London.)]

This world is too far above us for its harmony to touch our
souls. A great silence, like an impenetrable wall, shrouds its
life from our understanding. White, therefore, has this harmony
of silence, which works upon us negatively, like many pauses in
music that break temporarily the melody. It is not a dead
silence, but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the
appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in
the ice age.

A totally dead silence, on the other hand, a silence with no
possibilities, has the inner harmony of black. In music it is
represented by one of those profound and final pauses, after
which any continuation of the melody seems the dawn of another
world. Black is something burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral
pyre, something motionless like a corpse. The silence of black is
the silence of death. Outwardly black is the colour with least
harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the
minutest shades of other colours stand clearly forward. It
differs from white in this also, for with white nearly every
colour is in discord, or even mute altogether.

[Footnote: E.g. vermilion rings dull and muddy against white, but
against black with clear strength. Light yellow against white is
weak, against black pure and brilliant.]

Not without reason is white taken as symbolizing joy and spotless
purity, and black grief and death. A blend of black and white
produces gray which, as has been said, is silent and motionless,