TEE PSYCHOLOGY OF RED. 525 



other sources it may have, is always regarded as especially the ensign 

 of love. The rose is the flower of love, as the pale lily is of virtue. 

 This association is quite inapt, and many people who are sensitive in 

 such matters feel that the lily and many white flowers are far more 

 symholical of rapture and voluptuousness than the rose. It is, however, 

 the color and not the scent or other qualities that has exerted decisive 

 influence on the choice of the symbol. In the Teutonic symbolism of 

 fourteenth century Europe red was the color of love, as also, with 

 yellow, it was the favorite color for garments. In more modern times 

 this last tendency has survived. Sardou decides, it is reported, the 

 color of the dresses to be worn in his plays, on the ground that if he 

 did not the actresses would all wear red to attract attention to them- 

 selves, as once occurred at the Odeon. Eighteen hundred years earlier, 

 Clement of Alexandria had written: "Would it were possible to abolish 

 purple in dress, so as not to turn the eyes of the spectators on the 

 faces of those that wear it!" He proceeds to lament that women make 

 all their garments of purple (the classic purple was really a red) in 

 order to inflame lust — those 'stupid and luxurious purples' which have 

 caused Tyre and Sidon and the Lacedasmonian Sea to be so much in 

 demand for their purple fishes. Similar phenomena are noted on the 

 other side of the world. Thus the Japanese, as the Eev. Walter Weston 

 informs us, have a proverb: 'Love flies with a red petticoat.' Married 

 women are not there supposed to wear red petticoats, for they are too 

 attractive, and a married woman should be attractive only to her hus- 

 band. The aesthetic Japanese may be thought to be specially sensitive 

 to color, but in Africa also, in Loango, as Pechuel-Loesche mentions, 

 pregnant women are forbidden to wear red, and it would doubtless be 

 possible to find many similar indications of this feeling in other parts 

 of the world. 



We have now passed in review all the influences which, by force 

 of their powerful attraction or repulsion, have during countless ages 

 impressed on man, and often on his ancestors, the strong and poignant 

 emotions which accompany the sensation of the most vividly and per- 

 sistently seen of all colors. We find evidence of the reality of the in- 

 fluences we have traced — especially those of fire, blood and love — in 

 Christian ecclesiastical symbolism, according to which red variously 

 signifies ardent love, burning zeal, energy, courage, cruelty and blood- 

 thirstiness. To the antagonism and complexity of these influences we 

 must doubtless attribute the disturbing nature of the emotion aroused 

 by the group of red sensations and the fluctuations in the predilection 

 felt towards it. It is at once the most attractive and the most repulsive 

 of colors. To enjoy it we must use it economically. The vision of 

 poppies on a background of golden corn, the glint of roses embowered 

 in green leaves, the sudden flash of a scarlet flower on a southern 



