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Inquiries into Human Faculty
at the same time to be betrayed into some overvaunting of their capacities
in other directions. They would be a little conscious of this, and would
therefore shrink from being tested.
The power of reading by touch is not so very wonderful. A former
Lord Chancellor of England, the late Lord Hatherley, when he was
advanced in years, lost his eyesight for some time owing to a cataract,
which was not ripe to be operated on. He assured me that he had then
learned and practised reading by touch very rapidly. This fact may
perhaps also serve as additional evidence of the sensitivity of able men.
Notwithstanding many traveller’s tales, I have thus far been
unsuccessful in obtaining satisfactory evidence of any general large
superiority of the senses of savages over those of civilised men. My own
experience, so far as it goes, of Hottentots, Damaras, and some other wild
races, went to show that their sense discrimination was not superior to
those of white men, even as regards keenness of eyesight. An offhand
observer is apt to err by assigning to a single cause what is partly due to
others as well. Thus, as regards eye sight, a savage who is accustomed to
watch oxen grazing at a distance becomes so familiar with their
appearance and habits that he can identify particular animals and draw
conclusions as to what they are doing with an accuracy that may seem to
strangers to be wholly dependent on exceptional acuteness of vision. A
sailor has the reputation of keen sight because he sees a distant coast when
a lands-man cannot make it out; the fact being that the landsman usually
expects a different appearance to what he has really to look for, such as a
very minute and sharp outline instead of a large, faint blur. In a short time
a landsman becomes quite as quick as a sailor, and in some test
experiments
[1]
he was found on the average to be distinctly the superior. It
is not surprising that this should be so, as sailors in vessels of moderate
size have hardly ever the practice of focussing their eyes sharply upon
objects farther off than the length of the vessel or the top of the mast, say
at a distance of fifty paces. The horizon itself as seen from the deck, and
[1]
Gould’s Military and Anthropological Statistics, p. 530. New York, 1869.
