course of history, through gradual general development; that its beginning follows very late after the beginnings of other intellectual capacities; and that, even after man had grasped the distinction of different classes of colour, the _fixing_ of his conceptions of colour made very slow progress, so that he often attributes first one and then another colour to the same object. The shading-off of colours, when once understood, has yet been fixed in the human mind with such difficulty, that we find in many languages the most helpless wavering in the use of names of colours. As this phenomenon, important in man’s mental development, is no less so in relation to the origin and the understanding of the elements of myths, we will pause over Geiger’s disquisitions, to consider still further the fluctuating nature of the designations of colour in language, and especially to notice how far from clear and unsullied a reflexion impressions of colour cast on language, their natural medium of expression. We will however stay in the neighbourhood of the proper subject of investigation, and bring only Semitic words under consideration. Let us pick out the designations of Gold in this field. We cannot say in general terms of the Semitic languages that in the designation of gold and silver they do not express the optical difference between them, as a scholiast remarks in reference to Homer; for the appellations both of gold as _brilliant_, _shimmering_, and of silver as _pale_, prove that at least the different shine of the two metals was observed at the stage of the formation of language.[395] Far less definite, however, than this distinction of the two according to the general impression made on the sight, is the designation of the sensation made by each separately. The appellations of gold in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, zâhâbh, dahabhâ, ḏahab, denote _brilliant_ in general; whereas the Assyrian and Phenician[396] word for gold, ḥuraṣu (which is the same as the Hebrew chârûṣ), expresses no optical sensation.[397] The former appellations describe an optical sensation; but no definite colour-sensation. Indeed, even a late Arabic poet says of gold: al-ḏahab al-nârî,[398] ‘the _fire-like_ gold,’ which, if a description of colour, is a very vague one. Ruʾbâ b. al-ʿAjjâj, an Arabic poet living in the second century of the Hijrâ, says:[399] Hal yanfaʿunî kaḏabun sichtîtu * au fiḍḍatun au dahabun kibrîtu? Will a great lie save me? * or silver, or _sulphur-gold_?