218 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The disquisition is continued under the headings : How easily Color 

 arises ; How energetic Color may be ; Heightening to red ; Complete- 

 ness of Manifold Phenomena ; Agreement of Complete Phenomena ; 

 How easily Color disappears ; How durable Color remains ; Relation 

 to Philosophy ; Relation to Mathematics ; Relation to Physiology and 

 Pathology ; Relation to Natural History ; Relation to General Phys- 

 ics ; Relation to Tones. Then follows a series of sections dealing 

 with the primary colors and their mixtures. These sections relate less 

 to science than to art. The writer treats, among other things, of 

 ./Esthetic Effects ; Fear of the Theoretical ; Grounds and Pigments ; 

 Allegorical, Symbolical, and Mystical Use of Colors. The headings 

 alone indicate the enormous industry of the poet ; showing at the same 

 time an absence of that scientific definition which he stigmatized as 

 " pedantry " in the case of Newton. 



In connection with this subject, Goethe charged himself with all 

 kinds of kindred knowledge. He refers to ocular spectra, quoting 

 Boyle, Buffon, and Darwin ; to the paralysis of the eye by light ; to 

 its extreme sensitiveness when it awakes in the morning ; to irradia- 

 tion quoting Tycho Brahe on the comparative apparent size of the 

 dark and the illuminated moon. He dwells upon the persistence of 

 impressions upon the retina, and quotes various instances of abnormal 

 duration. He possessed a full and exact knowledge of the phenomena 

 of subjective colors, and described various modes of producing them. 

 He copiously illustrates the production by red of subjective green, 

 and by green of subjective red. Blue produces subjective yellow, and 

 yellow subjective blue. He experimented upon shadows, colored in con- 

 trast to surrounding light. The contrasting subjective colors he calls 

 " gef orderte Farben," colors " demanded " by the eye. Goethe gives 

 the following striking illustration of these subjective effects : " I once," 

 he said, " entered an inn toward evening, when a well-built maiden, 

 with dazzlingly white face, black hair, and scarlet bodice and skirt 

 came toward me. I looked at her sharply in the twilight, and when 

 she moved away, saw upon the white wall opposite a black face with 

 a bright halo round it, while the clothing of the perfectly distinct 

 figure appeared of a beautiful sea-green." With the instinct of the 

 poet, Goethe discerned in these antitheses an image of the general 

 method of nature. Every action, he says, implies an opposite. In- 

 halation precedes expiration, and each systole has its corresponding 

 diastole. Such is the eternal formula of life. Under the figure of 

 systole and diastole the rhythm of nature is represented in other por- 

 tions of the work. 



Goethe handled the prism with great skill, and his experiments with 

 it are numberless. He places white rectangles on a black ground, black 

 rectangles on a white ground, and shifts their apparent positions by pris- 

 matic refraction. He makes similar experiments with colored rectan- 

 gles and disks. The shifted image is sometimes projected on a screen, 



