In early art, represented truth, honor, and fidelity, and even at this
day we associate blue and truthfulness. Christ and the Virgin were
formerly painted with blue mantles, and blue is especially recognized as
the Virgin's color. We can never turn our eyes upward without seeing
truth's emblematical color. How appropriate that the heavens should be
blue! Of truthfulness and faithfulness it should be our constant
reminder.
Primary blue enters as a compound into three other colors of the
spectrum: green, indigo, and violet. As a primary color, it is much more
rarely seen in nature than either red or yellow. We have few blue birds,
few blue flowers, few blue fruits. As one of a compound, it is oftener
found than red. The grass, the leaves, everywhere proclaim the marriage
of good, as yellow anciently represented, and truth, as blue symbolized.
There is a deep significance in the change that has come over mankind's
view of the meaning of the first of these colors. With the loss of
faith, the tearing apart of truth and goodness, has come a change of
correspondence. Men have everywhere turned away from the light, though
still professing to strive for truth.
Each color possesses a character of its own, which proclaims to the
close observer the peculiar qualities of that to which it belongs. The
horticulturist reads the peculiarities of the fruit as readily by its
color as the phrenologist reads his by his 'bumps.' The red one, he will
tell you, is sour, the white one sweet, the pale one flat, and the green
one alkaline; that one is a good table apple, this one a superior cider
apple; and if you further ask the characteristics of a good cider apple,
he will tell you again it is known by its color, not only of the skin,
but also of the pulp, and that it can be foretold whether cider will be
weak, thin, and colorless, or possess strength, or richness, or color.
The botanist, too, regards color as indicative of quality, the yellow
flower having a bitter taste and a fixed, unfading hue, the black, a
poisonous, destructive property, etc., etc.
Truth, of which we have seen blue was the correspondent, is never
superficial, and, although apparent truths lie upon the surface, yet a
common adage locates truth at the bottom of a well. Seamen acknowledge
deep indigo blue of water to be indicative of profound depth. Of the
three or primitive colors, the red or heat color, which has been termed
light felt, the yellow or light color, which has been called heat seen,
and the blue, a color of chemical change, which is the color of growth,
these correspond in an unknown degree to the love, wisdom, and truth of
the Supreme One; heat to love, for love is heat; light to wisdom, for
wisdom is light; and germination and growth to truth, for by truth souls
grow into wisdom and love. The more we explore the arcana of nature the
more we will be enabled to discover the correspondence of the natural
with the spiritual world.