French consciousness combines the colour preferences of more peoples, gathered from a broader range of area, and a wider scope in kind. There is also a native tendency to amalgamate these in a greater degree than among any other living people. France, always susceptible to new forms of expressing the aesthetic idea, gave birth to and developed Gothic thought, accepted and digested the Italian Renaissance, and developed its own distinct period styles. It destroyed the monarchic expression of those styles and built a new republic which has inexhaustible mines of art wealth accumulated since the tenth century to draw upon as an adequate means of expressing modern ideas.

This explains why the French have long been supreme in the realm of the fine arts as well as in the applied or practical arts of life. They are adepts in the solution of problems of artistic expression in furnishings, clothing, and the use of accessory objects.

The qualities of the English are so at variance with the French that but to mention their character and their ideals produces in the mind quite a different conception. One is reminded at once of those qualities that have made the English styles less flippant, less changeable, less erratic in value change, more general in hue appreciation and more sombre in intensity relation than those of any of the other nations that we have mentioned.

In like manner, it would be simple enough to see why the Netherlands, Flanders, Germany, or any other country has developed a special liking for or tendency to the use of some particular gamut of colour. The reason for the choice is always found in the quality of the consciousness of the people who are to use colour.

One instinctively selects that symbol in any field which most clearly illustrates or describes the idea which he wishes to convey. If a highly neutralized colour is more restful than a more intense one, and I desire rest, when intense colours and neutralized ones are before me, I instinctively select the neutralized one. It is, of course, implied that I realize the force of the symbol.

If light, bright blues, pinks, and yellows express anything, they express light-hearted, youthful, rather flippant and old-fashioned feminine attributes. When a man looks about for a colour scheme for his library, den, or sleeping-room, he instinctively leaves such things alone. They do not express his qualities, nor those with which he desires to concern himself when he wishes to concentrate on his work, or to sleep and rest.

We, the people of the United States of America, are the most conglomerate of all peoples. We have, without having had time to amalgamate the characteristics of any people, received all peoples with open arms, until we are a nation one hundred million strong and represent nearly every form and grade of civilization. Naturally we are a people of many minds, many ideas, with distinctively individual and peculiar qualities, striving to be a nation. Our national colour expression can be nothing short of every colour available. We do not limit ourselves in any other field. We cannot limit ourselves in the range of colours used.

Because this is true, it is of the greatest importance that we seek to understand from every possible source what qualities may be expressed by different combinations, and learn to use those combinations to express individual ideas in moderation and with discretion.

But even this is not the most important thing to know. A people is mentally - and that means morally, intellectually, and ethically - made up of its inherited tendencies and whatever is taken into consciousness through the five senses. Environment is a mighty factor in the development of a people whose aesthetic sense is commensurate with the task before them of maintaining a commercial relationship which is thrust upon them by the very nature of their existence. Not only must we have the aesthetic quality in order that it may appear in our products, but we demand this quality as a natural means of refinement and culture. Its function is to satisfy the inherent desire for beauty which nature has decreed shall be a part of man's general makeup.

To historic periods, then, we must turn not only to know their structural forms, their decorative ideas, and their finished art objects, but to understand their colour as scientifically, logically and sensibly as we know their other forms of expression. To express the Tudor period in the colours of Louis XVI is as impossible a task as it would be for Queen Elizabeth to impersonate Marie Antoinette.