Note 38 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Painters are well aware that the colours at the red end of the spectrum are apt to appear as advancing, while those of the violet end are known as retiring. The appearance of relief given by a gilded pattern on a dark blue as ground, is in part referable to the principle just referred to. In addition, it appears to involve a difference in the action of the muscles of accommodation in the successive adaptations of the eye to the most refrangible and the least refrangible rays. (See Brücke, Die Physiologie der Farben, sec. 17.)