure ’ .50 Krause gave full vent to his indignation as a scientist: Magnus had cited
red as the brightest colour, whereas without a doubt it is yellow; bright blues and
violets appear next to dark reds on a brightness scale; Gladstone `knows not a thing
about the physics of the matter and is still not sure, in the Goethe vs. Newton debate,
48 Magnus (note 40), 427. Translated by Mr Michael Goodchild, MA.49 E. Krause, `Der Farbensinn. Mit besonderer Beruecksichtigung der Farbenkenntniss des Homer.
Von W. E. Gladstone, ehemaligem Premierminister von Grossbritannien und Lordrektor der UniversitaetGlasgow. Autorisirte deutsche Uebersetzung. Breslau 1878. J. U. Kern (Max Mueller) ’ , Kosmos, Band III,Heft 4 (1879), 377± 81. Krause’s review of Gladstone’s `Colour-Sense ’ .
50 Krause (note 49), 377.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 37
which of them is right ’ ;51 Gladstone ® nally attributed a quality of darkness even to
Homer’ s reds, and did not seem to have noticed the well-known, beautiful, bright-
blue metallic colour which the ancients produced by treating copper alloys with
sulphur. Regarding chloros, artists were quite capable of adding green tint to
countenances, to portray suŒering or fear, without violating natural skin colour.
Nightingales (Homer’ s chloreis) did live in green woods, which had nothing to do with
their plumage, actually rust-red (one of Gladstone’ s meanings of chloros). Krause
cited a letter to Nature,52 telling of an exchange between a pedantic Greek
schoolmaster and Sophocles, on the fallacy of giving literal meaning to the poetic use
of colour. He ended with an ironic note, quoting the following passage from the
German translation of the `Colour-Sense ’ here taken from Gladstone’ s English
original :
The fundamental fact which in the whole of this paper I wish to exhibit, [is]
namely that colours were for Homer not facts but images; his words for
describing them are ® gurative words, borrowed from natural objects; in truth,
colours are things illustrated rather than described. The word eruthros is in truth
a rarity in Homer, from its describing colour in the abstract and not as
embodied in a particular object. The same may be said of xanthos ; but the more
common use in Homer by far is to speak of rose-colour, wine-colour, ® re-colour,
bronze-colour, and the like ¼ There was no ® xed terminology of colour; and it
lay with the genius of each true poet to choose a vocabulary for himself.53
Gladstone had intended this passage, and its preceding survey, to support Homer as
sole author of both the Iliad and Odyssey. In so doing, he had all but defeated his
larger purpose. He had allowed Homer an avenue of poetic usage which neither
demanded nor precluded total colour recognition. Krause dismissed the issue of sole
authorship, and neatly seized upon the ® nal sense of the passage as something with
which he could wholeheartedly agree, except for the basis on which it rested, the
imperfect perception of colour in ancient Greece.
5.2. Beyond Kosmos
Among Gladstone’ s clippings is one of the ® rst reviews of his paper, from The
Spectator of 6 October 1877. It opens with the words `By far the most interesting
paper in the magazines of this month is Mr Gladstone’ s singular essay upon the
Colour-sense ’ .54 The descriptive words `the most interesting’ and `singular’ epitomize
the major aspects of this work. Its author a prominent statesman, its content wide-
ranging yet centred upon Homeric colour-words, its combination of elements novel,
its alliance with an equally singular German production obvious, it drew national and
international response very quickly. The response came not only from major
reviewers, but also (especially in Britain) from individuals, small discussion clubs, and
local learned societies;55 very little of it was positive; in fact, almost all of it was
51 Ibid. (note 49), 378.52 Ibid.53 Gladstone (note 2), 386. This passage from `The Colour-Sense ’ appears on pp. 379 and 380 of the
1878 German translation (note 28). I thought it better to use the original English, rather than an Englishre-translation. German scholars might like to compare the German text with the original English, especiallyfor Gladstone’ s di� cult phrase `not facts but images ’ .
54 Anon., `Some of the Magazines ’ , The Spectator (6 October 1877). Hawarden, Wales, FRO, Glynn-Gladstone MSS 1641.
55 Hawarden, Wales, FRO, Glynn-Gladstone MSS 1641. Gladstone had clipped and saved a numberof items pertaining to `The Colour-Sense ’ , often without date, source, or page number.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
38 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
negative. Even The Spectator found more to criticize than to praise, politely saying
at one point `We think, [that Mr Gladstone] rather strains his fancy in illustrating his
case ’ .56 Gladstone’ s article might well have been interesting and singular, but his
thesis was not accepted.
In addition to Darwin’s correspondence with Gladstone noted above, two other
letters are especially worthy of notice. One long missive came to Gladstone from H.
Lloyd, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. He opened somewhat deferentially, willing
to consider gradual progression of colour vision over time, only if `the old Bard
employed his epithets in a very loose and arbitrary way ’ .57 Then, no doubt quite
pained at Gladstone’ s abandonment of Newton’ s spectrum for Goethe’s theories of
colour perception, Lloyd set out to instruct the Prime Minister. He explained the
physical laws of light, colour and wave length, in unyielding detail and with cold
precision. He added another dimension to be explored further, the physiology of the
eye. In the second letter, the anatomist St George Jackson Mivart quoted Alfred
Russel Wallace at great length, ® nally adding a point of his own, `For my part, I
cannot see why delicate appreciation of hues and tones may not have been developed
over time again in diŒerent groups of animalsÐ in culminating forms, such as insects,
birds, and man ’ .58
Wallace’ s ® rst essay on the origin of the colour sense was published simultaneously
with, but independently of, Gladstone’ s paper. He had presented a possible
evolutionary route for animal colour vision, starting with perception of degrees of
brightness, ending with perception of colours according to wave length. In his view,
green and blue would have been the ® rst colours to which the eye became specially
adapted, in accord with their universal presence in foliage and sky, as well as their
soothing in¯ uence. Reds, yellows and violets would follow, as present in small
amounts, oŒering great contrast, and useful to animals hunting for food and mates.
This essay was revised and republished a year later,59 with speci® c response to
Gladstone (and through him, to Magnus and Geiger). `These curious facts’ wrote
Wallace, with regard to Gladstone’ s Homeric data, `can not, however, be held to
prove so recent an origin for colour-sensations as they would at ® rst sight appear to
do ’.60 He pictured brightly coloured structures as having evolved in response to an
already present and well-developed ability of animals, especially birds, to see colour,
long before the arrival of man. Wallace concluded that `Man’ s perception of colour
in the time of Homer was little if any inferior to what it is now¼ owing to a variety
of causes, no precise nomenclature of colours had become established’ .61
Grant Allen, in his notes on `The Colour-Sense ’ ,62 made many of the same points
as had Darwin, Krause, Lloyd, Mivart, and Wallace. He contended that `the colour
56 The Spectator (note 54).57 H. Lloyd, letter to W. E. Gladstone (7 December 1877), BL, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44455,
fol. 305.58 St George Jackson Mivart, letter to W. E. Gladstone (8 December 1878), BL, Gladstone Papers,
Add. MSS 44458, fol. 202. Mivart, Roman Catholic anatomist and zoologist, defended evolution whileattacking natural selection as its chief mechanism; he later could not accept Darwin’ s views on humanorigins. He remains a somewhat enigmatic ® gure, in terms of both his religion and his science.
59 Alfred Russel Wallace, `On the Origin of the Colour-Sense’ , in Tropical Nature and other Essays(London, 1878), 241± 8. Wallace, naturalist and tropical explorer, had independently and simultaneouslyproduced a theory equivalent to Darwin’s natural selection. Both men’ s works were presented as a jointpaper to the Linnean Society, in 1858.
60 Wallace (note 59), 246.61 Ibid. (note 59), 247.62 Grant Allen, `Development of the Sense of Colour’ , Mind, 3 (1878), 129± 32. Allen, an independent
scholar with a broad range of interests, contributed to, followed, and popularized contemporary science.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 39
sense is a faculty far more ancient than the development of man, and not (as Mr
Gladstone argues) one but lately evolved ’ .63 Colours in nature would be meaningless
unless perceived by animals; man shares the colour sense with other animals as the
result of evolution (even frogs can tell blue from green) ; the retinas of humans and
other animals possess both rods for the discernment of light and shade, and cones for
the discernment of colour, while nocturnal animals have only rods. He especially
investigated the colour senses of various ancient and extant racial groups, ® nding
them all very acute, far more developed than those ascribed to the ancient Greeks by
Gladstone. The art of the ancient Egyptians showed use of green, blue, and yellow
colours, with great delicacy of blending, but no shading. Could one then argue from
the Egyptians’ total lack of chiaroscuro that early human civilization had a well-
developed colour sense, but no perception of light and shade? For Allen, the great use
of visual epithets for light and dark, and the admitted lack of de® nite colour epithets
in Homeric poetry, did not show lack of colour perception. Rather:
¼ among a race of non-manufacturing warriors, ¼ the gleam of bronze, the light
of day, the bright or lowering sky, the inde® nite hues of man and horse and
cattle, were far more relatively important than the pure tints of ¯ owers and
insects, or the almost unknown art-products of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Assyria.64
Finally, Allen observed that modern man has a rich vocabulary of colour words
stemming from new techniques of dyeing and a growing interest in decorative
materials.
According to an unsigned article in The Architect,65 Greek artists used colours
conventionally rather than realistically, following the form of the work. Homer, as an
epic poet, depicted action, using appropriate colour and light epithets. Neither the
artists nor the poet had any defect in colour vision. W. W. Lloyd continued the
subject in the same journal, with a two-part article.66 He referred to Gladstone’ s
earlier work on Homer’ s limited use of colour terms, saying that now, `some
independent German speculations have given encouragement to [him] to republish
and even to reinforce the argument ¼ A German physiologist [has pressed the issue]
with true German singlesided [sic] thoroughness’ .67 He went on through an analysis
of the colours used in Greek poetry and painting, emphasizing their symbolism rather
than their literal application, and ending with the statement that Homer and his
fellows were neither colour-blind, nor on a low evolutionary level of colour sense.
In L’Athenaeum Belge,68 Paul Thomas immediately established a connection
between Magnus’s theory and evolutionary development in general. Thomas seemed
to accept Magnus’ s propositions, saying, for example, `The present sensitivity of our
retina is the hereditary result of an education which has been carried on through
many generations’ .69 He challenged Magnus on the supposed preference of primitive
peoples for bright colours, the role of the environment and cultural characteristics in
the use and appreciation of colour, and the diŒerence between a speci® c colour in the
abstract and as applied to some object. A `Scienti® c Review’ from the ReU publique
63 Allen (note 62), 130.64 Ibid. (note 62), 131.65 Anon., `Were the Greeks Colour-blind? ’ , The Architect, 3 November (1877), 239, 240.66 W. Watkins Lloyd, `Homer as a Colourist’ , The Architect (1877) : Part I, 24 November, 278, 279;
Part II, 1 December, 292± 4.67 Lloyd (note 66), 278.68 Paul Thomas, `De! veloppement historique du sens de la couleur, par H. Magnus’ , L’Athenaeum
Belge, 1 (1878), 1, 2. Author’s translation.69 Thomas (note 68), 1.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
40 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
Fran†aise referred to Magnus’s book as `an exceedingly curious work ’ ,70 because of
its theory, methodology, and relation to Gladstone’ s research. The reviewer very ably
illustrated the inappropriateness of interpreting poetic imagery literally, or of
equating the name of a colour with its distinguishability. He pointed out that La
Fontaine never mentioned the word blue in any of his fables, and used the word azure
only once. Were it not for that single instance, he asked, would we then be justi® ed
in concluding that he could not see blue?
Henri Dor71 regarded Magnus’s and Gladstone’ s theory as worthy of attention, as
a possible demonstration of Transformism (evolution) of the function of an organ
over time, by means of the forces of nature. He tested for such change by comparing
ancient and modern descriptions of the rainbow. He questioned forty-three persons
who came to his clinic. Very few of them had any degree of formal education by which
they would know the seven colours named in the Newtonian spectrum, but none was
colour-blind, and all worked in the silk industry of Lyons, thereby having daily
experience with many colours. Six named more than four of the colours, and seven
two or fewer; thirty were able to name only three or four. Red and blue were most
often mentioned, then yellow, green, violet, orange and indigo. White and rose were
also included. Dor stated `It is therefore very evident that the unlettered class of our
population is not in our own days much further advanced than Xenephon’ s [three
colours], and the average is far inferior to Aristotle’s [three colours, sometimes
four] ’ .72 After this practical approach Dor went on with devastating thoroughness to
make other damaging points based on philology, and ® nally on the numerous
pigments used in art by the ancients. Not much transforming of function over historic
time was evident here, even with the assurance of education of normal colour vision;
neither was language development a suitable criterion for degree of colour sense,
limited as it was to only a very small part of man’ s evolutionary history.
Criticisms made by science-oriented reviewers in both Britain and Europe were
applied almost indiscriminately to both Magnus and Gladstone, regardless of their
very diŒerent professions and the immediate scopes of their respective texts. They
considered both productions as treating of human evolution, Magnus’ s by a very
unusual and sometimes dubious route, Gladstone’ s as providing a theatre of action,
a speci® c example. Even with individually diŒerent approaches, and often for
somewhat diŒerent reasons, naturalists and physicists agreed upon one thing:
development of colour sense had occurred in animals ® rst, being passed on to man
in the course of evolution, long before the time of Homer ; what Magnus and
Gladstone were tracing was development of human colour-related vocabulary within
the historic period. This conclusion was totally supported by scholarly discussions on
the poetic, artistic and cultural uses of colour in earlier civilizations.
The point which raised the greatest popular response was that of colour-blindness.
Wallace had alluded to it, saying that a fully developed colour sense could not be of
crucial importance to man, or natural selection would long since have eliminated
70 Anon., `L’Evolution historique du sense de la couleur: MM. Geiger, Gladstone, Hugo Magnus etJaval ’ , Feuilleton de la ReU publique fran†aise, 12 Mars (1878). Author’ s translation. It did not seem to methat the writer of this review had really understood Magnus’s physiological explanations; I have thereforereferred only to his discussion of colour-words in literature.
71 Henri Dor, `The Historical Evolution of the Sense of Colour: Refutation of the Theories ofGladstone and Magnus ’ , Edinburgh Medical Journal, 293 (1879), 426± 36. Translation by H. M. Clarke ofa presentation to the Academy of Science, Belles-lettres and Arts at Lyons on 19 November 1878. HenriDor, an Honorary Professor of the University of Berne, and an oculist, resided and practised in Lyons,France.
72 Ibid. (note 71), 431.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 41
colour-blindness. 73 The disease or condition, as it was then variously called, was
under close study in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Its symptoms, diagnosis,
tendency to run in families, and high incidence in males were all becoming apparent,
existing as so many unexplained data in the absence of genetics and advanced study
of the retina. Whether it was related to the reportedly de® cient colour vision of
Homer and the ancients is an intriguing problem. Gladstone had ruled out any defect
of vision in Homer, and never changed his position. William Pole, himself colour-
blind,74 found remarkable coincidence between Gladstone’ s description of Homeric
colour terms and the way things appear to the colour-blind. He assumed Gladstone
to be unaware that a colour-blind person could still have the excellent sense of form,
light, and dark shown in the Homeric poems, and concluded that Homer was indeed
colour-blind. Yellow and blue were the only two colours which could be consistently
perceived by a partly colour-blind person. Because of this dichromic vision, any other
hue containing either of these two colours would be perceived as a variant shade of
one of them, or as a grey. This in turn, Pole declared, would lead to the kinds of
colour anomalies manifest in the Iliad and Odyssey. Homer’s reds and purples were
probably seen by him as dark yellows or blue-related hues, respectively. The question
as to whether all of the ancient Greeks had similarly de® cient colour vision became
confused with whether all of them were colour-blind. Pole concluded that even if all
of them were not colour-blind, Homer de® nitely was. If they all were, then dichromy
was a stage in the evolution of colour vision.
As Magnus’s career developed, the emphasis of his research shifted from his
original theory to the phenomenon of colour-blindness. He conducted surveys of its
incidence among European school children, collected reports of surveys done by
others, and sent several of these to Gladstone. Magnus also devised a method of
educating the colour sense, which was later used in the Boston schools.75 Gladstone
eventually procured documentation from the British Merchant Marine76 showing the
number of candidates rejected for inability to distinguish colours. The results of such
early studies were fairly consistent (incidence in males clustering around 4%, in
females around 0± 04 %) despite diŒerences in modes and purposes of testing, and in
methods of recording results. The Boston School System found that men and boys in
general did not particularly notice colours, and even when otherwise well educated
were often unable to name speci® c hues when tested. Those not really colour-blind
improved rapidly after some training of the eye for colour.
Magnus and Gladstone kept up a correspondence for at least three years after
1877. Magnus’ s side of it, at ® rst, was full of enthusiastic reports on German
reception of `our theory’ :
I am strongly convinced that in not too long a time the `Historical Development
of the Colour Senses ’ will have many followers¼ My immediate concern is to
investigate the colour vision of Breslau school children, and I believe I will ® nd
an impressive range of demonstration for our research.77
73 Wallace (note 59), 248.74 William Pole, `Colour Blindness in Relation to the Homeric Expressions for Colour’ , Nature, 18
(1878), Part I, 24 October, 676± 9 ; Part II, 31 October, 700± 4.75 H. Magnus and B. Joy JeŒries, Teachers’ Manual : Colour Chart for the Primary Education of the
Colour-Sense (Boston, 1882).76 Colour Tests Report upon the Colour Tests used in the Examination of Candidates ¼ in the British
Mercantile Marine (London, 1891).77 H. Magnus, letter to W. E. Gladstone (27 January 1878) , BL, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44456,
fol. 69. Author’ s translation.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
42 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
He left the nature of the expected demonstration unexplained. After a few practical
communications regarding references, reviews, and more of his research, Magnus’s
letters changed tone. He began to seek assistance from Gladstone. On 5 August, 1880,
he noted that he had been on the level of Docent for eight years, and wanted to attain
the level of Professor. He asked Gladstone’ s help in obtaining `a position in an
English university, in which I can turn to account my theoretical and practical
knowledge as an oculist ’ .78 In a later letter he acknowledged the di� culty of this
request, stating, however, `I am ® rmly convinced that my scienti® c career in a
German university would become accelerated, if I were to attain, through your
mediation, recognition of my scienti® c activity’ .79 This could, he suggested, take the
form of membership in an English scienti® c society, an honorary doctorate from an
English university, or o� cial approval of his work from the English government.
Gladstone responded graciously to all of this, corresponding with Lord Acton about
the Taylor Lectureship at Oxford.80 None of this activity bore fruit, and Magnus
remained in Germany.
6. Conclusion
How, or why, had Gladstone been drawn to write `The Colour-Sense ’ ? Obviously,
Magnus had sent him his book, in which he had cited Gladstone’ s earlier work on
Homer. Gladstone instantly saw and used a means of further connecting his own
studies with a piece of contemporary science. During the summer of 1877, after
receiving Die Geschichtliche Entwickelung des Farbensinnes, he shifted from work on
his more general Homeric thesaurus to an immediate practical application of the
colour words in particular. His early biographer Morley had pointed out his need to
start `from the principle of authority ¼ [which] ® tted in with his reverential
instincts ¼ temperament ¼ and education’ .81 Magnus had provided the catalytic
framework, the principle of authority ; Gladstone took it as a given, ® tting into it his
long-® xed views on the state of Homeric colour vision.
Magnus’ s inspiration for his book had come, in turn, from the words of Geiger
in an 1867 address : `Linguistic and physical science, conscious of their common aims,
must join hands’ .82 He would join them. It is interesting to speculate how much
international notice, or favour, Magnus’s book would have received, without
Gladstone’ s ensuing `Colour-Sense ’ . Magnus, faced with the contemporary lack of
information on the nature and age of early man, could only trace the development of
colour vocabulary back through historic time. In addition,his omission of Darwinism,
his heavy reliance on Lamarck, his scale of brightness, and his explanation of retinal
physiology were all matters of either viewpoint or of downright error, guaranteed to
irritate scienti® c sensibilities. His treatment of colour vocabulary as a direct indicator
of the extent of colour vision oŒended scholars in general, whether from science,
literature, or the arts.
78 H. Magnus, letter to W. E. Gladstone (5 August 1880) , BL, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44465, fol.186. Author’ s translation.
79 H. Magnus, letter to W. E. Gladstone (5 September 1880) , BL, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44466,fol. 45. Author’ s translation.
80 W. E. Gladstone, letter to John Dahlberg Acton (20 September 1880). Mentioned in Secretary’s noteat end of Magnus’s letter of 5 September 1880 and in Magnus’s letter of 2 October 1880, BL, GladstonePapers, Add. MSS 44466, fols 47 and 129.
81 John Morley, Life of William Gladstone, 3 vols (London, 1903) , I, 202.82 Lazarus Geiger, `On Colour Sense in Primitive Times and Its Development’ , in English and Foreign
Philosophical Library, edited by his brother Alfred Geiger, translated by David Asher (London, 1880), vol.12, 43± 63 (p. 62). A paper read by Lazarus Geiger on 24 September 1867, three years before his death, ata meeting of German naturalists in Frankfurt-on-Main.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 43
In allying himself with Magnus, Gladstone had taken on a heavy load of science
and language development, which became connected in the public mind with his
Homeric studies. He had done a painstaking analysis of Homeric colour epithets,
which alone would have drawn various responses from contemporary Greek scholars,
but which instead became the pivotal point of the larger debate. He wove his use of
Wilson, Goethe, Darwin, Newton, and Lamarck throughout his paper in a con® dent
and easy manner, marked by a certain naõ $ vety of approach and acceptance. Even
though he had preceded Magnus in opening the issue of a poorly developed sense of
colour among the early Greeks, he simply echoed him in the developmental aspects
of his paper. He did not attempt any discussion of natural selection, but he did
challenge Magnus over the use of Newtonian vs. Goethian criteria, and over the
relative position of Homer in the developmental scale of colour vision. The paper
shows Gladstone’ s tenacity with an idea, his unhesitating willingness to use and relate
material from various disciplines, and his remarkable breadth of industry, reference
and interest. Its signi® cance in 1877 lay not in the nature of Homer’ s colour
vocabulary in itself but, ® rst, in how that vocabulary ® tted into Magnus’s
developmental plan, and second, how Magnus’s plan ® tted into the larger picture of
human evolution.
None of Gladstone’ s or Magnus’s critical readers contested the idea of evolution
itself, nor did they argue for or against any of the possible evolutionary mechanisms.
In replying to either author, they focused on what they identi® ed as the real problem,
one of methodology.
They universally denied the assumption of colour vocabulary as an index to
colour recognition. They were aware of how little they knew about prehistoric man’ s
nature and physical form. Thus, a survey of colour words in the literature of historic
time could not be an appropriate tool for examining either the historic or the total
development of human colour vision. They supported their conclusions with a battery
of scienti® c facts, with arguments, and with speci® c examples from literature and the
arts. Taken collectively, these formed a consistent and powerful whole.
In a period marked by fearless and interested scholarly contribution from many
disciplines towards the understanding of any one major issue, the theory of Magnus
and Gladstone and the response to it embodied one small unit of the Darwinian
debate. It was particularly characterized by the absence of essential information, by
the sheer necessity of seizing upon any available avenue of investigation or argument,
by tenacious adherence to basic assumptions, and by supportive use of established but
not necessarily applicable information. Gladstone wrote no more upon the subject,
and Magnus’ s interest turned to other aspects of vision. Their work and the
discussion it generated now stands as one of the many attempts of the period to
identify and analyse some small aspect of human evolution, to close that much of the
gap between evolutionary theory and demonstrable fact.
7. Appendix
7.1. Gladstone’s categories of Homeric colour words
Author’ s summary : Gladstone’ s analysis of thirteen Homeric words, used to
denote either colour or degrees of lightness and darkness ; taken from pages 371 to
381 of `The Colour-Sense ’ :
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
44 Elizabeth Henry Bellmer
7.1.1. Three words for red or rose
Of these, Gladstone considered only eruthros and kallipareos as true colour
epithets, each indicating one de® nite colour consistently applied.
(1) Eruthros ( e d q t h q o U | ) : used for things which de® nitely could be called red, such
as wine, nectar, copper, the copper heaven, and blood. Often the shade is quite dark,
so that even Homer’ s red connotes darkness rather than brightness.
(2) Kallipareos ( j a k k i p aU q g o | ) : used for Homeric personages of fair visage with
rosy cheeks. Gladstone saw this epithet as an excellent example of `a normal relation
between the perception, the expression, and the object’ (p. 377).
(3) Rodoeis ( q c o d o U e i | ) : used for the brightness of the morning sky, rather than for
its rosy tint.
7.1.2. One word for auburn or chestnut
Gladstone considered this a true colour epithet.
(4) Xanthos ( n a m h o U | ) : approximately spectral orange, but not a true yellow; used
for the colour of hair, of horses ’ coats, of a slow-¯ owing river. Gladstone concluded
that Homer’ s colour vision was not quite so advanced as Magnus would indicate, or
as he himself had thought in 1858, when he had designated xanthos as yellow.
7.1.3. Two words denoting both darkness and brightness
Used mostly for a group of dark colours based upon red, purple, or brown, and
verging into black. Gladstone did not consider these true colour words, as they did
not seem to have consistent application for either the same colour or the same object
at diŒerent times.
(5) Phoinix ( u o i U m i n ) : used for the dye for ivory, dark cloaks, blood, painted prows
of ships, bay or chestnut in horses, darkness of serpents’ scales, the skin of jackals and
lions. While these might seem reddish, Gladstone felt that Homer would have marked
the diŒerence by using eruthros for anything which de® nitely appeared as red to him.
(6) Aithops ( a d i U h o w ) : used for open porticos, wine, oxen, iron, copper, the sea, the
horse, the lion, the eagle, mental sadness, soot, ash, ® re, and smoke. Gladstone
interpreted it to mean either darkness, or the brightness of light re¯ ected by a dark
substance.
7.1.4. Three words for darkness or dark colours
Not true colour epithets.
(7) Porphureos ( p o q u t U q e o | ) : used for the rainbow, clouds, the sea, blood, death,
painful apprehension, cloaks, blankets and carpets, the ball for play in Scherea;
occurs a total of 32 times in the Iliad and Odyssey, more than any other colour word.
(8) Kuaneos ( j t a U m e o | ) : used for bronze, or the colour of bronze, wool, the sea, sea
sand, ships’ prows, the coat of a mare, mourning garments, dark clouds, human hair,
beard and eyebrows, serried masses of advancing armies ; a word connoting darkness,
applied to a great variety of diŒerent items.
(9) Ioeides ( i d o e i d eU | ) : approximately violet or a dark shade close to purple. Used
for the hyacinth, the sea, or iron.
7.1.5. One word denoting an inde® nite pale colour
A light epithet, not a true colour epithet.
(10) Chloros ( v k x q o U | ) : used for fear, the paleness of fear, fresh light herbage,
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
The Statesman and the Ophthalmologist 45
twigs or olive wood, honey, and the nightingale. Neither yellow nor green, which
would lead into the next set of spectral colours not yet diŒerentiated.
7.1.6. Three words for whiteness, blackness, and intermediate shades of grey
(11) Melas (l U e k a | ) : used for black.
(12) Leukos ( k e t j o U | ) : used for white.
(13) Polios ( p o U k i o |) : used for shades of grey, as seen in sea foam, human hair, or
animal fur; a light epithet.
7.2. Gladstone’s comparative survey of occurrence of colour words in the Iliad and
the Odyssey
Author’ s summary, taken from pages 381 to 386 of `The Colour-Sense ’ :
In the last ten books of the Odyssey (4924 lines), Gladstone counted 133
occurrences of colour words representing his six categories. Thirty-one of these
[31/133, or 23%], were either the true colour epithets for red and orange, or words
related to his third and fourth categories, designating confused and shadowy
recognition of red, purple, or brown, verging into black. These occurred about once
in every 160 lines. The remaining 77% were words designating degrees of light and
dark, but no colour, as in categories 7.1.5 and 7.1.6.
The same procedure, applied to the last eight books of the Iliad (5131 lines),
yielded a total occurrence of 208 light- and colour-related words. Sixty of these
[60/208, or 29%], appearing about once in every 85 lines, were either true colour
words, or of categories 7.1.3 and 7.1.4, involving red, purple, and brown. The
remaining 71 % designated no colour, but only degrees of light and dark, as in
categories 7.1.5 and 7.1.6.
Gladstone used this similarity of pattern to support one author for both the Iliad
and the Odyssey.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Yor
k U
nive
rsity
Lib
rari
es]
at 0
5:42
23
Nov
embe
r 20
14
top related