1880.] vn Goethe s'Farhenhhre: 343 



pathology ; Eelatiou to natural history ; Relation to general physics ; 

 Rclatiou to tones. Then follows a series of sections dealing with 

 the primary colours ami their mixtures. These sections relate less 

 to science than to art. Tlie writer treats, among other tilings, of: 

 Esthetic effects ; Fear of the Tlieoretical ; Grounds and Pigments ; 

 Allegorical, Symbolical, and Mystical use of colours. The lioadiugs 

 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 his subject, Goethe charged himself with all 

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

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

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

 tion — quoting Tycho Brahe on the comparative aj^parent 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 colours, and described various modes of producing 

 them. He copiously illustrates the production by red of subjective 

 green, and by green of subjective vo\. Blue produces subjective 

 yellow, and yellow subjective blue. He experimented upon shadows, 

 coloured in contrast to surrounding light. The contrasting sub- 

 jective colours he calls " geforderte Farben," colours " demanded " 

 by the eye. Goethe gives the following striking illustration of these 

 subjective effects. " I once," he said, " entered an inn towards 

 evening, when a well-built maiden, with dazzlingly white face, black 

 hair, and scarlet bodice and skirt came towards me. I looked at 

 her sharply in the twilight, and when she moved away, saw upon 

 the white wall opposite a black fixce 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 dis- 

 cerned in these antitheses an image of the general method of nature. 

 Every action, he says, implies an opposite. Inhalation 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 portions of his work. 



Goethe handled the prism with great skill, and his experi- 

 ments with it are numberless. He places white rectangles on a black 

 ground, black rectangles on a white ground, and shifts their apjiarent 

 positions by prismatic refraction. He makes similar experiments with 

 Coloured rectangles and discs. The shifted image is sometimes 

 projected on a screen, the experiment being then •' objective." It 

 is sometimes looked at directly through the prism, the experiment 

 being then " subjective." In the production of chromatic effects, 

 he dwells upon the absolute necessity of boundaries — " Griinzen." 

 The sky may be looked at and shifted by a prism without the pro- 

 duction of colour ; and if the white rectangle on a black ground be 

 only made wide enough, the centre remains white after refraction, the 



