seems yellow.' This perpetual inhibition, initiated by the early christians, of the agreeable associations of yellow, and the concomitant emphasis, not only in language but also in actual life, of all its most unpleasant associations, may possibly account for the predominant emotional tone of yellow among peoples of European origin to-day.
A doubt may indeed possibly arise as to the complete adequacy of such an explanation. Can we absolutely exclude any innate psychic tendency physiologically rooted in the organism? A curious circumstance recorded by Latta, in his careful psychological investigation of a man operated on at the age of thirty for congenital cataract, might possibly be held to support the doubt. The first color that the subject noticed on recovering from the operation was red, while green took him the longest time to master. But 'the first time he saw yellow he became so sick that he thought he would vomit.'[1] One might be tempted to regard this incident as a brilliant justification of the association between bile and yellow and of the attitude of Christendom towards this color; an adult man, whose visual sense-organs have retained their virginal delicacy, at once becomes 'bilious' when he sees yellow! But, even putting aside the possibility of idiosyncrasy, it is fairly obvious that the man would approach the sight of colors with certain prepossessions; we are not told that he was shown yellow without being informed of its name, and since blind people are interested and curious with regard to the nature of color, we may well believe that this man had imbibed the current ideas as to yellow and that the appropriate affective tone was already associated with the color before he had ever seen it.
However that may be, the strange history of yellow in the human mind and its striking vicissitudes are not only full of interest, but they really bring us up to a great problem which the psychologist must constantly face under a myriad of aspects: the respective parts which must be assigned to the innate properties of the psychic organism and to the temporary reactions it has acquired under the influence of a slowly shifting environment. How far, the psychologist must so often ask himself, am I investigating the intrinsic qualities of the stream of consciousness? How far am I registering the images reflected from its banks?
- ↑ British Journal Psychology, June, 1904.
