PRISMATIC COLOR
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grapes and the amethyst. Indeed, it has been done unhesitatingly in most color schemes in order to supply the opposite of green.
(97) This gives a slanting circuit joining all the branch ends of the color tree, and has been likened to the rings of Saturn in Chapter I., paragraph 17.
A prismatic color sphere.
(98) With a little effort of the imagination we can picture a prismatic color sphere, using only the colors of light. In a cylindrical chamber is hung a diaphanous ball similar to a huge soap bubble, which can display color on its surface without obscuring its interior. ‘Then, at the proper points of the surrounding wall, three pure beams of colored light are admitted,—one red, another green, and the third violet-blue.
(99) They fall at proper levels on three sides of the sphere, while their intermediate gradations encircle the sphere with a complete spectrum plus the needed purple. As they penetrate the sphere, they unite to balance each other in neutrality. Pure whiteness is at the top, and, by some imaginary means their light gradually diminishes until they disappear in darkness below.
(100) This ideal color system is impossible in the present state of our knowledge and implements. Even were it possible, its immaterial hues could not serve to dye materials or paint pictures. Pigments are, and will in all probability continue to be, the practical agents of coloristic productions, however reluctant the scientist may be to accept them as the basis of a color system. It is true that they are chemically impure and imperfectly represent the colors of light. Some of them fade rapidly and undergo chemical change, as in the notable case of a green pigment tested
