The Popular Science Monthly, September, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, September, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
A later factor in the predilection for the red, orange and yellow
rays, though scarcely a factor in their discrimination, lies in the
fact that these are the colors of fire. Flame, apart from its beauty,
on which certain poets, Shelley especially, have often insisted, is a
source of massive physical satisfaction. Even under the conditions of
civilization we are often acutely sensitive to this fact, while under
the conditions of primitive life, in imperfect shelters, caves or
tents, where no other source of artificial light and heat is known, the
satisfaction is immensely greater. At the same time fire is associated
with food, it is a protection from wild beasts and the accompaniment of
the festival. It may even take on a sacred and symbolic character, and
the Roman goddess Vesta was, as Ovid said, simply ‘living flame.’
While fruit or fire would tend to make the emotional tone of red
pleasant, another very powerful factor in its emotional influences,
though this time as much by causing terror as pleasure, is the fact
that it is the color of blood. That ‘the blood is the life’ is a belief
instinctively stamped even on the emotions of animals, and it has not
died even in civilized man, for the sight of blood produces on many
persons a sickening and terrifying sensation which is only overcome
by habit and experience or by a very strong effort of will. It is
not surprising that in some parts of the world, and even in our own
Indo-European group of languages, the name for red is ‘blood-color.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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