212 
THK CONDOR 
Vol. XV 
The secret of this magic fortress is the value of neutral gray. To parody 
Goethe; Gran isf cine gana besonderc Farbe. Gray (neutral) is a tint of a very 
special kind. It is the epitome or synthesis of all other colors in turn, including 
that color positive and negative of color, black-and-white. Its use precludes the 
necessity of an intimate acquaintance with color combinations. You do not have 
to puzzle over a given color and say, this is blue phis red plus green plus violet. 
Yon have only to say, this is blue plus so much (or approximately so much) 
neutral gray, and you have it. All this may be rice to the initiated, but it is still 
“caviar to the general.” 
Once you get the idea you cannot get away from the color-file. It has the ul- 
timate authority of simplicity, of logical sec[uence, and of comprehensiveness. One 
even ventures to hope that such a color-file may one day be actualized in glass 
or blocks of painted wood, as a recognized essential of the color-worker's ap- 
paratus. With such a device one might, for instance, by lifting off the top 
layer of white prisms survey all possible light tints at a glance, or by lifting off 
the four top layers (or whatever number you elect to have in your scheme) 
view all the pure colors and all gray tones thereof at a glance. This would be 
simplicity itself. Meanwhile this mental or ‘‘mnemonic” color-file will be 
found indispensable. 
A PRACTICAL SYSTEM OF COLOR DESIGNATION 
.\ Partial Critique of Ridgway’s “Color Standards and Nomenclature" 
By \VILLh\M LEON DAWSON 
W E ARE LNDER deep and lasting obligation to Mr. Ridgway for hav- 
ing brought order out of chaos in the standardization of color. He ha.s 
shown a comprehensive grasp of the whole color problem, and has 
hrought to its solution a practical sagacity never before equalled. Thanks to 
him we have at last a real color key. The first edition of “Color Standards and 
Nomenclature" might have been a hundred thousand copies instead of one thou- 
sand if attention could first have been properly aroused to this most exquisite 
and intimate of human interests, color appreciation. How^ever, we are over- 
joyed to see an authoritative beginning made. The practical standardization of 
color has been accomplished ; but the same cannot be said of the equally practical 
(though perhaps not equally important) standardization of color names. The 
reason for this is apparent. Color names have arisen singly and at haphazard, ac- 
cording to the convenience, or necessity, or caprice of the individual. Collectively, 
they have come down to us with a thousand varying sanctions of experience, o1 
poetry, and nature and all the handicrafts besides. For ever}^ color name that has 
lived, a dozen have been .still-born, or died in infancy. To make selection from this 
motley host is not only to be arbitrary and capricious, by reason of the thousands of 
other names rejected, but it is to fail in the fundamental purpose, which is to 
fix concepts in their necessary relations. 
Now the function of language is to communicate thought, ideas. This it 
does by the use of words, words which are chiefly the symbols of a common ex- 
perience. The more established the value of the component words, i. e., the more 
certain their appeal to common experience, the clearer the language, the more 
