Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/66

56 I found in Torres Strait, is only partial and can not wholly account for the absence of a word for that color. Even to those with normal sensitiveness to blue, I think, there is no doubt that there is a closer resemblance between blue and black and between green and black than between red and black, and this difference in the degree of similarity between the different sensations of color and that of blackness may account in some measure for the difference in the definiteness of nomenclature.

It is a characteristic of the language of primitive races to have special names for every natural object, and often for very many individual parts of a natural object. If the savage has one name for one blue flower and another name for another, and so on, he will not require a name for the abstract quality of blueness. It is possible that he only begins to require names for colors when he begins to use pigments. If this be the case, it may help to explain the earlier development of names for red and yellow, for in many parts of the world pigments of these colors are by far the most common. In Torres Strait there were both red and yellow pigments, but no green pigment, and the nearest approach to a blue pigment was a slate-colored shale, and there appear to be many parts of the world where a blue pigment is wholly absent. Probably the most widely distributed blue pigment is indigo, and I have endeavored to ascertain whether those races which are familiar with indigo have a word for blue, but the evidence I have at present is too scanty to allow me to express an opinion on this point. It is probable, however, that the distribution of pigments has helped to determine the characteristic features of primitive color nomenclature, the greater frequency of red and yellow pigments being probably one of the factors which account for the more definite nomenclature for those colors.

Another factor, which may have been of importance, is the absence in the savage of an aesthetic interest in nature. The blue of the sky, the green and blue of the sea and the general green color of vegetation do not appear to interest him. It is, however, possible that the sky and sea do not interest the savage, or interest him less than the civilized man, because their colors are less brilliant than they are to us, and consequently this factor is not one on which much stress can be laid.

The widespread defect in the nomenclature for blue is rendered more striking by the fact that a name for red is universally present in primitive languages, while in many languages, as in that of Murray Island, various shades of red are not only discriminated, but also receive special names. In the experiments made in Torres Strait it seemed to me that this definiteness in the nomenclature for red was associated with a high degree of sensitiveness to this color, apparently