Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/435

No. 4.] to suspect that it might turn finally on the mere facts of dye-production. Certain dyes have been abundantly and cheaply produced from ancient times. From simple reasons of nature and of science these have been strong simple colors. It is best, for the daily gown of the farm-hand, to be one not easily showing soil, therefore preferably one not of bright color. But Sunday toggery and occasional 'camp-meeting' trimmings could be of brighter hues. The mere neatness and skin-agreeableness, therefore, or the many exciting associations experienced on these exceptional occasions of wearing brighter colors, (in turn none of the æsthetic elements of which associations were retinal,) — these may have thus first determined the 'liking' for them; and, so determined, this preference would thereafter remain attached to them until supplanted by some other associations. The particular kind of bright colors here chosen may thus have depended entirely on the difficulties and historical developments of chemistry. Again for the modiste. I am told by a prominent dye-man that "any one who could discover the manufacture of any strikingly new good and fast fabric dye of any tint or color whatever could get a hundred thousand dollars for the patent to-morrow." Rarity, not some innate charm, seems hinted here. Mere rarity now might not win the modiste's honest preference. But if we consider that for a long time the rare tints have become the complex tints, we may see how rarity by gradual and slow degrees has educated lovers of novelties to prefer soft and delicate colors, — educated them through the pangs and satisfactions of rivalry far more than through the unfolding of any æsthetic process seated in the eye. What is the seat of rivalry we will discuss in proper place, but it is not in the eye.

I feel sure, if the first gift of civilization to a wild Central Africa native should be a shawl of bright red color, that such would appear to her more beautiful than the most delicate mauve in the whole collection of "Bradley's Color-Sheets"; and if the shawl had been mauve, then red would sink into insignificance. I do not know and no one could trace all the primary circumstances which have determined the color likes and