4 6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



age and of another continent has seemed so precious, the color of the 

 sun, of gold and of corn, of honey and of amber. It is still a very- 

 familiar color to us, alike in sunlight and artificial light, and when not 

 too intense is in no degree fatiguing to the sense-organs; harmonious 

 tones of yellow, indeed, in the scheme of the decoration of a room, are 

 for many, perhaps for most, people highly agreeable to live in. Nor 

 can we claim that our dislike to yellow reveals a more refined esthetic 

 sensibility than the ancients possessed, for the painter knows nothing 

 of this antipathy. In Eembrandt, indeed, we have a painter of the 

 very highest rank who, as he slowly approached the culminating point 

 of his art, was more and more fascinated by yellow, until in the end 

 his pictures, even his portraits, are entirely covered by the shimmer of 

 old gold. 



It was clearly the advent of Christianity that introduced a new 

 feeling in regard to yellow, leading, as Magnus has remarked, to a 

 preference for the dark end of the spectrum. In very large measure, 

 no doubt, this was merely the Outcome of the whole of the christian 

 revulsion against the classic world and the rejection of everything 

 which stood as the symbol of joy and pride. Eed and yellow were the 

 favorite colors of that world. The love of red was too firmly rooted 

 in human nature for even Christianity to overcome it altogether, but 

 yellow was a point of less resistance and here the new religion tri- 

 umphed. Yellow became the color of envy. 



In some measure, however, this feeling may have been not so much 

 a reaction as the continuation of a natural development. The classic 

 world had clearly begun, as savages have begun everywhere, with an 

 almost exclusive delight in red, even an almost exclusive attention to 

 it, and for Homer as for the Arabs the rainbow was predominantly 

 red; yellow had next been added to the attractive colors; very slowly 

 the other colors of the spectrum began to win attention. Thus 

 Democritus substituted green for yellow in the list of primary colors 

 previously given by Empedocles. It was at a comparatively late period 

 that blue and violet became interesting or even acquired definite names. 

 The invasion of Christianity happened in time to join in this movement 

 along the spectrum — for even in the second century after Christ's birth 

 Aulus Gellius when discussing colors scarcely mentions green and blue 

 — and in doing so christian energy was reinforced by its instinctive 

 repulsion for the brilliant colors associated with pagan rites and cus- 

 toms. Thus it was that not red or yellow, but blue, the hue of heaven, 

 became the traditional color of the Virgin's raiment. In ecclesiastical 

 usage yellow has never been regarded with favor; it has usually been 

 either a color to avoid or to treat with indifference. This feeling has 

 not diminished with the centuries; in 1833 the use of yellow in priests' 

 garments was prohibited, and in the protestant church yellow has never 

 been used at all. 



