Darkness, as polar to brightness, is understood to be an absence of visible light. It is also the appearance of black in a color space.
Humans are unable to distinguish color when either light or darkness predominate (W. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, 1907). In the absence of light, perception is achromatic and ultimately, black.
The emotional response to darkness has metaphorical connotations in many cultures.
Famous quotes containing the word darkness:
“Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.
Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the
Church?”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“It is the sea that whitens the roof.
The sea drifts through the winter air.
It is the sea that the north wind makes.
The sea is in the falling snow.
This gloom is the darkness of the sea.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)