STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 383 



The feeling for color as such comes distinctly later. The first 

 delight in colored objects is hardly distinguishable from the 

 primordial delight in brightness. This applies pretty manifestly 

 to the brightly illumined, rose-red curtain which Preyer's boy 

 greeted with signs of satisfaction at the age of twenty-three days, 

 and it applies to later manifestations. Thus Preyer found, on ex- 

 perimenting with his boy toward the end of the second year as to 

 his color discrimination, that a decided preference was shown for 

 the bright or luminous colors, red and yellow.* Much the same 

 thing was observed by Miss Shinn in her interesting account of 

 the early development of her niece's color sense. f Thus in the 

 twenty-eighth month she showed a special fondness for the daffo- 

 dils, the bright tints of which allured another and older maiden, 

 and, alas! to the place whence all brightness was banished. 

 About the same time the child conceived a fondness for a yellow 

 gown of her aunt, strongly objecting to the substitution for it of 

 a brown dress. Among the other colored objects which capti- 

 vated the eye of this little girl were a patch of white cherry blos- 

 som and a red sunset sky. Such observations might easily be 

 multiplied. Whiteness, it is to be noted, comes, as we might ex- 

 pect, with bright partial colors, among the first favorites. J 



At what age a child begins to appreciate the value of color 

 as color, to like blue or red, for its own sake and apart from its 

 brightness, it is hard to say. The experiments of Preyer, Binet, 

 Baldwin, and others, as to the discrimination of color, are hardly 

 conclusive as to special likings, though Baldwin's plan of getting 

 the child to reach out for colors throws a certain light on this 

 point. According to Baldwin, blue is one of the first colors to be 

 singled out ; but he does not tell us how the colors he used (which 

 did not, unfortunately, include yellow the child's favorite accord- 

 ing to other observers) were related in point of luminosity.* 



No doubt a child of three or four is apt to conceive a special 

 liking for a particular color, which favorite he is wont to appro- 

 priate as " my color." A collection of such perfectly spontaneous 

 preferences is a desideratum in the study of the first manifesta- 

 tions of a feeling for color. Care must be taken in observing 

 these selections to eliminate the effects of association, and the un- 

 intentional infl.uence of example and authority, as when a child 

 takes to a particular color because it is " mamma's color " that is, 

 the one she appears to affect in her dress and otherwise. 



* Op. cit., p. "7 and p. 11 f. 



\ Notes on the Development of a Child, p. 91 ff. 



X Gf. Perez, L'Art et la Poesie chez I'Enfant, p. 41 ff. 



* See Baldwin's two articles on A New Method of Child Study, in Science, April, 1893, 

 and his volume, Mental Development in the Child and the Race. 



