Black and White, Red and Blue

Abstract

A young Greek student who arrived in Cambridge thirty years ago to readfor the Classical Tripos went to Bowes and Bowes to equip himself with the necessary works of reference. Besides his Liddell and Scott and his Lewis and Short he came away with a copy of A Guide to the Classics by Michael Oakeshott and G. T. Griffith, Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, not noticing that it was subtitled ‘How to Pick the Derby Winner’. Even when an author or editor is trying to avoid ambiguity there may still be questions of interpretation. The April 1926 issue of the Journal of Philosophical Studies printed three articles under the collective title ‘The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality’. They were the texts of papers read at a meeting of the newly founded British Institute of Philosophical Studies at the Royal Society of Arts on 16 February 1926. The title might suggest a symposium on problems discussed earlier by Goethe or later by Wittgenstein, or perhaps some investigation into the distinction between a priori and empirical concepts. The uncertainties of readers cannot have been long-lived. The symposiasts were Sir Frederick Lugard, KCMG, CB, DSO, Morris Ginsberg, MA, D.Litt. and the Hon. H. A. Wyndham. The same volume contained ‘The Primitive and the Civilized Mind’ by N. Lossky and the 1927 volume added Professor R. F. A. Hoernlé's ‘Prolegomena to the Study of the Black Man's Mind’.