"Distinction of sides is intended by Nature to imply distinction of colours" -- such was the sophism which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting whole towns at a time to the new culture.
Colour, if Tradition speaks the truth, once for the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient splendour over the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages.
And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours, and repeated it!
Out of colours ye seem to be baked, and out of glued scraps.
Why, I always supposed everyone thought in
colours. It must be very tiresome if you don't."
Indeed; he knew better than any one else at Haarlem or Leyden -- the two towns which boast the best soil and the most congenial climate -- how to vary the
colours, to modify the shape, and to produce new species.
Both the impostors begged him to be so kind as to step closer, and asked him if it were not a beautiful texture and lovely
colours. They pointed to the empty loom, and the poor old minister went forward rubbing his eyes; but he could see nothing, for there was nothing there.
SOCRATES: And if he had said, Tell me what they are?--you would have told him of other
colours which are
colours just as much as whiteness.
Forbes, E., on
colours of shells; on abrupt range of shells in depth; on poorness of palaeontological collections; on continuous succession of genera; on continental extensions; on distribution during glacial period; on parallelism in time and space
If we are so to regard it, we must distinguish the seeing from what is seen: we must say that, when we see a patch of
colour of a certain shape, the patch of
colour is one thing and our seeing of it is another.
It is brightly
coloured, but not so beautiful as the European species: in its flight, manners, and place of habitation, which is generally in the driest valley, there is also a wide difference.
In some way a feeling got among the
coloured people that it was far from proper for them to bear the surname of their former owners, and a great many of them took other surnames.