216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the " Farbenlehre," and looked up to Goethe on that side where his 

 greatness was uncontested and supreme. 



But in the month of May, 1878, Mr. Carlyle did me the honor of 

 calling upon me twice ; and I, not being at home at the time, visited 

 him in Chelsea soon afterward. He was then in his eighty-third year, 

 and, looking in his solemn fashion toward that portal to which we are 

 all so rapidly hastening, he remembered his friends. He then pre- 

 sented to me, as " a farewell gift," the two octavo volumes of letter- 

 press and the single folio volume, consisting in great part of colored 

 diagrams, which are here before you. Exactly half a century ago 

 these volumes were sent by Goethe to Mr. Carlyle. They embrace 

 the " Farbenlehre "a title which may be translated, though not well 

 translated, " Theory of Colors " and they are accompanied by a long 

 letter, or rather catalogue from Goethe himself, dated the 14th of 

 June, 1830, a little less than two years before his death. My illus- 

 trious friend wished me to examine the book, with a view of setting 

 forth what it really contained. This year for the first time I have 

 been able to comply with the desire of Mr. Carlyle ; and as I knew 

 that your wish would coincide with his, as to the propriety of making 

 some attempt to weigh the merits of a work which exerted so great 

 an influence in its day,* I have not shrunk from the labor of such a 

 review. 



The average reading of the late Mr. Buckle is said to have 

 amounted to three volumes a day. But they could not have been 

 volumes like those of the " Farbenlehre." For the necessity of halting 

 and pondering over its statements was so frequent and the difficulty 

 of coming to any undoubted conclusion regarding Goethe's real con- 

 ceptions was often so great as to invoke the expenditure of an inordi- 

 nate amount of time. I can not even now say with confidence that I 

 fully realize all the thoughts of Goethe. Many of them are strange to 

 the scientific man. They demand for their interpretation a sympathy 

 beyond that required or even tolerated in severe physical research. 

 Two factors, the one external and the other internal, go to the produc- 

 tion of every intellectual result. There is the evidence without and 

 there is the mind within on which that evidence impinges. Change 

 either factor, and the result will cease to be the same. In the region 

 of politics, where mere opinion comes so much into play, it is only 

 natural that the same external evidence should produce different con- 

 victions in different minds. But in the region of science, where dem- 

 onstration instead of opinion is paramount, such differences ought 

 hardly to be expected. That they nevertheless occur is strikingly 

 exemplified by the case before us ; for the very experimental facts 



* The late Sir Charles Eastlake translated a portion of the " Farbenlehre " ; while the 

 late Mr. Lewes, in his " Life of Goethe," has given a brief but very clever account of the 

 work. It is also dealt with, in connection with Goethe's other scientific labors, in Helru- 

 holtz's lectures. 



