Colors and Their Character

In everyday life there does not seem to be anything unusual in speaking of the character of colors. We may speak of a delicate blue a vivid red a lively yellow a naive green. Colors mean something to us; they have a kind of personality more or less to be compared with the human personality. The ancient Egyptian word ~wn for color later came to mean also the character of a living being (8z 414). Mantegazza even speaks of the soul of a color. A fine example of the intensity with which colors may be experienced is the following quotation from Sartre (204 25). An artist coming from a cafe enters the sunlit street: toutes les couleurs setaient allumees en meme temps et lui faisaient fete comme en 29 cetait le bal de la Redoute le Camaval la Fan­ tasia; les gens et les obj ets s etaient congestionnes; le violet dune robe se viola