Eastlake's heading for Part VI speaks of moral associations; Goethe's title, Sinnlich-sittliche Wirkung der Farbe, names a sensory-moral effect. The English word points to a mechanism the section argues against. Effects that are "at all times decided and significant" and arrive "immediately" are not learned links, and §760 insists that the eye is "not thus merely habituated" to colour but predisposed to produce it. Goethe does know colour by convention, green appropriated to hope, and later calls that the allegorical use, a matter of accident and caprice. This part treats the other kind, colour acting by its own nature. Eastlake's Note CC, which credits poets with working through association, suggests the heading was his considered reading rather than a slip.
Theory of Colours — trans. Charles Lock Eastlake (1840)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (Charles Lock Eastlake). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
The necessity and suitableness of such a conventional language where the elementary sign expresses the appearance itself, has been duly appreciated by extending, for instance, the application of the term polarity, which is borrowed from the magnet to electricity, &c. The _plus_ and _minus_ which may be substituted for this, have found as suitable an application to many phenomena; even the musician, probably without troubling himself about these other departments, has been naturally led to express the leading difference in the modes of melody by _major_ and _minor_.
757.
For ourselves we have long wished to introduce the term polarity into the doctrine of colours; with what right and in what sense, the present work may show. Perhaps we may hereafter find room to connect the elementary phenomena together according to our mode, by a similar use of symbolical terms, terms which must at all times convey the directly corresponding idea; we shall thus render more explicit what has been here only alluded to generally, and perhaps too vaguely expressed.
[1] Eine Entzweyung geht vor; literally, _a division takes place_.
According to some, the two magnetic powers are previously in the bar,
and are then separated at the ends.--T.
PART VI.
EFFECT OF COLOUR WITH REFERENCE TO MORAL ASSOCIATIONS.
758.
Since colour occupies so important a place in the series of elementary phenomena, filling as it does the limited circle assigned to it with fullest variety, we shall not be surprised to find that its effects are at all times decided and significant, and that they are immediately associated with the emotions of the mind. We shall not be surprised to find that these appearances presented singly, are specific, that in combination they may produce an harmonious, characteristic, often even an inharmonious effect on the eye, by means of which they act on the mind; producing this impression in their most general elementary character, without relation to the nature or form of the object on whose surface they are apparent. Hence, colour considered as an element of art, may be made subservient to the highest æsthetical ends.--Note C C.
759.
People experience a great delight in colour, generally. The eye requires it as much as it requires light. We have only to remember the refreshing sensation we experience, if on a cloudy day the sun illumines a single portion of the scene before us and displays its colours. That healing powers were ascribed to coloured gems, may have arisen from the experience of this indefinable pleasure.
760.
The colours which we see on objects are not qualities entirely strange to the eye; the organ is not thus merely habituated to the impression; no, it is always predisposed to produce colour of itself, and experiences a sensation of delight if something analogous to its own nature is offered to it from without; if its susceptibility is distinctly determined towards a given state.
761.
From some of our earlier observations we can conclude, that general impressions produced by single colours cannot be changed, that they act specifically, and must produce definite, specific states in the living organ.
762.
They likewise produce a corresponding influence on the mind. Experience teaches us that particular colours excite particular states of feeling. It is related of a witty Frenchman, "Il prétendoit que son ton de conversation avec Madame étoit changé depuis qu'elle avoit changé en cramoisi le meuble de son cabinet, qui étoit bleu."
763.
In order to experience these influences completely, the eye should be entirely surrounded with one colour; we should be in a room of one colour, or look through a coloured glass. We are then identified with the hue, it attunes the eye and mind in mere unison with itself.
764.
The colours on the _plus_ side are yellow, red-yellow (orange), yellow-red (minium, cinnabar). The feelings they excite are quick, lively, aspiring.
YELLOW.
765.
This is the colour nearest the light. It appears on the slightest mitigation of light, whether by semi-transparent mediums or faint reflection from white surfaces. In prismatic experiments it extends itself alone and widely in the light space, and while the two poles remain separated from each other, before it mixes with blue to produce green it is to be seen in its utmost purity and beauty. How the chemical yellow developes itself in and upon the white, has been circumstantially described in its proper place.
766.
In its highest purity it always carries with it the nature of brightness, and has a serene, gay, softly exciting character.
767.