ON Goethe's scientific researches. 51 



and roundabout methods which chemists must often 

 adopt to obtain certain elementary bodies in a pure form ; 

 and we need not be surprised to find that it is impossible 

 to solve a similar problem in the case of light in the 

 open air in a garden, and with a single prism in one's 

 hand.^ Goethe must, consistently with his theory, deny 

 in toto the possibility of isolating pure liglit of one colour. 

 Whether he ever experimented with the proper apparatus 

 to solve the problem remains doubtful, as the supplement 

 in which he promised to detail these experiments was 

 never published. 



To give some idea of the passionate way in which 

 Goethe, usually so temperate and even courtier-like, attacks 

 Newton, I quote from a few pages of the controversial 

 part of his work the following expressions, which he ap- 

 plies to the propositions of this consummate thinker in 

 physical and astronomical science — 'incredibly impu- 

 dent;' ' mere twaddle ;' ' ludicrous explanation ;' 'admi- 

 rable for school-children in a go-cart ;' ' but I see nothing 

 will do but lying, and plenty of it.' ^ 



Thus, in the theory of colour, Goethe remains faithful 

 to his principle, that Nature must reveal her secrets of her 

 own free will ; that she is but the transparent representa- 

 tion of the ideal world. Accordingly, he demands as a 

 preliminary to the investigation of physical phenomena, 

 that the observed facts shall be so arranged that one ex- 

 plains the other, and that thus we may attain an insight 



* I venture to add that I am acquainted with the impossibility of decom- 

 posing or changing simple coloured light, the two principles which form 

 the basis of Newton's theory, not merely by hearsay, but from actual obser- 

 vation, having been under the necessity in one of my own researches of 

 obtaining light of one colour in a state of the greatest possible piirity. (See 

 Poggendorft's Annalen, vol. Ixxxvi. p. 50], on Sir D. Brewster's Ntw Analysis 

 of Svnlight.) 



2 Something parallel to this extraordinary proceeding of Goethe's may be 

 found in Hobbes's attack on Wallis. — Tb. 



