COL OR-BLINDNESS. g i 



COLOK-BLmDNESS. 



Bt s. e. koehlek. 



"T'TT'E have become so accustomed to color in all the objects about 

 VV us, that we may almost be said to take no notice of it. Day- 

 after day we look upon the wealth of color in the landscape by which 

 we are surrounded, without hardly ever giving it a thought. Some of 

 us never awake to the perception of the beauty of color in nature ; to 

 others the knowledge of this beauty is only opened through the me- 

 dium of art. A person who has taken little interest in paintings, but 

 who, by some circumstance or other, is at last led to a more attentive 

 study, especially of landscape-painting, will frequently be surprised by 

 the enhanced interest which Nature ever after awakens in him. He 

 finds charms where he never sought them before, and sees beauties to 

 which he had been totally blind. The mystery of color has been un- 

 folded to him, or rather he has been made conscious of his own faculty 

 of perceiving color a faculty which had, indeed, been always in him, 

 but which had lain dormant. 



Even to those, however, who are fully alive to the charm of color, 

 the latter is so much a matter of fact that they take its presence for 

 granted, and accept as a foregone conclusion that it can never be 

 otherwise. The question. How would the world look without color ? 

 has never troubled their minds, and, if it were really proposed to them, 

 they would probably meet it with the reply that there was no need of 

 speculating about impossibilities. Yet that which appears to be so 

 impossible is really possible ; for there are not only people in existence 

 who do not see, never saw, and never will see color, but we may even 

 create something approximating such a colorless world for ourselves, 

 at least as far as the artificial sphere is concerned in which we move 

 within our houses. 



Before me, as I write this, hangs a Chinese painting, executed in 

 all the brilliancy of Oriental coloring rich vermilion, fine blues of 

 various shades, greens, and other full colors. I light an alcohol-lamp, 

 into the wick of which I have rubbed some common table-salt. I turn 

 down the gas, and. as I now look at the Chinese painting in the dim 

 light of my 'magic lamp, all its color has disappeared. I hnoio the 

 vermilion, the blues, and the greens are all there, but I can not see 

 them. And yet I see the picture itself quite plainly, with its outlines 

 and its delicate gradations ; but it is all black and gray, with only a 

 faint trace of yellow here and there, where a yellow pigment has been 

 employed by the artist. Beside me on my writing-table lies a sample- 

 chart of water-colors ; but, however intently I look at it, I can see 

 nothing but spots that seem to have been produced by India-ink in 

 various gradations. I travel round my room, and all the objects ap- 



