44 ON GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES. 



writings, instantly suggested itself to every one who knew 

 them. 



A reader who tries to realise attentively and thoroughly 

 every step in this part of the controversy is apt to expe- 

 rience at this point an uncomfortable, almost a painful 

 feeling to see a man of extraordinary abilities persist- 

 ently declaring that there is an obvious absurdity lurking 

 in a few inferences apparently quite clear and simple. 

 He searches and searches, and at last unable, with 

 all his efforts, to find any such absurdity, or even the 

 appearance of it, he gets into a state of mind in which 

 his own ideas are, so to speak, crystallised. But it is just 

 this obvious, flat contradiction that makes Groethe's point 

 of view in 1792 so interesting and so important. At this 

 point he has not as yet developed any theory of his own ; 

 there is nothing under discussion but a few easily-grasped 

 facts, as to the correctness of which both parties are agreed, 

 and yet both hold distinctly opposite views ; neither 

 of them even understands what his opponent is driving 

 at. On the one side are a number of physicists, who, 

 by a long series of the ablest investigations, the most 

 elaborate calculations, and the most ingenious inven- 

 tions, have brought optics to such perfection, that it, 

 and it alone, among the physical sciences, was begin- 

 ning almost to rival astronomy in accuracy. Some of 

 them have made the phenomena the subject of direct in- 

 vestigation ; all of them, thanks to the accuracy with 

 which it is possible to calculate beforehand the result 

 of every variety in the construction and combination of 

 instruments, have had the opportunity of putting the 

 inferences deduced from Newton's views to the test of 

 experiment, and all, without exception, agree in ac- 

 cepting them. On the other side is a man whose 

 remarkable mental endowments, and whose singular 

 talent for seeing through whatever obscures reality, we 



