But the function of
natural bodies is here _selective_, not _creative_. There is no colour
_generated_ by any natural body whatever. Natural bodies have showered
upon them, in the white light of the sun, the sum total of all
possible colours; and their action is limited to the sifting of that
total--the appropriating or absorbing of some of its constituents,
and the rejecting of others. It will fix this subject in your minds if
I say, that it is the portion of light which they reject, and not that
which they appropriate or absorb, that gives bodies their colours.
Let us begin our experimental inquiries here by asking, What is the
meaning of blackness? Pass a black ribbon through the colours of the
spectrum; it quenches all of them. The meaning of blackness is thus
revealed--it is the result of the absorption of all the constituents
of solar light. Pass a red ribbon through the spectrum. In the red
light the ribbon is a vivid red. Why? Because the light that enters
the ribbon is not quenched or absorbed, but in great part sent back to
the eye. Place the same ribbon in the green of the spectrum; it is
black as jet. It absorbs the green light, and renders the space on
which that light falls a space of intense darkness.
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