Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/462

458 Investigations on students in various countries have almost invariably shown that yellow is the least attractive color. In Germany, Cohn found among students that yellow, even in any degree of saturation, was never the preferred color. In determining the color preferences of 100 students in Columbia University, it was found that yellow came, at a considerable distance, fourth, being only followed by green, while Wissler found that, for male and female students alike, yellow is of all colors the least frequently preferred (by two per cent, of the men and five per cent, of the women); among the men it was also the most frequently disliked, though among the women this dislike was transferred to orange. The dislike of female students to yellow, it will be seen, seems a little less marked than that of male students. This is confirmed by an inquiry at Wellesley College, where it was found that though only 10 per cent, of the women preferred yellow, it was yet more frequently preferred than green or violet. At Cornell University, in a series of careful experiments on a small number of individuals, Major considered that there was no evidence of a positive dislike of yellow, yet all his subjects found yellow or orange among the least pleasant colors.

Among adults generally, it must be said finally, that yellow and orange are very seldom the favorite colors, and in ascertaining the color preferences of 4,500 men and women at the Chicago Exposition, Jastrow found that yellow and orange were the least preferred colors, though here also women seemed to like yellow more often than men.

But for mankind in general these results, undisputed as they probably are, do not hold universally good. There is one vast and highly important area of the world, by no means uncivilized in large part, where yellow, so far from being disparaged, is held in the highest honor. Throughout nearly the whole of Asia, ancient and modern—in Assyria, in India and in Ceylon, throughout China, in the Malay peninsula—yellow is usually the supreme and most sacred color. In India and Ceylon yellow is preferred, whether in flowers or in garments, and the substances that produce yellow dyes are held in highest honor and are essential in the ritual of many ceremonies; in the ceremonial of Hindu marriage, for instance, turmeric is always necessary. Turmeric is in India the substitute for the saffron, probably used by the Aryans be