e early fourteenth century, which I do not find
definitely in any previous work, nor afterwards in general art, though
constantly, and necessarily, in that of great colorists, namely, the
union of one color with another by reciprocal interference: that is to
say, if a mass of red is to be set beside a mass of blue, a piece of the
red will be carried into the blue, and a piece of the blue carried into
the red; sometimes in nearly equal portions, as in a shield divided into
four quarters, of which the uppermost on one side will be of the same
color as the lowermost on the other; sometimes in smaller fragments,
but, in the periods above named, always definitely and grandly, though
in a thousand various ways. And I call it a magnificent principle, for
it is an eternal and universal one, not in art only,[4] but in human
life. It is the great principle of Brotherhood, not by equality, nor by
likeness, but by giving and receiving; the souls that are unlike, and
the nations that are unlike, and the natures that are unlike, being
bound into one noble whole by each receiving something from, and of, the
others' gifts and the others' glory. I have not space to follow out this
thought,--it is of infinite extent and application,--but I note it for
the reader's pursuit, because I have long believed, and the whole second
volume of "Modern Painters" was written to prove, that in whatever has
been made by the Deity externally delightful to the human sense of
beauty, there is some type of God's nature or of God's laws; nor are any
of His laws, in one sense, greater than the appointment that the most
lovely and perfect unity shall be obtained by the taking of one nature
into another. I trespass upon too high ground; and yet I cannot fully
show the reader the extent of this law, but by leading him thus far. And
it is just because it is so vast and so awful a law, that it has rule
over the smallest things; and there is not a vein of color on the
lightest leaf which the spring winds are at this moment unfolding in the
fields around us, but it is an illustration of an ordainment to which
the earth and its creatures owe their continuance, and their Redemption.

Sec. XXVII. It is perfectly inconceivable, until it has been made a
subject of special inquiry, how perpetually Nature employs this principle
in the distribution of her light and shade; how by the most extraordinary
adaptations, apparently accidental, but always in exactly the right
place