The human color-sense considered as the organic response to natural stimuli / by L. Webster Fox and George M. Gould.

  • Fox, Lawrance Webster, 1853-1931.
Date:
[1886]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The human color-sense considered as the organic response to natural stimuli / by L. Webster Fox and George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The delight of children and savages in red, and the coarse aesthetic sense, might in part, be explainable in the same way, but more accurately and perfectly by the subjective vividness and associa- tions resulting from numberless centuries of blood-covenants and' blood-shed. Red is the color of war; savages tattoo themselves with it to arouse their own blood-thirsty instincts, and to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. That the prevalence of red pigments in nature, the ease of procuring the ochreous earths, and the relative difficulty of getting other pigment colors, would explain the savage predilection for red, is perhaps a slight coign of vantage, but it remains still an example of the triviality of the arguments to which theorizers have been driven. In continuance of the same symbolism as the bedaubed Indian gives to red, it has continued till to-day as the color par excellence of military uniforms. The delight in it by the crude aesthetic sense flows naturally from the ages of history when bravery and courage were in man almost the only, certainly the highest of all qualities. The ^Esthetic Symbolism of Color. —In accordance with our conceptions of the origins of our color-sense, there should be a natural association and symbolism of the differeut colors with the great classes of our emotional states. If man himself is the concrete result of cycles of permanent reaction between organism and environment, then his visual sense mnst find its ultimate explanations in the same process, and, like them, look forward to extension and perfection, on the same lines as its development has followed. Now, upon looking within, it is not a little startling to find the great divisions of our psychical nature corresponding with the great associations and divisions of our color-sense. It would be still more striking, if we were not now partially aware of the role color has played in his- tory and in the development of the mind. All objective exist- ences are perhaps more vividly represented to the imagination as colored things, than in any other way, and their associations • with the woes and joys of life point to no fanciful symbolism, but one which is quite as real and vital as the emotions whence he draws his mental life. Classifying the directions and meth- ods of mental activities, we find them to fall naturally into four classes: —
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