Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/436

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. I.

likes of civilization, but I do see ample room for them to have come down to us through instincts deeply inherited or through associations passed from generation to generation, or acquired in our individual lives, no elements of which ever or anywhere were seated directly in retinal stimulation. To make this difficult subject a little more plain, let me give an extreme illustration. Bright red infuriates a bull. Let us analyze his instincts. Red is the color of blood. The bull has always been a fighter. When he has fought he has seen blood. Bright red has seldom on his native heath and in connection with a moving creature been the object of his attention except to fight it. Through the dust of conflict the lolling tongue or a flowing wound would be the most conspicuous object to guide his aim and attack by. Now, far-fetched origins of instincts are always uncertain, but I can far more readily understand a bull's ordinary conduct toward flaming red on the above explanation than I can by attributing the marked difference between the bull's performances and those of a cow or horse toward the same handkerchief to some difference of retinal physiology, or to some difference of æsthetic temperament or spiritual quale as distributed between bulls and horses.

Perhaps something might be expected to be said here of contrasts, but these seem so plainly to be secondary cortex effects that I dare here to omit them.

Few things are now better known in psychology than that our most ordinary sensations may arouse associations so close that the independent nature of the latter would never be suspected from the mere data of the occurrence. Until Berkeley it was scarcely believed that visual direction was given in terms based upon separate organs from those which give us color. Yet to recognize all this does not wholly solve our problem. Even if we decided that all the æsthetics of color were associative, we have yet to account for the seat and origin of these associations. But we do not wholly so decide. I am a little inclined to think that we may yet at times and under proper circumstances have æsthetic color sensations proper, though we should esteem them to be of comparatively rare occurrence and