56
PRISMATIC COLOR
darkened or impure form of white; and, lest this should be attributed to a chemical reaction between the various matiers that serve as pigments, the experiment can be carried out without allowing one pigment to touch another by using Maxwell discs, as will be shown in the next chapter.
(94) Before leaving these prismatic colors, let us study them in
the light of what has already been learned of color dimensions.
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Fig. 15
Not only do they present different values,
but also different chromas. Their values
range from darkness at each end, where red
and purple become visible, to a brightness in
the greenish yellow, which is almost white.
So on the color tree described in Chapter II.,
paragraph 34, yellow has the highest branch,
green is lower, red is below the middle, with
blue and purple lower down, near black.
(95) Then in chroma they range from the powerful stimulation of the red to the soothing purple, with green occupying an intermediate step. This is also given on the color tree by the length of its branches.
(96) In Fig. 15 the vertical curve describes the values of the spectrum as they grade from red through yellow, green, blue, and purple. The horizontal curve describes the chromas of the spec- trum in the same sequence; while the third curve leaning outward is obtained by uniting the first two by two planes at right angles to one another, and sums up the three qualities by a single descriptive line. Now the red and purple ends are far apart, and science forbids their junction because of their great difference in wave length. But the mind is prone to unite them in order to produce the red-purples which we see in clouds at sunset, in flowers and
