1880.] on Goethe's * Farhenlehre: 341 



But in the month of May, 1878, Mr. Carlyle did mo tbo honour 

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

 him in Chelsea soon afterwards. He was then in his eighty-third 

 year, and looking in his solemn fashion towards that portal to which 

 we are all so rapidly hastening, he remembered his friends. He then 

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

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

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

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

 the ' Farhenlehre,' — a title which may be translated, though not well 

 translated, ' Theory of Colours' — and they are accompanied by a long 

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

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

 trious friend wdshed 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 w^th 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 labour 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 ' Farhenlehre.' 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 

 conceiDtions was often so great, as to invoke the expenditure of an 

 inordinate amount of time. I cannot 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 production 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 

 convictions in different minds. But in the region of science, where 

 demonstration 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 

 which had previously converted the world to Newton's views, on 

 appealing to the mind of Goethe, produced a theory of light and 

 colours in violent antagonism to that of Newton. 



* The late Sir Charles Eastlake translated a portion of the ' Farhenlehre' ; 

 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 labours, in Helmholtz's Lectures. 



