Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/464

460 age and of another continent has seemed so precious, the color of the sun, of gold and of corn, of honey and of amber. It is still a very familiar color to us, alike in sunlight and artificial light, and when not too intense is in no degree fatiguing to the sense-organs; harmonious tones of yellow, indeed, in the scheme of the decoration of a room, are for many, perhaps for most, people highly agreeable to live in. Nor can we claim that our dislike to yellow reveals a more refined esthetic sensibility than the ancients possessed, for the painter knows nothing of this antipathy. In Rembrandt, indeed, we have a painter of the very highest rank who, as he slowly approached the culminating point of his art, was more and more fascinated by yellow, until in the end his pictures, even his portraits, are entirely covered by the shimmer of old gold.

It was clearly the advent of Christianity that introduced a new feeling in regard to yellow, leading, as Magnus has remarked, to a preference for the dark end of the spectrum. In very large measure, no doubt, this was merely the Outcome of the whole of the christian revulsion against the classic world and the rejection of everything which stood as the symbol of joy and pride. Red and yellow were the favorite colors of that world. The love of red was too firmly rooted in human nature for even Christianity to overcome it altogether, but yellow was a point of less resistance and here the new religion triumphed. Yellow became the color of envy.

In some measure, however, this feeling may have been not so much a reaction as the continuation of a natural development. The classic world had clearly begun, as savages have begun everywhere, with an almost exclusive delight in red, even an almost exclusive attention to it, and for Homer as for the Arabs the rainbow was predominantly red; yellow had next been added to the attractive colors; very slowly the other colors of the spectrum began to win attention. Thus Democritus substituted green for yellow in the list of primary colors previously given by Empedocles. It was at a comparatively late period that blue and violet became interesting or even acquired definite names. The invasion of Christianity happened in time to join in this movement along the spectrum—for even in the second century after Christ's birth Aulus Gellius when discussing colors scarcely mentions green and blue—and in doing so christian energy was reinforced by its instinctive repulsion for the brilliant colors associated with pagan rites and customs. Thus it was that not red or yellow, but blue, the hue of heaven, became the traditional color of the Virgin's raiment. In ecclesiastical usage yellow has never been regarded with favor; it has usually been either a color to avoid or to treat with indifference. This feeling has not diminished with the centuries; in 1833 the use of yellow in priests' garments was prohibited, and in the protestant church yellow has never been used at all.