ON LIGHT
I do not think—I entirely reject the idea that colors constitute the first element, and that the sun is only the synthesis of their spectrum. I cannot see that the sun may be white, and that each color gives a share of its own virtue to it, and that their accord determines it. There is no color without an extrinsic support; from which we learn that it is itself an exterior thing, the diverse witness that matter renders to the pure source of indivisible splendor. Do not pretend to separate light; since it is light which divides darkness, producing seven notes according to the intensity of its effort. A vase of water or a prism, by the interposition of a transparent and thick medium and the refractive play of facets, allows us to watch this in the act. The free direct ray remains invariable, but color appears as soon as there is a captured refraction, which matter takes to itself as an especial attribute. The prism, in the calculated dispersive powers of its three angles and the concertedaction of its dihedral triple mirror, encloses all possible play of reflections, and restores to the light itsequivalent in color. I compare light to a woven substance,—where the rays constitute the warp, and where the wave of color, always implying a repercussion, is the woof. Color is nothing more than that.
If I examine the rainbow or the spectrum projected on a wall, I see a gradation in the nature of the tints, as well as in their relative intensity. Yellow occupies the center of the spectrum and permeates it to each edge, where the outer tones exclude it by degrees of obscuration. We can understand it to be the most immediate veil of light, while red and blue are reciprocal images of light metamorphized into two equally balanced tones. Light plays the rôle of mediator; it prepares the mixed colors by blending them in neighboring bands, thus provoking complementary tones. In it and by it, extreme red combined with green—as blue combines with orange—disappears in the unity of white.
Color, then, is a particular phenomenon of reflection, which the reflecting body, penetrated by the light, appropriates and restores in an altered form. This form is the result of the ray’s complete and ruthlessanalysis and examination which will not be denied.
And the intensity of tones varies, following a gamut of which yellow is the keynote, according to the more or less complete response of matter to the solicitations of the light.
Who would not be shocked with the affirmation of the classic theory that the color of an object results from its absorption of all the colored rays except that one whose livery it seems to wear? On the contrary, I should think that color, which constitutes the visible individuality of each thing, is an original and authentic quality in it; and that the color of the rose is no less its property than the perfume.
That which we measure is not the rapidity of light, but simply the resistance that its surroundings oppose to it, while transforming it.
And visibility itself is only one of the properties of light; differing with different subjects.