Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/57

 the eye of those who can see them, cannot but lend the most solemn tragedy a look of caricature. In this way scientific knowledge may incapacitate us for pleasures which depend on limited vision. This will be seen from a case which Mr. E. B. Tylor, in his Anthropology, incidentally notices. "The negro," says Mr. Tylor, "in spite of his name, is not black, but deep brown, and even this darkest hue does not appear at the beginning of life, for the newborn negro child is reddish brown, soon becoming slaty grey, and then darkening. Nor does the darkest tint ever extend over the negro's whole body, but the soles and palms are brown. When Blumenbach, the anthropologist, saw Kemble play Othello (made up, in the usual way, with blackened face and black gloves, to represent a negro), he complained that the whole illusion was spoilt for him when the actor opened his hands." Descriptions of impossible scenery and animal life in which the flora and fauna of India and Iceland, England and China, should be indiscriminately confused, will not strike the listener or onlooker as ridiculous if he knows nothing of such distinctions. So also with human character and customs. A play to be performed before an audience of antiquaries would need to reach their standard of accuracy; and every one sees how different this standard would be from that of an ordinary audience. But every one does not see that the difference between the scientific few and the unscientific many is only on a smaller scale the difference between an uncivilised and a civilised audience; that the degrees of accuracy demanded increase with the widening ranges of experience, with an expanding sphere of comparison and contrast. Still less does every one see that in social and individual character there are limits to this accuracy resulting from the direct conflict between feelings and ideas of very limited