Page:Elementary Color (IA gri c00033125012656167).djvu/24

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14
THE THEORY OF COLOR.

ditions, and also standards by which to analyze, measure and record these results. In selecting these standards more regard must be given to the aesthetic or psychical effect of the pigmentary standards than to the purely scientific or physical properties of colored light. This selection is of great interest to the physiological psychologist because it is only by the comparison and averaging of thousands of experiments made on different people that valuable theories can be formulated.

With standards and a nomenclature, color will be placed on an equal footing with other subjects, so that perceptions of color effects may be recorded and discussed with much of the definiteness with which we treat form and tone. Because this has not heretofore been possible, comparatively little advance has been made during the last two decades in the aesthetic consideration of material color which is the only practical phase of the subject, and if any greater progress is to be achieved in the future it evidently must be along new lines.

From the nursery to the university we are constantly asking two questions, "What is it?" and "Why is it?" and this is what the educator from the Kindergarten to the College is called upon to answer. In his laboratory the psychologist is collecting physical facts by tests regarding the powers of the eye and the ear, the sense of touch, weight, memory, etc., and these experiments when classified, arranged and averaged, furnish a basis for formulating theories, all of which is called psychology.

In vision, form and color play the principal parts, in fact cover the whole ground if we include light and shade in color where it belongs.

Experiments regarding form can be and have long been very definitely recorded but this has not been true with color ._

To Froebel must be given the honor of introducing logical form study into primary education, and on this has been built the present admirable system of drawing in our higher grades of schools, and the introduction of the standard forms in solids