22 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 travellers’ 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.
