of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential.
I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the
wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this,
that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is
a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as
black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses;
when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three
defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity,
for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of
religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence
of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and
separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean
not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a
plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or
not seen.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means
something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in
many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost
said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age
has realised this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume.
For if it were really true that white was a blank and colourless
thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead
of black and grey for the funeral dress of this pessimistic period.
We should see city gentlemen in frock coats of spotless silver
linen, with top hats as white as wonderful arum lilies. Which is
not the case.

Meanwhile, I could not find my chalk.