8 ON COLOUR. Paet I. 



It is of more importance for the proper arrangement of 

 colours to ascertain which harmonise in juxtaposition than to 

 occupy ourselves with abstruse questions respecting their 

 properties, or the laws by which they ought to be regulated ; 

 which, though they may display great thought and scientific 

 knowledge, are here of little practical use ; and which, like the 

 constitutions of certain wise professors, appear as plausible on 

 paper as they are impossible in practice. 



7. From facts and actual experience we may obtain some- 

 thing positive and useful; from theory nothing can be expected, 

 so long as the subject itself is not thoroughly understood, ex- 

 cept the most vague and contradictory conclusions. We have 

 constant proofs of this. One lays down as an axiom, that as 

 light is composed of the three primaries, those colours, when 

 used in the proportion necessary to form white light, " neu- 

 tralise" each other, and should therefore be so employed for 

 decorative purposes. But if when so put together they really 

 did neutralise each other, they would then be deprived of 

 their real effect, and we should counteract the very object 

 we had in view. To ornament with colour and neutralise 

 the colour is a contradiction. But it is supposed to accord 

 with a theory. Fortunately, however, the three primaries 

 placed in juxtaposition do accord admirably without under- 

 going this metamorphosis ; and it has been found neces- 

 sary to employ artificial means to obtain any approach (and 

 that too a very imperfect one) to the white light they com- 



and Ma from verbs meaning " to nourish " and " to fashion " (neither of 

 Avhich indeed is very applicable) than from the two natural and untaught 

 sounds made by infants, to which the signification of father and mother 

 were afterwards applied. Again, the mode of reckoning by tens (at once 

 the most obvious and natural, from the ten fingers) is thought to be " one 

 of the most marvellous achievements of the human mind, based on an 

 abstract conception of quantity, and regulated by a spirit of philosophical 

 classification," and the child Harpocrates, with its finger to its mouth, 

 has been thought to represent " Silence," instead of the idea of " infancy," 

 from a very common habit of young children. 



