342 Professor Tyndall [March 19, 



Goethe prized the ' Farbenlehre ' as the most important of his 

 works. " In what I have done as a poet," he says to Eckermann, " I 

 take no pride, but I am proud of the fact that I am the only person 

 in this century who is acquainted with the difficult science of colours." 

 If the importance of a work were to be measured by the amount of 

 conscious labour expended in its production, Goethe's estimate of 

 the ' Farbenlehre ' would probably be correct. The observations and 

 experiments there recorded astonish us by their variety and number. 

 The amount of reading which he accomj)lished was obviously vast. 

 He pursued the history of optics, not only along its main streams, but 

 on to its remotest rills. He was animated by the zeal of an apostle, 

 for he believed that a giant imposture was to be overthrown, and that 

 he was the man to accomplish the holy work of destruction. He was 

 also a lover of art, and held that the enunciation of the true principles 

 of colour would, in relation to painting, be of lasting importance. 

 Thus positively and negatively he was stimulated to bring all the 

 strength he could command to bear upon this question. The greater 

 part of the first volume is taken up with Goethe's own experiments, 

 which are described in 920 paragraphs duly numbered. It is not a 

 consecutive argument, but rather a series of jets of fact and logic 

 emitted at various intervals. I picture the poet in that troublous war- 

 time, walking up and down his Weimar garden, with his hands behind 

 his back, pondering his subject, throwing his experiments and re- 

 flections into these terse paragraphs, and turning occasionally into his 

 garden house to write them down. This first portion of the work 

 embraces three parts, which deal respectively with : Physiological or 

 Subjective Colours, with Physical or Prismatic Colours, and with 

 Chemical Colours and Pigments. To these are added a fourth part, 

 bearing the German title, " Allgemeine Ansichten nach innen " ; a 

 fifth part, entitled " Nachbarliche Verhaltnisse," neighbouring rela- 

 tions ; and a sixth part, entitled " Sinnlich-sittliche Wirkung der 

 Farbe," sensuously-moral effect of colours. It is hardly necessary 

 to remark that some of these titles, though doubtless j)regnant with 

 meaning to the poet himself, are not likely to commend themselves 

 to the more exacting man of science. 



The main divisions of Goethe's book are subdivided into short sec- 

 tions, bearing titles more or less shadowy from a scientific point of view : 

 Origin of white ; Origin of black ; Excitement of colour ; Heighten- 

 ing ; Culmination ; Balancing ; Kc version ; Fixation ; Mixture real ; 

 Mixture apparent ; Communication actual ; Communication a2)parcnt. 

 He describes the colours of minerals, plants, worms, insects, fishes, 

 birds, mammals, and men. Hair on the surface of the human body 

 he considers indicative rather of weakness than of strength. The 

 disquisition is continued under the headings: How easily colour 

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

 ness of manifold phenomena ; Agreement of complete phenomena ; 

 How easily colour disappears ; How durable colour remains ; Relation 

 to philosophy ; Relation to mathematics ; Relation to pliysiology and 



