384 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The values of the several colors probably disclose themselves 

 in close connection with that of color contrast. Many of the lik- 

 ings of a child of three in the matter of flowers, birds, dresses, 

 and so on, are clearly traceable to a growing pleasure in color 

 contrast. Here again we must distinguish between a true chro- 

 matic and a merely luminous effect. The dark-blue sky showing 

 itself in a break in the white clouds, one of the colored spectacles 

 which delighted Miss Shinn's niece, may have owed much of its 

 attractiveness to the contrast of light and dark. It would be in- 

 teresting to experiment with children of three with a view to 

 determine whether and how far chromatic contrast pleases when 

 it stands alone, and is not supported by that of chiaroscuro. 



I have reason to believe that children, like the less cultivated 

 adults, prefer juxtapositions of colors which lie far from one an- 

 other in the color circle, as blue and red or blue and yellow. It is 

 sometimes said that the practice and the history of painting show 

 blue and red to be a more pleasing combination than that of the 

 complementary colors, blue and yellow. It would be well to test 

 children's feeling on this matter. It would be necessary in this 

 inquiry to see that the child did not select for combination a par- 

 ticular color as blue or yellow for its own sake, and independently 

 of its relation to its companion a point not very easy to deter- 

 mine. Care would have to be taken to eliminate further the in- 

 fluence of authority as operating, not only by instructing the 

 child what combinations are best, but by setting models of com- 

 bination, in the habitual arrangements of dress and so forth. 

 This, too, would probably prove to be a condition not easy to 



satisfy.* 



I have dwelt at some length on the first germs of color appre- 

 ciation, because this is the one feature of the child's aesthetic sense 

 which has so far lent itself to definite experimental investigation. 

 It is very different when we turn to the first appreciation of form. 

 That little children have their likings in the matter of form is, 

 I think, indisputable, but they are not those of the cultivated 

 adult. A quite small child will admire the arch of a rainbow and 

 the roundness of a kitten's form, though in these instances the 

 delight in form is far from pure. More clearly marked is the ap- 

 preciation of pretty, graceful movements, as a kitten's boundings. 

 Perhaps the first waking up to the graces of form takes place in 

 connection with this delight in the forms of motion, a delight 

 which at first is a mixed feeling, involving the interest in all mo- 

 tion as suggestive of life, to which reference has already been 

 made. Do not all of us, indeed, tend to translate our impressions 



* The influence of such authority is especially evident in the selection of harmonious 

 shades of color for dress, etc. Cf. Miss Shinn, op. cit., p. 95. 



