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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 ’ :

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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,

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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.

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