e American Beauty is distinct from the Jacqueminot and La
France. Odours in certain grasses fade as really to my sense as certain
colours do to yours in the sun. The freshness of a flower in my hand is
analogous to the freshness I taste in an apple newly picked. I make use
of analogies like these to enlarge my conceptions of colours. Some
analogies which I draw between qualities in surface and vibration, taste
and smell, are drawn by others between sight, hearing, and touch. This
fact encourages me to persevere, to try and bridge the gap between the
eye and the hand.

Certainly I get far enough to sympathize with the delight that my kind
feel in beauty they see and harmony they hear. This bond between
humanity and me is worth keeping, even if the idea on which I base it
prove erroneous.

Sweet, beautiful vibrations exist for my touch, even though they travel
through other substances than air to reach me. So I imagine sweet,
delightful sounds, and the artistic arrangement of them which is called
music, and I remember that they travel through the air to the ear,
conveying impressions somewhat like mine. I also know what tones are,
since they are perceptible tactually in a voice. Now, heat varies
greatly in the sun, in the fire, in hands, and in the fur of animals;
indeed, there is such a thing for me as a cold sun. So I think of the
varieties of light that touch the eye, cold and warm, vivid and dim,
soft and glaring, but always light, and I imagine their passage through
the air to an extensive sense, instead of to a narrow one like touch.
From the experience I have had with voices I guess how the eye
distinguishes shades in the midst of light. While I read the lips of a
woman whose voice is soprano, I note a low tone or a glad tone in the
midst of a high, flowing voice. When I feel my cheeks hot, I know that I
am red. I have talked so much and read so much about colours that
through no will of my own I attach meanings to them, just as all people
attach certain meanings to abstract terms like hope, idealism,
monotheism, intellect, which cannot be represented truly by visible
objects, but which are understood from analogies between immaterial
concepts and the ideas they awaken of external things. The force of
association drives me to say that white is exalted and pure, green is
exuberant, red suggests love or shame or strength. Without the colour or
its equivalent, life to me would be dark, barren, a vast blackness.

Th