Читать книгу The Colour-Sense: Its Origin and Development - Allen Grant - Страница 5
ОглавлениеINTRODUCTORY.
There is no element of our sensuous nature which yields us greater or more varied pleasure than the perception of colour. Whether we look at the larger physical wholes, the azure heaven above us, the purple sea beneath us, and the green meadows by our side;—or at the smaller organic bodies, the brilliant flowers, the crimson foliage of autumn, the gaudily painted butterflies, the beetles clad in burnished gold, the peacock adorned with all the hues of the rainbow, and the humming-birds decked out in ruby, sapphire, and amethyst;—or again at the transient effects of light in the spectrum, the soap-bubble, the iridescent surface of the opal, the tints of eventide mirrored in the glassy lake;—in each and every case we feel a thrill of pure and unselfish enjoyment, which no other mere sensuous stimulation is capable of arousing in our breasts. The pleasure of colour is one which raises itself above the common level of monopolist gratification, and attains to the higher plane of æsthetic delight.
Nor is man the only creature who can appreciate and enjoy the lavish store of beauty which nature pours forth for his pleasure in the fields and the forest. We shall see reason to conclude, from the facts collected in this volume, that many of our dumb relations can fully enter into the love for exquisite colour, at least in its simplest and earliest forms. We shall find good ground for believing that the bird of paradise does not display its gorgeous plumage to the careless eyes of an unobservant mate; that the gaily painted butterfly is not insensible to the lovely tracery upon the wings of its fellow; and even that the tropical lizards or batrachians can duly admire the glistening coats, crimson crests, or golden pouches of their lissome helpmates. We shall further note certain habits which may lead us to suspect that birds and insects are pleasurably affected, not only by the colour of their own kind, but also by the delicate or brilliant tints of the fruits and flowers upon which they feed. In short, our object must be to trace back the pleasure which man experiences from the deft combination of red and green and violet, in painting or in decorative art, to a long line of ante-human ancestry, stretching back indefinitely through geological ages to the first progenitors of vertebrate life.
More than this we must attempt to show. If we would learn fully the whole history of the colour-sense, we must track it backward through the generations of the earlier earth, till we discover what were the circumstances by which it was first produced. We must find out how the various modes of æther-waves, which we now know as colours, came originally to be distinguished from one another by the nascent eyes of half-developed reptiles and insects. We must see by what steps the hues of flowers, and seeds, and fruits, and small animal prey caused the growth of a distinctive colour-perception in the creatures which fed upon them. And we shall probably conclude at the same time that the sense thus developed became in turn a source of new pleasure to its possessors, and a groundwork for more marvellous developments in future. The taste which was formed by the lilies and roses, the golden oranges and purple grapes, ended by producing the metallic lustre of the sun-birds and the daintily shaded ornamentation of the argus-pheasant.
We may hope to show, furthermore, that the existence of bright colouring in the world at large is almost entirely due to the influence of the colour-sense in the animal kingdom. I do not mean, of course, that animals have anything to do with the objective existence of those different æther-waves in the pencil of light which, when decomposed or separated, we perceive as colours; nor do I mean to include in this category the shades of earth, sea, sky, and other great inorganic masses. Obviously the human or animal eye could have no influence upon their origin or colouring. Even the green leaves of the trees and grasses seem quite independent of man or beast. But I still think that a vast mass of the coloured objects with which we are most familiar owe their hues to the perceptions of some insect, bird, or animal. If we look briefly at a few of the best-known cases, the reader will more clearly comprehend the line of argument which this book proposes to itself.
In the drawing-room where we sit, every object has obtained its colour entirely with reference to the likes and fancies of humanity. Not only have the pictures and ornaments been painted so as to please our eyes, but the carpets, the wall-paper, the curtains, the table-covers, the embroidery, the damask on the chairs and sofas, the clothing of the women and children, have all been dyed on purpose to stimulate and gratify the sense of sight. Indeed, there is scarcely an article of human use and manufacture, from the vermilion-stained earthenware of the prehistoric savage and the woad adornment of the Cymric warrior, to the Lambeth and Vallauris pottery, or the cretonnes and crewel-work of modern æsthetic designers, which has not received some special manipulation to add pleasing colour by means of dyes or pigments. The universal effect of the colour-sense on human products is too obvious to need further illustration.
A step lower down, we reach the actual bodies of men and animals themselves. It would seem at first sight as though the colour-sense could have nothing to do with the production of these. Yet the theory of sexual selection, into which we shall enter more fully hereafter, shows us how the long-continued choice of beautiful mates may have had the effect of encouraging the growth of bright-hued individuals, and the obsolescence of their less favoured fellows. I shall try to point out, also, an adjunct to this theory, which seems to have escaped even the keen eyes of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and their German allies. I shall endeavour to prove that only those animals display beautiful colours, due to sexual selection, in whom a taste for colour has already been aroused by the influence of flowers, fruits, or brilliant insects, their habitual food. As the liking cannot have grown up without some groundwork of advantage to be gained by it, we might gather, even a priori, that such would be the case; and I hope, in the sequel, to adduce a sufficiently large array of positive instances to justify an inductive conclusion to the same effect.
Taking still another step backward, we arrive at the brilliantly coloured fruits and flowers, upon which these tastes were formed. And here we shall have reason to believe that the agency of insects has been most powerful in developing the hues of blossoms; while the fruits, as we shall see, are rather due to the selective action of birds and mammals. Between them almost all the colours of vegetal life, except the uniform green of the foliage, are probably produced, being due to the colour-sense of one or other of the great seeing classes, the vertebrate and the articulate.
Many lesser cases may be alleged, where colours have been acquired for purposes of protection or deception, and of such an abundance will be forthcoming in their proper place. But enough has doubtless been said to show the immense importance of the colour-sense in man or animals, and the conspicuous part which (as I believe) it has played in the moulding of organic forms. If I put in two antithetical paragraphs the various great classes of coloured objects which we do or do not owe to its operation, the reader will be able to see at a glance just how much influence I claim for it.
We do not owe to the colour-sense the existence in nature of the rainbow, the sunset, or the other effects of iridescent light; the blue sky, the green or purple sea, the red rocks, or the other great inanimate masses; the foliage of trees and shrubs, the hues of autumn, and the tints of precious stones or minerals generally.
But we do owe to the colour-sense the beautiful flowers of the meadow and the garden,—roses, lilies, carnations, lilacs, laburnums, violets, primroses, cowslips, and daisies; the exquisite pink of the apple, the peach, the mango, and the cherry, with all the diverse artistic wealth of oranges, strawberries, plums, melons, brambleberries, and pomegranates; the yellow, blue, and melting green of tropical butterflies; the magnificent plumage of the toucan, the macaw, the cardinal-bird, the lory, and the honeysucker; the red breast of our homely robin; the silver or ruddy fur of the ermine, the wolverine, the fox, the squirrel, and the chinchilla; the rosy cheeks and pink lips of English maidens; the whole catalogue of dyes, paints, and pigments; and, last of all, the colours of art in every age and nation, from the red cloth of the South Seas, the lively frescoes of the Egyptian, and the subdued tones of Hellenic painters, to the stained windows of Poitiers and the Madonna of the Sistine Chapel.
The origin and rise of this powerful sense, and the means by which it has effected all these marvellous reactions on the external world, form the text upon which we must string our discourse in the present volume. We shall begin with the nature of colour, viewed as an external and objective fact; we shall next look at the steps by which the various eyes of insects and animals became sensible to its diverse stimulations; we shall then proceed to ask what secondary effects the newly acquired sense produced upon the surrounding existences; and we shall finally examine its remote æsthetic results in the sphere of human activity. We shall thus have traced the perception of colour from its first faint beginnings in palæozoic seas or carboniferous forests down to its latest developments in the palaces or galleries of civilised man.
