st some of its own colour back
in the light that it reflects.

Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your
hand: every object in the room, on that side of it, reflects some, but
more feebly, and the colours mixing all together form a neutral[209]
light, which lets the colour of your hand itself be more distinctly seen
than that of any object which reflects light to it; but if there were no
reflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.

Objects are seen, therefore in general, partly by direct light, and
partly by light reflected from the objects around them, or from the
atmosphere and clouds. The colour of their light sides depends much on
that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colours of
the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand
what colour an object will have at any point of its surface, that colour
depending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of
rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides
is, that their colour will be changeful, and that a picture which gives
them merely darker shades of the colour of the light sides must
assuredly be bad.

Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You will
see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow of
your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of
shade seen at once. And although the paper is white, and your hand of a
rosy colour somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the
flesh, and is of a very deep grey. The reason of this is, that much
light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but
very little is reflected from other things to the paper itself in that
chink under your finger.

In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of the
shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the object. I
say in general, because a thousand accidents may interfere to prevent
its being so. Take a little bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or the
ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand farthest
from the window; you will presently find you are throwing gleams of
light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the
glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow altogether, and
you will see your hand da