Also, when you come to think of it, there is nothing showing a finer
organisation in the incapacity for finding sugar sweet and vinegar
sour. The only difference is that, as sugar happens to be sweet and
vinegar sour, an organisation which perceives the reverse is at sixes
and sevens with the universe, or a bit of the universe; and, exactly
to the extent to which this six-and-sevenness prevails, is likely to
be mulcted of some of the universe's good things.
How may I bring this home, without introducing a sickly atmosphere of
decadent art and literature into my valley of the bay-trees? And yet,
an instance is needed. Well; there is an old story, originating
perhaps in Suetonius, handed on by Edgar Poe, and repeated, with
variations, by various modern French writers, of sundry persons who,
among other realities, despise the fact that sheets and table-linen
are usually white; and show the subtlety of their organisation (the
Emperor Tiberius, a very subtle person, was one of the earliest to
apply the notion) by taking their sleep and food in an arrangement of
black materials; a sort of mourning warehouse of beds and
dining-tables.
Now this means simply that these people have bought "distinction" at
the price of one of mankind's most delightful birthrights, the
pleasure in white, the queen, as Leonardo put it, of all colours. Our
minds, our very sensations are interwoven so intricately of all manner
of impressions and associations, that it is no allegory to say that
white is good, and that the love of white is akin somehow to the love
of virtue. For the love of white has come to mean, thanks to the
practice of all centuries and to the very structure of our nerves,
strength, cleanness, and newness of sensation, capacity for
re-enjoying the already enjoyed, for preferring the already preferred,
for discovering new interest and pleasureableness in old things,
instead of running to new ones, as one does when not the old ones are
exhausted, but one's own poor vigour. The love of white means,
furthermore, the appreciation of certain circumstances, delightful and
valuable in themselves, without which whiteness cannot be present: in
human beings, good health and youth and fairness of life; in houses
(oh! the white houses of Cadiz, white between the blue sky and blue
sea!), excellence of climate, warmth, dryness and clearness of air;
and in all manner of household goods and stuff, care, order,
daintiness of habits, leisure and affluence. All things these which,
quite as much as any peculiarity of optic function, give for the
healthy mind a sort of restfulness, of calm, of virtue, and I might
almost say, of regal or priestly quality to white; a quality which
suits it to the act of restoring our bodies with food and wine, above
all, to the act of spiritual purification, the passing through the
cool, colourless, stainless, which constitutes true sleep.
All this the Emperor Tiberius and his imitators forego with their
bogey black sheets and table-cloths....