by Grant Allen
All the objects which we have hitherto examined agree in one particular — they are self-coloured. Man finds them as he uses them, and transfers at once to the brilliant gewgaws the taste which was developed upon the bright-hued fruits. It is the property of natural colouration which gives to some of them their special value. Flowers and fruits, besides being transitory, are common and universal, and so they are only prized for their immediate beauty. Feathers and shells, though more permanent, are still too easily procured to rank high in exchange value. But jewels and precious metals, besides being indestructible, are naturally rare, and cannot be artificially multiplied; so that their value is proportionately and permanently great. Yet it may be noted that their æsthetic rank is not so elevated as that of flowers or even of beautiful feathers (though here many will disagree), partly, perhaps, because of the strong element of glitter and powerful total stimulation, but still more, I fancy, because the economical value has vulgarised them hopelessly, reducing them from the level of beautiful natural objects to the position of mere high-priced baubles.
The class which we have next to examine, however, is that of materials not naturally coloured, but artificially stained or dyed. Man at length progresses beyond the mere passive stage of æsthetics, and enters upon the active career of the artist. No longer content simply to gaze with pleasure upon the fruits, flowers, birds, butterflies, shells, corals, and precious stones which nature has beautified beforehand for his admiration, he begins on his own account to increase the stock of coloured objects by the application of pigment.
Pigment stands in the same relation to the natural taste for colour as sugar to the natural taste for sweetness, or artificial essences to the natural taste for perfume.
We get the first stage of this active process in the use of ochre, chalk, and charcoal, for the decoration of the hair and body. These pigments represent a very elementary form of painting, because in their case a friable substance is merely applied to another body, so that small fragments adhere by their own nature or by simple wetting. The expression of vegetable juices gives us a step in advance, as in the case of woad, indigo, logwood, and the like. The dyeing of cloth carries us still further on the upward march; and the discovery of mixed pigments, applied with a stamp or brush, puts a culminating touch to the process. Dyeing and painting revolutionise the whole environment of semi-civilised man, until at last, if the reader will cast his eye around the room in which he sits, he will see that scarcely an object can be found in it which has not received some purely decorative addition of pigment, stain, or polish.
Side by side with this great change goes the discovery of glass, porcelain, and other materials which imitate the natural colouring of precious stones. The numerous changes which can be rung upon these various materials, together with pigments, dyes, and textile fabrics, would demand a separate history, and cannot, therefore, be adequately treated in a single chapter.
But it must be remembered that while mankind have been transferring their native love for colour to these new objects, and exercising their sense upon these artificial stimulants, the taste must have been widening and deepening from day to day. It might have seemed to the reader at first that these æsthetic feelings, derived from a remote ancestry, must be growing perpetually weaker with the lapse of time, so that some fear might arise for their final obsolescence. But, really, man has gone on from age to age, surrounding himself more and more with beautiful flowers, bright clothing, decorative furniture, works of art, and all other exquisitely-coloured objects, so that what was at first a mere passing fancy for pebbles and shells, has developed at length into a perfect necessity of his fully-evolved nature. As an able writer in the “Revue Philosophique” has pointed out, even the veriest boor would now feel half his existence cut from under him if the whole æsthetic element were removed out of his life.
A third point of view must engage our attention for a while before we quit the subject of the æsthetic value of colour. I mean the gradual progress in disinterestedness, which marks the evolution of the æsthetic feelings.
The starting-point of visual æsthetics, as we have already seen, is the appreciation of bright colour in the fruits which form the common food of the original species. A close connection with vital function is here obvious and unmistakable. The simplest transference from this primordial pleasure consists, doubtless, in the mere transient interest in brilliant objects of the nearer environment, such as flowers, parrots, or butterflies. Not only the quadrumana, but savage or uncultured man himself, displays little interest in such intangible and distant manifestations of colour as the rainbow or the sunset. But monkeys are reported to pull to pieces handsome blossoms, to snatch the longer feathers from unsuspecting birds, and to dart after beautiful butterflies which flit past them on the wing in the bright sunlight. No doubt their interest is quite as momentary as that of the child who tears out the ray-florets of a daisy, or chases a Camberwell beauty across the meadow; yet if the facts as commonly related be really true, they show at least some slight disinterested love for colour, inasmuch as coloured bodies are instinctively selected as objects of passing pursuit, while green leaves or brown insects attract little or no attention.
The monkey, however, goes no further in his æsthetic career than this first simple step — for, of course, we must count the phenomena of sexual selection as manifestations of purely interested feeling. But man proceeds to employ the objects which he collects as means for his own personal decoration. The adornment of the body thus constitues the second stage of disinterested æsthetic progress. Flowers stuck into the rude head-dress, or woven into festoons for wreaths and girdles, form one of the earliest and most natural ornaments. But beautiful as these simple articles of dress must always be, they fade too soon for permanent use. Accordingly, shells, corals, pebbles, precious stones, feathers, and furs supersede them, where obtainable, as decorative appliances. The first function of pigment is for daubing the hair and body; while tattooing, originally a form of subordinative mutilation, grows at last into a mere æsthetic practice. As knowledge and arts increase, rude textile fabrics come into use, and being dyed or stained with red, yellow, and blue, form personal adornments for the savage chief. Of course, the whole original object of dress was that of decoration, the ideas of warmth and decency only coming in as afterthoughts at a later period. Amongst the lower races, men, not women, monopolise the handsomest costumes, which are worn as marks of distinction rather than as purely æsthetic adjuncts. Here, once again, we note that the employment of colour in male dress survives amongst ourselves mainly in connection with military, ecclesiastical, and governmental etiquette.
Yet even the humming-birds have passed beyond this second stage of disinterested æsthetic feeling, and reached the third step, which we have next to consider; for, as Mr. Gould tells us, they decorate their nests with pretty bits of lichen or brilliant feathers, interwoven with the materials of the outer wall. Much more have our old friends the bower-birds overstepped this higher limit, by positively instituting what may be described as Assembly Rooms, adorned with all kinds of coloured or shining objects. Obviously, the ornamentation of your home is one degree more disinterested than the ornamentation of your own person, and that of your temples or public buildings, one degree more so than that of your home. Both these steps are soon taken in the course of human evolution. The negroes of the Niger stain the exterior of their huts with blue and white; while the people of High Asia commonly paint theirs with grotesque figures. Amongst our own houses, external painting is, of course, very common, especially in countries where wood is largely employed as a building material. But internal decoration carries us a step higher, because it does not bear the same impress of mere ostentatious display; it shows more ingrained personal æsthetic sensibility, and less love of admiration at the hands of others. The West Indian negroes dress in very bright colours, and, on the whole, with admirable taste — the brilliant hues setting off with effect the natural darkness of their skin — but they sel
dom or never do anything toward the decoration of their huts, which are mere square blocks of mud wall, lightly roofed with palm-thatch. A step higher up, the West African negroes paint their huts externally, while inside they remain mere brown and dirty hovels. But the cultivated civilised man thinks more of surrounding himself, under his own roof, with beautiful and ennobling works of art, than of making a boastful external show before the eyes of his neighbours.
Under the same heading, we may notice the cultivation of flowers in gardens and windows. This practice exhibits a considerable advance upon the mere casual taste for picking pretty blossoms, and also upon the collection of naturally-grown flowers for personal decoration. It testifies to æsthetic forethought, and gives room for immense disinterested developments of æsthetic feeling. Gardens of more or less rude construction are found very far down in the scale of humanity, and they continue to be objects of solicitude up to the very highest level of civilisation.
The habit of keeping birds (especially those of bright plumage, like parrots, cockatoos, and peacocks) as domestic pets, deserves a passing notice in the same connection. How low down in the scale of civilisation this practice may extend I cannot say; but I observe that Captain Moresby mentions it as prevailing among the savage Papuans.
If the mere common savage decorates his own little hut with pigment, skulls, shells, and flowers, much more will the great chief gather around his dwelling these æsthetic adjuncts, and others of higher kind. Only kings in Hawaii were permitted to use the feathers of the Melithreptes, from which the royal robes were woven. Purple has always been a peculium of kingship, and the palace is naturally thought of as a finer and more brilliant building than the hut or house of a subject. Even the veriest savages have distinctions of dress and decoration for their chiefs; and when we come to the royal abodes of Egypt, Assyria, Mexico, and Peru, we see at once how large a share monarchy has borne in the development of artistic handicraft, which, of course, entails a corresponding development of the æsthetic feelings. Solomon’s house and ivory throne, as well as his “apes and peacocks,” will immediately occur to the Biblical student. If we trace this influence down through history, we shall find that princes have always been the great patrons of fine art, and that painting in particular has been almost entirely fostered under the protection of monarchs and aristocracies. But these royal decorations react upon the popular taste, and finally afford new outlets for the disinterested æsthetic sentiment of the people. Hitherto, the sense of beauty has been more or less linked with the feeling of proprietorship: beyond this line it gains more and more, with every step, in abstractness and remoteness from the personality of the individual.
Religion, however, does still more for the æsthetic sentiment than even governmental adjuncts. If the house of the chief receives exceptional decoration, much more does the house of that deified ghost-chief, the god. Wherever we look, we see that all the resources of art, infantile or full-grown, are most fully employed in the service of religion. Painting, sculpture, music, the thousand minor arts of decoration and dress, all combine to do honour to the gods of the country. From the West African fetish, through the Polynesian shrines, the Indian topes, the Chinese pagodas, the Mexican and Peruvian temples, the mysterious colonnades of Egypt, the massive architecture of Babylon or Nineveh, the Hellenic Parthenons, the Italian Capitols, to the modern mosques of Islam and the towering cathedrals of Christendom, we find the highest artistic handicraft of every age and race lavished upon the dwelling-place of the national deities. The few traces of æsthetic feeling in the Hebrew Scriptures are connected with the workmanship of the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the hieratic dress. I have pointed out elsewhere how large a part the religious sentiment has borne in the genesis of the sublime: it must here suffice thus briefly to hint at the impetus which it has given to the kindred feeling of the beautiful. Whether we look at the endless painted images of Karnak or at the stained windows of Salisbury, we must equally recognise the enormous influence of religion in the growth of disinterested æsthetic feeling.
The remaining steps of the process would carry us too far into the general realm of æsthetics, if treated in full detail. Enough has been done already to show the main course of evolution, whereby the love for colour becomes extended and divorced from the personality of the sentient mind. The final step, it seems to me, is taken, when we arrive at the pure love of colour in nature for its own sake, the love which draws the cultivated man to gaze with delight upon the autumn hues, the rainbow, the sunset clouds, or the myriad tints of sea, and sky, and plain, and forest. In works of art, so many additional factors of plot-interest, of admiration for imitative skill, or of critical appraisement, enter into the total of our consciousness, that we can hardly analyse our feeling into its simple constituents; but when we look upon the crimson and golden hues of evening, the thrill of pleasure which echoes through our brain represents, I believe, almost the purest form of disinterested love for mere colour.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GROWTH OF THE COLOUR-VOCABULARY.
The names of colours are abstract words: they represent an attribute, not an object. Accordingly, they do not belong to the class of words which form the vocabulary of young children or of primitive men. They arise gradually, during the course of human evolution, personal and collective, in proportion as they are required by the needs of the individual or the race. A child of two years old (or a little more) knows very well the names of grapes, strawberries, and oranges; but for purple, crimson, and orange as a colour, it has as yet no appropriate verbal symbol. If you ask it what it calls these things, it will answer at once, “glape,” “tlawbellie,” or “olage,” as the case may be; but if you ask it, “what colour is this?” it has no answer ready, because it does not even comprehend the question.
Intelligent adults who have received a philosophical education — or rather, an education in philosophy — have grown so accustomed to the conception of substance as composed of attributes, so habituated to the analytical mode of regarding concrete objects, that they find a difficulty in realising the mental state of the unsophisticated human being. An educated man, if asked to describe a grape, would answer, “It’s a small, round, sweet, purple fruit, which grows in clusters on a twining vine;” but a labourer would have recourse to better known concrete objects, and reply, “It’s something like a plum, only about the size of a cherry, and grows in bunches the same as currants.” Or again, if a naturalist discovers for the first time a new animal — say an argus pheasant — he will minutely characterise its shape, size, colour, external appearance, and internal structure, detailing all these points in extremely abstract language; whereas, a countryman who goes to the Zoological Gardens will simply describe it as “between a peacock and a guinea-hen.” In every case, the average intelligence of mankind endeavours to grasp an idea by means of concrete realities. Only by an effort is it able to resolve the complex whole into its ultimate analytic constituents.
We shall fall into many errors, therefore, if we insist upon reading the simple language of primitive man by the light of our developed experience. Evolution for ever impresses upon us the lesson, that if we would be good philosophers we must forget our philosophy. Thus, the formal logician was prepared to interpose his learned objection just above, when I said that the names of colours are abstract. For the purposes of his artificial system, with its propositions and denotations and intensions, blue and green are concrete terms. I have no fault to find with the expression; when writing logically, we must all allow the truth of the distinction. But from the point of view of psychology, every word which does not denote a concrete thing in its totality, or a picturable action, must be regarded as abstract. While general names are not real abstractions, because they describe indiscriminate individuals, adjectives are real abstractions, because they describe a single property viewed in isolation from the other properties of the objects in which it is an element.
The names of colours, then, are abstract words; but, like all other
abstracts, they necessarily take their rise from a concrete. A moment’s reflexion will show us that the evolution of language could not proceed otherwise. The earliest names must be names of things or of visible and audible actions. These must afterwards be applied to other like things or to similar attributes, by slight changes in their meaning. Unless primitive man in the search for a means of intercommunication had hit upon the plan of framing a conventional word to express an abstract idea — a plan obviously itself too abstract in its nature for adoption by any but a high order of intelligence — he must clearly proceed by forming new words out of the old, by likening the unnamed to the nameable. And as a matter of fact, philological analysis shows us that such has been the actual course of development — that every abstract word can be ultimately traced back to a root of extreme concreteness, and every expression of attribute can be shown to belong in its origin to a definite subject.
It would be easy to give a philological analysis of the common colour names, such as red, green, blue, and yellow, in several ancient and modern languages, which would bear out the truth of this assertion; but I prefer to take examples from a later date, and to show the origin of one or two very new expressions, whose meaning is too plain to admit of any doubt. Though this method has far less appearance of learning than the other, it carries a great deal more conviction to the general reader: for we can easily see that rose-coloured is directly derived from the known word and the known concrete object, a rose; whereas most people must take on trust the origin of brown from an Indo-European verb meaning to burn, or that of the heraldic gules from a Persian word ghul, which designates the same favourite flower.
