olors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and
green together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral
gray, and the like; and how she strikes these color-concords for general
tones, and then works into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and
you will gradually come to like what she does, and find out new and
beautiful chords of color in her work every day. If you enjoy them,
depend upon it you will paint them to a certain point right: or, at
least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If
color does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it,
you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color,
whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.

182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend much on your
state of health and right balance of mind; when you are fatigued or ill
you will not see colors well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not
choose them well: thus, though not infallibly a test of character in
individuals, color power is a great sign of mental health in nations;
when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their coloring always
gets dull.[50] You must also take great care not to be misled by
affected talk about colors from people who have not the gift of it:
numbers are eager and voluble about it who probably never in all their
lives received one genuine color-sensation. The modern religionists of
the school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and
chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than
strawberries and plums.

183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea that color can help
or display _form_; color[51] always disguises form, and is meant to do
so.

184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on color that "warm
colors" (reds and yellows) "approach," or express nearness, and "cold
colors" (blue and gray) "retire," or express distance. So far is this
from being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so
great as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colors, as such,
are ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality (as
depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A blue
bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch
farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always
appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in re