Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/434

418 They are exquisite; and a friend having unusual predilections for color delights had for some days been "revelling" in what he termed the "pure sensuous thrill" they gave him. With a purpose in view, I asked him to show me the one he liked best out of perhaps some two or three hundred sheets. He quickly did so, having previously spent much time in selection. I then asked him why he chose that color and tint. He replied, "Oh it is like the friend you trust and the character you admire — so firm and deep" He had told me too much. I was in hunt for an unmistakable pleasure sensation. Had he described some particular thrill "streaming in from every inch of color," or "swelling up the eye-ball," or "creeping up his scalp," or "flooding down his spine," it would have corresponded more with a "sensuous thrill." But, knowing my friend as I do, I at once saw that what he described and what he had felt was a reaction of his character — a response of his stored-up cortical ideas and instincts rather than any immediate response to his retinal processes, as was the mere color.

I do not state this as if to settle our question, but to raise its difficulties. How shall we investigate this problem for men in general? I am not sure that my friend would always pick out the same color. Could I concoct for him some beverage of the same deep liquid hue, but which, being drunk, should throw him into spasms of violent nausea, I feel sure that forever after he would abominate that particular color that it would be peculiarly treacherous and vile to him. If there were any certain color around which clustered the preferences of most persons, — say a majority out of three sets of a thousand each, — this would speak for some intimate relation between the color and the choice. An insufficient number of tests have been made on this plan, but all that have been made fail to show, even approximately, any such constant preference. I believe that a thousand women chosen from the cotton-hands of the South would pick out a lot of violent colors, while a thousand Parisian modistes would choose tints soft and delicate. Should one be so fortunate as to hunt down the determining reasons for the difference of these choices, I am inclined