SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES iS} 

 highly. The theory of colour that he develops in this work agrees entirely 

 with Schelling's polarity theory. All colour-effect is derived from a "primal 

 phenomenon" — namely, the contrast between light and darkness; between 

 these two stands as a connecting link ' 'das Trube. ' ' When pure light is broken 

 up by a prism, it is disturbed by the action of the glass, and from this arise 

 the spectral colours. That these colours arise through the disturbance of the 

 light Goethe tries to prove, infer alia, by the fact that the sun, when viewed 

 through a darkened glass, appears red. Newton's view that the pure white 

 light actually arises as a result of the combination of the various colours in 

 the spectrum puts Goethe into a furious passion; he goes through Newton's 

 optics point by point and provides them with marginal notes which are as 

 irrational in content as they are scurrilous in tone. The coarsest expressions 

 in the vocabulary denoting stupidity and dishonesty are lavished on page 

 after page of the work. Goethe has here — to his own discredit — adopted 

 his admirer Schelling's polemical vocabulary, while his general attitude 

 towards Newton displays in a deplorable manner the narrow limitations of 

 even a universal genius. Goethe deserves no place in the history of optics. 



Nevertheless, Goethe was not entirely wrong when he considered the 

 colour theory to be his best natural-scientific work. In fact, it contains a 

 section in which Goethe's finest gifts as an observer of nature are given full 

 play as nowhere else — namely, the chapter on "physiological colours." 

 In this chapter, as well as here and there in other parts of the work, are a 

 large number of observations of subjective colour-perceptions, recorded with 

 all the exactness of a scientist and with the keen insight of an artist. These 

 detailed observations concerning colour harmony, colour contrasts, com- 

 plementary colours, and other optico-physiological phenomena, attracted 

 great attention even among his contemporaries; they resulted in continued 

 research by scientists possessing professional knowledge of quite a different 

 type from that of their model, and even in our own day, when mental phys- 

 iology has become a specialized science, they have won justifiable recog- 

 nition. In no field has Goethe so nearly approached the spirit of exact 

 natural research as he has here, and that, too, in spite of the false theory 

 for the sake of which this subsequent research work was carried out. 



During the remaining years of Goethe's life the colour theory absorbed 

 most of his scientific interest; in fact, in his old age he ended by valuing it 

 above all his poetic works. This was manifestly due to the fact that as a 

 poet he considered himself neglected; his neo-romantic proteges, Schelling's 

 friends, had come to dominate public opinion, and though they always 

 treated him with courtesy, they wounded his feelings by placing their own 

 quite mediocre leaders on a level with him. On the other hand, they loudly 

 praised his scientific speculations; there grew up quite a school of scientific 

 students of natural philosophy who looked up to Goethe as a prophet — 



