And for one who
appreciates color this is sufficient; he can point to the colors and
say--that is what I feel. To render his feeling also in words would
be a superfluous business, supposing they could be adequate to express
it; or, if they were adequate, that would make expression through color
superfluous. The value of any medium consists in its power to express
what none other can. Nevertheless, it is possible to find rough verbal
equivalents for the simpler colors. Thus every one would probably agree
with Lipps and call a pure yellow happy, a deep blue quiet and earnest,
red passionate, violet wistful; would perhaps feel that orange partakes
at once of the happiness of yellow and the passion of red, while green
partakes of the happiness of yellow and the quiet of blue; and in
general that the brighter and warmer tones are joyful and exciting,
the darker and colder, more inward and restful.
To explain the expressiveness of color sensations is as difficult as
to account for the parallel phenomenon in sounds. Here as there resort
is had to the principle of association. Colors get, it is thought,
their value for feeling either through some connection with emotionally
toned objects, like vegetation, light, the sky, blood, darkness, and
fire, or else through some relation to emotional situations, like
mourning or danger, which they have come to symbolize. And there is
little doubt that such associations play a part in determining the
emotional meaning of colors--the reticence and distance of blue, the
happiness of yellow, for example, are partly explained through the
fact that blue is the color of the sky, yellow the color of sunlight;
the meaning of black is due, partly at any rate, to association with
mourning.
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