58 GOETHE'S " FARBENLEHRE." 



him, while among philosophers Sehelling and Hegel 

 shouted in acclamation over the supposed defeat of 

 Newton. The physicists, however, gave the poet no 

 countenance. Goethe met their scorn with scorn, and 

 under his lash these deniers of his theory, their Master 

 included, paid the penalty of their arrogance. 



How, then, did he lay down the lines of his own 

 theory? How, out of such meagre elements as his 

 yellow, and his blue, and his turbid medium, did he 

 extract the amazing variety and richness of the New- 

 tonian spectrum? Here we must walk circumspectly, 

 for the intellectual atmosphere with which Goethe sur- 

 rounds himself is by no means free from turbidity. In 

 trying to account for his position, we must make our- 

 selves acquainted with his salient facts, and endeavour 

 to place our minds in sympathy with his mode of regard- 

 ing them. He found that he could intensify the yellow 

 of his transmitted light by making the turbidity of his 

 medium stronger. A single sheet of diaphanous parch- 

 ment placed over a hole in his window-shutter appeared 

 whitish. Two sheets appeared yellow, which by the 

 addition of other sheets could be converted into red. It 

 is quite true that by simply sending it through a me- 

 dium charged with extremely minute particles we can 

 extract from white light a ruby red. The red of the 

 London sun, of which we have had such fine and fre- 

 quent examples during the late winter, is a case to 

 some extent in point. Goethe did not believe in New- 

 ton's differently refrangible rays. He refused to enter- 

 tain the notion that the red light obtained by the em- 

 ployment of several sheets of parchment was different 

 in quality from the yellow light obtained with two. 

 The red, according to him, was a mere intensification 

 " Steigerung " of the yellow. Colours in general con- 

 sisted, according to Goethe, of light on its way to 



